Police investigate sect accused of polygamy

Tim Callaway
Alberta Correspondent
alberta@christianweek.org

CRESTON, BC-The attorney general of B.C. announced July 23 that his government now has enough information to investigate allegations of sexual exploitation, forced marriage and child abuse at a polygamous religious commune located just a few kilometres from this southern interior city.

Geoff Plant says a criminal probe will assess the legitimacy of several accusations against the leaders of a fundamentalist Mormon sect at Bountiful. The group has been the object of several news reports over the past 15 years.

Plant says it’s been difficult to investigate Bountiful’s religious leaders because of constitutional rights to freedom of religion and the basic question as to whether polygamy is even against the law in Canada. What finally moved him to action was a confession from a former commune resident who claims she was victimized at the 47-year-old commune.

"That direct complaint allowed me to take a step beyond my traditional role, to raise the issue with my cabinet colleagues," Plant says.

Debbie Palmer, who was assigned at age 15 to be the sixth bride of a 55-year-old man at Bountiful, says the attorney general’s announcement is overdue. She claims underage girls have been trafficked across the international border into Bountiful and impregnated there by men in positions of power.

The vice president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, John Russell, says midwives admit to delivering babies to young girls no older than 13. To keep the female population higher than the male population, young men are often expelled from the commune.

However, Winston Blackmore, a spiritual leader of the sect, told the Calgary Sun in an exclusive interview that he has nothing to hide and will not hamper the investigation.

Admitting he has up to 20 wives, Blackmore maintains his community-part of a breakaway sect of the Mormon Church-is doing nothing wrong.

"I urge the attorney general to come see us and we will cooperate in the investigation," he told the Sun, adding that such scrutiny is nothing new to the people of Bountiful.

"The authorities did this in 1990 with three police officers who wouldn’t even let me go to the bathroom by myself," Blackmore says. "They were trying to prove that I had more than one wife, so I said, ‘Right, I do, now go away.’"

Blackmore-who was excommunicated by the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints about a year ago-is involved in a power struggle for control of Bountiful. He claims he will cooperate with authorities because if the charges are substantiated, he wants to act on them.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or the official Mormon Church, banned polygamy in 1890. Wayne Bourne, an elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Calgary told the Sun, "[Blackmore] has false and foolish notions about polygamy. His religion has as much to do with the Church of Latter Day Saints as Martin Luther has to do with Catholicism."

Plant is appointing a special police task force made up of RCMP members, a social worker and a dedicated prosecutor to investigate the case.