Cabinet talks a signal of hope for child brides of Bountiful:
 A letter detailing abuse behind the cult's veil has spurred the attorney-general to action
 
By Daphne Bramham
Vancouver Sun
 
The message finally got through to the B.C. government -- the polygamous community of Bountiful needs to be investigated.

"Some people say harm is happening and it is not right for a responsive government not to do anything," Attorney-General Geoff Plant said Monday.

Plant said he decided it was the moral thing to do after he received a letter last week from a former Bountiful resident outlining the abuse suffered there.

He took the letter to last week's cabinet meeting and asked the other ministers what they knew about Bountiful and what they were doing about it. Plant also asked his deputy to speak to other deputy ministers and find out what is known about Bountiful.

"I'm setting the tone and using the moral authority of this office," he told me after explaining that he has no power to order a police investigation. "It is time for the government to try to figure out what to do."

Since the community was founded in the late 1940s, there have been allegations of sexual exploitation and rape of young girls who are given as concubines to leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The breakaway Mormon sect has as its principal tenet that only men with three wives or more will be allowed into heaven.

That said, it is a secretive cult and key to any government action will be encouraging people to come forward with information.

But there are some who have already indicated their willingness. Debbie Palmer, who was a concubine to three men and mother of eight children, left Bountiful in 1988. She gave the RCMP enough evidence that it recommended charges be laid against Bountiful's leaders in 1992.

But the Crown prosecutors in the attorney-general's ministry refused to lay charges. The NDP attorney-general at the time was Colin Gabelman, who -- like Plant -- was concerned that the Charter of Rights' protections for freedom of religion may override the criminal charge of polygamy.

Palmer's sister, Jane Blackmore, is also willing to give testimony. She is Winston Blackmore's first and only legal wife who left Blackmore and Bountiful two years ago. A midwife, she continues to attend births in Bountiful and has told reporters she has looked after mothers as young as 13.

There are also the other former 'wives' of Bountiful who complained to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal about abuses and who are willing to provide information about child brides, child mothers, multiple marriages and the poor quality of education they received.

But it's not just the abuse of girls that the government needs to investigate.

For polygamy to work, boys and young men have to be cast out. Labelled as trouble-makers, they're excommunicated and told they are damned for eternity.

Like the girls, the boys rarely finish high school. Few have marketable skills.

Because they are raised to fear outsiders who they're taught to believe are evil, they often end up drifting aimlessly in the Kootenays, often drug addicted, alcoholic and frequently violent.

Plant has done the right thing. By raising the issue at cabinet, he's sent a signal to the victims of Bountiful that there is hope for justice.

Now, it's up to his colleagues and the police to live up to that promise.
 
Vancouver Sun
Originally published Tuesday, June 15, 2004
 
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