Leaders of polygamists are arrested in Canada

"I'm shocked. I really am," said Mary Batchelor, the director of the Utah-based pro-polygamy group Principle Voices. "I feel Canada's been really harsh and antagonistic towards them. They have the idea they're going to rescue all these people and we've learned in Utah and Texas that doesn't work."

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, whose office assisted in the prosecution of FLDS leader Warren Jeffs for rape as an accomplice, said he was following the case "with interest."

"I think we made the right decision here, based on our resources and based on our laws, that we would go after the more egregious crimes like child brides, for example, and that we would not be charging everybody who's in a bigamous relationship with a felony," he told the Deseret News on Wednesday.

Shurtleff has involved Oppal in a multijurisdictional crackdown on crimes within polygamous sects, but the attorney general said he had no plans to deviate from his policy.

The group Stop Polygamy in Canada hailed the charges has history-making.

"Polygamy is not a 'religious belief.' It is a crime," said the group's Nancy Mereska. "It denigrates the rights of women and children, denying them their inalienable rights to equality and the right to choose."

In an e-mail to the Deseret News in 2006, Blackmore acknowledged being the subject of a Canadian police inquiry.

"Since we are not hiding we are not hard to find," he wrote. "It is hard to think that Canada, the home of free lovers and legalized same-sex marriages, not to mention legal wife-swapping clubs, could waste their time on people who live like we do."

Messages to Blackmore for comment on Wednesday were not immediately returned.

Jessop said the FLDS in Canada are clearly concerned, especially in the aftermath of the raid on the YFZ Ranch in Texas. He worried about basic human rights being trampled on in the governments' zeal to prosecute them.

"Is it going to take a military smashing down the sacred temple in downtown Salt Lake before the rest of Utah and the world pays attention to what's going on?" he said. "If they think they're exempt from it, they're dead wrong."

In Texas, a dozen FLDS men have been indicted on felony charges stemming from the raid, including sexual assault of a child, bigamy, performing a marriage ceremony prohibited by law and failure to report child abuse. Hundreds of children were taken into state custody only to be returned two months later when a pair of Texas courts ruled Child Protective Services acted improperly.

Jeffs was convicted in Utah and is facing criminal charges in Arizona.

Shields said several RCMP officers stayed behind after the arrests to meet with community members.

"To assure them that we weren't interested in causing damage to the community, we weren't attempting to have children apprehended," he said.

Blackmore was a bishop in the Utah-based FLDS Church until he was excommunicated in 2002. The fundamentalists who live in Bountiful split — with some following Blackmore and others remaining in the FLDS Church. Oler was a bishop in Bountiful.

Both Blackmore and Oler were to be released from RCMP custody pending a Jan. 21 court appearance. They were ordered by a judge to surrender their passports and not leave British Columbia, check in with authorities and not enter into or perform any "celestial" marriages, Shields said.

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E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com