Utah authorities looking into more allegations of child-bride marriages
More allegations of underage marriages are surfacing involving the Utah-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It comes as a fight is brewing over leadership of the 10,000-member polygamous church and a dramatic turnabout of control of the church’s real-estate holdings arm.
A pair of affidavits filed late last month with the British Columbia Supreme Court in Canada and obtained by Fox 13 allege dozens more child-bride marriages. The province’s high court is hearing closing arguments this week in a case that could decriminalize polygamy in that country.
The affidavits, written by Texas Ranger Nick Hanna, cite marriage records seized in the 2008 raid on the FLDS Church’s YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, Texas. They detail marriages going back to 1990 involving allegedly underage girls. Some of the marriages took place in Utah.