Keep Sweet: The little girls of Bountiful, B.C.
 
By Sarah Galashan
CTV News - Ontario, Canada
Warren Jeffs

They surrounded me, all dressed in identical prairie-styled smocks and leggings. Most wore their hair braided and all of the little girls in Bountiful, B.C. bore a remarkable resemblance to each other. If they weren't directly related, it was clear many of them were half-sisters, or cousins, sharing a father, although few were willing to admit it.

It was two years ago that I had the chance to visit Canada's only polygamist community, nestled in the mountains near Creston, B.C. But the testimony out this week's trial of Warren Jeffs, in Utah, has me thinking about Bountiful again.

Jeffs, the 51-year-old prophet/leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is charged on two counts of rape as an accomplice for using his authority to coerce the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her older cousin.

As the head of the FLDS, Jeffs has many followers in Bountiful. It's been alleged that he dictates who marries who within the U.S. church, and that his influence extends to Bountiful.

In particular I remember the little girls. They were ... sweet, in keeping with the town's motto "keep sweet," I suppose. But they were not so different from other 10 year olds, with dreams of one day getting married. The added dimension, of course, each little girl specified she'd like to be a first wife, the only one legally married to her husband. Sheer numbers dictate many will not be the first, since FLDS doctrine dictates a man must take three wives at least in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.

As a journalist I am there to ask questions. But that day I decided more might be revealed by the questions they had. I handed the microphone to the most precocious of the bunch. Told them they could ask me anything and that I'd answer honestly. Their questions spoke volumes.

They wanted to know about New York, Paris, London, Rome. Had I been? Why wasn't I married? Was I ever lonely? (After all, they reasoned, I must spend most of my time alone in my apartment "taking notes!") Didn't I want to have children and a family?

It got pretty personal. But I kept my word. Yes, sometimes I was lonely. Someday I hoped to have a family. But first I wanted to fall in love, and in the meantime I got to visit places like New York and Paris.

They listened intently as I answered, but in unison they insisted there was no place on earth as beautiful or wonderful as Bountiful. I didn't correct them; it's not my place to tell a 10-year-old that what she's been taught is either right or wrong.

But now as I listen to the young woman's testimony in Utah, I'm haunted by that scrum of little girls. And I hope all their questions continue to get answered.

Sarah Galashan is CTV's Alberta Bureau Chief, covering the major stories out of Edmonton and Calgary.
 
ctv.ca
Originally published September 15, 2007
 
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