By Daphne Bramham
Montreal Gazette
August 6, 2011
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/WARREN+JEFFS+GUILTY/5214106/story.html
 |
| The aggressive way Texas officials prosecuted polygamist leader Warren Jeffs for preying on young girls stands in stark contrast to B.C.'s dithering over the plight of Canadian children caught in polygamist communes, says columnist Daphne Bramham. |
Laid bare in a Texas courtroom this week was the ugly, disturbing truth about the institutionalized pedophilia practised by polygamous leader Warren Jeffs and supported, tacitly if not overtly, by his 10,000 followers in the United States and Bountiful, B.C.
Unlike British Columbia, which has long failed to protect children as it dithered over whether religious freedom justifies polygamy, Texas aggressively pursued complaints about child rape and forced marriage within the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Jeffs — the FLDS prophet — was convicted Thursday of child sexual assault and aggravated child sexual assault of a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old. He was the eighth FLDS member to be convicted in Texas since a 2008 raid on the church's compound.
Key to the conviction of the 55-year-old, fundamentalist Mormon leader was DNA evidence of his fathering a child with a 15-year-old and bizarre audio tapes. One tape was made as he ritualistically raped the 12-year-old with others watching.
Another was his instructions to a "Quorum of 12" brides to shave their pubic hair and always be sexually ready "when I need your comfort."
Among that Quorum of 12 was at least one Canadian — a girl whom Texas authorities first alerted B.C. child protection staff to in 2008 when she was found during the raid.
On Friday, the Texas jury was told that of Jeffs's 78 wives, 24 were under the age of 17 when they married. At least five of those underaged brides are from Bountiful.
Their names, birth dates, marriage dates and parents' names were included in a list of 31 under-aged brides filed four months ago in B.C. Supreme Court as part of the constitutional reference case to determine whether Canada's polygamy law is valid.
The Bountiful girls were handed over to Jeffs by their fathers, brothers and sometimes their mothers — all leading members of the community who went to great lengths to ensure that they were not detected by either law enforcement officers or border patrols, according to Jeffs's diaries (which formed part of the case in Texas and are also widely available on the Internet).
What's mystifying is why British Columbia has taken no action on any of that information. More than three years after government officials were first notified about at least one under-aged Bountiful girl in Texas, there has still been no move to repatriate or protect any of the under-aged girls who were illegally either taken to the United States or brought from there to Bountiful.
Even excluding the girls who already have been raped, there are more than 400 children in Bountiful's two government-funded schools. Half of them are certain to be children who need protection.
More than four months after the list of 31 girls was filed in B.C. Supreme Court, no charges have been laid against the fathers, mothers and brothers who transported child brides into the arms of middle-aged men or against the middle-aged men who brought child brides home from the United States. The question must be asked: Why not?
The B.C. government has a moral and legal responsibility to protect children and prosecute their abusers. Protecting children and charging child abusers has nothing to do with the constitutional reference case or Chief Justice Robert Bauman's ongoing deliberations.
It seems officials are still stymied by a notion that somehow that might infringe on these pedophiles' religious rights.
They ought to have been paying close attention to what Texas has done rather than wasting time like officials in Arizona and Utah. (There, at least politicians have the excuse of not wanting to offend their large number of mainstream Mormon voters by resurrecting the issue of polygamy, which they renounced more than 120 years ago.)
In Texas, only Jeffs has tried to make religious freedom an issue. Defending himself after firing his seven lawyers, Jeffs tried repeatedly to stop the trial by claiming it was religious persecution and violated his rights.
When Jeffs refused to stay in court for his sentencing hearing, his court-appointed lawyer didn't argue for religious freedom; rather he argued that Jeffs is only a product of his environment. But it's that soulless, soul-destroying FLDS environment that governments have allowed to flourish in Bountiful and in states like Arizona and Utah by failing to enforce child abuse laws.
There is, of course, good reason to determine whether Canada's religious freedom guarantee extends to polygamy.
But the more urgent matter is, and should always have been, protecting children from sexual predators — even if they are so-called men of God.
Contact: dbramham@vancouversun.com
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.