KINGMAN, Ariz. — A young woman named Candi Shapley told a grand jury here last summer that, as a 16-year-old member of a fundamentalist Mormon group, she was raped twice by a man a dozen years her senior who had taken her as his second wife.

"I told him I wasn't ready to have children. And he thought that I was. He just told me that I was and so he forced me to have sex with him," she testified. (TRANSCRIPT)

Girls play basketball in the remote desert town of Hildale, Ariz., a hub of the polygamous sect led by Warren Jeffs.

That man, Randolph Barlow, goes on trial Tuesday in Mohave County Superior Court, but he will not face the most serious charges in the grand jury's indictment. In a last-minute development that authorities allege underscores the powerful grip of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and its leader, Warren Jeffs, the county attorney dropped sexual assault charges after the alleged victim refused to assist in their prosecution.

Instead of two sexual assault counts which carry five to 10 years in prison, Barlow will stand trial for sexual contact with a minor, more commonly known as statutory rape, a charge with a maximum sentence of two years and a minimum of probation.

Matt Smith, the county attorney, said he was disappointed at the turn of events, but felt he had no choice after Shapley, his main source of evidence against Barlow, became more and more uncooperative.

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"She made it real clear that she didn't want him to go even to jail. She got a lawyer and he informed me that I wasn't allowed to talk to her anymore," he said.

Shapley, now 20, left the church after she ended her marriage, but her father and his six wives remain in the sect and live in Short Creek, its 7,000-member enclave on the Utah border.

The investigator who built the case against Barlow, 33,  said he believed relatives exerted pressure on her to stop cooperating.

"Basically they are telling her she's going to go to hell and she's fighting against their Prophet [Jeffs], who they consider Jesus Christ and that they won't have anything to do with her if she participates or testifies," Gary Engels said.

A lawyer for Shapley said she felt she had been misled and treated shabbily by the authorities and never wanted to harm Barlow, Jeffs or anyone else in Short Creek.

"She has close relations back in that community and she just wants to go ahead and move on with her life," attorney Mikkel Jordahl said.

Last Friday, uncertain about what his key witness would say on the stand, Smith struck a deal with Barlow. In return for dropping the sexual assault charges, the defendant waived his right to a jury trial and agreed to let a judge decide his guilt on the statutory rape charge. Smith said he believed Shapley would testify if the charges were reduced, and a bench trial would be preferable because jurors might acquit if Shapley seemed hostile toward the prosecution.

A lawyer for Barlow, Bruce Griffen, said he was pleased with the deal.

"It radically reduces the exposure that Mr. Barlow has [to prison time] so from our perspective that is a good development," he said.

Shapley met twice with the defense, Griffen said, but they never discussed details of the case. Instead, he said, they talked about her displeasure with the prosecution. Among her complaints, her lawyer said, was that she was forced to testify before the grand jury while one of her twin daughters was in the hospital for brain surgery.

"She was unhappy with how she had been treated and wanted an outlet to vent that," Griffen said.

What she will say on the stand Tuesday remains a mystery, the lawyer said.

"There's still a question mark. Will she show up? And if she shows up, what game is she bringing?" Griffen said.

Barlow is the second of eight FLDS men prosecuted this year in an attempt by Arizona authorities to rein in polygamous marriage to minors in Short Creek.

Barlow's case was unique among the eight cases because it included sexual assault charges in addition to the statutory rape count. The alleged victims in the other cases, all of whom are still married to the defendants, refused to cooperate with investigators and those cases are based largely on the dates on birth certificates for children of the plural marriages.

The first polygamist tried, Kelly Fischer, was convicted of statutory rape and sentenced to 45 days in jail. His victim, his third wife, wrote a letter to the judge requesting leniency.

Barlow's trial begins just after Jeffs, who was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, was taken into custody outside Las Vegas Monday night. Jeffs, who decides who in the community will marry and performs the ceremonies, faces federal charges in Utah and state charges in Arizona related to arranging underage marriages and attempting to flee prosecution.