ST. GEORGE, Utah — The woman at the center of the rape case against Warren Jeffs told a rapt courtroom Tuesday that she had never heard of sex and did not know where babies came from when the polygamist leader ordered her, at age 14, to marry and "go forth and multiply" with an older man who was her first cousin.

Weeping and blotting her reddened face with a tissue, the woman, now 20, testified that her upbringing in Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was so sheltered that she gasped in confusion and horror when her new husband unzipped his pants.

"What is that? Put it away," she recalled shouting at him soon after their April 2001 wedding. (VIDEO)

She said she was repulsed when the 19-year-old man, whom she had known her entire life, touched her. She said she fought off his advances for weeks until he forced her to have intercourse, saying, "This is what men and wives do."

According to the witness, when she tearfully confided in a married sister, "she said, 'Do you know you are having sex with him?' And I said, 'What is sex?'"

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Her five-hour account was the centerpiece of the first day of a preliminary hearing to determine whether prosecutors in Washington County have enough evidence to try Jeffs, 50, the "prophet" or spiritual leader of the FLDS, on two counts of rape as an accomplice. District Court Judge James Shumate adjourned the hearing until Dec. 14, when prosecutors will call additional witnesses.

In questioning the alleged victim and two of her sisters Tuesday, prosecutors focused on Jeffs' role in arranging the marriage and counseling the distraught teenager afterwards. They have not pursued rape charges against the husband, who was identified in court as Alan Steed.

An arranged marriage

The witness said that she talked to Jeffs twice before the ceremony, telling him both times that she felt too young to be a wife. She said he told her God had revealed to the prophet, a post then held by his ailing father Rulon but inherited by him the next year, that the two cousins were to be married and that to refuse the marriage was to reject God.

She said that once she was married, she visited Jeffs five times, telling him that her husband was touching her private parts. She asked to be released from the marriage.

"I never came out and said, 'We are having intercourse.' But he knew without a doubt what I was talking about," she said.

The witness said Jeffs reminded her of the FLDS teaching that a woman's path to heaven was through her husband, and claimed he told her "to be obedient and submissive to" her husband. During one visit, he suggested she break off contact with her mother, who was her best friend, "and give your loyalty to your husband."

Another time, he told her to have a baby because a child might make her fall in love with Steed.

"He told me that I needed to go home and give myself mind, body and soul to Alan because he was my priestly head and he knew what was best for me," she recalled.