WUNRN
CANADA-USA - RELIGIOUS SECT
CANADIAN PARENTS TOOK UNDERAGE
DAUGHTERS TO US FOR MARRIAGE TO
POLYGAMOUS LEADER
By Daphne
Bramham, Vancouver Sun -
A startling development in the polygamy story: The British
Columbia Canadian government filed documents Friday in BC Supreme Court
alleging that between 2004 and 2005, two 12-year-old girls and a 13-year-old
from
In 2005, two fathers from the fundamentalist
Mormon community of
They went separately and, in one case, the girl’s
mother went along.
The purpose of the trips? Marriage, according to
documents filed in B.C. Supreme Court Friday. The girls were “sealed for time
and eternity” in religious ceremonies to Warren Jeffs, the prophet of the
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Jeffs was 49 at the
time.
The ceremonies took place in the FLDS-controlled
twin towns of
A year earlier, the documents say that a
13-year-old Bountiful girl was also taken by her father and mother to Colorado
City where she was “celestially married” to Jeffs at a ceremony in James
Allred’s home.
No one is certain how many wives Jeffs has,
although it’s commonly estimated to be more than 80.
The polygamous prophet is currently in a
It’s as a result of the Texas investigation that
last week lawyers for the B.C. government found out about the two, 12-year-old
girls and their parents. And it was only after receiving that information that
B.C. lawyers learned that other provincial officials had known some details
about the 13-year-old.
On Friday, B.C. government lawyers filed an
application in B.C. Supreme Court asking that this new evidence be heard as
part of the constitutional reference case even though Chief Justice Robert
Bauman’s case management order from a year ago stipulated that no evidence
could be submitted after a certain point, which has now past.
Next Friday, the chief justice will hear arguments
before deciding whether to admit the evidence and whether to seal the documents
attached to the application that include: the parents’ names, the girls’ names
and birth records and FLDS marriage records seized in a 2008 raid on the Texas
compound that was prompted by a complaint about child sexual abuse.
At the time, former Bountiful resident Teressa
Wall Blackmore told The Vancouver Sun that she knew of five
At the time, Canadian consular officials as well
as then-attorney general Wally Oppal also said that they were aware that some
Canadian teens were taken into protective custody in
Why nothing was done in 2008 either by the
ministry of children and family development or by the attorney general’s
criminal justice branch is an open question.
Now, that information about the three child brides
is being used by the government lawyers as evidence of the harm of polygamy –
harm is a primary reason that a right such as religious freedom can be
overridden.
But what these parents allegedly did is not only
shocking and amoral, it is criminal.
Having sex with children is described in the
Criminal Code as sexual exploitation and punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
Human trafficking is defined as recruiting,
transporting, transferring, harbouring or receiving persons who have been threatened,
coerced, abducted, deceived or who were in a position of vulnerability because
of the traffickers position of power.
However, because
But if the child brides were delivered to Jeffs
after November 2005, the parents could face up to life in prison and a $1
million fine.
And that’s not the end of it.
Two more unusual sections of the Criminal Code –
Sections 170 and 171 – might be applicable.
The first makes it an offence for a parent or
guardian of anyone under 18 who procures the child for the purpose of engaging
in any sexual activity with another person. If the child is under 16, the
punishment ranges from six months to five years in jail.
The other is section 171, which makes it a
criminal offence for a householder to knowingly permit a person under 18 to
“resort to or be in or on the premises for the purpose of engaging in any
sexual activity.” The maximum penalty is five years in jail.
Of course, laying criminal charges takes both
political and bureaucratic will – something that until recently has been
tragically lacking in