CRESTON (NEWS1130) – A special prosecutor has approved polygamy charges against the two leaders of an isolated religious sect in southeastern BC.

The criminal justice branch says Winston Blackmore and James Oler are each charged with polygamy, while Oler is also charged with unlawfully removing a child from Canada.

Blackmore and Oler are leaders of separate sects in the religious commune known as Bountiful, where residents follow a fundamentalist form of Mormonism that still holds polygamy as a tenet of the faith.

Two other people, Brandon James Blackmore and Emily Ruth Crossfield, also face charges alleging the removal of a child from Canada.

In 2009, polygamy charges against Blackmore and Oler were thrown out over how the province chose a special prosecutor, prompting the government to launch a constitutional reference case that eventually upheld the anti-polygamy law.

Peter Wilson was appointed as a special prosecutor in January 2012 to reconsider whether charges should be laid, and he’ll be overseeing the case for the Crown.

Former Attorney General Wally Oppal started the polygamy investigation almost a decade ago.

“I’m encouraged that the charges were laid. It’s been a bit of a long road, but in any event, the charges were laid and the persons will appear in court and the matter will proceed from there on.”

Oppal says when he first became Attorney General in 2005, the activities going on in the community were brought to his attention and he says he was concerned, as were the RCMP, and that’s when it was decided the investigation would be reopened. “Eventually charges were laid and then constitutional challenge was made against those charges and the Supreme Court of British Columbia,, the Chief Justice, decided that the section of the criminal code is valid and then the charges were then allowed to proceed.”