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Bust-up in Bountiful: How a bitter power struggle turned family against family in this notorious polygamous community in British Columbia.
Aired January 25,
2006 at 9pm
on CBC-TV
Updated April 12,
2008 on
CBC Newsworld

WATCH the fifth estate ONLINE
Scenic in Bountiful, BC
Watch this story online.
REPORTER: Hana Gartner
PRODUCER: Oleh Rumak

WEB EXCLUSIVE
Former Bishop of Bountiful, Winston Blackmore is rumoured to have 26 wives and 80 children. Download the Bountiful family tree. (.pdf file)
DEBBIE PALMER INTERVIEW

Hana Gartner: EVEN IF YOU WERE A FERVENT BELIEVER, THIS IS A 57 YEAR OLD MAN IT'S GOTTA BE SCARY.

Debbie Palmer: If that's all you've ever known and you see girls that age being married to men that age and older all the time it's really not that difficult of a stretch of the imagination.

The statistics of Palmer's former life are overwhelming: six mothers, 46 siblings, 3 husbands, 8 children, 86 stepchildren - one of whom is Winston Blackmore.

Debbie Palmer: I was his stepmother, several of his sisters were married to my father so he was an uncle to me. I was actually ended up being a step grandmother to him as well.

.....

Debbie Palmer
The statistics of Palmer's former life are overwhelming: six mothers, 46 siblings, 3 husbands, 8 children, 86 stepchildren - one of whom is Winston Blackmore.

At the age of 34 and after years of silent suffering she left the community. She became a leading activist against polygamy.

Hana Gartner: IS LIFE IN BOUTIFUL ABOUT SEX OR SALVATION?

Debbie Palmer: It's all about sex, it really is. There is great pretence that it's a very moral sort of back to basics family fundamentalist type of community but there's sex everywhere.

Hana Gartner: WHAT ARE THE LOGISTICS OF INTERCOURSE? HOW DOES IT WORK? DOES SOMEBODY KEEP A BIG CHART AND SAY – OH, BETTY YOUR OVULATING – THURSDAY IS YOUR NIGHT.

Debbie Palmer: I know in the larger families, they do, do that, they have to.

Hana Gartner: REALLY?

Debbie Palmer: Well like I mean in a good size dairy, you have to know when a cows going to come around so she can be serviced properly by the bull, or you don't have calves and you don't have your cows freshened properly and if you've got very many wives in your family then somebody needs to keep track of that...one of the really horrific things about some of the inbreeding that has happened in the polygamist communities is that most of the men that have been in positions of control that have instigated these marriages are men that have studied breeding stock in animals .”

Hana Gartner: THIS IS ALL BASED ON ANIMAL HUSBANDRY?

Debbie Palmer: Yes it is.

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