ELDORADO, Texas -
Authorities are gearing up for the next prosecution of a member of the Utah-based Fundamentalist LDS Church.
Allan Eugene Keate, 56, will go on trial Dec. 7 on a charge of child sex assault. Last week, Raymond Jessop, 38, was convicted of child sex assault and sentenced to 10 years in a Texas prison for fathering a child with a 16-year-old girl who was a plural wife. He will face a separate bigamy charge at a later date.
In all, a dozen FLDS members, including polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, 53, face criminal charges related to underage marriages.
"The court has set a series of trial dates that stretch into December of next year," said Eric Nichols, an assistant Texas Attorney General.
Key to those cases is hundreds of boxes of evidence seized by police in last year's raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch outside Eldorado. Authorities, acting on a phone call alleging abuse, raided the ranch and placed 439 children in state protective custody. Texas child welfare officials alleged a pattern of abuse, with girls becoming child brides and boys groomed to be sexual perpetrators.
The state's case imploded, however, when a pair of Texas appellate courts found the children were not at any immediate risk of abuse and ordered the children returned.
The evidence seized from the YFZ's temple annex was used to build a dozen criminal cases against FLDS men accused of taking underage girls as plural wives. They included family photographs, marriage records and thousands of pages of dictations by Jeffs. Prosecutors first used them in Raymond Jessop's trial in the absence of witnesses, who have said they are not crime victims.
Collectively, they paint a picture of some underage marriages being performed at the ranch.
"I was mouth at performing the marriage sealings," Jeffs allegedly said in a 2006 dictation that was entered into evidence in one of the child custody cases. "Merril Leroy Jessop received (one girl) and Raymond Merril Jessop received my daughter (name redacted)."
The document describes three marriages Jeffs was involved with, including the spiritual marriage of a 12-year-old girl to the FLDS leader.
"I delegated Merril Jessop to ferform the sealing, and there was sealed (the girl) to Warren Steed Jeffs. That's me!" he said in the dictation.
Last year, the FLDS Church said it no longer condones any underage marriages. Attorneys for FLDS members have fought to have the evidence tossed, arguing that it was illegally obtained by police based upon a hoax phone call. The judge presiding over the FLDS trials refused, and the FLDS have said they will appeal.
"There was no victim," FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop told reporters Tuesday after Jessop's sentencing. "They've never had a victim. The only victims they've had is what they generated. They generated them on April 3, on a hoax telephone call. They've now been working diligently to justify the terrible deeds that they did."
FOX 13's Ben Winslow reports.
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Allan Eugene Keate, 56, will go on trial Dec. 7 on a charge of child sex assault. Last week, Raymond Jessop, 38, was convicted of child sex assault and sentenced to 10 years in a Texas prison for fathering a child with a 16-year-old girl who was a plural wife. He will face a separate bigamy charge at a later date.
In all, a dozen FLDS members, including polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, 53, face criminal charges related to underage marriages.
"The court has set a series of trial dates that stretch into December of next year," said Eric Nichols, an assistant Texas Attorney General.
Key to those cases is hundreds of boxes of evidence seized by police in last year's raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch outside Eldorado. Authorities, acting on a phone call alleging abuse, raided the ranch and placed 439 children in state protective custody. Texas child welfare officials alleged a pattern of abuse, with girls becoming child brides and boys groomed to be sexual perpetrators.
The state's case imploded, however, when a pair of Texas appellate courts found the children were not at any immediate risk of abuse and ordered the children returned.
The evidence seized from the YFZ's temple annex was used to build a dozen criminal cases against FLDS men accused of taking underage girls as plural wives. They included family photographs, marriage records and thousands of pages of dictations by Jeffs. Prosecutors first used them in Raymond Jessop's trial in the absence of witnesses, who have said they are not crime victims.
Collectively, they paint a picture of some underage marriages being performed at the ranch.
"I was mouth at performing the marriage sealings," Jeffs allegedly said in a 2006 dictation that was entered into evidence in one of the child custody cases. "Merril Leroy Jessop received (one girl) and Raymond Merril Jessop received my daughter (name redacted)."
The document describes three marriages Jeffs was involved with, including the spiritual marriage of a 12-year-old girl to the FLDS leader.
"I delegated Merril Jessop to ferform the sealing, and there was sealed (the girl) to Warren Steed Jeffs. That's me!" he said in the dictation.
Last year, the FLDS Church said it no longer condones any underage marriages. Attorneys for FLDS members have fought to have the evidence tossed, arguing that it was illegally obtained by police based upon a hoax phone call. The judge presiding over the FLDS trials refused, and the FLDS have said they will appeal.
"There was no victim," FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop told reporters Tuesday after Jessop's sentencing. "They've never had a victim. The only victims they've had is what they generated. They generated them on April 3, on a hoax telephone call. They've now been working diligently to justify the terrible deeds that they did."
FOX 13's Ben Winslow reports.
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