The photos released after the closing arguments in the trial of Warren Jeffs say it all.
They show Elissa Wall at age 14, before her spiritual wedding to her 19-year-old cousin. In one, she is a pudgy girl, her body and smiling face still plump with baby fat, dressed as any youngster that age might be to attend church. In the other, taken just months later, she is being fitted for a wedding dress, her baby face looking anxious.
Wall’s age and innocence were convincing factors as prosecutors successfully argued in court that she was raped by the man she was forced to marry. A jury convicted Jeffs, the leader and prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, of two counts of being an accomplice to rape for marrying Wall to Allen Steed and pressuring her to submit to sex with him.
The jury was right to convict Jeffs. Wall clearly did not want to marry Steed. She testified she hated him and did not want to be anywhere near him. She begged, but Jeffs and Wall’s family ignored her pleas and sent her to Steed’s bed. Jeffs, the jury was told, held such a position of power over Wall and other members of the church that she really had no choice.
When a woman, or a girl in this case, says no to sex and intercourse happens anyway, that’s rape. Wall said no, over and over again.
Under Utah law, a 14-year-old cannot get married, and for good reasons. A 14-year-old is a child without the emotional maturity to understand what marriage means. Wall testified she knew nothing about sex. She said she did not tell anyone she had been raped because she did not know what the word meant. The law says a 14-year-old is capable of consenting to sex, but not when she is enticed or coerced. That’s what happened to Elissa Wall.
Wall and Steed presented completely different versions of their married life and how sexual intercourse occurred. Wall said she was forced and later was so distraught she tried to commit suicide. Steed said Wall initiated sex. But that was hard to believe, given Wall’s age and innocence. And, ultimately, the jury did not believe it.
This verdict is more than a conviction of Warren Jeffs. It is an indictment of a religious community in which a 14-year-old girl can be forced to have sex in an illegal marriage she does not want. Utah must not turn a blind eye to such abuse.
