BC Child Bride Trial Wraps Up, Judge Reserves Decision

James Oler leaves court in Cranbrook, B.C., on July 24, 2017. A British Columbia court heard evidence from three former members of a polygamous religious group in the trial of Oler on April 11, 2019. The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh

A four-day gap in the whereabouts of a man’s underage daughter is enough to dispute whether she was removed from Canada 15 years ago, a lawyer argued at the B.C. trial of a fundamentalist Mormon who is accused of taking an underage girl across the border for sexual purposes.

James Marion Oler, 54, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Bountiful, B.C., is charged with removing his 15-year-old daughter from Canada to Nevada in June 2004 to marry another member of the church, which practices polygamy.