Two leaders of an infamous polygamist community in Bountiful, B.C. have been arrested.
Sect member James Oler and leader Winston Blackmore are each charged with practicing polygamy. The charges were sworn yesterday.
Attorney General Wally Oppal says Blackmore is accused of committing polygamy with 20 women while Oler is accused of committing the crime with two women.
"This has been a very complex issue," he said. "It's been with us for well over 20 years. The problem has always been the defence of religion has always been raised."
Oppal said some legal experts have believed that the charge wouldn't withstand a Charter of Rights challenge over the issue of freedom of religion.
"I've always disagreed with that," he said.
Oppal said he stated in 2005, when he was appointed attorney general, that he was concerned about the polygamy issue in Bountiful "because of the exploitation of women and children."
Oppal asked the RCMP to reopen the investigation shortly after he was elected.
Bountiful is located in Creston Valley, near Cranbrook and Creston. The polygamist community lives in a commune-style compound outside of Lister.
More than 800 people reside in Bountiful -- allegedly descended from half a dozen men.
The sect is a breakaway offshoot of the Mormon Church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
A lengthy investigation
B.C. Attorney General Wally Oppal appointed a special prosecutor last June to investigate allegations of misconduct in the community back, saying renewed public concerns compelled him to act.
That came despite two earlier legal opinions that said it would be difficult to proceed with polygamy charges, which would be challenged in court.
"I've always taken the position that's a valid offence in law," Oppal said Wednesday. "And if someone says that it's contrary to their religion let a judge make that decision."
But in August 2007, prosecutor Richard Peck found there was not enough evidence to charge the group with sexual abuse and it was "extraordinarily difficult" to find victims willing to testify.
Blackmore, who is the sect leader, openly admits to having numerous wives and dozens of children but has said the community abhors sexual abuse of children.
However, Blackmore has refused in previous interviews to discuss allegations that teenaged girls in the community marry older men or that others are sent to polygamous groups in the United States.
Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, the sect's prophet in the U.S., is currently in prison there.
He was convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape and faces trial in Arizona on other charges related to the marriages of members of sect there.
A renewed concern
The issue of polygamy in British Columbia came up again last year after more than 450 children were apprehended by child-welfare authorities from a polygamous community in Texas.
At least one of the girls in that case was from Bountiful, refocusing the spotlight on a community that has existed in relative obscurity in B.C.'s Kootenays, not far from the U.S. border.
After the special prosecutor was announced, Blackmore accused Oppal of religious persecution.
"It can't possibly be about polygamy," Blackmore wrote in an email to The Canadian Press last June.
"It must be about his own religious bias and now he wants the Liberal government to persecute some of the citizens that they have an obligation to serve and protect."
Blackmore has said he has tried to meet with Oppal in the past, but that the attorney general has refused.
With files from The Canadian Press
