Fundamentalist case blurs line between abuser and abused
 Warren Jeffs was a tyrant but those carrying out orders were also victims
 
By Daphne Bramham
Vancouver Sun
 
On a different battlefield, Allen Steed might simply and coldly be referred to as collateral damage.

Steed is the reason that Warren Jeffs, the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, may spend the rest of his life in prison.

Jeffs, 51, was sentenced earlier this week on two counts of being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl to the maximum penalty -- two terms of five years to life in prison, to be served consecutively. (It is up to the Utah Board of Pardon and Parole to determine when, if ever, to release the leader of the largest polygamous group in North America, including an estimated 600 followers in Bountiful, B.C.)

Steed is the alleged rapist. It's important to emphasize alleged, since the 27-year-old truck driver has yet to go to trial. He wasn't even charged until after a jury found Jeffs guilty.

But what is uncontestable is that Jeffs could not have been found guilty unless the jury believed that Allen Steed had committed two rapes.

Because of that, Steed's lawyers say their client can never get a fair trial. They want Steed's rape charge dropped.

His lawyers raise troubling questions about how Utah got Jeffs's conviction. They made public a secret and extraordinary agreement between prosecutors and the victim, Elissa Wall, that precluded police from even interviewing Steed before Jeffs was charged.

The first time Steed told his side of the story was at Jeffs's trial in September, when he testified that he never raped Elissa Wall, his 14-year-old "celestial" bride and first cousin.

Before he testified, Steed acknowledged that his testimony might be used against him in a subsequent trial. But what choice did he have?

Steed believes Jeffs speaks for God, so Jeffs's request that he testify didn't just come from the prophet, it came from God.

If Utah has its way, Steed's testimony will be used against him. Sheriffs followed Steed out of the courtroom after he testified in September and questioned him. A few days later, an arrest warrant was issued.

Utah was desperate to get a conviction and put Jeffs in jail to break down the Taliban-like control the FLDS exercises over its 8,000 or so followers. Other politicians and prosecutors in other jurisdictions should be as well.

But was this the right way to do it? Jeffs's lawyers don't think so. They are seeking a new trial, arguing that you can't convict an accomplice without charging the rapist.

Not that they care a whit about Allen Steed. At trial, Jeffs's lawyer Walter Bugden characterized Steed as a sweet, innocent guy falsely accused by a 14-year-old seductress. At Tuesday's sentencing hearing, Bugden described Steed as "a brute."

On Monday, Steed's lawyers filed a court document saying that their client's prosecution is not only unfair, it's unconstitutional, unconscionable and malicious. They want the charges against Steed dropped. Failing that, they want the trial moved away from St. George, Utah, where Jeffs's high-profile trial was held.

"What was once a question -- was the alleged victim raped? -- has now been resolved affirmatively in the public eye beyond a reasonable doubt," the lawyers wrote.

Appended to their lengthy motion is a curious document. It's a contract between Wall and the state of Utah setting out strict conditions for her testimony. Key among those is that Jeffs be charged and that Steed would not be part of the investigation.

In their attempt to vilify Wall, Steed's lawyers neglect to mention that she has always said that her first cousin and former husband is as much a victim of Jeffs's megalomania as she was.

On the day Steed was charged, Wall called him "a victim of Warren Jeffs and a perpetrator of child abuse."

That fairly sets out the paradox of being both abused and an abuser. But it raises the question of what to do with him.

Lawyers for both Jeffs and Steed believe their clients have been wrongly charged.

They argue that the state is using the rape case as a surrogate instead of going after the real target: polygamy and forced marriages.

They argue that Utah -- a majority of whose citizens and legislators are Mormon -- is persecuting the so-called "fundamentalist Mormons" because the state and the mainstream Mormon church now find polygamy abhorrent.

Steed's lawyers note the irony that Utah's constitution specifically spells out the right to a fair trial because the state's Mormon founders had been so intensely persecuted for practising polygamy.

Since 1890, however, both legislators and the mainstream church have tried to stamp out polygamy because it is harmful. Wall and Steed are but two examples of its victims.

Nearly a dozen more testified in Jeffs's defence to lives totally circumscribed by the prophet. None was more poignant than the barely literate, 24-year-old Merril Shapley, who struggled to spell his own name. He'd been forced to leave school at age eight.

Politicians and prosecutors must do whatever they can to bring tyrants and abusers to justice. But in that pursuit, it defeats the purpose if they become tyrants and abusers themselves.

dbramham@png.canwest.com
 
canada.com
Originally published Friday, November 23, 2007
 
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