SALT LAKE CITY - Authorities
are investigating the alleged abuse of women and children in a
Canadian polygamous community populated by an offshoot of
fundamentalist southern Utah and northern Arizona
Mormons.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is
investigating the polygamous Fundamental Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints, a Bountiful, British Colombia,
church that practices polygamy as a central tenet, spokeswoman
Cpl. Catherine Galliford said Thursday.
The Bountiful
congregation is affiliated with the fundamentalist church that
has its base in the twin border towns of Hildale, Utah, and
Colorado City, Ariz., where an estimated 10,000 polygamists
live.
"Finally," said Rowenna Erickson, a co-founder of
the Salt Lake City-based Tapestry Against Polygamy. "They've
been trafficking girls for a long time."
Messages left
Thursday by the Associated Press with Rod Parker and R. Scott
Barry, lawyers for the church in southern Utah, were not
immediately returned.
Police in the RCMP's Vancouver,
B.C., division decided last week to launch the investigation
after numerous reports surfaced of the alleged abuse,
Galliford said.
"There have been more recent
allegations made through the media," Galliford said. "We
decided as a police force, it's time to clear the air once and
for all."
The most recent allegations of sexual abuse
and forced marriage were reported Thursday in the
Daily
Telegraph
of London. Women who have fled the community of
about 1,000 residents told the newspaper of girls in their
early teens forced to marry older men and of the routine
trafficking of underage girls between Canada and southern
Utah.
The RCMP is working with the British Colombian
provincial government in the investigation.
