B.C. polygamist leaders charged in case that will test ban on multiple marriage

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This article was published 07/01/2009 (6316 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER, B.C. – After decades of controversy and allegations, RCMP swept into the polygamous community of Bountiful, B.C., on Wednesday and arrested two sect leaders, including one who had bragged of multiple wives and dozens of children and all but dared police to stop him.

Winston Blackmore and James Oler – leaders of separate, divided factions in the community of about 1,000 people – were each charged with a single count of practising polygamy.

Blackmore is accused of having 20 wives and Oler two, and police say some of their wives were as young as 15 years old when they were married.

The arrest brought a dramatic end to almost 20 years of investigations and scrutiny, and the start of a criminal case that will test the limits of Canada’s prohibition of polygamy.

“We’ve always felt that there has been exploitation,” Attorney General Wally Oppal said Wednesday at a news conference in Vancouver.

“The question is whether under our laws we were in a position to proceed, and we have concluded that we are.”

Blackmore and Oler were released from custody in Cranbrook, B.C. on Wednesday under a number of conditions.

Both men must abstain from entering into or performing any celestial marriages.

They must also remain within B.C., surrender their passports to police, and report to the RCMP detachment in Creston twice a month.

Blackmore and Oler are scheduled to appear in provincial court in Creston on Jan. 21.

The RCMP had also recommended charges of sexual exploitation against the pair, but Oppal said because the age of consent was 14 years old until it was raised to 16 last year, prosecutors didn’t believe they could win a conviction.

The self-named community in the Creston Valley, not far from the U.S. border in southeastern B.C., is made up of members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church.

The mainstream church renounced the polygamy in 1890 but the fundamentalist sects have continued the practice, which they claim brings glorification in Heaven.

Blackmore has openly admitted to having numerous wives but has insisted his community abhors sexual abuse of children.

However, Blackmore has refused to discuss allegations that teenaged girls in the community marry older men, and has instead accused Oppal of religious persecution.

“It must be about his own religious bias and now he wants the Liberal government to persecute some of the citizens that they have an obligation to serve and protect,” Blackmore wrote in an email to The Canadian Press last June.

The community drew the attention of RCMP in 1990, when a former community member said she was married to a 57-year-old man when she was just 15.

In the years since, Bountiful has been investigated for accusations including polygamy, sexual abuse, and trafficking young girls to the U.S. to be married.

But until now, prosecutors have shied away from pursuing polygamy charges amid concerns that such a case could fail under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, essentially striking down the Criminal Code provision against polygamy.

“That’s not really our concern, our concern is: Is the law being violated, are there people being exploited?” said Oppal.

“If some court decides otherwise, we would obviously have to live with that.”

The most recent RCMP investigation began in the fall of 2005, when RCMP looked into allegations of polygamy and sexual exploitation against Blackmore and Oler.

After interviewing dozens of potential witnesses in Canada and the United States the Mounties again recommended charges. Last June, Oppal appointed a special prosecutor to review the case.

That came despite two earlier legal opinions that it would be difficult to proceed with polygamy charges.

Oppal said he was compelled to act amid renewed public interest after authorities seized hundreds of children from a sister polygamous sect in Texas last year.

At least one of the girls in that case was from Bountiful, although Oppal said the Texas cases isn’t related to the charges against either Blackmore or Oler.

Nancy Mereska, whose Stop Polygamy campaign has long called for charges against Bountiful’s leaders, said the community shouldn’t be protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“Polygamy is not a religious right; polygamy is a crime,” said Mereska, who lives in Two Hills, Alta.

“I believe that Canada has all the ammunition it needs to take this process all the way up to the Supreme Court and I believe that the Supreme Court of Canada will uphold the laws against polygamy.”

Alison Brewin, executive director of West Coast Legal Education and Action Fund, made up of lawyers and legal experts, said the lack of action in Bountiful has undermined women’s rights and set young women and girls up for exploitation.

“In the case of Bountiful, these vulnerabilities are reinforced by the closed nature of the community, including the control of information,” Brewin said in a statement.