Arizona gets an FLDS conviction, so why can't B.C.?:
 Member of polygamous sect found guilty of having sex with a minor
 
By Daphne Bramham
Vancouver Sun
 
News out of Arizona should stiffen the spines of B.C. law enforcers, who have been investigating the goings-on in the fundamentalist Mormon community of Bountiful for the past two years.

An Arizona jury convicted 38-year-old Kelly Fischer on charges of sex with a minor and conspiracy to commit sex with a minor.

Fischer is a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a group that broke with the mainstream Mormon church over polygamy.

The FLDS has about 500 adherents in Bountiful, while another 700 or so Bountiful residents follow excommunicated FLDS bishop Winston Blackmore.

What makes Fischer's case of particular interest is that the Arizona prosecutor got the conviction without having the testimony of the victim or a witness with firsthand knowledge.

Fischer's stepdaughter, who gave birth to his child at 17, did not appear in court or testify. Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith doesn't know where she is, having escaped the clutches of the FLDS, her abuser and her mother, who helped arrange for the plural marriage between daughter and stepfather.

But he reminded jurors that it's not unique that a victim doesn't testify. It happens all the time in sexual abuse and domestic violence cases in Arizona -- and in B.C. and dozens of other jurisdictions.

"You get to be her voice. You get to speak for the victim in this case," Smith told them. "Don't let him [Fischer] get away with this."

Smith's case rested on the birth certificate for the girl's child that showed Fischer was the father, and on the testimony from two former FLDS members.

Those former members -- Richard Holm and Issac Wyler -- told the court how plural marriages are arranged with young girls assigned to much older men only with the blessing of the church's top leaders. In this case, it was FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs, who is on the FBI's most wanted list for evading prosecution on the same Arizona charges as Fischer and a rape-as-an-accomplice charge in Utah for arranging and conducting under-age "marriages."

Wyler, who lived down the street from Fischer, testified that the girl's mother had been "re-assigned" as a wife to Fischer about 1997 or 1998 and moved into the building contractor's home in Colorado City along with her children. The daughter, who would become Fischer's third "wife," was no more than 14 at the time.

A few years later, Wyler said he saw Fischer and the girl together horseback riding. "They were joking around a little bit, probably inappropriately for the way we were raised," he told the jury, describing it as "courtship behaviour" -- despite given the community's strict prohibition on dating.

After that, Wyler heard rumours that the pair had been joined in a secret religious or "celestial" marriage ceremony and saw Fischer driving by with the girl seated beside Fischer and in between him and his legal wife. He explained that polygamists typically rotate seating arrangements so that each wife gets equal time.

Holm explained that fundamentalist Mormons believe that the prophet has a revelation from God about these placement marriages and no one can refuse these edicts without facing intense pressure, even threats of death and destruction.

Jurors reached the guilty verdict in just over an hour Friday after three days of hearings.

Interviewed after delivering the verdict, several said they had no difficulty with the evidence and the only thing that slowed their decision-making was determining whether the law applied if the "marriage" had taken place outside Arizona. (It does.)

Smith admitted after the verdict that Fischer's case was the weakest of eight cases against FLDS men charged with having sex with a minor and conspiracy to commit sex with a minor. He is now optimistic that Fischer's conviction may encourage other witnesses to come forward.

In B.C., the RCMP has already gathered the birth records from the midwifery clinic in Bountiful, according to midwife Leah Barlow. And the police have no problem getting access to the birth certificates that Blackmore has confirmed that Bountiful's fathers signed.

There are former members who have already publicly stated that they have witnessed both celestial marriages of under-age girls and births of children to mothers as young as 14, and would be willing to testify. Yet both the RCMP and Attorney-General Wally Oppal keep saying that they need a credible witness.

The Arizona jury didn't need it. They were satisfied with the proof they got.

So what's the hold-up here? Isn't it time somebody gave voice to the silent victims in Bountiful?

dbramham@png.canwest.com
 
canada.com
Originally published July 11, 2006
 
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