A Utah judge on Tuesday ordered the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints President Warren Jeffs to pay $16 million to a woman who was 14 when she was pressured to marry her 19-year-old cousin.
Elissa Wall will receive $4 million in damages and $12 million in punitive damages, Third District Court Judge Keith Kelly ordered in the lawsuit Wall first filed in 2007. Wall filed the case under the pseudonym ”MJ” when the events occurred.
It was not immediately clear how Wall intends to collect. Jeffs has been incarcerated since 2006. He is serving a sentence of life plus 20 years in a Texas prison for convictions related to sexually abusing two girls he married as plural wives.