BLIND FAITH OBEDIENCE
Parents who give up their girls
As Brandon James Blackmore and Emily Ruth Gail Blackmore kept silent during their trial and their sentencing, left open was the question of what kind of parents would take their 13-year-old daughter to the United States for a polygamous marriage to their 49-year-old prophet.
Former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints told the court that in Bountiful, absolute obedience to the prophet is akin to godliness — even a prophet like Warren Jeffs, a convicted pedophile serving life in Texas.
Yet beyond the promised heavenly reward, one might think that sending a child to the prophet’s whim might come with a few earthly rewards as well.
There is nothing to suggest that the Blackmores reaped any benefits after delivering their 13-year-old into a plural marriage in 2004, or four months later when Brandon took a similar trip with his 16-year-old daughter. Nor does it appear that the couple gained anything years earlier, when they agreed to the marriage of another teenage daughter to the previous prophet only a few years before his death.
For the Blackmores, their “reward” will be jail time — a year for Brandon and seven months for Gail. Both will be on probation for 18 months. Their DNA and their names will remain on the sex offender registry for a decade.
Who are these people? Sparse details of their lives are contained in B.C. Supreme Court Justice Paul Pearlman’s written sentencing decision. Gail Blackmore, 60, had completed Grade 10 and was 17 when she became Blackmore’s third of four wives. Over her 43-year relationship with him, she bore 11 of his children.
In 2007, she managed to get permission from her husband and the FLDS leaders to go to the College of the Rockies in Creston and complete a certificate in herbology. She earned a few dollars selling the herbs and herbal products that she makes to supplement the money she gets from the government each month — $93 from the Canada Pension Plan and $450 a month in child tax benefit, which will stop within a year when her youngest daughter turns 18.
After Brandon’s ouster, Gail lived in the family’s big home in Bountiful, sharing it with two of her “sister wives,” four daughters — including the one who married Jeffs at 13 and is now 26 — six grandchildren, and 17 others. Most of those 17 are the other wives’ children.
As devout FLDS members, the women and children get rations from the community’s storehouse that is supported by the requirement that everyone tithe to the church almost all that they earn. There have been times that there’s little more than flour and rice in the storehouse, according to former members.
In one letter of support provided to the court, a friend described Gail as “a warm, kind, generous person with a gentle soul who loves her family dearly.”
In others, she was described as “honest, kind, hard-working, compassionate and gentle.”
But Blackmore has expressed no remorse for what she did. In a letter to the court, she expressed “the joy, blessings and fulfilment she derives as a mother and an active member of her community.”
Asked by the parole officer who wrote the pre-sentencing report whether she would commit the crime again, Gail replied: “I can’t talk about that.”
Brandon Blackmore is 71. Despite his devotion to his faith and its prophets, Blackmore has done hard and even unpleasant jobs. He’s been a janitor, maintenance man, teacher, farmhand, and is a certified septic field and tank worker.
He has a chronic shoulder injury, and his poor health got him excused from sitting through several days of his trial.
In 2011, Blackmore was deemed unworthy by the prophet, who stripped him of his wives, family, job and home that sits on FLDS land.
At the time of his arrest in 2014, Blackmore was living in an old bus on a friend’s property near Bountiful. According to the judge, Blackmore alternated between living there and staying with a son. The son fled Bountiful in 2002 along with his wife and their eight children.
For the past six years, Blackmore eked out a meagre living, supplementing his $1,380-a-month seniors pension with about $400 a month earned doing odd jobs.
He is described as having “some insight” into what he did. According to the pre-sentence report, Blackmore admitted that his FLDS beliefs and Jeffs’ revelations had “prevailed over his personal beliefs as a parent.”
Led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, Blackmore looked past the journalists in the front row to the FLDS members behind.
“Are you happy now?” he said grimly and enigmatically. “I’ll bet you are.”