Bountiful parents set to be sentenced
Bountiful parents who trafficked daughter, 13, will learn of their punishments on Friday
It is hard to imagine what punishment might ever be enough for the parents of a 13-year-old girl who took her out of Canada for a polygamous marriage to a 49-year-old man, knowing that she would subsequently be raped.
Brandon James Blackmore, 70, and Emily Gail Blackmore, 60, are the parents. At the time, both were living in Bountiful, B.C., and were devoted to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and its prophet, Warren Jeffs.
Tried in November and convicted in February of the unlawful removal of a child for illegal purposes, the Blackmores will be sentenced on Friday.
The offence has never been used before. There are no precedents, only the Criminal Code’s maximum penalty of five years in jail. But in determining whether or for how long to imprison the Blackmores, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Paul Pearlman might consider the penalties in the 2010 child trafficking law. It has a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment and a mandatory minimum of five years in jail. The penalty increases to life with a mandatory minimum of six years if it involved aggravated assault, aggravated sexual assault, murder or kidnapping.
During the trial, it was clear that the parents’ only rationale for their acts was the same defence used by Nazis during the Nuremberg trials: They were only following orders.
Gail Blackmore refused legal representation and made no effort to defend herself. Her estranged husband did have a lawyer. His strongest argument was that the Crown failed to prove that his client knew before leaving Canada that Jeffs intended to sexually exploit his child.
The judge rejected that argument based on the testimony of former FLDS members. All of them said they were taught at home, at school and at church that the purpose of marriage was to produce as many children as possible, and that wives must be fully compliant to their husbands’ desires.
It all began with a phone call to Brandon Blackmore on Feb. 26, 2004 from Jeffs, who told him “the Lord had revealed that his 13-year-old daughter belonged to me and we would discuss that when he brought her down south sometime Friday.”
According to Jeffs’ diary, which was entered as evidence, the prophet clearly knew that what he was asking Blackmore to do was illegal. He noted that the marriage “will hasten the persecutions against me and this people as the apostates in Canada will inform the authorities.”
Within hours, the Blackmores left the southeastern B.C. community, crossing the U.S. border at Porthill, Idaho within minutes. With them was an older daughter, who was already one of Jeffs’ more than 80 wives.
They arrived in Short Creek on the Utah-Arizona border the following day, and on March 1, Brandon Blackmore was summoned to Jeffs’ office.
The marriage of his young daughter “was the will of the Lord,” according to Jeffs’ diary entry. “I asked him (Blackmore) to bring his wife and daughter at 1 o’clock p.m. He gave full submission and determination to me and to the Lord to submit to the Lord’s will.”
At that later meeting, Jeffs told the three of them, “this girl was called on a mission and they received it joyfully.”
Within the hour, the prophet and the Grade 8 student were married. The parents witnessed the ceremony, but didn’t linger. They retraced the nearly 1,800-kilometre trip and were back in Bountiful two days later.
A week after the girl’s 14th birthday in September, she was raped. It is recorded in Jeffs’ diary and in her church-held personal records as the day she received “the Love of God.”
Jeffs made an audio recording of it that was played in the B.C. courtroom. The girl’s half-brother, Brandon Seth Blackmore, identified her tiny, frightened voice amid the panting.
The girl — now 25 — did not testify at her parents’ trial. But the petite, young woman (whose name is protected by a courtordered publication ban) did come to court the first day with her mother. She wore a drab, pioneer-style dress mandated by the prophet.
The life that her parents committed her to is unimaginable. Within months of her marriage, Jeffs was indicted by an Arizona grand jury on child sexual abuse charges and became a fugitive, moving with some of his favourite wives between safe houses dotted across the western United States and Canada.
Jeffs has been in jail since his arrest 11 years ago. But his wives are still on the move, moved
between safe houses by the prophet’s most loyal men. The wives are not allowed to remarry. Even if they were, the prophet has banned all FLDS members from sexual conduct until he is free.
Undoubtedly, Jeffs promised this young woman heaven. But where she has ended up is more like hell.
And no judge, no laws and no punishment can make up for that.