Posted by:
Nightingale
(
)
Date: July 15, 2021 04:25PM
I knew before I opened the link that it would be Blackmore.
I had the great good fortune to meet Debbie Palmer, anti-polygamy activist in B.C. Canada. She was a small, quiet-spoken woman who was tireless in her quest to help the women and children trapped in polygamous compounds such as Bountiful. She wrote a book about her life, stunning in its raw personal disclosures of the abuse and hardships she and other girls and women were (and are) subjected to. For one, she was sexually abused by older boys in the compound at the appallingly young age of 4 and suffered long-term effects from the physical damage they did. In her lifetime Debbie suffered physical and sexual abuse by her father (Dalmon Oler), a brother, and as above, by teen boys as a young girl.
There is also a documentary film detailing her experiences. Here's a write-up about it:
https://bountiful.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/leavingbountiful_pr.pdfHere’s a newspaper article that was written after Deb’s death in 2020: (The writer is a newspaper columnist who followed Debbie's story and frequently published articles about the issues around Mormon polygamy).
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/daphne-bramham-outspoken-activist-against-polygamy-diesExcerpts:
“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 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 a 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.”
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Winston Blackmore is the infamous leader of Bountiful now (which is described in the documentary film write-up as “a branch plant of Colorado City”). Debbie was his step-mother (as she was married to his father, Ray, becoming his sixth wife, as above).
For such a small and quietly-spoken woman Debbie made an enormous, and loud, impact. I met her at a gathering to show her film and we kept in touch. I spoke to her many times about her experiences, the records she had and the book she was writing. We discussed the needs of women who were trying to escape from Bountiful and ways to assist them. One of Debbie's sisters is/was the midwife there. Needless to say, she was kept plenty busy with the constant stream of births.
I greatly admired Debbie's strength, honesty and willingness to lay her life and soul bare to try and effect change for the children and women of Bountiful, as well as any males who wanted to escape.
Debbie was also active in trying to assist polygamy's victims in the USA.
She was called "...a crusader against what she calls the “illegal cross-border trade in Canadian and American female children for sexual and breeding purposes.”
She stated that polygamy is "slavery for religious purposes".
The abusive system survives. Many of its victims do not.
I was terribly sad when I heard that Deb had died. She deserved to enjoy a long and happy retirement. Her job post-Bountiful (as a social worker) was demanding, just as her Bountiful experience and the leave-taking were. And, of course, she remained in that world, albeit in a different way, as she never stopped trying to help others who were caught up in it without resources, choices or freedom.
RIP, Deborah Ann Palmer.