'My dad, his 27 wives, 150 kids': Canadian teenager's TikTok on ‘World's Largest Polygamist Cult’ goes viral

Tribune Web Desk
Chandigarh, January 24

Imagine a family of 150 siblings, and all of them are your brothers and sisters and not your cousins.

A 19-year-old boy, Merlin Blackmore, has revealed secrets about his Polygamist-cult family on the video-sharing app, TikTok.

The teenager revealed has he grew up in a cult-like family with one father, 27 mothers, and 150 siblings.

The Sun has called it “Canada’s largest Polygamist Family” on record.

This family’s head is 64-year-old, Winston Blackmore. He is settled in Bountiful, British Columbia, where he lives with a large polygamous family. Three of his children have come out to speak about their experiences in public.

Aside from Merlin, Muray—who is also 19—and Warren, 21, took their story to social media sites to post.

Merlin, the youngest of the three, no longer lives with the family, and has moved to the United States.

“I’ve wanted to talk about this for years. Now I’m in a position I can, the world is going to know,” he said in a TikTok.

There were 27 women, but only 22 of them had kids with Winston.

Of those 22, 16 remain still married to him.

The children were trained to call their biological mother “mum.” They called the other wives of their father a “mother” followed by their first name.

The large family had a “motel house” to board all teenagers. The children did not live with their mothers as they grew older. The other brother, Warren, revealed the general setting was to have two wives per house with young kids.

Each wife would occupy one floor of the house.

Of the wives, there were a pair of 3-sisters married to Winston. And there were 4 groups of two sisters. Murray calls himself a triplet because two other kids from two other wives were born on the same day.

The family was so large they formed their community.

The family farmed their own produce and kids were given farming duties. However, their quaint community is against the law. Winston was accused of practising plural or ‘celestial’ marriage in 2017.

He served six months of house arrest.

The three brothers have now left their community and live separately. However, they are still in touch with their siblings back home.