Raymond Merril Jessop
Polygamist sect leader's son is accused of having sex with minors
Posted on 10/24/2009 7:47:24 AM PDT by deport
The son of one of the most powerful families within a polygamist Mormon sect goes to trial for sexual assault Monday, a case in which Texas prosecutors will provide their first public evidence that Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints men engaged in sex with underage girls.
Raymond Merril Jessop, 38, is the first to face trial among 12 defendants who live at the sect's Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado and are accused of arranging or participating in underage marriages. His father, Frederick Merril Jessop is the senior leader of the FLDS because the group's prophet, Warren Jeffs, is jailed in Utah for forcing girls into underage marriages in that state. .....
The
particular charges in this first trial involve one of Jessop's nine wives whom prosecutors believe was less than 18 years of age when she gave birth to Jessop's daughter. The child was 3 years old at the time of the raid, said Willie Jessop.
The fact that the sect members “married” teenage girls younger than 18 years of age is not in dispute. The Texas Attorney General's Office will have to prove to jurors that the sect's idea of marriage involved sex with minor girls, which will not be an easy task considering that many of the children do not have birth certificates. .....
The Schleicher County District Clerk's Office has called 300 of the county's approximate 2,800 residents to report Monday as potential jurors for the trial in Eldorado, about 400 miles northwest of Houston.
It is not known how many of the 300 potential jurors are FLDS members.......
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(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
“Escape” by Carolyn Jessop is a good introduction to this groups of pervs and whackjobs.
Oct. 2, 2009
San Angelo Standard Times
http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2009/oct/02/flds-member-pleads-not-guilty-to-sex-assault/
Judge allows FLDS raid evidence
SAN ANGELO, Texas — The rules of engagement are set for the first criminal trial to come out of the historic raid on the Yearning For Zion Ranch 18 months ago — and those rules will include the entire volume of evidence gathered at the ranch during the raid.
At the end of a pre-trial hearing Friday for Raymond Merril Jessop, 51st District Judge Barbara Walther issued her long-expected ruling on whether lawyers for the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints would be allowed a hearing to challenge the admissibility of evidence gathered in the raid.......
Walther denied the evidence motion, which had been presented in the course of a four-day hearing in May. Defense attorneys argued, in part, that the all evidence gathered at the ranch should be suppressed because authorities had acted on a false report in seeking the search warrant.
“The court finds that Defendants’ offer of proof of deliberate falsehoods contained within the probable cause affidavits to support the two warrants is unsupported by credible evidence,” Walther wrote.
That finding paves the way for evidence from the raid — which includes thousands of pages of medical records, genealogical documents, family journals, handwritten files and notebooks, photographs, computers, cameras and digital files — to be used in the trials of all 10 FLDS members who are facing criminal prosecution.
At the start of Friday’s pre-trial hearing, Jessop, 37, pleaded not guilty to a sexual assault charge, after which his attorney and the state prosecutor began their arguments for rules governing Jessop’s trial, scheduled to begin in Oct. 26 in Eldorado. Jessop is charged with having sex with an underage girl.
end snips.............
Thanks for posting this article.
While the outrage over pedafilia, accepting sex with minors, is properly punished, it seems the left is rapidly turning every other human sex sin into a protected right. A right so protected, to speak out against it is labeled a “hate crime.”
Dude, spell-check is your friend.
Pedophilia
FYI ping!
I'm a little busy to sort through the nonsense. Especially the SL Trib.
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