BOUNTIFUL POLYGAMISTS BEING CHARGED

VANCOUVER — Leaders of the two factions in the POLYGAMOUS community of Bountiful have been charged under the Criminal Code with practising POLYGAMY. In a sensational turn in a 20-year-old debate over the issue of POLYGAMY in Canada, police have charged JIM OLER and WINSTON BLACKMORE.

The two men were charged each with one count on Tuesday and have not yet appeared in court. JIM OLER is charged with “practising POLYGAMY” with two women. WINSTON BLACKMORE's charge relates to 20 women. The religious community has been the subject of several police probes since the late 1980s following allegations of incest, sexual abuse, fraud, and trafficking of teenage brides across the Canada-U.S. border. But police up to this point have refused to proceed with charges. “This has been a very complex issue,” said B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal. “It's been with us for well over 20 years. The problem has always been the defence of religion has always been raised.”

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Mr. Oppal said some legal experts have believed that the POLYGAMY charge wouldn't withstand a Charter of Rights challenge over the issue of freedom of religion. “I've always disagreed with that,” he said. "Our belief is that it is a valid section [of the Criminal Code]. Hopefully it won't be a long trial," Mr. Oppal added, saying it was premature to say when a trial may take place.

The two Bountiful leaders are expected to be released from custody today on conditions that include they not perform marriages. RCMP Sgt. Tim Shields said he's not aware any of the wives were under 18.

WINSTON BLACKMORE was considered the bishop in Canada of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from 1984 until 2002, when he was replaced by JIM OLER WINSTON BLACKMORE is reported to have more than 20 wives and dozens of children. In an exchange of e-mails with The Globe and Mail earlier this year, WINSTON BLACKMORE said he had no legal wives but lots of family members. WINSTON BLACKMORE also said he acts in his capacity as a religious minister when called upon by others but he was neither a member of a FLDS congregation nor a leader of any religious community. WINSTON BLACKMORE has previously said he was part of a sect called the United Order Effort, which he has described as the true Mormon church. JIM OLER, who has been more reluctant to speak with the media than WINSTON BLACKMORE, is reported to have fewer wives.

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Mr. Oppal had previously indicated he would like to see charges of polygamy laid against members of the community despite concerns raised by two government advisers about the difficulty of obtaining a conviction of POLYGAMY in the face of protections for religious freedom guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedom. Vancouver lawyers Richard Peck and Len Doust in separate opinions advised the government to seek a court ruling on whether the law on POLYGAMY conflicts with the Canadian Charter before charging anyone.

Undeterred, Mr. Oppal sought advice a third time. The opinion of the adviser, Vancouver lawyer Terry Robertson, has not yet been released although his review was to be completed last fall. Last summer, Mr. Robertson told The Globe and Mail he intended to ask the RCMP to reopen its investigation into the POLYGAMOUS community to find out whether men in authority fathered children with underage girls.

POLYGAMY is an indictable offence in the Criminal Code. "Is the spirit of the law being violated and we think it is. If some court decides otherwise, we will obviously have to live with that," Mr. Oppal said when asked about the risk of losing court.

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BOUNTIFUL is a community of more than 1,000 people in a rural area outside Creston, B.C., in southeastern B.C. a few kilometres north of the Canada/U.S. border.

The news conference comes two weeks after the release of a report on the unprecedented raid on April 3 on the central compound and headquarters for the religion, the Yearning For Zion ranch in Eldorado, Texas. Welfare authorities concluded that 12 of 439 children who were seized during the raid were underaged child brides. Seven of the girls, who were between the ages of 12 and 15, had one or more children. An additional 262 children were considered to be neglected because parents did not remove them from situations that exposed them to sexual abuse, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

A Texas grand jury has indicted 12 men on charges including sexual assault of a child, aggravated sexual assault, bigamy and conducting an illegal marriage, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. The raid led to the largest child welfare apprehension in U.S. history.

RELATED STORIES

- POLYGAMY and the LAW
- BOUNTIFUL POLYGAMISTS POLICE RAID
- TEXAS COURT OF APPEAL RULES AGAINST AUTHORITIES IN POLYGAMIST RAID
- EVIDENCE OF INCEST FOUND IN TEXAS POLYGAMIST CHILDREN
- AUTHORITIES RAID TEXAS POLYGAMIST RANCH

BOUNTIFUL POLYGAMIST's being investigated

B.C.'s attorney general has appointed a third special prosecutor to investigate whether charges should be laid against members of the polygamist community of Bountiful, in the province's southeastern Interior.

Wally Oppal instructed the province's Criminal Justice Branch to hire another special prosecutor, Terrence Robertson, to review the results of the latest police investigation and consider charges.

Robertson will look at results of the RCMP investigation, consider charges, offer advice to the police, write a report, and if he believes charges are warranted, conduct the prosecution.

Oppal said he disagrees with the recommendations of two previous special prosecutors, Richard Peck and Leonard Doust, whom he appointed, and who both recommended the Criminal Justice Branch not proceed with charges.

"I think this is something we, as a society, need to be concerned with. The whole idea of men with senior ages, 50-year-old men, having relationships with younger women between the ages of 14 and 16 and 17 … I think Canadians would find abhorrent," said Oppal.

In April, Doust, a prominent Vancouver lawyer, recommended the government ask the courts to clarify whether the law prohibiting polygamy is constitutional before considering pressing charges.

Section 293 of the Criminal Code of Canada explicitly bans polygamy and threatens offenders with a five-year prison term.

But Doust declined Oppal's request that he prosecute on the polygamy allegation when the two met in May, saying he felt it would be unfair.

On Monday in a written statement, Oppal said upholding the law is not unfair, and that's why he has asked the criminal justice branch to appoint Robertson as the third special prosecutor to handle the investigation.

"It is my opinion that the Criminal Justice Branch is mistaken in its belief that section 293 of the Criminal Code of Canada is unconstitutional. Both Mr. Doust and Mr. Peck believe section 293 to be constitutionally valid legislation. A valid criminal law is and should be enforced. To do so is appropriate and is not unfair," Oppal said in written statement.

The polygamist community of Bountiful is home to a community of several hundred polygamists with links to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the U.S.

A woman who used to live in Bountiful said she hopes the latest special prosecutor will recommend charges be laid.

Debbie Palmer, who left Bountiful 20 years ago with her eight children, told CBC News on Monday she wishes the provincial government would approach the issue more directly.

"I thought that he [Oppal] would have the power to go ahead and designate that they should go ahead and prosecute charges of polygamy and child sexual assault without asking for yet another opinion," Palmer said.

Texas ruling allows children, parents to reunite
In Texas on Monday, a judge ordered the return of more than 400 children taken by state authorities from a ranch run by the polygamist group.

According to the ruling, parents are allowed to pick up their children but can't leave Texas without court permission and must participate in parenting classes.

They have also been ordered not to interfere with any ongoing child abuse investigation and to allow the children to have psychiatric or medical exams if required.

The order comes days after the Texas Supreme Court said child welfare officials had no right to seize hundreds of children from the west Texas ranch.

Child welfare officials removed more than 400 children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, about 300 kilometres northwest of San Antonio.

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In a related Story: Bountiful opens its' Doors

By Meghan Wood

AFTER YEARS of keeping a low profile in B.C.'s lush Creston Valley, the community of Bountiful opened its doors to the public April 21 -- media and protestors alike -- to set some records straight.

A group from the community, calling itself the Women of Bountiful, hosted a press conference at a community centre 10 km away in Creston. Their aim was to show Canada that they are fully aware of their lifestyle choice, they enjoy sharing husbands even though they admit polygamy is illegal in Canada, and they will use Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms to argue that plural marriage is covered by their freedom of religion.

"We the women of our community will be silent no more," said Zelpha Chatwin to the 300 people in attendance. "I love the fact that my girls and I only have to cook and clean once a week. [Polygamists are] a team of players who care for each other."

The women also said plural marriages come with various benefits, such as pooling resources and talent, and higher household incomes, reported the National Post.

"The Bountiful Women's Society is an organization of the women in the community and [The Women of Bountiful] includes most but not all of them," said Winston Blackmore, Bountiful's former bishop and a powerful businessman.

"It was organized many years ago, but because of the division in our community has been inactive for sometime. It has been recently revived and is now active with some 100 members. They decided to hold this conference because of the continued claims by ex-members that they spoke for the women of Bountiful. These women speak for themselves."

The women of this fundamentalist Mormon group said reports of child abuse and kidnappings were "false allegations" and "common misconceptions fostered by irresponsible journalists." They also announced that girls under 18 will no longer enter into plural marriages.

"There is definitely an interest among the parents that their children at least reach the age of 18 before they should think about becoming someone's wife," Blackmore explained. "In our province, any 16-year-old that has the consent of their parents can get a marriage license and marry the person of their choice no matter what the age. In our communities for many years, no one was married before they graduated from high school."

Only two girls younger than 16 have ever entered into what the Women called "plural marriages."

Blackmore said it is the wife's choice, never the husband's, about whether they will participate in plural marriages.

The men of Bountiful who live the polygamous lifestyle marry one woman legally and then take more wives in "celestial unions," which are recognized solely by their church, part of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a sect of Mormonism. According to Apologetics Index, the sect separated from the Mormon church when the Church renounced plural marriage in 1890.

"They believe polygamy and large families will gain them access to the highest tier of heaven," states the web site. "Women reportedly bear an average of 10 children each. Fundamentalists believe monogamy is limiting for both men and women, that plural marriage allows a man and his 'ladies' greater opportunity to provide bodies for waiting heavenly spirits and increases their ability to populate this and future worlds."

The women taken as celestial wives refer to one another as "sister wives." Jane Blackmore, Winston's first legal wife, recently divorced the minister and left the commune. She is a nurse who served as the community's midwife and told MacLeans last year that she has aided in births to mothers as young as 15 and has even delivered many of her ex-husband's estimated 80 children by other wives.

The division Blackmore mentioned was caused by a split in the community where some of the members of Bountiful chose to follow Warren Jeffs, 49, a self-proclaimed prophet who lives by the mandate: "One vision. One Plan. One Man." Insiders say Jeffs used his father's weakened state to position himself as leader by removing his potential rival, Blackmore. Jeffs lives in Hildale, Utah but runs Bountiful's provincially funded school and encourages women to marry young before the world ends.

"Warren Jeffs is interested in the end of the world," said Blackmore. "I am not, for that will come soon enough for all of us. He made himself into the leader. I did not want to follow his views for they were not in keeping with our fundamental sacred values."

Court of Appeal in Texas rules against Authorities in Removal of Children from Polygamist ranch

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin has ruled that the state did not have the right to remove more than 400 children from a west Texas polygamist ranch and place them in shelters across the state. One of those shelters is the Ark Assessment Center on Leopard.

The children were brought to the Ark about four weeks ago and are still there. The Ark's director told 6 News they will wait until they are told the next move to make by the Attorney General's office, and that is what Child Protective Services is doing as well.

The Third District Texas Court of Appeals found that, "the department (CPS) did not present any evidence of danger to the physical health or safety of any male children or any female children who had not reached puberty," and, "there was no evidence that the department made reasonable efforts to eliminate or prevent the removal of any children."

CPS issued a response Thursday afternoon, saying "the department removed children from the ranch after finding a pervasive pattern of sexual abuse," and, "will work with the office of the Attorney General to determine the state's next steps in this case."

6 News has also learned all custody hearings have been put on hold as a result of Thursday's ruling.

What happens to the children in state custody now is not very clear at the moment, although in issuing its ruling, the appeals court gave a lower court ten days to release the children to their parents' custody.

However, the state could appeal to the Texas Supreme Court to try and block the order.

Evidence of Inbreeding and Fumarase Deficiency found in Texas Polygamists

Texas social workers will begin conducting DNA tests today to identify the 416 children taken into custody from the fundamentalist Mormon ranch near Eldorado since April 3. A district court judge granted the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (TDFPS) permission to test the children last Friday, as the agency's custody workers continued to struggle with the serious, complicated task of determining which children belong to whom — a task further clouded by the fact that children and mothers gave evasive, shifting answers during interviews.

Genetic testing could be completed in as little as a few days, according to Howard Coleman, CEO of Genelex, a Seattle-based commercial genetics lab, which is not involved with the Texas case. It could take several weeks longer, however, to construct a family tree from the results. Once they are traced, however, the children's origins may offer a fascinating look at the family structure of the secretive polygamist sect, as well as insight into the emergence of a tragic birth defect that has plagued the community.

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At the heart of the identity problem are the group's commitment to "celestial marriage" — polygamy — and its custom of allowing first cousins to marry. "Your family tree shouldn't be a wreath," says Randy Mankin, editor of the El Dorado Success newspaper, which unearthed the sect's Utah roots four years ago, when its first members, posing as businessmen, arrived in Eldorado under the pretense of building a hunting and game preserve. But the legal notices published in Mankin's paper listing the custody suits brought by the state against the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ (FLDS) illustrate just how circular relationships are. Four surnames dominate the list: Jeffs (relatives of Warren Jeffs, the sect's imprisoned leader and "prophet"), Jessop, Barlow and Steed.

In the 1930s, two families, the Jessops and the Barlows, settled the area around Hildale, Utah, along the border with Arizona, where they founded the FDLS — and began handing down to their descendants a recessive gene for a severe form of mental retardation called Fumarase Deficiency. The birth defect has become increasingly prevalent within the FLDS community since 1990 when it was first identified by Dr. Theodore Tarby, an Arizona pediatric neurologist, now retired but formerly with the Children's Rehabilitative Services in Phoenix. He saw his first case when an FLDS mother brought her severely retarded son to see him. Tarby asked the mother whether any of her other children had problems, and she mentioned a daughter with cerebral palsy — testing proved that she, too, had Fumarase Deficiency syndrome.

The birth defect — an enzyme deficiency — causes severe mental retardation, epilepsy and disfigurement of features. "The retardation is in the severe range — an IQ around 25," Dr. Tarby says. Afflicted children are missing portions of their brain, often cannot sit or stand, and suffer grand mal seizures and encephalitis. Language skills are nonexistent or minimal. "I remember one little girl has a fascination with coins and the only word she could say was 'money,'" the doctor said. Families whose children are affected often avail themselves of state-funded medical care, consistent with the FLDS philosophy of seeking government aid — despite their suspicion of government — which they call "bleeding the Beast."

Until 1990 Tarby says he knew of only 13 cases of Fumarase Deficiency worldwide. Since, it has taken hold in the FLDS community because of intermarriage. "If you have two parents with the gene," Tarby says, "you are going to have a one-in-four chance of having a child afflicted with it." Depending on the severity of the disorder, children may die in childhood or may survive into early adulthood; if a person who has developed the disorder goes on to have a child, his or her chances of passing it on are one in two. But diagnosing the condition is difficult and requires extremely careful testing, the doctor says. His research, published in 2006, identified 20 cases within the Hildale-Colorado City enclave. "I would expect there are going to be Fumarase Deficiency cases there in Texas," he said.

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State officials will not release any medical information about the 416 children in their custody, but one mother, giving her name simply as Sally on CNN's Larry King Live, described her son as "handicapped" and needing hourly care. "One of the mothers raised concerns about her child who had Down Syndrome," TDFPS spokesman Greg Cunningham told TIME in an e-mail. "That child has had a medical evaluation and has had one-on-one care." Cunningham says that the children in custody at the Pavilion, part of the city's civic center complex, have one caregiver for every three children. A small number of older boys have been moved to the Cal Farley Boy's Ranch in Amarillo, a privately funded home for needy children.

The FLDS community, by and large, rejects the idea that Fumarase Deficiency is caused by genes, according to Tarby. "They have their mythology about the condition. They think it's something in the water, or something in the air," he says. Before Tarby retired in 2007, FLDS leaders invited him to address the community about the disorder and how to prevent it. He told them that prevention would involve barring marriages between people with the recessive gene, or asking those couples to forgo children. He suggested that families discontinue having children once the disorder presents itself, or test for the gene during pregnancy and selectively abort pregnancies with the deficiency. All were approaches rejected by the FLDS. "It's not something they are willing to do," Tarby says.

For More news on the Texas Polygamist Ranch

Polygamist Ranch in Texas Shut Down - 52 Girls removed

After sealing off the retreat of the polygamist sect led by Warren Jeffs yesterday, the Child Protective Services (CPS) inspectors have removed 52 girls from the 1,900-acre ranch about 260km (160 miles) north-west of the Texan town of San Antonio.

Eighteen of the girls removed from the 400-member ranch community are aged between 6 months and 17 and were put in a state of custody because it appeared they "had been abused or were at immediate risk of future abuse." The rest of the young girls are being found foster homes.

Authorities said none of the 52 girls would be returning to the retreat build about four years ago by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). About half of them were interviewed by welfare officials after being removed from the YFZ Ranch, as the members of the polygamist community called it.

"We're dealing with children that aren't accustomed to the outside world, so we're trying to be very sensitive to their needs," said Marleigh Meisner, spokeswoman for Texas Child Protective Services.

The investigation into the safety of the children living at the ranch was initiated after Child Protective Services were notified by someone that a 16-year-old girl had suffered physical abuse.

Investigators were searching for a 16-year-old girl who allegedly gave birth to a child after marrying to a 50-year-old man, The San Antonio Times said. The girl hasn’t been found yet and authorities are currently searching for her 50-year-old husband Dale Barlow.

Authorities said the ranch's residents were very cooperative and assisted the investigators in their search. No one was arrested.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) bought approximately 1,900 acres near Eldorado about four years ago. There they build the ranch and called it the YFZ Ranch. About 400 members of the church were relocated from their Arizona and Utah compounds to the YFZ Ranch.

Since 2002, when his father died, the community has been led by Warren Jeffs. It’s one of the several religious groups which spread from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after the Mormon Church renounced polygamy in 1890.

Jeffs, the 52-year-old leader and "prophet" of the 10,000-member church, was later convicted for involvement in the rape of a 14-year-old girl in 2001, the year when she wed her cousin in an arranged marriage. In Utah, he was sentenced for to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison.

In Arizona, Jeffs also faces charges as an accomplice of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages similar to that above mentioned. He is now behind bars the Mohave County Jail in Kingman, Ariz., awaiting trial.