Barry Beyerstein, a cult expert at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, told me that the power struggle in Bountiful wasn’t unusual. “Cults tend to implode due to internal contradictions, jealousies, slights,” he explained. “But when they tie that to the end of the world being near, danger is also near.” His international research shows that when cults reach that stage, most split and start new and smaller colonies. Others turn into Waco and Jonestown and self-destruct with a vengeance.
Preventing the consequences of hyper-religious behaviour means using the law. In the case of the religious sect at Bountiful, the law is clear: it is illegal to practice polygamy in Canada. Cross-border trafficking in girls is also illegal—but it’s happening in order to broaden the gene pool in Bountiful and its sister colony in Colorado City. A man setting up each of his polygamous wives as single mothers so they can get a child tax benefit for all their children is also illegal, but it’s a money-making scheme for Bountiful.
Audrey Vance, who has lived in Creston for forty-two years, was also moved after seeing Winston Blackmore’s first wife, Jane, on the fifth estate documentary. “She had the courage to go on national TV and tell her story about being the [community’s] midwife, about listening to a fifteen-year-old girl crying while she delivered her baby because she didn’t want to be married or to be pregnant.” The fifteen-year-old was the daughter of one of Blackmore’s other wives. As Jane recounted on the documentary, when she raised her concerns with her husband, Blackmore said, “Well, Mother, I want you to mind your own business because you are not the bishop.”
After Jane Blackmore’s stunning account of underage sex, coercion and sexual abuse, all the people I talked to, including Jane, told me they presumed the attorney general would subpoena the birth records she’d kept as a midwife. But her phone never rang, and a search warrant was never served.
Since the justice system continued to ignore the polygamy issue, the women in Creston decided to hook their protest to the Education Act instead. They sent letters to the editors of major B.C. newspapers claiming that the Bountiful Elementary Secondary School (BESS) was receiving an annual government grant of $460,826. Vance, a former school trustee in Creston, wanted to know why a polygamist school funded with taxpayers’ money was left alone to teach a cult lifestyle to school-age children.
Vance’s information came from women inside Bountiful, who could not be named for fear of repercussions. They had told her that the department of education routinely gave the school several weeks’ notice before an inspection—time enough for the school staff to remove all the white-supremacist slogans that had been posted on the classroom walls. Inspectors apparently were fooled, but Vance thinks they should have been wise to the fact that the teachers were never able to explain why the school had hardly any graduates. The reason, of course, was that the girls left school to be married, and many of the boys were sent away. Only a few students were allowed to finish high school. But that information was never shared with inspectors, and it seems they never did ask for it.
The new complaint from the women of Creston didn’t spark any action, either. In the meantime, then attorney general Geoff Plant explained to me somewhat impatiently, “Under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, they are protected by Freedom of Religion. I cannot prosecute because it could result in a Charter challenge.”
One of the authors of the gender-equality guarantee in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the lawyer Marilou McPhedran, saw this as “flimsy reasoning from a high-ranking representative of the people in a free and democratic society.” She was surprised that Plant would justify his inaction because of speculation that the Criminal Code prohibition of polygamy might be trumped by the Charter’s guarantee of freedom of religion. “There are no absolute rights or freedoms in Canada,” she explained. She pointed to the Supreme Court case of the Jehovah’s Witness family who refused a blood transfusion for their sick child—their right to freedom of religion was overruled in favour of the safety and health of the child.
“In the Bountiful case,” said McPhedran, “the excuse that women and girls have consented to their treatment would likely collapse when measured with the Criminal Code prohibition of polygamy and equality rights of women and girls in Sections 15 and 28 of the Charter.”
So why were government officials dithering?
Doug Barron, a corporal in the Creston RCMP, told me they would investigate a complaint but hadn’t received one. When I reminded him that the daily news was full of RCMP investigations into other criminal activities where no one had made a complaint, such as terrorist cells and biker gangs, he had no comment.
As for Plant, he replied curtly, “My only source of knowledge about Bountiful is the media. Most of what I say is misrepresented by the media, so why should I believe what they say about others?” He took the same line as the RCMP. “If people think there’s been an offence, they need to go to the police. It concerns me when people think I have some responsibility for this.”
The women of British Columbia disagreed. They saw the inaction as morally bankrupt and a failure to protect Canadian citizens, and launched three protests in April and May 2004. One was the letter from the Creston women regarding the Education Act, another came from the Western Women’s Committee of the Canadian Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU), who sent a letter to Geoff Plant, copying it to every other level of government and minister that seemed to be responsible, including Prime Minister Paul Martin, asking that the laws governing polygamy, statutory rape, incest and provincial and federal tax fraud be enforced in Bountiful. And a third came from a group of women, including Debbie Palmer, who filed a complaint to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.
Debbie Palmer was living in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, with her three school-age children and one grandchild, when I interviewed her for the magazine story. She could paper the walls of her four-bedroom duplex with the petitions and letters she’d sent to authorities in Canada. She had already written a book and kept up-to-date data on the goings-on within the cult. She also provided help for those who left. “There’s nothing for these women,” she said. “They have little education, absolutely no financial support and no status on the outside as a married woman.”
The emotional turmoil the apostates suffer is immense. “We don’t know how to deal with flashbacks and post-traumatic stress,” Palmer said. “We’ve been raised to always be sweet, to love the person you’re assigned to and to believe that you are safe in a community, apart from the world and its sins.” Of the ugly goings-on inside the colony—things like rape, molestation and abuse—she said, “We didn’t have names for that.”
Winston Blackmore, who is Palmer’s stepgrandson, brother-in-law and nephew, told me that he too is upset with any form of abuse: “As a long-time bishop, husband and father, I have been especially saddened when I see it among plural families.” But he also wrote that monogamists don’t have bragging rights on good behaviour. “When you monogamists can show us a system that is without abuse, divorce, infidelity, neglect, jealousy or any of the other things that you love to gasp at us over, then and only then should there be a story written about us.”
As I drove out of Bountiful, a thunderstorm was brewing over the mountains. One woman, whose identity had to be protected, matched the mood of the mounting storm. “What’s happening in there is pure evil,” she said.
Later in 2004, Plant said he had encouraged police to reopen the Bountiful file. He claimed that he had also begun looking into the school’s funding and the overall welfare of the young girls in the community. “It has reached a point where there is enough concern in the public that we’d better be doing something about it, as opposed to standing by and doing nothing.”
Eventually, after a maddening collection of miss-starts and after much stomping and denying and accusing, a charge of practising polygamy was finally laid in January 2009 against the two most prominent men of the Bountiful community, Winston Blackmore and James Oler. But the prosecution fa
iled to convict them, and the charges were stayed. Crown prosecutors were reluctant to try again because of that same old fear that charges would be declared unconstitutional on the basis of religious freedom.
By then there was another new attorney general of British Columbia, Wally Opal, who decided that the situation could not be sustained. On October 22, 2009, the B.C. government asked the provincial court for clarification—a process known as a reference—of whether Canada’s 121-year-old law against polygamy is consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
As the case began, Rebecca Cook explained: “The polygamy reference case being heard in Vancouver is extremely important, not only for issues here but in different parts of the world. The documents that come out of this case will be important to other groups in other parts of the world by raising awareness about how these cases can be brought to court.” The gathering of expert testimony from around the world was fascinating, too, in illustrating the different ways that women’s groups were addressing polygamy. Cook said, “One way to try to eliminate it is to criminally prohibit it. Another way is to limit it: for example, in Indonesia a man needs the permission of his first wife to take a second wife.” She examined what the law in each jurisdiction actually says and found that though in one place all the wives must agree if a man is to take another wife, in others they don’t. Similarly, some jurisdictions say women must inherit equally regardless of the type of marriage they are in. Others claim that women in polygamous marriages cannot inherit at all.
Cook wondered whether there is any instance where women could freely choose a discriminatory structure of marriage. The question she posed is this: Should the state sanction an unequal form of marriage that is unfair to women? “The reference case in B.C. is important in terms of how the court sees women’s equality versus men’s equality: the inherent role of unequal structure, how it stereotypes women particularly in the case of Bountiful into child-bearing-service roles, having sex at certain times, maximizing the chances of child-bearing and being trained to be sweet. The wrong is the unfair structure: it allows a man to marry multiple spouses but not women. It denies women sexual exclusivity and it stereotypes them in child-bearing roles.”
When the reference case began, all sides lined up to have their day in court. The judge, Chief Justice Robert Bauman, listened to months of testimony, called on dozens of witnesses and ultimately made his lengthy and careful judgment. He ruled that though the ban on the practice of polygamy infringed on some sections of the Charter, polygamy remained illegal in Canada. He wrote that “the harms associated with the practice are endemic; they are inherent,” and that the harms found in polygamous societies “are not simply the product of individual misconduct; they arise inevitably out of the practice.” He further stated, “There is no such thing as so-called good polygamy.”
His judgment was in keeping with attitude changes the world over: the oppression of women not only hurts individuals but also hinders economies and holds back progress. A judgment impossible to imagine even a decade earlier now seemed inevitable.
His comprehensive legal opinion is the first in the world to fully expose the effects of polygamy. In his conclusion he listed harms done, an itemization worth quoting at length.
(a) It creates a pool of unmarried men with the attendant increase in crime and anti-social behaviour;
(b) The increased competition for women creates pressure to recruit increasingly younger brides into the marriage market;
(c) This competition causes men (as fathers, husbands and brothers) to seek to exercise more control over the choices of women, increasing gender inequality and undermining female autonomy and rights. This is exacerbated by larger age disparities between husbands and wives in both polygynous and monogamous relationships;
(d) Men reduce investment in wives and offspring as they spread their resources more thinly across larger families and increasingly channel those resources into obtaining more wives.
(e) While polygyny increases the value of women in the marriage market, women do not realize the added value since men manipulate social institutions in ways that facilitate their control of women. These institutions include early and arranged marriages, the payment of bride-price, easy divorce and the devaluing of romantic love. Among the costs are depressed mental health for women and poorer outcomes for their children.
(f) Women in polygynous relationships are at an elevated risk of physical and psychological harm. They face higher rates of domestic violence and abuse, including sexual abuse. Competition for material and emotional access to a shared husband can lead to fractious co-wife relationships. These factors contribute to the higher rates of depressive disorders and other mental health issues that women in polygynous relationships face. They have more children, are more likely to die in childbirth and live shorter lives than their monogamous counterparts. They lack reproductive autonomy, and report high rates of marital dissatisfaction and low levels of self-esteem. They also fare worse economically, as resources may be inequitably divided or simply insufficient.
(g) Children in polygynous families face higher infant mortality, even when accounting for economic status and other relevant variables. They tend to suffer more emotional, behavioural and physical problems, as well as lower educational achievement. These outcomes are likely the result of higher levels of conflict, emotional stress and tension in polygynous families. In particular, rivalry and jealousy among co-wives can cause significant emotional problems for their children. The inability of fathers to give sufficient affection and disciplinary attention to all of their children can further reduce children’s emotional security. Children are also at enhanced risk of psychological and physical abuse and neglect.
(h) Early marriage for girls is common, frequently to significantly older men. The resultant early sexual activity, pregnancies and childbirth have negative health implications for girls and also significantly limit their socio-economic development. Shortened inter-birth intervals pose a heightened risk of problems for both mother and child.
(i) The sex ratio imbalance inherent in polygyny means that young men are forced out of polygamous communities to sustain the ability of senior men to accumulate more wives. These young men and boys often receive limited education as a result, and must navigate their way outside their communities with few life skills and little social support.
The judgment, handed down on November 23, 2011, was hailed by women’s groups across Canada and around the world. The archaic demands of fundamentalists had been challenged and stopped. It’s a sign of the times. As the woman in Bountiful said when I slipped past the gate so many years ago, “When the silence is broken, the secrets will lose their power.”
Still, as this book went to press, the provincial government of British Columbia had taken no action against the polygamists of Bountiful.
THREE
Cultural Contradictions
If your culture oppresses women, change it.
— FARIDA SHAHEED, United Nations
Independent Expert on Cultural Rights
Justifying violence in the name of culture is an old story. I’ve been its unhappy witness while reporting on the status of women in a dozen different places. I remember a UN official in Kandahar speaking to me with the patronizing air of a functionary in January 2001 about the Taliban rules that didn’t allow women to work outside their homes and forbade girls to go to school. He asked me, “When are you going to get it through your head that what’s happening to the women of Afghanistan is cultural.” I remember a diplomat in New York telling me, with exaggerated patience, “What you need to try to understand is that practices such as female genital mutilation and child marriage are cultural, and it’s not our business to interfere.”
In fact, in most of the countries where I work as a journalist, the thugs in power are quick to tell me, “You’re not from here. You’re not part of our culture, so you have no right to write about our women.” Speaking up about someone else’s culture is
indeed a delicate task. Exposing the truth about cultural contradictions has been a hazardous voyage for the courageous women who dare to risk the wrath of those who see themselves as the keepers of the cultural key in order to tell the truth about the price women pay for the so-called belonging that being part of a culture implies. Culture flies like a banner of pride. But it also covers a host of misogynist acts that have oppressed women for centuries.
Farida Shaheed was appointed as the United Nations Independent Expert on Cultural Rights in 2009. It was surely a sign of the times as the UN had assiduously avoided tangling with “cultural” issues such as child marriage in the past, lest they inflame one country or another with comments seen as interfering. Shaheed’s appointment was tantamount to an announcement that “culture” is no longer acceptable as an excuse for the ill treatment of women and girls. She has worked for women’s rights in Pakistan for three decades, first starting an NGO called Shirkat Gah in Lahore so that women could be educated about the laws that govern them and then as one of the founders of an organization called Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML).
“Violence against women is always justified in the name of culture,” she says. “Whether the culture is translated into laws [such as the personal status laws in Egypt] or is part of the system [the presumed and approved behaviour of a tribe], this is always the excuse. And it is not acceptable.” She’s taken a daring new stand that is bound to contribute to the revolution going on in the lives of women today. In her new position, she asks women to shift the paradigm from culture as an obstacle to rights, to demanding the cultural rights that are prescribed in the UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. She refers to the precise wording of the covenant that says, “All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” Her goal is to flip the thinking from “I can’t (go to school, work, decide when to marry) because of my culture” to “I can decide for myself because of my cultural rights.”
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