Husband in breakaway Mormon case felt "really bad"

ST. GEORGE, Utah (Reuters) - A fundamentalist Mormon who married his 14-year-old cousin cried on Wednesday and said he felt "really bad" about the end of their relationship at the center of a trial highlighting a breakaway sect that practices polygamy.

Allen Steed testified days after the cousin told the court she wanted to die after being forced into sex in the arranged marriage. The woman said she begged her husband not to touch her as he undressed her one night soon after their wedding.

"I felt really, really bad," Steed said while dabbing at his eyes. "I would do anything to win her back. I tried everything I knew."

Warren Jeffs, 51, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is charged with two counts of being an accomplice to rape after he presided over the wedding of Steed and the teenager.

When talking about the end of the couple's marriage, which he considered legal, Steed began to cry and dabbing at his eyes with a tissue.

He testified in St. George, Utah, 120 miles northeast of Las Vegas, that when he was married at age 19, he, like his bride, knew nothing about sexual relations.

Sexual intimacy, according to the breakaway church's doctrine, is only for procreation. Men and women also have no interaction before marriage and often a couple is wed without knowing the spouse.

Steed testified during cross-examination that he was not good at communicating, and when he exposed himself to his young bride a few weeks after the marriage, he thought it would be a good courting technique.

Church leader Jeffs is not charged with polygamy, but the trial has spotlighted his secretive sect, whose roughly 7,500 members live in an isolated area of along the Utah-Arizona border. His defense lawyers have questioned how Jeffs would have known that rape was being committed behind bedroom doors.

Closing arguments in the case are expected on Friday after the judge and lawyers discuss jury instructions on Thursday.