New Special Prosecutor Named in Bountiful Polygamy Probe

By Staff Reporter
The Province
January 18, 2012

http://www.theprovince.com/news/special+prosecutor+named+Bountiful+polygamy+probe/6014675/story.html?cid=megadrop_story

Children play on a trampoline in the backyard of a home in Bountiful near Creston April 19, 2005.

The B.C. attorney general's office has named Peter Wilson as special prosecutor to pick up its explosive investigation into the polygamist community of Bountiful.

The Vancouver lawyer was appointed this week to replace Richard Peck, who stepped down from the probe early this month.

B.C.'s legal branch is trying to determine whether charges of sexual exploitation or other offences are warranted against members of the commune.

The breakaway Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints sect, in B.C. since the early 1980s, has been accused of forcing underage women into arranged marriages and motherhood with much older men. There have also been accusations of trafficking young women between Bountiful and a like-minded community in the U.S. led by Warren Jeffs. Jeffs is serving a sentence of life plus 20 years in a Houston jail for sexual assaults on two girls whom he "married" when they were 12 and 14.

B.C. Mounties recommended charges in 2006, after an investigation into the allegations.

In a landmark November ruling, the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that polygamy remains a crime in Canada. While the law was deemed to violate the religious freedom of fundamentalist Mormons, the ruling argued the harm against women and children outweighs that concern.

The current investigation will look at possible charges such as sexual assault and sexual exploitation, but will not consider polygamy-related offences, said a release from Neil MacKenzie of the Criminal Justice Branch Wednesday.

Wilson was named by assistant deputy attorney general Robert Gillen, at the request of B.C. Attorney General Shirley Bond.