Read this news( an extract) regarding 2 men being arrested due to they have more than one wife at the same time…..and I think how Freedom and Regulation can get a balance?
On Wednesday around 7:45 a.m., eight plainclothes RCMP officers in unmarked cars drove up to the homes of polygamous leaders Winston Blackmore and James Oler in southeastern British Columbia.
They arrested Blackmore, 52, and Oler, 44, and charged them with the criminal offence of practising polygamy. It may not be the first time that anyone in Canada has been charged with polygamy. But it is definitely the first time anyone has been charged since the 1800s.
Both men — the most important spiritual leaders in the fundamentalist Mormon community — were cooperative.
Four officers took the men in separate cars to Cranbrook, more than 100 kilometres away from their homes outside Creston in southeastern B.C.
They went to the Cranbrook RCMP detachment where — by phone — a judicial justice of the peace listened to the facts presented by the officers.
The RCMP asked that the men be released with conditions. Those conditions, agreed to by the JJP, are that they report twice monthly to Creston RCMP, surrender their passports, stay in British Columbia and not enter into or perform any plural marriages — celestial marriages as these fundamentalist Mormon leaders call them.
They will make their first court appearances on Jan. 21 in Creston.
Blackmore, who has had 26 wives and has more than 108 children, is the spiritual leader to about half the community. He is also the head of the Mormon Hills School Society, a government-funded independent school.
Twenty women are named in the indictment as having been in a polygamous or conjugal union with Blackmore between May 1, 2005 and Dec. 8, 2006.
Only two women are listed in the Oler indictment, which covers the period between Nov. 1, 2004 and Oct. 8, 2008.
Oppal said none of the women are minors now, but some may have been when they entered into the religious marriages.
Oler is the bishop of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). He was appointed by prophet Warren Jeffs, who was convicted in 2007 as an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old in Utah. Jeffs is in jail in Arizona, where he faces similar charges and he faces other charges in Texas.
The FLDS is a breakaway sect that has no connection to the mainstream Mormon church, which is formally called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The LDS renounced the earthly practise of polygamy in 1890.
As Blackmore and Oler were taken to Cranbrook, four officers stayed behind to talk to the approximately 1,000 residents of the community that’s known as Bountiful to assure residents that no children would be apprehended.
The reason for that extra caution is that it’s less than a year since Texas sent armed police into an FLDS compound there and rounded up all of the women and children. The action was taken after the child protection service received a complaint from someone who alleged she was an under-aged bride of a much older man, and that she was pregnant with her second child.
(Texas authorities were never able to locate the girl and all but a few of the women and children were sent back home a few months later.)……………..
……………….Alison Brewin, executive director of West Coast LEAF, said in a news release: “The lack of action to protect the fundamental freedoms and rights of the women of Bountiful has been contrary to the women’s Charter rights.
“These charges will allow the courts, the government, the women of Bountiful and all Canadians to determine the boundaries of religious freedom when women’s equality is at stake.”
some CNY goodies inflight
Recent Comments