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Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith did not dispute that his victims were both under 18 but wrote in his response that Jeffs "used his position of power and trust to place both victims into so-called 'marriages' with men who were over 18 years of age and are related to the victims as first cousins of the half-blood." He said that while a plain reading of the statute makes the 18 and older argument, applying it that way leads to absurd results.

Child Protective Services officials this week defended their decision to remove hundreds of children from the Eldorado ranch run by a polygamous sect, saying that the group's communal living situation required the removal of all the children in the face of evidence of sexual abuse.

Top-level tensions in the Presbyterian church over a cult inside its Camberwell church have deteriorated after the state authority defied a move that would end its attempts to excise the cult. Members of the Victorian assembly on Tuesday expressed outrage at a report from the national church group that in practice exonerates the cult, known as the Fellowship.

"I know you are worried about that. We're not going to do it," Shurtleff said Thursday during a public meeting on polygamy at the Dixie Center. "We don't believe that is the answer."

The clerk of the magistrate court in Clayton said a $55,000 bond was posted for Wayne Bent by his son.

British Airways redefines 'religious insanity.' Again.

"This has turned from a thriving city into a ghost town," Utah-based FLDS leader Willie Jessop said as he navigated a luxury Mercedes SUV past a herd of hapless dairy cows, their unused milk being dumped out in the garden. "What do you build homes for if you don't have children to put in them? What do you grow a garden for if you don't have anybody to feed? Will life return out here? That has yet to be seen."

Members of Mr Packer's inner circle have confirmed that the billionaire, Scientology's wealthiest member in the world, was no longer undertaking Scientology courses and had slowly moved away from the religion, telling his closest friends he no longer "needs it".

They've become the sworn enemies of a controversial religion, famous for unsettling online video attacks and protesting en masse in creepy masks. But the elusive internet group known as Anonymous didn't start out with a concrete plan to bring down Scientology. Before they got serious, Anonymous members say, they were only in it for laughs.

An Associated Press analysis of the records, which authorities seized in a raid last month, show that by the time a girl reached 16, she was more likely to be married than to live as a child in her father's household. The same was not true for boys.

Some parents worry that even if they don't want their children immunized, they will appear uncooperative with the state and risk losing their child forever.

The Roman Catholic Church has recently directed dioceses worldwide not to give parish information to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The move is to prevent LDS Church members from baptizing by proxy Catholic ancestors.

Bent, 66, is the leader of The Lord Our Righteousness Church, whose members moved in 2000 to a remote former ranch near the Colorado line that they call Strong City. He has acknowledged having sex with followers and lying naked with virgins, but denies any children or adults were molested. He has said the virgins asked for sex and he refused.

Authorities say the only subject that cult members agree to discuss is about living conditions in the cave. They answer to all other questions by singing psalms or writing.

Fierce winds of change — from national political attitudes about polygamy to new economic stress and even down to the personal decisions about where to live in a post-Eldorado world — are buffeting the polygamist faithful.

Nearly two-dozen conservative Christian leaders have signed a letter to the Senate Finance Committee questioning an investigation into six large ministries that preach a gospel of prosperity.

Sect members still staying in the cave have not signaled any date of their possible coming out.

On her Bebo page Miss Bond, who used the online name Living Disaster and has internet friends with names like Sam Suicide, said she was obsessed with the hugely popular My Chemical Romance band, whose hit number one with their last album The Black Parade. Her mother, Heather Bond, told the court how she learned The Black Parade is "where you go when you die" as she researched the emo fad.

For the fourth time in as many months, the Internet-based group Anonymous will stage a protest against the Church of Scientology in downtown Clearwater.

A Utah religion whose followers practice mummification is at the center of a U.S. Supreme Court case that is delaying a permanent home for a World War II monument honoring fallen American servicemen.