Leaders of FLDS Sect Charged With Polygamy, Transporting ‘Child Brides’ Between U.S. and Canada
Two leaders of the racist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), who have followers in Boundary County, Idaho, and in nearby Bountiful, British Columbia, have been charged again with practicing polygamy.
Winston Kaye Blackmore, 57, and James Marion Oler, 49, were first charged in 2009, but those charges were dropped after a judge ruled a special prosecutor in the case had been hired improperly. But a judge ruled that Canada’s anti-polygamy law is valid and does not violate the group’s religious freedom, allowing the charges to be filed again last week.
The sect’s leader, Warren Jeffs, who has issued written orders to church members while serving a prison term in the United States for sexual offenses against young girls, has preached that black people are the descendants of Cain, “cursed with black skin” and selected by God to be the “servants” of white people.
Earlier this year, a jury in Phoenix returned a record $5.2 million award against the sect after concluding the twin cities of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah - a combined community known as “Short Creek” — engaged in a pattern of religious discrimination and intimidation.
Now, in the newly filed indictment in Canada, Blackmore and Oler, who head different FLDS factions, are each charged with one count of polygamy. Two other members of the sect, Blackmore’s brother, Brandon Blackmore and his wife, Emily Ruth Gail Crossfield, are charged with child sex trafficking for offenses that allegedly occurred in February 2004.
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