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  Sect Men Arraigned in Abuse Case

Associated Press, carried in Houston Chronicle
July 29, 2008

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5914121.html

SAN ANTONIO — The five indicted followers of jailed polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs were arraigned Tuesday in Eldorado and ordered to avoid their alleged victims when they post bond.

Raymond Merrill Jessop, 36, Allan Eugene Keate, 56, Michael George Emack, 57, and Merrill Leroy Jessop, 33, appeared at arraignment hearings to be read the charge of sexual assault of a child they each face and to hear their constitutional rights. They'll enter pleas at a later court hearing.

Merrill Leroy Jessop faces an additional charge of bigamy.

Lloyd Hammon Barlow, the 38-year-old physician who lived at the Yearning For Zion Ranch, faces three misdemeanor counts of failure to report child abuse. He posted a bond totaling $15,000 on Tuesday, said Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Safety.

The other men remained jailed Tuesday evening on bonds of $100,000 for each charge. They were ordered by Justice of the Peace James Doyle to avoid their victims, to stay in Texas and only leave Schleicher County after notifying law enforcement.

Prosecutors have refused to provide details on what the men from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are accused of doing, but documents from a separate custody case included a journal entry from Jeffs indicating Raymond Merrill Jessop was married to Jeffs' daughter the day after she turned 15.

The same entry, dated July 2006, said Merrill Leroy Jessop married another sect daughter that day, though it's not clear how old the daughter was at the time.

Jeffs, who was also indicted for sexual assault of a child in Eldorado, is jailed in Arizona awaiting trial on charges related to the marriage of underage girls to older sect members there. He was convicted in Utah last year as an accomplice to rape for marrying a girl to her cousin.

Under Texas law, a girl younger than 17 cannot generally consent to sex with an adult.

The state's bigamy statute applies to legal marriages and to couples who purport to marry, a lower standard adopted in part to target unions like the spiritual marriages practiced by FLDS members.

Prosecutors and law enforcement say their investigation continues, and the grand jury is scheduled to meet again in Eldorado on Aug. 22.

 
 

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