SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) | A 16-year-old girl is a key witness in the state’s effort to pursue criminal charges against members of her polygamist sect, even though she denies investigators’ claims that she was abused.
The girl, a daughter of the sect’s jailed prophet, said she’s never been married and doesn’t have a baby. She denies church elders are influencing her and wants to fire her attorney. The state can’t even prove her purported abuse happened in Texas.
A court filing showed the girl has been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury Wednesday, the day the panel convenes in Schleicher County, home of a West Texas ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS).
Grand jury proceedings are secret, and the state Attorney General’s Office, which is handling the prosecution, has declined to comment.
The criminal case follows state child welfare officials’ ill-fated April seizure of more than 400 children at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado.
The state accused the sect of widespread sexual abuse of teen girls, but the Texas Supreme Court in June forced the state to return the children from foster care. The high court said the state overreached in taking all the children from the ranch when only a handful of girls may have been abused.
Schleicher County Clerk Peggy Williams could not say what case the grand jury would be considering, but the sparsely populated county calls grand juries only about twice a year, and non-FLDS cases were handled several weeks ago.
It’s not clear what, or whether, criminal indictments of FLDS members may result. But the girl scheduled to testify Wednesday illustrates that to win indictments, prosecutors may have to overcome the denials of teens thought to have been abused.
The girl is fighting attempts by her attorney, Natalie Malonis, to finalize an emergency restraining order issued Friday against church elder Willie Jessop.
Miss Malonis said Mr. Jessop was influencing the teen and encouraging her to be uncooperative. The girl denies it, and denies her attorney’s central claim making her an abuse victim - that she was spiritually married at 15 to an adult man and had a child at 16.
The girl wants a new lawyer. “I have asked her many times to please step aside,” she told the Associated Press by telephone on Sunday from Texas. “I need more help. I want my attorney to listen to me.”
Miss Malonis has said she would not fight with her client through the media. She has said state investigators have given her the information that leads her to think her client has been abused.
A call and e-mail to Mr. Jessop were not returned. He and other leaders of the FLDS have consistently denied there was any abuse and vowed earlier this month not to sanction underage marriages.
FLDS spokesman Rod Parker said he’s not sure whether the girl will be cooperative in her grand jury testimony or whether other FLDS children have been subpoenaed to appear.
“If they’re going to be asked to testify against their parents, that’s a real dilemma,” he said.
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