#WINSTON BLACKMORE 15 YEAR OLD WIFE TRIAL#
#WINSTON BLACKMORE 15 YEAR OLD WIFE TV#

Men with multiple wives were told to choose one and live monogamously or risk excommunication. The first was in 1890 and the second from LDS president Wilfred Woodruff was in 1904 and it instructed that no new plural marriages should be performed. Two revelations are the reasons that Mormon fundamentalists split from the mainstream church. Without it, he said, there would be no Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because Mormonism has “a doctrine of revelation.” Its adherents believe that God’s word is continually being revealed unlike Christians who believe God’s word is fully contained in the Bible. Mormon scholar Richard Bennett testified this week that the keeping of records is essential. It is enclosed by a gated fence as is the annex next to it where the documents were found in a basement vault behind heavy doors and many locks.

The centrepiece of the compound, which once housed 700 FLDS members, is a massive stone temple that resembles the mainstream Mormon’s temple in Salt Lake City. Less than a kilometre from the first gate, there’s another gate and a lookout tower. Unlike Bountiful, which has no gates or fences and is publicly accessible, the entire ranch was surrounded by a high, perimeter fence. The ranch was owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a splinter group from the mainstream church. The records were among 375 boxes of documents seized in 2008 by Texas Rangers from the heavily secured vault next to the temple at the Yearning for Zion ranch. But five marriage records were entered as evidence with the personal church records of Oler and the five women. There are four women on Oler’s indictment for one count of polygamy. According to FLDS doctrine, they must always have a “priesthood head” to direct their temporal and spiritual lives. What that means to Mormon fundamentalists is that when she dies, she will be resurrected and reunited with Blackmore’s father - her first husband and adoptive father - or, perhaps with her second husband, who was Oler’s father.īut what it also shows is that women are deemed so vulnerable to bad influences that they must at all times be under the authority of a man. In the marriage records put into evidence last week, she is distinguished from the rest as having married Blackmore only “for time” and not “for time and all eternity.” Of course, at the time of the marriages, Canada’s age of sexual consent was only 14.īut, more disturbingly, one of the sisters on the list is Blackmore’s own adopted sister, who in this Byzantine world also happens to be his stepmother. The two young women had married Blackmore within a month of each other in 1999 and had been sharing the same home.Īs Blackmore himself has admitted under oath in other court proceedings, nearly half of those brides were under 17. Within six months of Canada legalizing same-sex marriage, two of Blackmore’s wives took out a marriage licence and married each other. There are even two of Winston’s wives who are wife and wife. On three occasions, sisters were married on the same day to the former bishop of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Nearly half of the 24 women listed on Blackmore’s indictment are related to at least one of their sister-wives.

#WINSTON BLACKMORE 15 YEAR OLD WIFE TRIAL#

Supreme Court trial where 60-year-old Blackmore and James Oler, 53, stand accused of having illegally taken multiple wives.

#WINSTON BLACKMORE 15 YEAR OLD WIFE TV#

as opposed to the reality TV version - is unfolding in a B.C. The reality of polygamy in Mormon fundamentalist communities like Bountiful, B.C.

Winston blackmore 15 year old wife