An American man managed to marry four women without raising suspicion, taking advantage of a loophole in Canada’s marriage license procedures that do not require checks for existing marriages.
Jason Washington, a 46-year-old resident of New York, successfully wed multiple women, despite the legal prohibition against polygamy.
His marital escapades included at least three women in British Columbia and one in New York. These unions came to light when some of the wives discovered they were not his only spouse, according to accounts shared with CTV News.
One of the women, who used the pseudonym Emma, expressed regret, stating that she would have reconsidered her decision had she been aware of Washington’s previous marriages.
“I absolutely would not have married him,” she told the news outlet. “I wouldn’t have done any of these things.”
Emma and Washington tied the knot in 2014, following a whirlwind romance that led to his proposal just a month after they started dating.
‘He said all the right things, like he knew exactly what I needed,’ she said.
Little did she know her husband had recently pleaded guilty to the charge of ‘uttering a threat’ in a different relationship, or that he had another wife he was going through divorce proceedings with.
The former marine said it was his wives’ job to look into his prior marriages
Court records obtained by CTV News showed that the 2013 divorce proceedings in British Columbia between him and his first wife were never finalized.
Four years after marrying Emma, Washington would marry another woman, who uses the pseudonym Sara.
Sara said she had ‘absolutely no idea’ there were two other women legally married to her husband. ‘I was shocked that there were other women,’ she told CTV News.
In 2021, Washington would marry his fourth wife in New York, where he currently resides. They have since divorced and Emma and Sara are looking into ways of separating themselves from Washington.
The Canadian women said the British Columbia government approved their licenses without any problems, despite bigamy being illegal.
The case has drawn attention to the method spouses or prospective spouses can use to check past marriage records. Canadians can pay C$50 ($36 USD) to search if their partners have been married before, however, their significant other has to sign off on the search, CTV News said.
The only province in Canada that requires the government to check for prior licenses is Quebec.
The other nine provinces rely on people being honest on their forms, which have them check a box to say if they are divorced, widowed, or never married.
Washington was previously thrown in jail after killing a man in a drunk driving accident
Although incorrectly filing a form is illegal, it is rarely ever prosecuted.
British Columbia’s Ministry of Citizens Services approved more than 28,500 marriages last year.
Despite the betrayal, Washington washed his hands of any wrongdoing, telling CTV News that it was his wives’ job to look into his relationship history.
‘That was a woman’s job. That was my soon-to-be wife’s job to do all that,’ he said.
‘I’ve always been up front, 100 per cent, about who I’ve been married to and who I haven’t. They all talk to each other, bro. They’re women,’ Washington responded.
‘These are women I loved for many, many years,’ he added.
When contacted by the Daily Mail, Washington said: ‘I have nothing to say.’
In all 50 US states and Canada, bigamy, the act of marrying more than one person at a time, is considered a crime.
This is not Washington’s first experience with a scandal, as he was previously thrown in jail in Buffalo after killing a man in a drunk driving accident.
Washington was convicted of second-degree manslaughter in 2022 after he crossed the double yellow line on Seneca Street and crashed his vehicle into another, killing a man.
The other driver, Thomas Shoemaker, 57, was killed. Washington and a female passenger were left injured and taken to the hospital.
He pleaded guilty to the crime in October of that year and spent a little more than three years in jail before his release in 2024, records showed.
When asked about his criminal record, Washington said he was convicted of the crime because he suffers from ‘dissociative episodes from f**king combat.’
He went on to lash out at the CTV News reporter, telling him: ‘You f**king t***!’
According to military records reviewed by the outlet, Washington was court martialed for ‘bad conduct.’ He served from August 1997 to October 2001.
