Prospective jurors were vetted Monday for the trial of the first of 12 male members of a Texas polygamist sect whose ranch state officials raided last year.
Nearly 10 people in the jury pool that will try Raymond Jessop clearly belonged to the Fundamentalist Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Houston Chronicle reported. The women wore traditional ankle-length prairie dresses with their hair in braids, and the men wore buttoned-up shirts.
Sect members had vowed to register to vote after the April 2008 raid on the Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldorado, the Chronicle reported. Jury pools are pulled from voter registration rolls.
"Everyone (in the sect) views (Raymond) as a hero and martyr," Flora Jessop, former polygamist Flora Jessop who escaped the compound 15 years ago, told CBS News. "Being on trial has not and will not hurt his image at all. All 12 of these guys are viewed that way."
Raymond Jessop, of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is set to stand trial Monday, 18 months after agents raided the group's remote ranch and carted off more than 400 children in the largest child custody case in American history, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Jessop was indicted after a raid in April 2008 and pleaded not guilty to allegations including sexual assault, bigamy, and being married to underage girls, CBS reported.
Jessop faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of sexual assault of a child, a charge stemming from his alleged marriage to an underage girl in FLDS, a breakaway Mormon sect that is not recognized by the mainstream Mormon church, the Chronicle reported. He will be tried later on a separate count of bigamy related to a second alleged underage bride.
"I knew that the girl being 16 years old, if she went to the hospital, they could put Raymond Jessop in jeopardy of prosecution as the government is looking for any reason to come against us there," Warren Jeffs, a sect leader, wrote in a journal seized from the ranch referring to an underage girl Jessop married and impregnated.
In all, 12 sect members have been charged with crimes ranging from failure to report child abuse to sexual assault and bigamy, the Chronicle reported.
It "really doesn't" surprise me that the men are being put on trial, "because of the nature of the abuses that we've been talking about for years,” Flora told CBS News. “And I'm just happy to see that they are going to trial. What I'm upset the most about, I think, is the fact that none of the women have been indicted, as well.
"I think that the women were nothing but pimps on that compound and giving their daughters over to these perverts knowing what was going to happen to them," Flora added.
"What the jury's going to hear, though, my understanding (is), is DNA evidence establishing paternity and maternity, and they were not able to get DNA for a lot of these children to determine who belongs to whom,” Beth Karas, a Court TV correspondent, told CBS. “But for the men charged, I believe they have the evidence."
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While they might have enough to at least charge the main culprits responsible, it sounds like pressing the trial too much further will cause a lot of undo stress on the poor children that were directly impacted by the polygamist sect.