Man, 20 husbands? She must be worn out...
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- A federal prosecutor will work with state and local authorities to end lawlessness in polygamous communities and may stop the so-called polygamy underground railway across the Canada-U.S. border.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this week that a senior prosecutor in the U.S. deputy attorney general's office would carry out the review with the attorneys-general of Nevada, Arizona and Utah.
Reid described the problem as an "epidemic of lawlessness in polygamous communities."
Reid had previously contacted U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to urge a review of how the federal government could help state and local authorities "tackle this complex problem."
Arizona Attorney-General Terry Goddard said yesterday that he welcomes the review, which he and others had sought three or four years ago. "The problem traditionally has been that the laws have not been enforced in these remote communities in Utah, Arizona and Nevada," he said.
"My fundamental guiding star is, there is nothing special here. They need to follow the law like anyone else and it is up to us as prosecutors to make sure it happens," Goddard said.
The Canadian government should be working with the United States on the cross-border issues, said British Columbia legislator Bill Bennett.
He said that polygamous groups transport young women to and from Bountiful, British Columbia to marry older men.
"What we need is a cooperative effort by the province, various states and the two federal governments, who have primary responsibility for immigration and customs," he said.
The U.S. federal review was announced a month after a raid on a 1,700-acre compound in Texas of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamous religious sect.
Authorities found more than 20 girls that they believed were under the age of 18 and pregnant or who already had children. Child protection officials said they found evidence of sexual abuse and a pervasive pattern of grooming young girls for underage sex. They apprehended 463 children at the compound, including at least one Canadian girl, and placed them in foster care.
Former members of the polygamous sect have said young women were regularly sent across the Canada-U.S. border, in both directions, to marry older men. Bountiful is a FLDS community of about 1,000 in the Creston, British Columbia area.
Reid said that the U.S. federal government should have done more in previous years, when Utah and Arizona asked for federal co-operation in investigating "the systemic lawlessness" in polygamous communities. State authorities had sought federal action on violations of federal civil rights laws by Colorado City marshals and on Internal Revenue Code violations.
Source: Daily Camera Online.
Someone posted..well some guys have a wife and a mistress. True but what usually happens...the mistress wants to be the wife and the wife usually ends up divorcing him? I’ve never heard of the mistress, wife and husband just deciding to co-op, and live happily ever after.