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ELDORADO — After being duped by false leads and chastised by a court for its handling of polygamist sect children, Texas authorities won a round Thursday with the first criminal conviction of a sect member charged with sexually assaulting an underage girl.
Raymond Jessop, 38, was found guilty of having sex with the teen with whom he had a so-called spiritual marriage. He could be sentenced to 20 years in prison.The jury reconvenes Monday to begin deciding his sentence.Early on, the weeklong raid of the Yearning For Zion Ranch was hounded by missteps. After scouring the ranch for days in April 2008 in search of a caller who claimed to be an abused girl, law enforcement acknowledged that "Sarah Barlow" didn’t exist.Several weeks after Texas child welfare officials put all 439 sect children in foster care in one of the largest child-custody cases in U.S. history, an appellate court ruled that Texas officials had overstepped their authority, and the children went back to their parents.But authorities still seized documents from homes and concrete vaults in the towering limestone temple and annex building at the ranch — documents that helped convict Jessop and indict 11 other members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.The trialJurors deliberated for little more than two hours before convicting Jessop. He had been free on bail during the trial, but was immediately handcuffed and led to jail.Lawyers declined to comment on the verdict Thursday.Investigators say Jessop has nine wives. He also faces a bigamy charge, but that case will be tried later.The girl in the assault case, now 21, was previously in a spiritual marriage with Jessop’s brother before being "reassigned" to Jessop when she was 15, according to documents seized at the ranch. She became pregnant at age 16.Generally, under Texas law, no one younger than 17 can consent to sex with an adult."Any act of sexual assault is a horrendous crime, but an act of a sexual assault of a child is of such an extreme nature we don’t even consider whether the victim was able — much less did — consent," Assistant Attorney General Eric Nichols said during closing arguments as he stood before photos of the young mother and toddler in prairie dresses."There is a sound foundation based not just in documents, based in DNA evidence for which the documents serve as corroboration . . . that Raymond Merril Jessop behind those gates, behind that guard house, behind those walls, sexually assaulted" the then-teen, he said.
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