The sect practices polygamy in arranged marriages between under-age girls and older men.
Now Mr. Jeffs is being tried on felony charges that he was an accomplice to rape in arranging polygamous marriages between under-age girls and older men, and the jury is being drawn from a pool of St . Georgeresidents.
Mr. Jeffs founded the ranch in 2004 as a community for his followers, who practiced polygamy there and arranged marriages between under-age girls and male elders, according to testimony.
Although the investigation into the sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was set off by accusations of marriages between under-age girls and older men, thiSaintsthe first indication that boys might have been victimized.
Investigators have reportedly taken D.N.A. samples from some 600 F.L.D.S. members, including children, presumably in an attempt to establish a biological link between under-age mothers and older men (in Texas, the legal age for marriage is 16 with consent; 17 for unmarried sexual contact when there is an age difference of more than three years).
He's going on trial this week for, as the Times puts it, being "an accomplice to rape in arranging polygamous marriages between under-age girls and older men".
UNDER AGE 10 -- Inappropriate.
Other works of fiction have, of course, centered on the relationship between an under-age girl and a grown man: Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Lolita" and, more recently, Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "How I Learned to Drive".
Many of the families are also related and share last names like Jeffs, which is also the name of the F.L.D.S. leader, Warren S. Jeffs, who was convicted last year on a rape charge for imposing marriage between an under-age girl and older man in Utah.
From the outside there really doesn't seem to be much difference between Norman and a lot of under-age movie heroes.
A recent study, 91 using data from the Health Survey of England (HSE), failed to find any association between under-reporting and age among people aged 50 or over.
