ARIZONA-UTAH BORDER (CNN) -- After 115 days on the FBI's most-wanted list and a year in solitary confinement in a jail called Purgatory, the leader of the nation's largest polygamist sect is going on trial in St. George, Utah.
Polygamist sect leader Warren Steed Jeffs is accused of arranging marriages to underage girls.
Warren Steed Jeffs, 51, is the president and prophet, seer and revelator of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as the FLDS. He stands accused of being an accomplice to ****. The trial is in its fourth day of jury selection.
The charges stem from Jeffs' alleged practice of arranging marriages between adult male followers and underage brides.
The young accuser at the center of the trial is under police protection. "Jane Doe," as she is known in court documents, was 14 at the time she says Jeffs forced her into a "spiritual marriage" with a 19-year-old first cousin. Watch how Jeffs went from prophet to defendant »
The two were married in Las Vegas by the prophet. "The whole time I was there I was crying. I wanted to die. I was so scared," the reluctant child bride testified at a preliminary hearing.
She told authorities her husband's demands for *** made her uncomfortable. But when she sought the advice of the prophet, she says he told her it was her spiritual duty to submit to her husband, who is her "priesthood head and leader." If she didn't, he warned, she'd lose her "salvation," according to an affidavit.
Those are the simple elements of the prosecution's case in the ****-accomplice trial, now in the jury selection phase. But a lot is at stake in this desolate stretch of desert along the Utah-Arizona border. The trial of Warren Jeffs is expected to pull back the curtain on a secretive community and what critics say are the abusive practices of its leaders.
The estimated 10,000 FLDS members are taught that outsiders are wicked. They are forbidden to watch television or movies. The only music they hear are tapes of Jeffs singing hymns. And, like "Jane Doe," girls as young as 13 are forced into marriages arranged by FLDS leaders, investigators and those who have left the sect say.
The judge presiding over the trial, James L. Shumate, recently ruled that two former followers, now ardent critics, can testify about Jeffs' influence over FLDS marriages and couples' *** lives.
One of Jeffs' lawyers, Walter Bugden Jr., recently told CNN that Jeffs and his flock "absolutely" believe he is being persecuted by authorities. Jailers told the Salt Lake Tribune that Jeffs has open sores on his knees because he is constantly praying in his cell.
The FLDS is not to be confused with the Mormon church, which abandoned polygamy in 1890. The church renounces the polygamous FLDS, which in turn believes it is practicing the true religion of founder Joseph Smith.
As their faith dictates, followers cover themselves from chin to toe in prairie-style garb. Women wear long, pastel-colored prairie dresses, and men dress in long pants and long-sleeved shirts. Former followers say red, thought to be the color of evil, is banned.
Former followers have painted a grim picture of compound life in interviews with CNN. They say ******, child molestation and spousal abuse are rampant. Disobedient wives who don't "keep sweet" have been sent to mental institutions.
"It is remarkable to me that this community exists in the United States," he said. "You have what I would call a total theocracy here. It is totally controlled by the church and the church leaders."
On August 28, 2006, the red Cadillac Escalade the prophet was riding in was pulled over outside Las Vegas, Nevada. His brother was driving. One of his wives, Naomi, was at his side. Police found wigs, sunglasses, computers, iPods and $54,000 in cash sewn into the lining of a suitcase.
