B.C

Source: The Canadian Press

Lawyers involved in the case of two men accused of practising polygamy in a small B.C. community may be looking for a change of venue if the controversial case goes to trial.

Winston Blackmore and James Oler, religious community leaders in Bountiful, B.C., attended the 10-minute hearing and the case was put off until Feb. 18.

Linda Mueller, a spokeswoman for the B.C. government, says there was a brief discussion about changing the location of a trial, which would currently be heard in the small town of Creston, about 700 kilometres southeast of Vancouver.

Blackmore is accused of having up to 20 wives and Oler two wives.

Bountiful has about 1,000 residents and has been the subject of several investigations involving allegations of polygamy, sexual abuse and trafficking of teenage brides across the Canada-U.S. border to sister communities in the United States.

The 52-year-old Blackmore and Oler, 44, are the leaders of two rival factions of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Bountiful.

Technorati Tags: Winston Blackmore, James Oler, FLDS

In response to the quoted sentence in bold below I say…

…indeed, it has been said to me numerous times over the years (once that it has been agreed upon that polygyny is in fact a perfectly legitimate biblical form of marriage) that “Well, it’s just not for me, and no woman in her right mind would want it.”

The assumption of those who say this of course is that they themselves are in their right mind and any woman who is unlike them on the issue, who would seek out and engage themselves in a plural marriage, must be mentally unstable, brainwashed, or existing in some state of extreme desperation.  Interestingly enough, this usually has been preceeded with another statement, which goes something like “It would be easier to accept your position on polygyny if more people (ie. the majority) agreed with you.”  Just who is brainwashed, and by whom I wonder?

Nautrally, I would disagree with this assessment, although I do readily admit that finding a lady possessing the qualities of a good, God fearing wife (especially amongst the christian community!) is akin to finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.  But contrary to the assumption that a polygymous wife must be flawed in some manner I would say that she is a precious jewel indeed.  The diamond, being ever so rare, so different from all the rest, is valued all the more, is it not?

Source: canada.com

But there must be consent, and this is where things get tricky. A lot of people seem to assume that these young, healthy women in a polygamous relationship have been brainwashed by those with religious authority over them. They believe no self-respecting sister would subject herself to this kind of arrangement of her own free will. Ergo, this must be stopped.

Well, I’ve seen high Anglicans genuflecting, Quakers quaking and holy rollers rolling in their places of worship, and it has occurred to me that something has happened to their brains. But when they emerge, shriven or whatever, they seem perfectly normal again.

It’s the same with people of other faiths I’ve seen on TV, lacerating their bodies, beheading live chickens and crawling with their faces in the mud. I presume they have families to look after and jobs to go to.

What the Bountiful women have done, though, is more permanent. They’ve hitched themselves, like sled dogs, to one man so that he can “raise up seed” and qualify to get to the celestial kingdom.

If they, and their man, really believe this is their religious duty, what right has any non-believer to stop them from performing it? And how can anyone presume to tell where religious instruction ends and brainwashing begins?

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Technorati Tags: polygamy, polygyny

An interesting piece.  Read the full story at the Source: TIME

Winston Blackmore and Family

The farming community of Lister is located in a picturesque valley hard on the U.S. border in southeastern British Columbia, Canada, in the shade of the Skimmerhorn Mountains. It lies roughly between Calgary and Spokane (the closest big town is Creston — pop. about 4,800). Founded by World War I veterans, Lister was always conspicuous for the dark secrets of many of its inhabitants. In the beginning of course, these secrets were the simple memories of the horrors of war. But recent generations have struggled with more complex secrets centered on a farming settlement in a corner of Lister known as Bountiful — and paralleling the events that unfolded in Eldorado, Texas in April 2008.

Made up of as many as 1,000 adherents of a fundamentalist Mormon sect, Bountiful has been home to clans of polygamists since the arrival in the late 1940s of the homestead’s founder Harold Blackmore, who — according to one account — was drawn to the valley after envisioning it in a dream. Blackmore was part of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which was expelled from mainstream Mormonism in the 1930s. For generations, local farmers co-existed with the polygamists of Bountiful. But this relationship, based on the country tenet of “live and let live,” grew increasingly uneasy over time as strange stories of life within the settlement leaked out, and found their way into the media with accounts of a power struggle between Winston Blackmore, the sect’s leader in Bountiful, and Warren Jeffs, the leader of the FLDS Church. Jeffs, now incarcerated in the U.S. for being an accomplice to rape, is facing charges in the aftermath of the raid on the polygamist Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado. (See pictures of two polygamist families.

Technorati Tags: FLDS, Harold Blackmore

Source: financialpost.com

Winston Blackmore shot back at the British Columbia government Thursday, defending his polygamist Mormon faith.

“Iam what Iam and we are what we are,” Mr. Blackmore said in a statement to reporters at the Mormon Hills elementary school near Creston, B.C.

Mr. Blackmore and another leader at the Mormon colony, James Oler, were charged Wednesday with polygamy.

“We are descended from a long line of Mormon-believing people. My family did not make up our faith nor did we establish the fundamental teachings of Mormonism,” said Mr. Blackmore.

“Jesus Christ is our Lord and Saviour. He has taught us and Ihave taught my children that they should pray for their enemies as well as their friends. That is what we will continue to do.”

Oler could not be reached for comment Thursday.

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Technorati Tags: Winston Blackmore, FLDS, James Oler

Source: The Canadian Press

A teenaged relative of Winston Blackmore says RCMP travelled to the United States late last year to interview her about her uncle.

Cindy Blackmore says two Mounties who flew to Las Vegas also asked her what it was like to grow up in the polygamous community of Bountiful, in southeastern B.C.

The seventeen-year-old, who was raised with two mothers in a polygamous family but left home at 14, says she is not a polygamist but is not against it.

She says people should have the choice about whether to live that kind of lifestyle, even though she chooses not to.

Fifty-two-year-old Winston Blackmore and 44-year-old James Oler were arrested Wednesday and charged with one count each of practising polygamy in a case that will test the country’s prohibition of multiple marriage.

Winston Blackmore is expected to make a public statement later today.

Technorati Tags: Winston Blackmore, FLDS

When men deny infallibility to God and Scripture (His Word) the concept in and of itself doesn’t simply disappear, but is transferred to some other entity of our own choosing- and usually one constructed after our own image- , such as church, the state  or the school.   I think the concept of infallibility has, at least in our minds, been transferred to the State, in particular a certain form of State government, ie. Democracy.  This is an obvious error, which the sentence in bold below illustrates rather well.

Yes, the democratic State in fallible, and engages  in religious persecution, and has done so in one form or another since it’s conception.  The rules may change, but the war rages on.

Source: nationalpost.com

Polygamy has been illegal in Canada since 1892, when a law was passed to keep polygamous Mormons out of the country. The modern statute, called section 293, dropped the bias against Mormons but continued to make polygamy illegal. But over all those years the law has rarely been applied even though police on occasion have said charges should be laid.

In 1990, a B. C. police investigation recommended charges be laid in Bountiful but the Crown received legal opinions that the polygamous ban would be struck down as an “unjustifiable infringement of religious freedom.”

In 2006, the RCMP looked at sexual exploitation charges instead, but it was agreed that there would not be enough evidence to get a conviction.

In 2007, Mr. Oppal appointed Vancouver lawyer Richard Peck to make an independent assessment of the law and how it might be used. While Mr. Peck concluded that polygamy was the “underlying phenomenon from which all other alleged harms flow” in Bountiful, he did not think a prosecution would work.

Rather, he advised that section 293 be referred to the courts to test its constitutionality, which experts said would give the law real clout if it were upheld. Mr. Peck wrote that he thought the law would be upheld.

He discouraged individual prosecutions, such as the ones announced yesterday, because they “would likely face a number of obstacles, resulting in a cumbersome and time-consuming process” and that the “constitutional issue might not be heard for some time after the charges are laid.”

Following Mr. Peck’s report, another Vancouver lawyer, Leonard Doust, was also asked to give his recommendation and came to the same conclusion.

Other legal experts have also had strong concerns about the chances of individual prosecutions.

Ms. Baines said yesterday that if the polygamy issue was going to go to court, a reference would have been the way to go.

That way, she said, it would have been a quicker route to a higher court and it would have allowed for various intervenors to make their case. However, even with a reference she was convinced section 293 would have been struck down.

She said complicating the issue is the large number of immigrants who are coming to Canada from countries where polygamy is recognized as legitimate.

But because it is illegal here, there is no way of knowing what impact that is having on the women and children who live in such families.

“The problem is that Canadian culture has changed significantly and there are many people living secretly in polygamous relationships. There is an assumption that polygamy is bad for women and children–but as long as it’s a crime, no one is going to belly up and say they’re living in the relationship. Until they decriminalize it, we can’t know if it’s harmful in Canada.”

Others see the issue of polygamy getting blown out of proportion because of the particular case of Bountiful. Last year, James Gratl, then president of the B. C. Civil Liberties Association, said the problem with anti-polygamy laws is they assume there is one form of marriage that is proper.

Full Story

Technorati Tags: Winston Blackmore, FLDS, Bountiful

Source: nationalpost.com

The charges brought yesterday against two leaders in the polygamous community of Bountiful, B.C., are likely the first steps in a process that could see Canada’s anti-polygamy law struck down as unconstitutional.

Over the past two decades, four attorneys-general in British Columbia have been reluctant to lay a charge because of a fear that their cases would have no chance of surviving a religious freedom defence under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Last April, Wally Oppal, the current Attorney-General of the province, said the criminal justice branch believed any prosecution would fail because of a possible violation of the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. But he also said the only way to test its constitutionality was to lay a charge and “then let the defence worry about the constitutionality issue.”

But Beverley Baines, a law professor at Queen’s University who produced a report for the federal government in 2006 on the polygamy issue, said yesterday that a constitutionality challenge is one the government is likely to lose.

“It was sufficiently clear [the law] was unconstitutional and we shouldn’t waste taxpayer money on individual court cases,” she said yesterday about the conclusions she reached in her report, which called for polygamy to be decriminalized.

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Technorati Tags: Winston Blackmore

Source: CTV.ca |

Two leaders of a controversial religious sect in Bountiful, B.C. have been arrested and charged with polygamy.

Winston Blackmore and James Oler that been named the arrested, B.C. Attorney General Wally Oppal confirmed Wednesday.

Oppal said Blackmore is alleged to have committed polygamy with 20 women and Oler, with two women.

“This has been a very complex issue,” he said. “It’s been with us for well over 20 years. The problem has always been the defence of religion has always been raised.”

Two previous legal opinions have said that polygamy charges might be thrown out under a Charter of Rights challenge.

“I’ve always disagreed with that,” Oppal said of using freedom of religion to defend the practice of polygamy.

Oppal said that in 2005, when he was appointed attorney general he was concerned about polygamy in Bountiful “because of the exploitation of women and children.”

In June 2008, Oppal appointed a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of abuse at Bountiful.

About 800 to 1,000 people live in the community, all members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) or an off-shoot sect based on the teachings of Blackmore. Both religions believe in the practice of polygamy.

The FLDS broke off from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the early 1900s when the Mormon church renounced polygamy.

Blackmore is the defacto leader of Bountiful, even though he was excommunicated from the FLDS in 2002 following a power struggle with the sect’s disgraced prophet Warren Jeffs.

Jeffs is now jailed for life on two counts for being an accomplice to rape for arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin.

Blackmore’s first wife has gone on the record to say that he has about 25 wives. Blackmore himself has made public statements admitting to have numerous wives and dozens of children but has said the community does not sexually abuse children.

Oppal was under fire to investigate Bountiful by both politicians and activists and relented after the community entered the national spotlight after authorities in Texas raided a similar polygamous sect, because of suspicions of child abuse.

Blackmore has refused to comment on allegations that teenage girls are pushed into marriages with much-older men or that other girls are sent to other polygamous sects in the United States.

Full Story

Technorati Tags: FLDS, Winston Blackmore, James Oler

Source: globeandmail.com:

…
A Texas Supreme Court judge is expected to sign an order within a week that will end court supervision of the teenager’s care, Mary Ann Gonzales, a deputy clerk, said yesterday in an interview. Once the court order is lifted, the young woman may live where she wants and is no longer required to stay in Texas, Ms. Gonzales said.
…
The Canadian teen’s case sparked concern about an unofficial cross-border underground railway that former FLDS women said was used for moving underage girls between polygamist colonies in British Columbia and the United States. The former FLDS members said the young women were taken across the border to be assigned as so-called celestial brides to older men. At the time of the raid, the Canadian teen’s parents said she was visiting her grandmother at the polygamist compound.

… she turned 18 this month and, as a result, is no longer under the jurisdiction of the state child-protection agency. Her parents, who live in a polygamist FLDS community outside Creston in southeastern B.C., did not respond to a request for an interview yesterday.

So far, the court has lifted restrictions on 287 of the young people who were taken into custody and allowed them to return to their families. Five sect members have been charged with sexual assault of a child, and several have been charged with bigamy

One FLDS member was charged with failing to report child abuse. Texas authorities have reportedly said they have evidence of at least 10 underage marriages. One caseworker testified in court that 48 per cent of the men were involved in underage-marriage practices.

Despite the reversal in court orders, Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for Child Protective Services, said yesterday that authorities do not believe they made any mistakes. Investigators acted on information they had at the time of the raid, he said in an interview.

“We stand by the fact that at the time, given the circumstances and the information we had, we did act appropriately and no, we haven’t changed that position,” he said. Asked whether an apology were necessary, Mr. Crimmins said: “Absolutely not.”
…

Full Story…

Source: canadianpress.google.com

A B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has dismissed a complaint from a polygamist couple who alleged a teacher’s union discriminated against them by calling for an investigation into allegations of child abuse in the community of Bountiful, B.C.

Duane and Susie Palmer filed their complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal in 2004, after the president of the B.C. Teacher’s Federation sent a letter to the premier calling for the investigation into the polygamous community located in southeastern B.C.

The October 2004 letter refers to allegations that the community school failed to abide by the provincial curriculum and taught religious intolerance.

It said that girls were being told they needed only learn what would prepare them to be wives and mothers and were encouraged to leave school before the age of 16.

A subsequent news release urged the B.C. government to respond to “persistent and serious allegations of child abuse.”

And a petition circulated by the federation cites allegations including trafficking of young girls into the community to be the wives of older men, assigning husbands to girls as young as 14 and older men impregnating girls as young as 14 or 15.

The petition called for a thorough investigation and support for the “lost boys” of Bountiful, turned out in order to “keep the gender imbalance,” and discontinuation of provincial funding for the school in Bountiful if it was found that the school was not abiding by the provincial curriculum.

Residents of Bountiful are members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway group from the mainstream Mormon church that renounced polygamy more than a century ago and disavows any connection.

The Palmers, he a director of the Mormon Hills School Society in Bountiful and she a teacher at the school, said they were concerned children would not be treated equally or graded fairly.

They said they were also concerned that church members who were certified teachers would not be accepted to work in other public schools under the federation.

“They desire to have us persecuted because of our marital status,” the couple, who identified themselves as members of the breakaway sect, told the tribunal. “Some of us choose to live in a plural marriage relationship.”

They said the law against polygamy had been proven to be unconstitutional.

The couple said they did not want their students harassed by the teachers or other students “because of who they are.”

“We have a desire to ensure that our government is not pressured into making any rash and harmful decisions, based on false accusations which would be harmful to the education of our children, and our right to live our religion and lifestyle,” said their complaint.

They claimed the federation discriminated against them on the grounds of family and marital status and religion, and made false and unfounded accusations.

But tribunal member Lindsay M. Lyster recently dismissed the complaint, saying that while the Palmers may have been offended by the allegations and opposed to the idea there should be an investigation, there was nothing in the publications to support their complaint.

“The respondents’ purpose in creating the letter to the premier, the newsletter and the petition was not to discriminate against the Palmers or anyone else,” Lyster wrote in the Aug. 15 ruling.

Rather, the tribunal found the allegations “a matter of legitimate public interest.”

Earlier this year, after years of controversy, the B.C. attorney general appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the possibility of laying charges in the community.

That occurred after more than 450 children were apprehended by child-welfare authorities from a sister polygamous community in Texas, including at least one teenage girl from Bountiful. Those children were eventually ordered returned to their parents by a Texas court.

Source: The Calgary Sun

A court-appointed official from the U.S. is trying to take over a private school in B.C. run by the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Bruce Wisan, appointed by a U.S. court to protect the assets of the Church, has launched a lawsuit in B.C. Supreme Court.

He is hoping to gain control of the Bountiful Elementary-Secondary School near Creston, B.C.

Speaking from his home in Utah, Wisan said he became involved in Canada because of the split within the community between followers of FLDS leader Warren Jeffs and supporters of Canadian Winston Blackmore.

He says children of Blackmore supporters are not allowed to attend the school or even use the playgrounds.

Wisan said he launched the lawsuit to force an equitable distribution of FLDS assets in Canada.

He has asked the court to remove the FLDS members as directors of the society that runs the school. He wants to be appointed as trustee to regulate the school’s affairs.

From: globeandmail.com

Prominent polygamist Winston Blackmore and his family could receive more than $10,000 this month from the B.C. government in so-called dividend cheques. Others in the polygamist community of Bountiful with fewer wives and smaller families will receive less, but government payments could still be substantial.
…

The B.C. government is sending $100 to every man, woman and child in the province as part of a climate-change program. The list of adults comes from income-tax returns. The names of children come from the federal government’s Canada Child Tax Benefit program; their cheques will be mailed to their parents or primary caregivers. British Columbians who do not pay income tax or receive a child-tax benefit can apply directly to the provincial government for the money.
Print Edition – Section Front

Mr. Blackmore was skeptical about whether the B.C. government would send the cheques to him.

“I am sure that the BC government will do everything possible to see to it that my family does not get the $100 cheque. So it will make no difference to us whether we be few or many,” Mr. Blackmore stated during the e-mail exchange.

Via: globeandmail.com

More police work and research on polygamy in British Columbia are unnecessary delays that threaten to tie up the contentious issue until after next May’s provincial election, Nancy Mereska, co-ordinator of an Alberta-based anti-polygamy group, said yesterday.

“Research could take another year to get through it all. I could send you a list of books as long as my arm,” said Ms. Mereska, of Stop Polygamy in Canada, in an interview from Two Hills, Alta.

“I believe now that this is another delay tactic. We may not see anything happening until after the election. I’m very disappointed.”

Special prosecutor Terry Robertson was appointed this month to decide whether polygamists at a religious community in Bountiful, in the southeast corner of B.C., should face criminal charges. He told The Globe and Mail last week that he intends to ask the RCMP to reopen its investigation into the polygamous community to find out whether men in authority fathered children with underage girls. He also said more research will be done into the effect of polygamy on society. He anticipated he would complete his review in the fall.

Via the Calgary Herald

The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in a Polygamous Mormon Sect by Daphne Bramham    The fatal flaw in polygamy is arithmetic, writes Vancouver Sun columnist Daphne Bramham. Given that a society normally produces as many boys as girls, what does a polygamous community do with all the extra men? Kick them out, of course, preferably before they present a challenge for the charms of girls their own age.But the story of these “lost boys” is incidental to the focus of The Secret Lives Of Saints, although they are the collateral damage of the tale. The real damage is the fate of young, pubescent, nubile girls. This is one society where protection would come in the form of physical ugliness.Bramham is unsparing in her criticism for the “religion” of fundamentalism, for the law, the legislatures concerned and, ultimately, the lies that underpin the promotion of polygamy as some sort of normal, albeit alternative, lifestyle. She is scathing in her condemnation of the notion that it is appropriate to marry off girls barely in their teens to men old enough to be, and in some cases are, their own grandfathers.