Bountiful women oppressed by law not polygamy, court told

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The women living in the polygamous community of Bountiful, B.C., don't feel oppressed because of their marriages but because one of the central practices of their religion is considered a crime, a law professor testified Wednesday.

Angela Campbell of Montreal's McGill University was the first witness to appear at the landmark constitutional case, and her testimony was especially controversial. A day earlier, the provincial and federal governments - which are both arguing polygamy should remain illegal - unsuccessfully attempted to block her appearance.

Professor Campbell, who teaches family law, visited Bountiful in 2008 and 2009 and interviewed a number of women, including wives living in plural marriages. She interviewed 20 women in Bountiful, along with two who had left the community.

Before she visited, Prof. Campbell had read about the alleged harms of polygamy, which are central to the government's argument: that multiple marriage fosters sexual and physical abuse, creates child brides, requires boys to be expelled, and leaves women unable to have any say in who they marry.

But Prof. Campbell said what she found instead were women who rejected the notion that polygamy inevitably leads to abuse or that they are unequal.

"In speaking with the community members about the risks of inequality and abuse ... the responses would be to the effect of, 'We're not treated badly, we've chosen to live this way, it's consistent with what we value,"' said Prof. Campbell.

Prof. Campbell said the women she interviewed told her adolescent marriages have been discouraged in recent years and women have more say in who they marry. Some were even using contraception, although she acknowledged that was often without their husbands' knowledge.

Prof. Campbell said women in plural marriages valued their relationships with their husbands' other wives, referred to as "sister wives," who share in domestic responsibilities such as childcare.

Prof. Campbell said it appeared the prohibition against polygamy was doing the most damage, stigmatizing the women and making it more difficult for them to seek outside help such as domestic or spousal counselling.

"For some services that would bring attention to the polygamous nature of a marriage, those are situations where individuals expressed some reticence to seek out services," she said.

"There was a resistance to being in the spotlight, especially in the spotlight as a plural wife."

At any rate, Prof. Campbell said the law against polygamy wasn't working. While some of the women told Prof. Campbell they haven't always known that polygamy was a crime in Canada, they do now, and that prohibition isn't stopping polygamous marriages.

"Currently, it (the law) is known because of the fact that there's so much attention on this community, politically, through law enforcement, through the media," she testified.

"The belief that this practice was mandated by faith was viewed as more important, yielding a stronger force on their lives than the state's rules."

Residents in Bountiful practise a form of fundamentalist Mormonism, which teaches polygamy will help them enter the highest kingdom of heaven. The mainstream Mormon church renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

About 1,000 people live in Bountiful, a small commune in southeastern B.C. near the U.S. border, and they're divided into two separate factions. One is led by James Oler, who has formal ties to the U.S.-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, and the other is led by Winston Blackmore, whose followers split from the FLDS in 2002.

The women Prof. Campbell interviewed were all members of Mr. Blackmore's congregation.

B.C. government lawyer Craig Jones noted Mr. Blackmore's followers have a reputation for being more liberal than Mr. Oler's, and that liberalization has increased since the split in 2002.

He also noted that Prof. Campbell's research indicated Canada's laws against polygamy only became common knowledge in the community within the past several years.

"So it's safe to say in the time frame in which criminalization has been weighing more heavily on the residents' minds, that is also a period in which the community has become less insular and isolated?" said Mr. Jones.

"That's a fair parallel," replied Prof. Campbell.

Mr. Jones also questioned Prof. Campbell's conclusions that child brides and the so-called "lost boys" phenomenon, in which boys and young men with no one left to marry are cast out of the community, aren't major problems in Bountiful.

He asked Prof. Campbell whether she had any data, such as the ages at which women first gave birth or the graduation rates of boys and girls.

Prof. Campbell agreed such information would help determine whether those problems exist, but she hadn't researched it.