Persecution Complex

But a few days later, Steed again had sex with her against her will, she testified.

Asked in court if she had a choice about having sex with Steed if he insisted, she said, "Absolutely not." She said the FLDS religion requires a woman to submit to her husband and religious leader:

"He was my priesthood head and husband."

Elissa Wall's riveting testimony left Warren Jeffs' defense team with little choice but to put Allen Steed on the stand. Jeffs' best hope for acquittal would rest in the credibility of a devout follower with a 10th-grade education.

After Steed was read his Miranda rights warning him that his sworn testimony could be used against him legally, he blurted out a statement that revealed his unwavering loyalty to the prophet.

"I don't believe Warren Jeffs has ever done anything wrong," the truck driver stated without a question being posed by Jeffs' lead defense attorney, Walter Budgen.

Steed testified that he knew Wall was "concerned" about the marriage but that he had no reservations. Budgen moved Steed quickly through the marriage ceremony with no attempt to refute Wall's testimony about her strong reluctance to be married.

Instead, Budgen focused on Steed's enthusiastic reaction to the marriage. "I was on cloud nine," Steed testified, although he admitted that he was not "particularly" in love with his child bride.

Steed acknowledged that the marriage was "rough and rocky" at the beginning and that his attempts to initiate sexual contact with Wall were rebuked. "I really didn't know how to make her like me," Steed testified. "I would write her letters and tell her I loved her."

In one such letter, Steed misspelled Elissa's first name, injecting a second "l."

Steed testified that Wall told him she wanted to wait five years to have children. In FLDS theology, the only reason for sexual relations is procreation.

Rather than backing off, Steed said he stepped up his sexual overtures by exposing himself to Wall one evening at the park.

"I tried to help her feel more familiar and move things along," Steed explained to the jury. Steed testified that Wall "was surprised" and that he "could tell" that he "had offended her." He said his young bride forgave him a few days later.

At this point in his testimony, Elissa Wall exited the courtroom leaving her notebook on the floor with the words "He Was Abusing Me" written in large letters.

Clearly worried about how the park exposure incident would affect the jury, Steed tried to put distance between the incident and the first time the couple had sexual intercourse. Steed testified that a "month or so" after he had exposed himself, Wall initiated sexual relations with him one evening after he had returned from a long day at work.

"She rolled up next to me and asked me to scratch her back," Steed testified. "One thing led to the next," he said, and the couple had consensual sex. "I felt like she was ready to go forward," Steed testified.

With sharply conflicting versions of the first sexual encounter, the credibility of Steed and Wall would be crucial in the jury's deliberations.

Wall weathered a blistering cross-examination by defense attorney Tara Isaacson that attempted to portray her as a strong-willed opportunist hoping a criminal conviction against Jeffs would bolster her chances of collecting a large financial settlement in her pending lawsuit.

Steed, however, crumbled under incisive questioning from Utah Assistant Attorney General Craig L. Barlow.

"Allen contradicted himself several times on the stand," jury foreman David Finch said after the verdict.

Barlow forced Steed to recant the date of the first sexual encounter, moving it back to within days of his exposing himself to Wall in the park, instead of the "month or so" he had originally said under oath.

Barlow, chief of the Utah AG's children's justice division, also stripped away the veneer of FLDS righteousness surrounding sexual relationships.

Steed testified that after Wall initially told him she wanted to wait five years to have a baby, she reconsidered and told Steed she might be ready in as soon as a few months.

Barlow seized on the opening and suggested to Steed that rather than waiting five years to initiate sex to conceive a baby, Steed had chosen to have sex with his 14-year-old cousin at the earliest possible date.

"Wouldn't you?" Steed quickly replied.

Steed's cocky answer strongly suggested that his motivation for sex had little to do with FLDS spirituality and far more to do with raging teenage testosterone.

Barlow drove home the unspoken subtext with a curt rejoinder dripping with unmistakable disdain.

"I'm not you, Mr. Steed."

Barlow then exposed the lengths to which FLDS loyalists, like Steed, would go to keep their leader, Warren Jeffs, from going to prison.

Barlow played a tape recording of Warren Jeffs telling the story of how a former prophet had lied to authorities to get out of prison. The prophet had said he would renounce polygamy, but, once out of jail, he continued the practice.

Jeffs preached that such deceit is acceptable if it is done to free oneself from enemies and continue to obey the "heavenly father."