Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Latter-day Saint movements Eldorado, Texas, USA · 2011

United States: FLDS bishop convicted of solemnizing the 'celestial marriage' of a twelve-year-old

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

FLDS bishop at the Yearning For Zion ranch

Organization

Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Yearning For Zion Ranch

Spiritual nexus

The bishop's sacramental office was itself the instrument: his authority to perform the marriage rite is what converted a child into a 'wife'. The conviction is for the religious act, one step removed from hands-on abuse — a caveat the record states — but the authority-as-mechanism could not be more literal.

  • Religious marriage or family control
  • Prophecy or divine command
  • Ritual, oath, or initiation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2011-11-01 · conviction and maximum sentence

    51st District Court, Texas. FLDS bishop Fredrick Merril Jessop was convicted of the felony of conducting a marriage ceremony prohibited by law, for solemnizing the 2006 'celestial marriage' of his own 12-year-old daughter to Warren Jeffs. Trial evidence showed he had witnessed or solemnized sixteen underage marriages, four of which led to separate sexual-assault or bigamy prosecutions of other FLDS men. He received the maximum: ten years and a $10,000 fine.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • sacramental authority to perform 'celestial marriages'
  • doctrinal machinery delivering underage girls into unions with adult men

Primary record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting verdict and sentencing report 'FLDS bishop Merril Jessop gets maximum sentence', The Salt Lake Tribune (Nov. 2011).

Utah's paper of record reporting the conviction, the trial evidence on sixteen underage marriages, and the maximum sentence.

Related record

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