Still stunned at the sudden loss of their brother, Stephen and his siblings were numb with grief. During the approval process, the young man had begun texting Jessica something forbidden but that she says is common among Order teens who have an interest in one another. His life was in danger, the voice on the other end warned. Order girls are taught from birth that their primary purposes in life are to be obedient, a submissive wife, and to bear as many children as possible, the suit states. It was time. Children born into the clan make up much of the labor force. In qui tam cases, the federal government can either join the plaintiffs in recouping losses and pursuing damages and fines, or let the plaintiffs prosecute the lawsuit on their own. She said her father didnt think the suitor was a good student. Come back, his dad will say. It empowered Stephen before that, no one had ever stood up to Daniel Kingston or any of them, says a former member. Girls who agree to become plural wives tend to be more devout and usually live in homes without their husband, thus receiving less scrutiny. As lore has it, Elden was the one mighty and strong predicted by Scripture, who holding the scepter of power in his hand would set in order the House of God. With thick white hair, a lantern jaw and a commanding presence, he had no problem attracting followers. She received no sex education or premarital counseling. A week later, the two were profiled on the CBS program Whistleblower for their work in exposing fraud at Washakie Renewable Energy, the biofuel company operated by two of Mary Nelsons first cousins. When people hear organized crime, they think of mobsters. Stephen didnt know what the law said he only knew that the people he loved were being abused and exploited by his own father. Inseparable: Twins Peter (left) and Paul have lived. Businesses and individuals have the autonomy to choose and operate as they see fit as evidenced by a huge diversity of industry and management styles among members. Noticing Stephen, he put the barbells down and came over to the boy. Jessica Kingston said a girls devotion and attitude are often measured by her view of polygamy. When they arrived in Grand Junction, all three couples filled out the papers for a marriage license. He seemed like the most amazing guy, Stephen recalls. Jessica saw the list. Wed sleep on the chicken coop in the summer and shoot raccoons. DeRieux remarried at age 21 to a man who isnt from the Kingston Group. For the marriages performed in Utah, Bill W. Stoddard signed as the officiant until his death in March. Like Stephen, the boys were considered troublemakers by the Order and like Stephen, they knew a lot about how the clan handled its money. We really know what your game is.. In all likelihood, Stephen and his brothers had stolen the gold from Patty Kingston first and then the Brown boys, in an effort to emulate their cousins rebellious acts, had robbed their aunt weeks or even months later. Its a quiet, haunting place, with massive hayfields that stretch to the horizon. Mafi had another meeting with Paul Kingston during which he made sure that she had completed her [applications] and told her that she could only attend college if her grades were sufficient to qualify for financial aid.. My mom was never the same. He was born Jan. 7, 1928, in San Diego, Calif., a son of the late Paul and Evelyn . Current members dispute those characterizations. His father stood on the stage and called out the names of the men who were to receive one of the clans highest honors. Theyre trying to paint a picture, Markey said, give the judge and, frankly, the defendants, when they see the complaint, give them the context, which is to the effect, We know what's up. They had 4 children: John Hozlette Kingston and 3 other children. To hide the scope of his organization, J.O. Three weeks after Snow married a 21-year-old man in Davis County, Hansens 17-year-old daughter legally married a 24-year-old man in Salt Lake County. deductible, Report a missed paper by emailingsubscribe@sltrib.comor calling801-237-2900, For e-edition questions or comments, contact customer support801-237-2900or emailsubscribe@sltrib.com. For parents, there can be other practical considerations in letting a teen marry, Hansen said. A young child is also one of the accusers in the suit with allegations the child was raped by his or her father, who allegedly raped the mother. Members are primarily born into the. Mafis mother is Paul Kingstons fifth wife, yet when filling out the aid forms, the woman advising her told Mafi not to submit anything about her father, according to the lawsuit. Kiki Kannibal: The Girl Who Played With Fire. Mafi recalls Paul Kingston telling the children who attended that meeting that The Order was going to be trying out something new, the lawsuit says. Paul Eldon Kingston, the leader of Utah's polygamous Kingston Group, also known is the order, is named as a defendant in a bombshell lawsuit alleging sex trafficking. The DCCS is a financial cooperative established by his uncle Elden Kingston in 1935. LDS Church wants to light up a temple in a place that prides itself on dark skies, For husband-and-wife team, this new restaurant is the culmination of a decadeslong dream, plural marriages that happen outside the law, two stars of the television show Escaping Polygamy,", Shanell DeRieux, a former Kingston Group member, stigmas that often come with being associated, Kent Johnson, a spokesman for the Davis County Cooperative Society. Shortly after that meeting, the complaint continues, Mrs. It is a common and intentional practice in the Order to require girls and women to submit sexually to their husbands even if the sexual submission is against their will because having children results in workers for the benefit of the Order, the lawsuit states. The lawsuit says Mafi received an aid package that exceeded her tuition. Kingston succeeded his father John Ortell Kingston as the leader of the Kingston Clan on his father's death in 1987. (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Jessica Kingston was wed at age 16 in what she says was a marriage she felt pressured into by her parents and others in a polygamous sect. The Order's top man, Paul Kingston, counts a half-dozen such relatives among his 20-plus wives, according to ex-members and Attorney General's investigator Ron Barton. But the Kingstons have remained in Salt Lake, operating virtually undetected in a city of more than 1 million people. Paul E. Kingston, considered the top man, signed as a witness for four of the marriages that The Tribune found outside Utah. He finished a three-year term as Chair of the Department of Sociology in August 2007. Many consider Kingston the top man in the group. She's since left the marriage and wants the legal marriage age raised to 18. Three others, including Grant, said they had to flee to escape such a fate. The ones that misbehave, they try to push them to marry as soon as they can, Hansen said. The family believed that discipline would rein in the boys and that hard labor would make the girls more supplicant to their husbands back in the city. Johnson said neither he nor any other representatives of the cooperative society were aware of the lawsuit until contacted by The Salt Lake Tribune recently for comment. Later that afternoon, in another house across town belonging to the Order, a woman named Patty Kingston opened her closet to discover that a chest of gold coins worth as much as $5 million had vanished. When Jessica Kingston was 15, her father told her she had four choices apparently the number of suitors who had spoken to him about marrying her. According to written histories, John Ortell Kingston, father of the current leader, also encouraged his family members to marry other kin to improve their own bloodline. If they kill me, they kill me, he says. When Paul turned 21, he married Richaun Dye. Copyright 2023 Penske Business Media, LLC. Over 75 years, the Kingstons have amassed a fortune worth an estimated $300 million, but the operation skirts the edges of the law. deductible, Report a missed paper by emailingsubscribe@sltrib.comor calling801-237-2900, For e-edition questions or comments, contact customer support801-237-2900or emailsubscribe@sltrib.com. For that, she would have to be legally married to him. Home. The suit was filed against the groups leader Paul Eldon Kingston and 21 other members. Boys work its coal mine and stack boxes at Standard Restaurant Supply, a massive discount store. They were finally getting even. And it would be several years after that before he stole from his father for the first time. We will continue to do so. Those two unions happened in Colorado, where its legal to marry your cousin. [5][6][7][8] Members generally seek the blessing of parents and religious leaders before choosing to marry. Their divorce was finalized in July 2012 a little more than three years after they married. But Jessica knew the longer she waited to wed, the more likely she would have to become a polygamist and the more likely her husband would be far older than she was. The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time J.O. That includes the fraud within Washakie Renewable Energy as well as what the plaintiffs allege was a separate scheme by sect members to bilk a U.S. Department of Agriculture program to provide free lunches to child and adult day cares. After the chest of gold was stolen, suspicion among the clans leadership immediately fell on a group of rebellious teenagers who had left the cult a few years before. The statement also said that of the Kingston Group individuals who married under age 18 in the past 20 years, 95.1 percent remain married, 94.2 percent have earned a high school degree, and a third, most of them women, have graduated from a public college or university. We strongly encourage all members to strictly adhere to every legal guideline when operating their businesses including day cares and when applying for all need-based assistance, including financial aid for students. During his tenure Kingston has followed his father's practice of plural, child, and intra-family marriage. Jessica has begun working with Hope After Polygamy, a charity started by the cast of Escaping Polygamy and other former Kingston Group members to assist people leaving polygamous sects. Mafi followed Paul Kingstons instructions, the lawsuit states, and never again saw those funds.. They should refrain from this decision until they can be well informed to make a mature and thoughtful decision before entering into marriage.. Men rise in prominence by being obedient and pure of blood and by having large families that can produce a lot of money and workers for the group, the suit continues. Paul Kingston, the top man within the Davis County Cooperative Society, also known as the Kingston Group or The Order, is accused of overseeing what the lawsuit calls a scheme. Some former sect members, including two stars of the television show Escaping Polygamy," say girls are pressured to marry at the age most kids are learning to drive and reading Wuthering Heights.. He told the children they would all be applying for financial aid, enrolling at SLCC and majoring in business administration, the lawsuit cites Mafi as saying. But the constant fear has subsided. Its all political, Jessica said. Finding one wasnt difficult. He was usually off visiting one of his 30 or so wives, or checking on one of the clans many businesses, or in a backroom getting his muscles rubbed in preparation for one of his painful, 40-day fasts, a purification ritual that he endured in order to get closer to God. If that father says yes, the groom talks to the girl. She favors raising the legal marriage age to 18. She also is a star of "Escaping Polygamy." No recordings or photos were allowed during the ceremony. Depending on ones view, members of the Kingston Group either take care to follow marriage laws, or work to circumvent them. "A review of wedding certificates shows how the teen marriages are sanctioned at the highest levels of the Kingston Group. We want to hear it. If the case succeeds, the whistleblowers can collect perhaps millions of dollars from the damages or fines paid by the defendants. If Paul Kingston or the designee signs off, the groom next goes to the girls father. It begins with the potential groom. He trained the women how to rip off the government, a scheme the Order called Bleeding the Beast. If you would like the full family tree and I feel your request is legitimate I will email it to you. At clan gatherings, girls who were still in their teens danced with men old enough to be their uncles, whom they were sometimes forced to marry. He snapped the padlock on the first crate and began stuffing the silver ingots into duffel bags, lugging them back out to the waiting Honda. You had to be, like, a son of the prophet to know where it was.. He slept with a different one each night, in accordance with their ovulation cycles, and sometimes disappeared during lunch to have sex with a favorite. Exhibiting LGBTQ+ tendencies can indicate impure blood, according to the lawsuit. Our goal of an educated, well-informed population goes against the popular narrative for our culture and there is a concerted effort to keep this false narrative alive. Among those Kingston Group brides who marry as minors and for whom The Tribune was able to find birthdates, the average age was 16 years, 7 months and 12 days. During his tenure, Kingston has followed his father's practice of plural, child, and intra-family marriage. It was a wild place, says Scott Cosgrove, a former detective with the Box Elder County Sheriffs Office, who remembers the ranch as a broken-down spread, guarded by a feral pack of boys who patrolled the fence line from the back of a pickup armed with shotguns. Two of Hansen's daughters legally married when they were under the age of 18 to young men in the Kingston Group. On the surface, the operation is legit: From Salt Lake, the Order controls some 100 businesses spread out over the Western states, from a casino in California to a cattle ranch in Nevada to a factory that makes lifelike dolls in Utah. [4], Plural marriage is practiced by some members of the DCCS, and members make their own choice in who they marry. The other seven are brothers or sons of Paul Kingston. In Salt Lake County, for example, there were 45 marriages in which the bride or groom was 17 or younger, according to data from the county clerks office from Feb. 1, 2016, to April 10, 2018. Did the Utah Legislature do enough to save the Great Salt Lake? The lone man suing said three Order men raped him when he was 16 or 17 and that when he left the group and announced he was gay, was tracked down and severely beaten by a group of boys acting at the direction of the Order, the lawsuit alleges. Jessica said her husband was on a group text that went around listing girls or women who had not yet married with jokes about how old the females were getting. 210 King Sobhuza II: King of Swaziland (now Eswatini), lived 1899-1982, is thought to have had 70 wives. His followers erected a crude stone cross nearby in his honor, covered with inscriptions of the letter K (for Kingdom or Kingston). But mostly he talked about the history of the Order and his ancestors, the men who had started the clan. But we paid it all back.. Then one night, a clan member called and told him that the Order planned to kill him. As he talked to the woman who lived there, Luke Brown came out of the house, and his brother Scott soon joined him. The now-20-year-old said she and her husband have started a family of their own. (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Jessica Kingston claims she was groomed into choosing marriage at age 16 by her parents and the polygamous sect. Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune She said marrying at 16 mitigated the pressures U.S. society places on her to have statuesque looks and be immodest. Lawful marriage and the way it binds people together legally and financially, Hansen said, is seen as a way to keep the more rebellious girls in the Kingston Group. The Kingstons operate in a self-contained universe, completely cut off from the outside world. Snow says she chose to get married to escape an abusive living situation. The pressure became so intense DeRieux stopped going to dances. In the past, we have worked closely with DWS, DOE and financial aid counselors at local colleges and universities to ensure proper training and that all applications adhere to every guideline. He didnt have anyone to help him process what had just happened., Taking advantage of his status as a son of the prophet, Stephen began bending the rules even further. Paul Elden Kingston is an accountant and attorney who has served as the Trustee-in-Trust of the Davis County Cooperative Society (DCCS), a Mormon fundamentalist denomination,[2] since 1987. 03/01/2023 9:00 a.m. Police divers cut a path through the ice to reach the victims. Instead, he had walked away from the family three years earlier to make a life of his own. When he had finished, he walked toward Stephen, who was sitting on the tractor. The marriages, former followers say, can be used as a tool to keep girls in the Kingston Group, known among younger members as The Order. For their part, the brides sometimes see legal marriages as a way to avoid becoming polygamists later (and consequently being matched with a husband perhaps twice their age) or a means to escape their parents crowded households. Comparable graduation rates have been attained by our bachelors and advanced degree students when compared to the state of Utah and the U.S., despite an uphill battle of active discrimination against our students. The families of 19-year-old Stephen Smith who was rumored to be . Girls, many of them teen brides, answer phones at the Orders law office, bag groceries at its supermarket or tend to the clans many children. If you messed with one of them, you were messing with them all., When Stephen was nine, an accident at Washakie set in motion a chain of events that would eventually prompt him to leave the cult. Brothers John Daniel Kingston, the father of the girl now in state custody, is said to have 20 wives; the mother of the "M.N." is half sister. I love the Order. At age 15, Snow wanted out of the Kingston Group. Kingston taught his followers that they are the literal descendants of Jesus and one of his wives, who had come down to Earth to found a race of chosen people. Had Snow been a better behaved, more devout member of the Kingston Group, Hansen said, there may not have been a push to have her legally marry at 16. A sheriffs deputy traced the license plate of the Honda to a run-down house in a working-class suburb south of the city. When one of his favorite wives died, he missed her so much that he dug her up from her grave. In 2006 it was estimated that Paul Kingston had up to 40 wives (including two half-sisters of his), some of whom have up . I honestly didnt even know there was any gold until they accused me of taking it, he says. Its his father, the prophet, calling to coax his wayward son back into the fold. I dont think theyre organized crime in that regard, but the racketeering statute defines it as any conspiracy or pattern of illegal activity done in concert with others. A Tale of Two Chads: More Drama From Nineties Band Live. John Gustafson, a representative of the Davis County Cooperative Society, an affiliate of the Kingston Group, disputed the lawsuits claims. She's since left the marriage and wants the legal marriage age raised to 18. The parents of the 16-year-olds also completed a form granting their permission. 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