Authorities are investigating the alleged abuse of women and children in a Canadian polygamous community populated by an offshoot of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from southern Utah.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is investigating the polygamous FLDS Church, a Bountiful, British Columbia, church that practices polygamy as a central tenet, spokeswoman Cpl. Catherine Galliford said Thursday.
The Bountiful congregation is affiliated with the FLDS 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.
"It's white slavery," said Erickson, who claimed similar complaints have been made and ignored by American and Utah officials.
"We've been trying to tell them about these young girls being hauled off," she said. "They weren't really interested."
The RCMP is working with the British Canadian provincial government in the investigation.
"We feel we may have to have some social workers . . . involved in this process with us," Galliford said.
British Columbia Attorney General Geoff Plant supports the police investigation and has offered a lawyer, if needed, an aide in his Victoria, B.C., office said.