Last February, the publishing company Random House Canada sent me a draft copy of a to-be-published book called The Secret Lives of Saints by award-winning Vancouver reporter and columnist Daphne Bramham. The book proved to be a harrowing account of the lives of women, girls and boys in a polygamous sect called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) in Bountiful, B.C., and several communities in the United States.

I read the galley without putting it down, then called Daphne to ask if she would write a story for Homemakers. To my delight, she agreed.

In "Escape from Bountiful" Daphne tells the story of one remarkable woman, Teressa Wall Blackmore. Apart from being a stunning testament to Teressa's bravery and resolve, the account is also a vivid sketch of the FLDS and the thorny issues it presents to Canadian lawmakers and regulators.

Those issues, very simply stated, come down to the question: Whose rights trump whose? Legal authorities, Daphne explains, are reticent to prosecute because the FLDS's practices may be protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and, in the U.S., under freedom-of-religion laws. Indeed, much public opinion came down on the side of the FLDS when, in April, authorities in Texas raided its Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, and took hundreds of women and children into protective custody. (Most have returned to the ranch, although investigations continue.)

I believe that if polygamous communities were widely seen to comprise consenting, comfortably off adults (such as those in the HBO series "Big Love") much of this debate might never come to the fore. However, as a number of commentators have noted, where polygamy exists, so do allegations of underage marriage, sexual abuse and spousal and child abuse.

In Secret Lives, Daphne says, "Canadian troops are... in Afghanistan, in part to defend the rights of that country's women and children from the Taliban -- a group of violent religious fundamentalists. We are outraged at reports of women forced to submit to cruel and seemingly arbitrary religious rules, and of little girls and boys denied education, which is replaced instead with religious instruction designed to perpetuate the injustice. If we won't tolerate it on the other side of the world, why do we put up with it in Canada?"

Good question. I would love to hear your response to it. Please share your opinions, thoughts and experiences at homemakers.com, or write to me.

Kathy Ullyott, editor-in-chief
kathy@homemakers.com