ST. GEORGE, Utah — A woman who was married at 14 to her older cousin told a jury Thursday that she married at the instruction of Warren Jeffs, the leader of a polygamous sect, and out of fear of eternal damnation.

As the first witness to take the stand in the case against Jeffs, the woman, now 21, said that Jeffs, her schoolteacher and spiritual adviser, taught that her purpose in life was to be obedient and submissive to her husband.

"I was a mother to his children. I would keep home for him. I would be committed to him," testified the woman, dressed in a black pantsuit with her long blond hair pulled back with a headband. "We were to follow as though led by a hair."

Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, faces a potential life sentence on two counts of rape as an accomplice for allegedly encouraging the follower to marry and have sex with her 19-year-old cousin against her wishes.

The woman said that growing up, she was taught to regard boys as "snakes" and to "keep the bars up" when it came to any kind of physical contact before marriage. Once married, it was the husband's job to teach his wife about sex, a subject the witness claimed to be entirely ignorant of before her husband made unwanted advances toward her.

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Those who dared to defy any of the church's teachings risked extreme social isolation in this life, she said, and eternal damnation in the next.

"You could lose your home, your family, your family could suffer consequences," testified the woman, who is identified as Jane Doe IV in court filings. "You could also lose your chance at salvation."

The woman said she learned at an early age the consequences of disobeying the church leadership.

When she was in fifth grade, the church excommunicated her father, removed his wife and children from him and placed them on a remote ranch in southwestern Utah, according to the witness.

It was there that she first met the cousin who would become her husband while he was caring for livestock on the land.

Jeffs, who is believed to have taken as many as 70 "celestial wives," is not being prosecuted for polygamy. During opening statements Thursday, however, lawyers on both sides claimed that the teachings of his faith had played a crucial role in the events that led to the criminal charges against him.

"We are here today because, in 2001, Mr. Jeffs told a 14-year-old girl who told him that she thought she was too young to get married that it was her obligation to do so," Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap told jurors in his opening statement Thursday afternoon.

But a lawyer for Jeffs, 51, insisted that he never told the alleged victim to submit unwillingly to sexual intercourse. Instead, defense attorney Tara Isaacson claimed, Jeffs offered her the same spiritual counsel he did to all of his followers and asked the jury to consider whether rape had actually occurred.

Although Jeffs did not officially assume leadership of the FLDS until his father's death in 2002, he was an active presence in the church leadership, or priesthood, as a youth educator and counselor to his father for many years before. The former teen bride testified that she and others in the FLDS received Jeffs' teachings through sermons, books and audiotapes that he distributed on a variety of topics, including marriage and sexual relations.

Jurors and members of the packed courtroom audience, which included several of Jeffs' relatives and followers, listened intently as prosecutors played portions of the recordings.

"There is no halfway, no holding back. You give yourself to him," Jeffs said in a teaching on the marriage covenant.

"The covenant is not just with [your husband], but with the heavenly Father and the prophet, who hold the key to your salvation," Jeffs said on the tape, while the defendant, dressed in a black suit and silver tie at the defense table, listened to the recording wearing a serene expression.

The prosecutor said in his opening statement that, after Jeffs informed the teen that God wanted her to marry her cousin, the young girl begged to be placed with someone else.

His response was that she should pray on the matter.

After their "celestial marriage" in a private ceremony in a Nevada hotel, the girl rebuffed her husband's sexual advances for some time before relenting, allegedly as the result of Jeffs' counsel, according to Belnap.

But Jeffs' lawyer insisted that her client was not aware that the woman was being raped because she never claimed outright that such abuse existed in her marriage.

"The prosecution will attempt to show that, when Warren Jeffs encouraged [the alleged victim] to marry, he was encouraging her to submit to rape," Isaacson said. "But the evidence will show that being pressured to marry is different from being pressured to submit to rape."

Direct examination of the woman will continue Friday morning.