From Deseret News archives:
FLDS in Canada may face arrests soon
But instead of a smiling portrait of an elected official, Bountiful Elementary-Secondary School displays a photograph of a smiling Warren Jeffs the leader of the Fundamentalist LDS Church who is doing time in a Utah prison, convicted of being an accomplice to rape.
The principal puts an affectionate arm around a youthful and happy second-grade teacher, a mother of 12. She's one of his wives.
The students and the teachers are dressed in hand-sewn clothes, mostly cut from the same few bolts of pastel fabric. The girls wear their hair in long, elaborate French braids, some with exaggerated pompadours above their foreheads.
School rules, posted near the front door, say: "Obey sweetly and promptly."
When authorities raided a thickly walled polygamist compound and took custody of 463 children in Texas last month, child welfare officials said the beliefs practiced there left girls at risk of sexual abuse and encouraged boys to become sexual perpetrators.
Yet.
British Columbia's Attorney General Wally Oppal told The Associated Press he plans to arrest someone on a polygamy charge or ask the courts to weigh in on Bountiful's legal standing within the month.
"Something must be done," he said. "I personally feel, and our government feels, that it would be inappropriate to do nothing."
Bountiful, just north of the U.S. border, is already splintered: some follow Jeffs, others follow his excommunicated former bishop Winston Blackmore. Even though many are related or have the same last name, members of the two groups are not allowed to talk with each other.
Wary of outsiders one Bountiful woman grabbed two children and ran into her home when approached by an AP reporter these believers say authorities "kidnapped" children in Texas, confirming their worst fears about the broader world they deliberately avoid.
"It's always in the back of our mind," said Bountiful Elementary-Secondary School principal Merrill Palmer. "How would you feel if the police could come to your home and take your children? We have that hanging over us all the time."
Recent comments
If it's your legal wife and she lives with you, yes they will take...
Re: Curtis | May 15, 2008 at 3:32 p.m.
If your wife was aware and let you do it. I should hope they would.
Re: Curtis | May 15, 2008 at 11:50 a.m.
Too bad they aren't prostitutes or pot growers. That way nobody in BC...
wallofvoodoo | May 15, 2008 at 9:44 a.m.
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I don't pretend to be an expert on global warming. I've met with...
He is NOT a good example. He broke the Sabbath for a simple game and money....
Yes - the Catholic Church can take any stand they want for the Catholic...
Let it be heard and RISE AND SHOUT, the UTES are out. We claim ownership of...
IN 50 years of membership I have yet to hear a person of whatever position in...
It is non-sense to say one has to have religion to do good or to be good....
Please don't spend any taxpayer money on this.
be a Dietmer because he can never win big games. He will never be a Steve...
I find it interesting that so many who are so vocal about a perceived threat...
Fireboylen, you make want to drug test you with that comment, are you out of...
Oh really. "How many places other than DN..." is a stupid thing to say....


