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Joseph was indeed sealed to 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball, and it was at her father's request. According to Helen:
My father was the first to introduce it to me, which had a similar effect to a sudden shock of a small earthquake. When he found (after the first outburst of displeasure for supposed injury) that I received it meekly, he took the first opportunity to introduce Sarah Ann [Whitney] to me as Joseph's wife.
—Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, 1828-1896, Autobiography (c. 1839-1846), "Life Incidents," Woman's Exponent 9-10 (1880-1882) and "Scenes and Incidents in Nauvoo," Woman's Exponent 11 (1882-83)) off-site
There is, despite the critics' insinuations, no evidence that Helen Mar Kimball's marriage was consummated. Consummation would not have been inappropriate, since this was a marriage, but the critics are too anxious to find problems where no evidence for such exists.
Critics have alleged that Helen confessed to having sexual relations with Joseph. This is refuted elsewhere on the wiki.
Helen later saw her youthful displeasure with her marriage to Joseph as inappropriate and insisted that she had been protected and blessed by being a plural wife, even though she did not know it at the time. Helen ought to be allowed to speak for herself here:
I did not try to conceal the fact of its having been a trial, but confessed that it had been one of the severest of my life; but that it had also proven one of the greatest of blessings. I could truly say it had done the most towards making me a Saint and a free woman, in every sense of the word; and I knew many others who could say the same, and to whom it had proven one of the greatest boons--a "blessing in disguise." [1]
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