No further charges related to investigation in Bountiful, B.C.: special prosecutor

VICTORIA — A special prosecutor in British Columbia has declined to approve any further charges against people associated with the community of Bountiful where a fundamentalist Christian sect practises polygamy.

The B.C. Prosecution Service said in a statement Tuesday that the decision from special prosecutor Peter Wilson brings the matter to a close after years of investigations and charge assessments.

Wilson’s mandate included considering the possible prosecution of people accused of sexual exploitation and other alleged offences against minors, as well as polygamy-related offences, the prosecution service said. 

In assessing charges, Wilson said he considered relevant case law and followed the test set out by the prosecution service, which states Crown counsel must measure all the available evidence against two factors: whether there is a substantial likelihood of conviction and, if so, whether the public interest requires prosecution.

The exploitation charges recommended by investigators were, with one exception, the same as those submitted to his predecessor Richard Peck in 2006, Wilson said in a statement.

“In addition, the complainant statements relied upon were, for the most part, taken during a 2005 RCMP investigation and are, therefore, exactly the same statements considered by Mr. Peck.”

Wilson was appointed as a special prosecutor in 2012 after Peck decided not to continue his mandate.

There was some new evidence relating to allegations of sexual exploitation involving one person, which Wilson said he considered but ultimately found many of the same problems that previous prosecutors had identified with the proposed charges.

“A significant problem common to all of the proposed sexual exploitation counts is that they would have to be prosecuted with unco-operative witnesses,” he said.

The complainants, according to their statements and police reports, “seem content with their situation as plural wives,” he said, adding the result is a case that would “turn entirely on circumstantial evidence.”

Wilson said the proposed charges also didn’t meet the public interest test.

“In many instances, the alleged sexual exploitation occurred years if not decades ago. A prosecution would likely cause significant emotional distress to complainants who have emphatically rejected any notion that they are now or were ever victims.”

James Oler and Winston Blackmore, two rival leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, were convicted in a B.C. court of practising polygamy in 2018 and sentenced to house arrest and probation.

Oler was also convicted and sentenced to 12 months in jail last year for taking a 15-year-old girl into the United States to be married.

Two other members of the Bountiful community have been convicted for removing a 13-year-old girl across the border.

In his statement, Wilson said investigators recommended the prosecution of three suspects and submitted new information earlier this year in relation to the alleged removal of two other children who subsequently married members of the same sect in the United States. 

In each case, Wilson said, there was no substantial likelihood of conviction, so he declined to approve the charges.

Insp. Brent Novakoski, the senior investigating officer for the RCMP’s southeast district in B.C., said the announcement “concludes a lengthy, extensive and complex investigation that has spanned two decades, two countries and involved a number of legal firsts.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 24, 2020.

The Canadian Press