Provincial Attorney General Wally Oppal said he has reviewed a report by special prosecutor Richard Peck and agrees no charges should be pursued against members of a fundamentalist Mormon sect in Bountiful, British Columbia.
The group is part of the southern Utah-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, known as the FLDS and headed by Warren S. Jeffs.
Oppal said the government could find no witnesses on the sexual-assault allegations because investigators were told that all consented to the acts that took place.
More serious allegations of sexual exploitation of young women also could not be substantiated, Oppal said.
He said he was surprised by the number of young women who told police they were the aggressors and wanted to have sex with the older men.
Church doctrine that touts plural marriage as a path to exaltation in heaven is rooted in the early Mormon theology. Mormons, however, abandoned polygamy in 1890.
