Debbie Palmer, plural wife of Ray Blackmore in Bountiful, BC, passed away in January 2020, age 64. I had met her at an event years ago screening a film about Mormon fundamentalist polygamy ("Leaving Bountiful"). We became friends and kept in touch for a while. I was interested in her activism and helped her briefly with editing some of her work. Through Debbie I met other ex-polygamous wives and learned a lot about the life they led as plural wives, isolated in rural BC, Canada.
She was the mother of eight children and the oldest of forty-seven brothers and sisters.
Included in her advocacy work, Debbie met internationally with human rights advocates on the topic of polygamy.
Debbie detailed her early life in her book "Keep Sweet - Children of Polygamy".
It starts: "My father had six wives and I have forty-seven brothers and sisters. My oldest daughter is my aunt and I am her grandmother. When I was assigned to marry my first husband, I became my own step-grandmother since my father was already married to two daughters of my new husband. According to the eternal laws of the polygamous group I grew up with, I will be a step-grandmother to many of my own brothers and sisters "for time and all eternity".
"Several of my stepsons were assigned to marry my sisters, so I also became a sister-in-law to my own stepchildren. After my mother's father was assigned to marry one of my second husband's daughters as a second wife, I became my own great-grandmother. This stepdaughter became my step-grandmother and I her step-mother, so when I gave birth to two sons with her father, my own sons became my great-uncles and I was their great-great-grandmother.
"My ancestors were fierce and uncompromising when it came to religion. Once converted and baptized into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, they became more entrenched in their beliefs with every hardship and persecution brought on by the "Gentiles", a term which is all-inclusive for people who are non-members. Many members of my family and extended family, including the three men I was assigned to by the prophet of our particular group of Mormon Fundamentalists, were drawn by the teachings of Joseph Smith and plural marriage to one place - the Creston Valley in British Columbia, Canada.
"Grandpa Romney, Michael Merrick, and Kelvin Whitmer had been having cottage meetings..."
When I met Debbie and her friends, sisters, fellow plural wives, it was fascinating for me to observe the skill many of the women had in accurately reciting all the complicated family genealogy.
I am sad to have come across Debbie's obituary when I looked her up this morning.
Daphne Bramham, Reporter, Vancouver Sun, writes, in part:
"One of Bountiful's first child brides, Debbie Palmer was the first mother to flee the fundamentalist Mormon community with all her children and the first to shine a spotlight on it.
"If it weren’t for Debbie Palmer, Canadians might not know anything about the polygamous community of Bountiful in southeastern British Columbia.
"She was the first to lift the veil of secrecy that had protected the community from outsiders in the early 1990s.
"By demanding criminal charges against the leaders for their abuse of women and children, she became a thorn in the sides of a succession of provincial attorneys-general, police and other politicians.
"But she was shunned and shamed by family and childhood friends. Palmer’s activism took a huge toll. She died last weekend [January 2020] at the age of 64.
"Palmer was the oldest in a family of 47 children. When she was only six, her mother died, leaving Debbie and her two siblings to be raised by their father’s other five wives, who had multiple children of their own.
"At 15, Palmer was one of Bountiful’s first child brides. In a religious ceremony, she became the sixth wife of the community’s leader, Ray Blackmore. He was 40 years older than her. Palmer was a widow by 18.
"The community’s elders – all men — placed her in another plural marriage to an man who was so abusive that she was released and later married Marvin Palmer with whom she had five children.
"But life in Bountiful finally became intolerable and, in 1988, the mother of eight fled becoming one of the first women in either Canada or the United States to escape without leaving any of her children behind.
"[Debbie's] Life in Bountiful report revealed a pattern of forced marriages, rigid demands of obedience, and a “distinct culture … that limits individual rights to the point of virtually eliminating them.”
"It questioned whether children raised there could ever be capable of exercising free choice, including giving informed consent to sex and marriage.
"Over the years, Palmer became friends with Jon Krakauer, whose 2003 book, Under the Banner of Heaven, focused international attention on the fundamentalist Mormons.
"Yet without her pioneering efforts, two former fundamentalist Mormon bishops — her stepbrother James Oler, and Winston Blackmore, her brother-in-law and stepson — might never have been convicted of polygamy, and Oler and Brandon Blackmore (another of Palmer’s stepsons) and his wife, Gail Blackmore, might never have been jailed for illegally taking their under-aged daughters to the United States for coerced marriages.
"The admonition to women and girls to Keep Sweet might have remained, spelled out in white stone on the mountainside above the government-funded school.
"To anyone exposed to her unrelenting anger and what was, at the time, her seemingly incredible tales of abuse, Palmer could be exhausting and, at times, exasperating. She needed to be all of that and more in order to be heard.
"And, in the end, Palmer proved Margaret Mead’s contention that it is the few caring people who change the world. Deborah Ann Oler Palmer was one of those who changed hers."
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/daphne-bramham-outspoken-activist-against-polygamy-dies-----
Debbie's obituary states in part:
"This amazing woman is a published author of “Keep Sweet: Children of Polygamy” and other works. Her advocacy work and life was memorialized in a documentary called “Leaving Bountiful”; after which, she was a consultant in the film “In God’s Country”. After finishing her Diploma in Correctional Studies at SIAST, Prince Albert, Deborah was then employed at Pinegrove Correctional Centre as a Corrections Officer for many years until her passing. However, her real passion in life was her work in being a lifelong advocate and defender for women and children who did not know the power of their own voice, strength and freedoms."
https://grays.ca/tribute/details/2160/Deborah-Palmer/obituary.html-----
I learned more from Debbie about life within Mormon polygamy than I really wanted to know, including accounts of her experiences of abuse at an early age by boys within the commune. I would have wished for her many more years free of fundamentalist Mormonism in which to enjoy her family and a retirement she richly deserved. A quiet, soft-spoken woman, nevertheless she showed enormous courage in escaping from Bountiful, engaging in advocacy on behalf of countless women and children, and making a lot of noise in public on various committees, in many hearings and being instrumental in bringing a spotlight onto the abuses going on in Bountiful, BC, the outrage of cross-border trafficking in young girls (to be "married" to much older men without their free consent) and the realities of Mormon polygamy.
Debbie was easy to love. She deserved better than the treatment she received within the confines of Bountiful, at the hands of the abusive male Mormon fundamentalists. I admire her courage in exposing the abuse and pain of her early years. It's good to know she enjoyed her life and family in the outside world. I just wish it could have been for longer. I wish she had been able to retire early and enjoy a long period of peace and prosperity. I trust she is resting in peace now.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2020 05:24PM by Nightingale.