Polygamists Winston Blackmore and James Oler were sentenced today in Cranbrook, British Columbia.to six months and three months of house arrest, respectively with a year probation to follow.
In 2014, Blackmore appeared outside the courthouse in Creston, B.C., with a number of his daughters, who came to support him. (CBC)
Part of a breakaway sect of Mormon, Blackmore, 60, was found to have taken 24 wives and fathered 149 children. Oler, 53. has 5 wives.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, based in Utah, renounced polygamy officially back in the late 1800s.
It denies any connection to the fundamentalist group in Bountiful’s form of Mormonism.
Bountiful is what the community calls the area in southeastern British Columbia, others know it as Lister.
Most of the women were 16 or 17 when they married Blackmore; one was 15.
Justice Sherry Anne Donegan presided over the precedent-setting case.
The maximum sentence for polygamy under Canada’s Criminal Code is five years in prison.
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