Polygamists on Trial

This week, I am attending the trial of Raymond Merrill Jessop, a member of a polygamous Mormon sect in West Texas, accused of sexually assaulting a child. You will no doubt remember the photos from 2008 of Texas Rangers storming the compound and carting off hundreds of children, from toddlers to teenagers. Since then, the members of Yearning for Zion have allowed select photographers onto the compound to capture innocent moments – feeding babies, slicing bananas and being generally wholesome, as a way to win over public opinion. Today, the trial created another opportunity to contemplate the power of images to manufacture a truth.

The prosecution is trying to establish that Jessop had a baby with a girl who was then 16; sexual relations with a girl that age is illegal in Texas, and although she is his “wife” their marriage is not recognized in the state. As evidence, the prosecution submitted several photos of the girl and her baby.  In all – including the one on her drivers license – she looks calm, confident, extremely happy. Her maternal gestures with the baby seem utterly natural. There is one exception, and it will stay with me forever. Someone from the attorney general’s office came to take a DNA swab from the baby’s cheek. In the photo, he is on his knees, wearing white gloves, looking sternly at what seems to be a needle (it’s a Q-tip). The baby, then 4, looks terrified, and is gripping her mother’s skirt and back. The mother’s head is cut out of the shot, so you can’t tell her age.

The prosecution was using these photos to build their case but the impression they leave is exactly the opposite: Here was a woman, beaming and carefree, until a man from the state showed up at her front door, with a medical instrument. Visually, they confirm what Willie Jessop, the spokesman for the sect, keeps repeating. “There is no victim here. The state is trying to create one.”

Whether or not the girl consented is irrelevant to this case. Because of her age, the sex was illegal. And what does consent mean anyway for a girl who was completely sheltered and raised to think that being a teenage mother was the highest honor? That said, the state has had several of these girls away from the compound in their custody for months, and has not been able to convince any of them that they were coerced. She is now 21 and still a hostile witness. So at what point, for the older girls at least, does yes means yes?

 

Tags: Mormon sect, polygamy, Raymond Merrill Jessop, Yearning for Zion

Hanna Rosin Double X co- editor, reporter, prefer my friends live.

Comments

Unlawful sex

By: ProudTexan | Sat, 10/31/2009 - 11:00

It doesn't matter that the girls are now adults, they were children when they were impregnated and that won't be changed by the fact that they are now adults. The FLDS religion has to follow the laws just like any other religion. You can't break a law and then claim it's your religion otherwise, there would be no use for laws because everyone would claim a religious exemption for any law they wanted to break, take drugs for example. Suppose Religion X says that using meth is part of its religion, are you just supposed to let them break the law? The answer is no, if you break the law you must pay regardless of your religion.

When Yes means Yes

By: Rebeckah | Sat, 10/31/2009 - 09:41

Hannah, it's pretty simple. Now that this girl is over 18 she can legally say yes even to illegal situations. Before she was 18, whether she thought it was okay or not, she could not -- nor should she have been allowed to. This is a protection not just for her, but for ALL young girls, from being coerced into a situation they do not truly understand and are not prepared for. You brought up the fact that she is 21 and still does not feel that she is a victim. Now I wonder a few things. What happens if she turns 25, 28, or 30 and decides that she doesn't want her 13 year old daughter (and there were several documented cases of 13 year olds being married off in this sect too) to be given to a man 3 times her age. She decides to flee with her children. Does she have a high school diploma? A GED? Any college or trade skills? Merrill Jessop has shown that the men in this group feel NO responsibility to pay child support for their children. (In case you missed that in the support trial, he actually told the judge that he didn't feel the need to support his children because their mother had a "nice home" and left it.) How is she going to take care of them if not? You appear to be arguing that the public should ignore eggregious violations of not just the law, but basic human decency, if the abuser can convince the victim that she really wants this. I find that mindset frightening. No, I don't think that children should be removed willy nilly. Yes, I do think that Raymond and all of the other men who married underage girls should be prosecuted. I also think that our nation needs to have a NATIONAL standard of education which is enforced from coast to coast and verified in the cases of children being homeschooled. Ultimately only education can make a difference in the lives of these men, women, and children.

As a side note, are you aware that several of these women on the ranch had left behind chidren when they moved there? One woman left her children by her deceased husband. If losing a parent is traumatic, I wonder how they will fare in having lost a father and then having a mother abandon them. I believe there are certainly cases where a child being placed in a safe home is better than leaving them with their parents. Not ALL children should be removed, but some certainly should.

We tolerate religious teachings

By: Kit-Kat | Fri, 10/30/2009 - 15:54

but not religious practices that conflict with the law. Parents who abuse their children do not get a free pass as a result of their religious beliefs. Parents are prosecuted for child abuse committed in the name of religion, as well as acts that endanger their child's health, such as the refusal of medical care, that are undertaken as a result of religious beliefs.

I don't object to the FLDSers believing whatever they want to (however misguided I think it is) but to the fact that systemic statutory rape is part of their religious practice. As is child abandonment (that is, the lost boys) and welfare fraud and bigamy.

dissapointed...

By: jkw | Fri, 10/30/2009 - 15:06

It's disappointing to read the responses to this article. This is not a question concerning the appropriate age for women to give birth, this is about a 30 year old man having sex with a 15 year old girl. And this is also not a question of who did the complaining. In this country we have something called a Public Order Crime, which includes crimes that disrupt the social norms and conventions of our society. Basically, it means that when an adult has sex with a minor it is considered rape, even if the act was consensual, as Hannah Rosin points out. And as far as the "So at what point, for the older girls at least, does yes means yes?" question, the law is clear: you are a minor until your 18th birthday, at which point yes means yes. You can't stop people from making bad decisions and you can't always arm them with the necessary background to make those decisions.

The other issue I would like to address is referred to in some of the posts concerns the children and the so-called brainwashing of members of the FLDS. The truth is that this country prides itself on religious freedom (as long as the religious practices in question conform to the other laws of this country). And while I do think that what the FLDS church does is wrong, morally, it is no different than what fundamentalists of all sorts do. We tolerate Christians who teach their children to speak in tongues, who convince them that they will burn in hell, and that Armageddon is just around the corner. If we accept this, then why not the teachings of the FLDS? You can't pick and choose: either religion needs to be outlawed or it must exist withing the confines of the laws of this country.

I have seen horrible parents of the religious and non-religious sort and as long as they do nothing illegal they are free to raise their children as they see fit. That's what freedom means, like it or not.

Choose your poison

By: _Nancy_ | Fri, 10/30/2009 - 13:09

a lot of this boils down to the specifics of the case. What were the complaints? Who did the complaining? But with regard to the actions of the authorities at the time, I have grave concerns. What's worse? an underaged teen mother raised in a religious sect or the authorities intervening in the family? I think back to the spectacle of crying children being removed from their hysterical mothers and can't help but wonder what is the greater harm?


There are two points here for me. The first is that no matter how bad we may judge this cult to be for the women who participate in it, I think that stepping in without being asked, it that's what happened here, is a problem. There are no doubt all sorts of difficulties for young women in that position who want out and it makes sense to make getting help as easy as possible for them. But to step in on the assumption that the complaint is there makes me uncomfortable. What sort of precedent does that set? What about other religions sects, the Hasidim, for instance? Is it okay to step in because we assume there is harm going on?


The other issue for me is the children. It's widely recognized that while children are resilient over all, separation from a parent, being removed from a home, even a bad home is more traumatic than staying. While there's no logitudinal evidence for long term negative effects from violent film and television, spanking, poverty or even living with an alcoholic parent, there is a very clear link between losing a parent in childhood, whether to death or through a traumatic separation and difficulties of all sorts as these children grow up. Separating parents and children should be a last resort and only used in the most extreme cases.

I'll be interested to see what happens as the trial progresses.

If you can't figure out what

By: Kit-Kat | Fri, 10/30/2009 - 11:06

If you can't figure out what is wrong with these FLDS cults, it's starting to become hopeless. Girls are "married" off as teenagers to men at least twice their age without any choice in the matter. Excess boys are abandoned as teenagers, dumped by the side of the road. They have no education and no previous contact with the outside world, and many end up involved in drugs and prostitution. When a man dies or is kicked out of the cult for misbehavior or as the result of a power struggle, his wives are simply reassigned to other men. Girls often end up married to relatives, with their mothers or aunts or daughters as co-wives. Welfare fraud is often rampant. Read *Under the Banner of Heaven* for a start. Stop acting like this is just some kind of lifestyle choice we should be respecting. For the children born into it, it is no choice.

liberalism and paternalism

By: jillian07 | Fri, 10/30/2009 - 10:44

I'm about as liberal as they come, and I think we (liberals) are going to have to start asking ourselves some of the hard questions this post brings up. We are so supportive of freedom, until people start using it to make decisions we disagree with. Yes, this is a complicated issue- particularly the questions about consent that Hanna raises in the final sentences. But if we answer the questions with "I wouldn't, so you can't," then I think we've got a real problem.

FLDS, not LDS

By: Lynn | Fri, 10/30/2009 - 10:45

Just FYI, Jessop is a member of the FLDS church, or the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It is not affiliated with or sanctioned by the Mormon church.

And my grandmother....

By: janeslogin | Fri, 10/30/2009 - 10:37

...had her first child a 14. No shotguns. Not illegal. Insofar as anyone knows it was not uncommon at that time.

Huh?

By: lagne | Fri, 10/30/2009 - 10:12

I followed the link to the slideshow and looked through the pictures. I think I found the picture to which you refer. If so, I totally disagree with your assessment of the picture. First of all, according to the photo's caption, the child is 2 years old, not 4, and the caption clearly states that the mother's age is 19. Secondly, the man holding the Q-tip appears to be gazing sympathetically, almost apologetically, at the upset child. Thirdly, it is OBVIOUSLY a Q-tip and not a needle. Why should anyone be inclined to take your work seriously, Hanna, if you traffic in inflammatory exaggerations that anyone with a working eyeball can debunk?
*
As for "beaming and carefree women," by all means, they're welcome to beam and care not, even if their beliefs differ from mine. The issue here isn't about WOMEN; it's about LITTLE GIRLS. I'd hardly call 15- and 16-year-old (and younger) girls "women," and I'd hardly call women of ANY age forced into marriages "beaming and carefree." Depending on the exact age of her child, even the mother in the photo could have been as young as 16 when her child was born. I honestly can't tell whether you're trying to defend the sect's practices or trying to defend the attorney general's investigation.