B.C. to investigate polygamous commune
 
By Frank Stirk
CanadianChristianity.com
 
Mounting public pressure appears to have finally persuaded the British Columbia government to abandon its hands-off attitude toward Bountiful, a polygamous commune near Cranbrook in the southeastern Interior.

Attorney-General Geoff Plant announced recently that a task force of RCMP officers, a social worker and a dedicated prosecutor is being assembled that will investigate widespread allegations that women and teenaged girls in the commune are being sexually abused and sexual exploited.

"The groundswell of public concern has reached a point where government and the police, in my view, have an obligation to act," Plant told the Toronto Star. "It's a priority to investigate the many allegations being made."

The commune, which was founded in the late 1940s, is controlled by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a splinter group from mainstream Mormonism that still practices polygamy as part of its religion.

Women who have escaped this male-dominated lifestyle say the results are devastating. They allege rampant sexual abuse, the forced "marriages" of teenaged girls as so-called "celestial wives," high rates of teenaged pregnancies, and a birth rate well above the national average.

"The women in polygamist marriages are second-class citizens whose sole purpose is to be a walking womb," Nancy Mereska, coordinator of Stop Polygamy in Canada, told the Calgary Sun. "If they don't want to live this lifestyle or they disobey their 'husband,' they're told they'll go to Hell."

More than a decade ago, B.C's NDP government decided that while polygamy is a crime in Canada, any attempt to prosecute the Bountiful commune would likely be successfully challenged in court as a violation of constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion. Plant came to the same conclusion after the Liberals came to power.

What helped change his mind, according to Plant, was a first-hand account of the alleged abuses taking place that he received in May from Debbie Palmer, a woman with eight children from three arranged "marriages," who had fled Bountiful in 1988.

"What truly offends the majority of people who hear about these allegations goes beyond the question of multiple marriages," Plant said. "It includes suggestions there are children who are being sexually exploited, girls being transported across the [Canada-U.S.] border, and so on.

"If supported by the facts, these charges would have no constitutional challenge."

Also said to be of concern to B.C.'s education ministry are allegations that an independent elementary school in Bountiful requires that children quit school at Grade 10 and demands that girls submit to multiple "marriages" and bear children. It is also claimed, as the Vancouver Sun reported, that its curriculum "is racist, white-supremacist and discriminates against women."

This prompted the Bulkley Valley school district to call earlier this year for a moratorium on taxpayers' dollars going to the school so that "the exploitation and manipulation of these children is stopped immediately," The Province reported.

Over the past two years, the government has given the commune $1.1 million in education grants. A second school is due to open in September.

In June, Education Minister Tom Christensen told The Province there was no evidence that Bountiful's students are not receiving "a sound education." Yet now, according to the Vancouver Sun, he has promised his department's school inspectors will take a closer look at the school "as new information becomes available."

Also urging the government to investigate Bountiful was the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. But in a letter to Premier Gordon Campbell dated July 20, president John Russell urged that this investigation not extend to polygamy.

That, Russell wrote, would be "an unhelpful diversion from the other allegations at hand. The key underlying issue is not whether a man is co-habiting with more than one woman, but whether sexual or spousal abuse or exploitation is taking place."

However, Vancouver Sun columnist Daphne Bramham, who has written extensively on the situation in Bountiful, believes these alleged abuses are occurring precisely because of the polygamy.

"Polygamy is at the heart of the problems in Bountiful," she stated. "It's the reason for the abuse, the statutory rape of young girls, and the casting off of young men unprepared and uneducated to cope in the broader community."

In The Star, women's rights campaigner Jancis Andrews said polygamy is "the poisonous root" of all the problems that police will be investigating.

"This is a cult, a totally medieval, screwed up, grotesque philosophy," she said. "And I truly believe that when the public realizes the gross injustices and contraventions of human rights that are taking place there, it will have to be done away with."

Even Plant now seems to acknowledge that the government cannot turn a blind eye to the polygamy, nor allow it to impede the police investigation.

As he told the Star, "The fact is that [polygamy] section sits there in the Criminal Code. No court has ever struck it down. And we may have to deal with it."

Yet the failure of successive governments to act sooner has only made the problem worse, says Bramham. "The community has nearly doubled in population [since the early 1990s] and the community now owns nearly half of the Creston Valley and has long-term leases on land recently given to the Lower Kootenay first nations band as part of a land-claim settlement."

Winston Blackmore, Bountiful's leader, is promising that investigators will receive their full cooperation, reminding the Calgary Sun that police conducted a similar enquiry 14 years ago.

"They were trying to prove I had more than one wife, so I said, 'Right, I do, now go away,'" said Blackmore, who claims to have "less than 20" wives.

But as the Globe and Mail reported in June, Blackmore is currently caught up in a bitter rivalry with Warren Jeffs, the Utah-based "prophet" or leader of the Fundamentalist Church, over the control of Bountiful.

Palmer says the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently interviewed her over concerns that their dispute could turn violent, in the wake of allegations that Jeffs has vowed vengeance upon his rivals.

"The FBI is certainly concerned that Jeffs talks openly about 'blood atonement' and what that could mean in the context of this internal battle, which is further victimizing women and children," Palmer told The Province.

"But when we tried to tell the RCMP, they laughed at us. They said, 'Show us the knife, show us the blood, and then we'll look into it.'"

There is no indication when the task force will begin its investigation.
 
CanadianChristianity.com
Originally published July 28, 2004
 
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