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That question is being asked once again in the wake of the huge bust at the West Texas compound of the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). Last weekend, child welfare investigators and law enforcement personnel liberated teenage mothers and underage girls who said they had been forced to marry. Over 400 children have been taken into state custody. The raid, prompted by a report that a 16-year-old girl had been sexually assaulted at the compound, uncovered rampant and systematic emotional and physical abuse of children and their mothers.
A FLDS colony exists at Bountiful, BC, where polygamy has been an open secret for decades, yet provincial governments have refused to prosecute. The events in Texas have renewed pressure on Attorney-General Wally Oppal to get off his duff.
The Attorney-General of British Columbia should stop wasting time and start prosecuting individuals in the fundamentalist Mormon community of Bountiful, a former member of the polygamous sect said Tuesday.Debbie Palmer, who was married off at the age of 15 to a 55-year-old man, said she does not understand why the province keeps studying the constitutionality of the federal law that forbids polygamy rather than testing it by enforcement.
Rather than enforce the law against polygamy, Mr Oppal has elected to refer the Bountiful file to, not one, but two successive outside lawyers for advice. Both opposed prosecution; rather, they advised court references to assess the law's constitutionality. Oppal says he favours a more aggressive approach, but has not actually done anything. Certainly, he is dithering; he may even be stalling.
Don Stuart, a professor of law at Queen's University, said he was puzzled by what was going on in British Columbia."I'm not quite sure why it's necessary to refer a normal law enforcement discretion to a committee," Prof. Stuart said.
"Prosecutors are not supposed to proceed if there's no reasonable prospect of success. If there's an evidentiary problem of getting the proper complainant you can understand why they're not proceeding," said Prof. Stuart. "But assuming there's a possibility of getting the evidence I would have thought that referring the matter to a court for a constitutional reference seems rather odd. Especially if the likelihood here is that people are being hurt."
Ms Palmer says that she was forced to marry an older man who already had five wives. After he died, she was “reassigned” to another polygamous man who abused her. She finally managed to escape with her eight children.
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In short, because we’re become a nation of collective symbolisms without substance…
I think somebody should make a call claiming to be an abused 16 year old…
Out of curiosity, do prosecutors go after African immigrants who practice polygamy? Who abuse their wives in the same manner?
I’m not justifying either. Personally I think that anyone abusing anyone ought be prosecuted. I’d just hope it be done fairly and equitably and not just because American media is sensationalizing events in Texas for ratings.
I don’t know what the situation in BC is like. I do know that you can go into many African immigrant communities around the US and find everything the media has sensationalized about the FLDS and worse. (See, for example, this NYT story) Is that happening in BC too?
Clark, Debbie Palmer and others who have fled, or been evicted from, Bountiful say it is.
I agree the law should be applied equitably, but Bountiful has been known as a polygamous colony for over 20 years. It’s extremely frustrating that nothing has been done for so long and at such cost to innocent women and children.
B.C. is one of the provinces where the judiciary imposed gay marriage before Parliament did. As a result, the law of B.C. says that the government has no power to deny the validity of anything held out as a “marriage”. Anyone regardless of his circumstances can declare himself “married” on any terms he sees fit, and the government has no choice but to accept that and to treat his “marriage” exactly as if it were real.
So, the law against polygamy is void and cannot be enforced. If a man and five women declare themselves married, they are lawfully married and that’s the end of it.
Of course, if there’s anything like the kind of abuse people are alleging, the obvious course would be to prosecute the abuse, not the marriage. That this is not being done tells me that these allegations are found on investigation to be false and malicious.
Canada’s age of sexual consent raised to 16…
Good news: The recently passed omnibus crime bill came into effect today. One of its provisions makes it illegal for adults to have sex with a minor under the age of 16. The previous age of consent was 14.
The Tackling Violent Crime Act rai…