Child Bride Fights Back

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/09/14/jeffs.trial/index.html

In st. George Utah, there is a child bride who married her cousin against her will. She was 14 and he was 19 at the time. She said that she disliked him because he once sprayed her with a water hose in the freezing cold. She didn't have any warning that she was to marry him. She found out by him sitting next to her (which boys and girls were not accustomed to do). Warren Jeffs who leads the fundamentalist church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints is the ring leader to the child bride polygamy. She said she was trying to preserve her eternal salvation when she obeyed a command by polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs to marry her cousin at age 14. Jeffs is charged with two counts of rape as an accomplice for using his church authority to coerce the unwilling girl into marriage. He states that just because she doesn't like her cousin does not make for a sufficient reason to sue him. She states that she was forced to have sex with her cousin. He couseled the the girls to obey their husbands and submit themselves to him. This being said, he claims he did not force the girls to have sex. Sounds kind of fishy doesn't it? First of all, I did not know that sort of thing went on, especially with a ring leader like Jeffs. And her cousin? I don't understand that. It's one thing to be promised to someone, but your own flesh and blood shouldn't be the only option. I think that this girl has every right to sue Jeffs because she was treated wrongly. She is in the United States and has rights, no matter what the custom of the religion is.