Polygamist family goes on the defensive
 
Vancouver Sun, with files from Canadian Press
 
BOUNTIFUL, B.C.- Canada's best known polygamist family went on the offensive today, holding a news conference on their driveway to accuse both RCMP and Canada Citizenship and Immigration of unfairly treating them and discriminating against them because of their religious beliefs.

Winston Blackmore - the patriarch of a family that includes 20-some wives and more than 102 children - was flanked by three of his American wives who have been ordered to leave Canada having failed to satisfy Citizenship and Immigration that they meet the criteria for immigration under humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

The wives - Edith Barlow, Marsha Chatwin and Zelpha Chatwin - believe that they were discriminated against because they are fundamentalist Mormons who believe that practising polygamy is one of the ways of getting into the highest realm of heaven.

Blackmore also said Warren Jeffs, a U.S. polygamist on the FBI's most wanted list, is probably in Canada.

But he didn't say whether he knew where Jeffs was and said anyway, that's not his problem.

Jeffs heads the FLDS church, a polygamist sect that broke away from the Mormon church when it abandoned polygamy more than a century ago. He is considered by his followers to be a prophet, but he hasn't been seen in public in nearly two years.

He is wanted on criminal charges of sexual conduct with a minor and for arranging plural marriages of underaged girls. He's also wanted for fraud.

Earlier this month, the FBI announced a $100,000 reward for any information on Jeffs' whereabouts.

Polygamy is illegal in Canada and in the United States, although it is rarely prosecuted in either country.
 
canada.com
Originally published May 16, 2006
 
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