Canadian polygamist sect under pressure

Polygamy illegal in Canada
Bountiful residents have reason to worry: Just like in Texas, polygamy is illegal in Canada.

But instead of responding to a direct complaint of sexual abuse, Oppal would be reacting to two decades of unanswered pressure that the Canadian government do something about these families who practice plural marriages with impunity.

The pressure has been growing since the Texas raid. A national poll last month found nearly two-thirds of Canadians want Bountiful residents who break the law by practicing polygamy to be prosecuted.

But two Canadian laws stand in contradiction: Polygamy is banned, and religious freedoms are firmly protected.

In repeated investigations, the more troubling questions of sexual abuse, human trafficking and forced marriages also have been investigated. As part of a three-year review launched in 2004, detectives spent three months in the community. No charges were brought, but the legal age of sexual consent in Canada increased to 16 from 14 on May 1.

"To me it is so offensive that nothing's been done," said Daphne Branham, who has published a book about Canada's polygamous renegade Mormon sect. "Everything about the community is so unbelievable, from the fact that we fund the schools, we provide their health care. Our doctors and nurses — they see the fathers in the hospital, they sign the birth certificates — everyone knows what's going on out there."

Joe Sales / AP Employees at J.R. Blackmore and Sons in Kitchener, British Columbia, work preparing fence posts.The company is owned by Winston Blackmore, a self-professed polygamist.

Bountiful's leaders say they are being unfairly singled out. Some say fewer than one in four Bountiful families are polygamous. No man takes more than one wife, legally; the rest are spiritual unions — no different, they say, than a married man having a fling.

"Canadian officials don't need to look very far from the windows of the capital to see people who are carrying on relationships with more than one woman at the same time, which is polygamy. For them to target us would be nothing more than religious persecution," said Winston Blackmore, the former bishop, who has said he has more than two dozen wives and more than 100 children.

The FLDS, with an estimated 10,000 members, is headquartered in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah. In 1947, a small group moved across the Canadian border into Lister. The newcomers dubbed the pristine spot at the base of a snowy mountain range Bountiful.

In addition to an estimated 1,000 Canadians who live here, the U.S. Embassy estimates there are about 300 Americans loyal to Blackmore, and another 200 who follow Jeffs.

This polygamist sect is open
Unlike the raided compound in Eldorado, Texas, with its walls and locked gate, Bountiful is unmarked and open. The region is dotted with lush orchards swarming this spring with pollenating bees. Pheasant, ducks and deer — at odd times, even a herd of caribou or grazing elk — meander by.

A rolling road through forests and farms leads to a single traffic sign, a curled white arrow that in Canada means a dead-end street. But this road continues into Bountiful — a collection of large, mostly unfinished homes that look down on creeks littered with broken buckets, bent bicycle rims and plastic bags. The creeks wind through a neighborhood of smaller poorly kept homes with broken windows, broken siding and broken stairs.

Children bounce on trampolines, toddlers dash down footpaths. Three women in matching, limb-covering pink dresses push double strollers along the hardpacked dirt roads, their hems and boots splashed with mud.

Emmett Blackmore, 11, waves from a unicycle. "I'm just learning!" he laughs. Pedaling away, he startles a wild turkey.

Minutes later, two vans driven by women block the only road out of town. A man, who does not give his name, approaches and peers into AP's rental car.

"Do you have a boy in there?" he asks. "I'm told you were talking to a child back there."

He looks into the car, empty but for two occupants and some photography equipment.

Later, John Kettle, the local administrative district director, said the "naive" community is "under siege."

"It's like the 1950s here. It's a time warp of niceness. People are genuine. It's the best kept secret in North America," he said.

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