Frustrated A-G looking for alternative tactic

With no victims willing to testify, prosecution becomes impossible

Michael Smyth, The Province

August 02, 2007

A ttorney-General Wally Oppal is disgusted by the concept of polygamy. So are most Canadians, according to every opinion poll on the topic.

And since polygamy is clearly illegal under the Criminal Code, Oppal has always favoured a tough-cop approach to the problem.

But now he's finding out why no previous attorney-general, stretching back decades, has seriously gone after the polygamist leaders of Bountiful, B.C. How do you bring down a bunch of bad guys if you can't find any victims? Not only do the multiple wives of Bountiful's male masters claim to be happy and content with their lives, but they also shocked Oppal with their attitudes toward sex.


"It was a surprise to me the number of young women who told the police that they were the aggressors -- that they wanted to have sex with the older men," Oppal said yesterday.


You may be thinking what Bountiful's many critics allege: The women are brainwashed and coached on what to say to the cops.

"But how do you prove that?" Oppal asked.

The answer: You can't. With no victims, no evidence of sexual assault or exploitation and no evidence of coercion, you've got no case.

Oppal admitted as much yesterday, announcing there would be no charges against Bountiful's poly-gamist leaders.

But he's not giving up. Oppal said the government will now likely ask the courts to rule on whether the long-established but rarely prosecuted polygamy law is valid in the first place. It's a case that could go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

But something tells me poly-gamist leaders like Winston Blackmore, the cocky and confident "bishop of Bountiful," aren't very worried.

For one thing, Blackmore and company can fall back on the Constitution's guarantees of liberty and religious freedoms.

And it's hard to imagine any court being immune from the apparent relaxing of attitudes toward polygamy in popular media and culture. (Google "pro-polygamy" to find some of the dozens of polygamy-support sites on the Internet or watch HBO's critically acclaimed Big Love about a modern polygamist family and you'll get the idea.) And what about Muslim polygamists? Many Muslim countries that generate thousands of immigrants to Canada condone and recognize polygamist marriages. Will the government go after them as well as the fundamentalist Mormons? Oppal looked like a guy who knows he's fighting a losing battle yesterday.

"It's fine to say, 'My religion allows me the luxury of two or more wives.' I, quite frankly, find that argument to be demeaning to women, but that's my own view." It's hard to disagree with him. But now that the whole concept of marriage has been thrown open (see the earlier debates on same-sex unions), I suspect the opinion of the majority will lose out once again.


http://www.canada.com/theprovince/columnists/story.html?id=535c6f9a-d99d-46a8-9e2b-ce69c565917a