The leader of a polygamist sect in the US faces life in jail after being convicted of arranging a marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin.

Warren Jeffs, 51, the self-described “prophet” of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was found guilty by a court in Utah of being an accomplice to rape. He had been on the run for 15 months before his arrest in August last year and was on the FBI’s most wanted list.

The two-week trial of Jeffs has riveted the western state, with a majority Mormon population, and fascinated much of the United States.

Jeffs’s sect is not associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are called Mormons. Polygamy was one of the early tenets of the Mormon religion, but was rejected in 1890 as Utah sought statehood.

Prosecutors argued during the two-week trial that Jeffs, who will be sentenced in November, knew when he arranged and presided over the 2001 marriage, in which the girl was an unwilling partner, that forced sex would follow.

In tearful testimony, the victim said she begged Jeffs not to marry her to her cousin, whom she did not like. Jeffs had told her it was her religious duty to give herself to her husband, and instructed her to repent and submit to his will.

The woman, whose identity was not disclosed during her trial, said she wanted to die after her husband first forced her into sex.

The woman said the couple were married for at least a month before they had intercourse, and that her husband told her it was “time for you to be a wife and do your duty.”

“My entire body was shaking. I was so scared,” she testified. “He just laid me on the bed and had sex.”

Afterwards, she slipped into the bathroom, where she downed two bottles of over-the-counter pain reliever and curled up on the floor, she said. “The only thing I wanted to do was die,” she said.

Lawyers for Jeffs argued that he could not have known that rape would be committed behind closed bedroom doors, and that the accuser was too vague when she told Jeffs about her problems with the relationship.

Jurors rejected another defense attorney’s argument that the prosecution of a polygamous sect leader was religious persecution.

The victim in the case did not accept it either, telling reporters in a prepared statement that the case was about child abuse.

“This trial has not been about religion or a vendetta. It was simply about child abuse and preventing abuse,” the woman said.

Jurors said after the verdict that much of their deliberations focused on the issue of enticement and the age of the victim. They said that Jeffs was the girl’s only hope of getting out of the relationship and that he failed.

“He ultimately held all the keys to say ’you don’t have to be in this marriage.’” said juror Stan Coulter, 26.

The case followed the formation three years ago of a Utah task force to uncover crimes within polygamous communities, including the abuse of minors and sex crimes.

But Richard Holm, a former member of the sect, said he did not believe that the self-proclaimed prophet’s conviction would have much impact on the sect or polygamy in Utah.

“He will be regarded as a martyr. There is a power base and system in place to carry on,” Holm said.

But Holm said he was happy and relieved with the guilty verdict. “I think he (Jeffs) saw an opportunity to take glory, credit and power for himself ... In doing so, he abused and hurt a lot of people,” he said.

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