Judge orders two Canadians jailed in child bride case

OTTAWA: Two Canadians were handed jail terms for taking a 13year-old girl to the United States to wed the now imprisoned leader of a Mormon sect that practices polygamy.

Brandon and Gail Blackmore were convicted in February of taking the girl across the CanadaUS border for sexual purposes in 2004.

Brandon Blackmore was sentenced to one year in prison, while his former wife Gail Blackmore was sentenced to seven months.

Records recovered from a concrete-encased vault during a police raid on a ranch in the US state of Texas, which were presented at trial, showed the girl married Warren Jeffs, the fundamentalist Mormon leader sentenced to life in prison for child sexual assault in 2011.

At the time, the Blackmores were members of a polygamist enclave in Canada’s westernmost British Columbia province.

The main branch of the Mormon faith – the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – renounced polygamy in the 1890s under pressure from the US government.

But some offshoots of the religion continue the practice.

Last month, two leaders of the Bountiful, British Columbia community, including one who has 25 wives and 146 children, were convicted of polygamy in a separate case.

The landmark ruling that upheld Canada’s longstanding ban on the practice was the first real test of the law, which was enacted 127 years ago.

Winston Blackmore and James Marion Oler, who has five wives, face up to five years in prison. — AFP