Bountiful couple deserve jail time
There are few more contemptible acts than parents knowingly and willingly putting their children in harm’s way.
Brandon and Gail Blackmore did that in 2004 when they drove their 13-year-old daughter from B.C. to Utah and witnessed her marriage to Warren Jeffs, the 49-year-old prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Jeffs already had more than 80 wives (including one of the Blackmores’ other daughters). He was already known as erratic, autocratic and a suspected pedophile.
And yet they handed their daughter to him, knowing that procreation is the main reason for marriage, not companionship or love.
Their daughter had no real contact with the world outside the polygamous community of Bountiful in southeastern B.C. She was educated in the government-supported Bountiful Elementary Secondary School, where the prophet’s monotone sermons were the basis of much of the teaching and were a constant backdrop during almost every waking hour of every FLDS members’ day.
At school, at home and at church, she was taught absolute obedience to her father, to the community’s bishop and to Jeffs, who the FLDS believe is “the mouthpiece of God.”
With no contacts outside the community, she had no one to go to for help even if she had had the wherewithal to ask for it in the hours between Brandon Blackmore getting Jeffs’s phone call. Jeffs said the Lord had revealed that the 13-year-old “belonged” to him. A few hours later, the Blackmores were crossing the border.
Their daughter had been told in her short life that her salvation and eternal life depended on her absolute, unquestioning obedience. She trusted them to make the best decision for her. Within days of her 14th birthday a few months later, the prophet sexually assaulted her.
Gail and Brandon Blackmore have been convicted of removing their daughter from Canada for sexual purposes — a neverbefore-used section of the Criminal Code that carries a maximum penalty of five years.
At a sentencing hearing last week, Brandon Blackmore’s lawyer acknowledged that even though Jeffs excommunicated his client in 2012, Blackmore, 71, isn’t exactly remorseful.
“The pre-sentence report does indicate, if not remorse, then certainly insight by Mr. Blackmore,” said John Gustafson, who argued for a conditional sentence (which would mean no criminal record) and no jail time.
Gail Blackmore, 60, didn’t have a lawyer and said nothing. But Joe Doyle, who had been appointed as a ‘friend of the court,’ argued the media coverage of the trial was punishment enough and a big enough signal to deter others.
For Gail Blackmore, he suggested a 90-day conditional sentence. If her pre-sentence report indicated remorse, Doyle didn’t mention it. But what was clear during the trial is that she remains a loyal FLDS member. She continues to wear pioneerstyle dresses in dark, solid colours, according to the dictates of Jeffs. And, throughout the trial, she appeared to be reading from church tracts during the proceedings.
Prosecutor Peter Wilson asked Justice Paul Pearlman to sentence Brandon Blackmore to 12-18 months in jail. For Gail Blackmore, Wilson suggested six months to a year in jail. The B.C. Supreme Court justice reserved his decision until Aug. 11.
He has a lot to think about. The Criminal Code allows for up to five years. The similar, but more recent, child-trafficking law has a mandatory minimum of five years and a maximum of 14 years in prison.
With no precedents for this particular offence — S. 273.3 (1) — recent child sexual offence sentences at least offer some context.
David Leonard Anderson, 60, of Maple Ridge was sentenced to 14 months in jail in January 2016 after trying to lure a 13-year-old girl into having sex with him. The 13-year-old was an undercover police officer.
In January 2015, 30-year-old Bradley Nicholas Wray of North Vancouver was jailed for a year for having amassed a huge collection of child pornography. While not a victimless crime, Wray didn’t directly violate either a child or a child’s trust.
In the Blackmore case, Wilson argued that jail time would act as a deterrent to others in a similar situation — what he described as “a fairly narrow group ... the likely group of potential offenders is probably small and could very well be limited to other adherents of the FLDS.”
But Wilson is wrong. Coerced child marriages aren’t limited to this breakaway sect. Forced child marriages are common enough in both the Sikh and Muslim communities that the Vancouver-based settlement society, MOSAIC, got a federal government grant to write a training manual for staff to help them recognize those at risk of forced marriages (often outside the country) and those who are victims within a coerced marriage.
Crudely put, what the Blackmores did is they trafficked and pimped their daughter to a depraved religious leader.
It’s such an enormous breach of a particularly naive child’s trust that it ought to warrant more than six months, or even 18 months in jail.