BC polygamists convicted in child bride case
Posted Feb 3, 2017 1:35 pm.
Last Updated Feb 3, 2017 1:45 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A former couple from a polygamous community in B.C. have been found guilty of taking a 13-year-old girl into the United States to marry the now imprisoned leader of the sect that practises plural marriage.
Justice Paul Pearlman of B.C. Supreme Court found former husband and wife Brandon Blackmore and Gail Blackmore guilty of taking a girl across the border for a sexual purpose in 2004.
He found James Oler not guilty of the same charge, saying he couldn’t prove that the man crossed the border with a 15-year-old girl who was later married to a member of the polygamous church.
The Blackmores will be sentenced April 13th.
Court heard the accused are connected to the community of Bountiful, in southeastern British Columbia.
The charges against the Blackmores centred on records that show the girl was married to Warren Jeffs, the 60-year-old prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Oler was accused of bringing the 15-year-old girl across the border to marry James Leroy Johnson, who was 24 at the time of the marriage.
