Polygamy today is comprised of early Mormon polygamy descendants and these families are now interrelated by a factor impossible in monogamy. ("Doctrine & Covenants," Section 132, verses 55, 62-63), "Joseph Smith also testified an angel with a sword came to him many times and commanded him to practice polygamy or else he would lose his life. "For the first time, the faith-promoting stories about my great-grandfathers heroism for defying the federal government when they outlawed polygamy interested me. restricted in some polygamous sects, including FLDS groups in Colorado City, Arizona; Hildale, Utah; and West Texas, that force some of the young males to leave the communities . The corporation produces goods and services that are used by members, and sold or traded to other cooperatives and to the public. [1] Charles William Kingston, Autobiography, 2324; spelling and punctuation standardized. present a troubling scenario for law enforcement: these are crimes of a sexual nature committed in private in a closed society. A fourth to half of father-daughter and brother-sister offspring have mental or physical deficiencies. . Men and boys wore blue coverall-type suits tied with strings; women and girls wore plain blue denim dresses. Because I fell down this rabbit hole and now so do you all. Blood tests showed the infant and 25 other children from numerous women were fathered by the same man, leading to one of the largest welfare fraud-settlements in Utah history. on the history of the fundamentalist community. . " The Lard apparently should have done genetics 101. . The accusers describe a patriarchal doctrine known as The Law of One Above Another, which they claim designates everyone a rank in the groups hierarchy. LuAnn Kingston, a former member of the clan who in 1995 at age fifteen was forced to marry her first cousin, shared: The joke used to be that if you werent married by 17, you were an old maid.[5], Within the Kingston Group, the primary polygamists are the immediate Kingston family and heirs. 75.119.192.80 Sounds like I left a few out, he said after being reminded of how many children he had fathered in that family.[6]. "Rather than polygamy being about religion, Moore-Emmett believes that many polygamous marriages are about sex and power. Consanguinity also causes rare recessive disorders to mask as dominant. "Recovery from Mormonism - www.exmormon.org", http://www.lds-mormon.com/quinn_polygamy.shtml, http://www.i4m.com/think/polygamy/polygamy_summary.htm. The Kingston Clan is a polygamous group with an estimated 10,500 members. So many young people.'. . Most populations outbreed and so these lethal genes rarely match to cause any serious diseases. . He did not consider this lack of sons might be his genetic inheritance, not his multiple wives. . But that's like spitting in the ocean.'. . . "Today, six sons and two daughters of John Ortell and LaDonna have married at least 20 half-sisters, nieces and first cousins, giving birth to a family tree that twists and tangles, and, at times, withers with children born of genetic deficiencies. "Our ancestral destiny meant we might give birth to sons who would die at maturity or daughters who would carry the trait to the next generation of sons. For a man of God to be confined to one woman is small business. "Andrea's son, now 7, lives with his father, Jason Kingston--Andrea's half-brother--and Rosalind, his niece. . Surely, there were too many deaths. "The clan's other numerous incestuous couplings among consenting adults . Eventually, she admitted she had married her half-brother and given birth to three children. . David Kingston is alleged to have married his 16-year-old niece Mary Ann Nelson, who attempted to run away but was apprehended and beaten by her father, John Daniel Kingston. 'And when you talk about the public interest, you have to consider who pays for the consequences. However, Grant claims she endured years of sexual abuse by a half-brother as a child. FOX 13 spoke to the man who filed the IRS. . Some Kingston followers might justify their financial conglomerate by comparing it to the wealthy Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A small portion of the funds (less than 6%) were also used to purchase legitimate goods and services from businesses who provided them in "good faith". . "', "'Joseph Smith was also selecting for the "obedience gene." . This is inadequate information for purposes of establishing the true incidence of consanguinity within a family or community. [8], In the late 1990s, three members of the LDCJC faced scrutiny for entering into incestuous relationships. 'If you cross a Barlow and Jessop, you stand a high risk of getting this condition,' Tarby says. One of the most controversial splinter groups of Mormonism, the Latter Day Church of Christ, has been led by members of the Kingston family since it was founded in 1935. . . A member of a polygamist clan today was convicted of incest with his 16-year-old niece, who testified that she had been forced to become his 15th wife. "Joseph Smith Jessop and his first wife, Martha Moore Yeates, had 14 children. They have been known for systemic inbreeding, child sex abuse, physical abuse, child labor, and tax evasion. . "'I had never seen a patient with it,' Tarby says. The Co-op members practiced plural marriage and abided by a rigid hierarchy of leadership and deference. "It is possible that positive genetic traits could be passed along through human inbreeding. . [49] As part of the plea deal and restitution, the company forfeits rights to a number of assets including their bio-fuel plant in Plymouth, Utah. "Then, as generations of polygamous Kingston children have been taught, they demurred to questions about their father. . The Prophet Josephs priorities of missionary work, temple ordinances, proxy work for the dead, and feeding the poor appear to have been lost somewhere. . [17] That same year, Ardous Kingston Gustafson, a mother of four and founding Co-op member, was jailed on Christmas Eve when she could not produce membership lists that were to be used to target plural families for further arrest and harassment. He faces up to 30 years in. . The Kingston Group is believed to have a few thousand members, mostly in Utah and Idaho. I think most people are made aware of the problems caused by inbreeding (a nicer word than incest) when they are still young teenagers. [23][36] These relationships are defined as incestuous according to Utah's Criminal Code 76-7-102 (2021), which states: "Related person" means a person related to the provider or actor as an ancestor, descendant, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, or first cousin, and includes: (i) blood relationships of the whole or half blood without regard to legitimacy; (ii) the relationship of parent and child by adoption; and (iii) the relationship of stepparent and stepchild while the marriage creating the relationship of a stepparent and stepchild exists. 'All of a sudden [with] this one little baby, everything tightened up and she arched her back so hard her head was almost touching her toes,' Wyler says. Initially, she tried to conceal her marital relationship. Click to reveal This resulted in his excommunication from the LDS Church in 1929. "There is no doubt in the mind of any expert interviewed by 'New Times' that the practice of polygamy combined with inbreeding has fostered the spread of fumarase deficiency. "The baby, delivered at Johnson's home in 1983, was taken to Primary Children's Medical Center. The FLDS already has moved several hundred men, women and children to the compound, many of whom very likely carry the fumarase deficiency gene. [in order] to reduce competition for wives. . . 'Right now, we are just looking at the tip of the iceberg.'. I'd never heard of them, a polygamist, fundie cult where even 14 year olds could . "Several Kingston offspring of incestuous couplings also have been born without fingernails, a disease that could be linked to a number of genetically caused abnormalities, although an exact diagnosis is impossible without closer study of medical records. [Andrea] Moore-Emmett [author of 'God's Brothel: The Extortion of Sex for Salvation in Contemporary Mormon and Christian Fundamentalist Polygamy and the Stories of 18 Women Who Escaped'] contends that [in polygamy] incest, statutory rape, torture, physical abuse, forced marriages, and trafficking of girls is rampant. She says her parents, Merlin Barnum Kingston (John Ortell's brother) and Joyce Fransden, were uncle and niece. "'I tried to get people to come, but nobody would listen,' says the mother, who left the group and her marriage after her sons were diagnosed with dwarfism. Photocopy in authors possession. Because God loves that man, and because he honors his word. 5, p. 22, "Brethren, I want you to understand that it is not to be as it has been heretofore. . 11, p. 128, ". . And Jeffs so far has shown no indication that he is concerned about the increasing prevalence of fumarase deficiency children in the community, former FLDS member Isaac Wyler says. The girl's father and mother, Susan Nelson (one of John Daniel's many wives) are half-sister and brother. So, from the beginnings of Mormon Church history, we have LDS Elohim's hand of blessing placed upon the insidious institution of multi-wifing and forever-birthing. If such a test were developed, a community-wide screening program could be instituted that would identify those carrying the fumarase gene. Although the official stance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is against polygamy, several of the women's stories reveal that LDS leaders dismiss the deviant sects and blame the women who come to them for help. . The FLDS was formed by Mormons who refused to give up polygamy. . This seemed to apply in my own kindred because those of us who left Mormonism and married outsiders are less riddled with the deleterious genetic legacy than relatives who married within the ancestral Mormon gene pool. . 'So often when you have an uncle-niece, or half-brother-sister, you have a situation where abuse is going on,' Jorde says. "'They are in terrible shape,' says Dr. Kirk A. Aleck, director of the Pediatric Neurogenetics Center at St. Joseph's Hospital. . ". "52 years later, more than half of the 8,000 people . But in a 2News . Mormon Church presidents and "prophet"-leaders have blamed monogamy a host of terminal afflictions that have been delivered upon the world. But it must needs be done in mine own way; and behold this is the way that I, the Lord, have decreed to provide for my saints, that the poor shall be exalted, in that the rich are made low (D&C 104:16). "'My guess is this man had used some of these inbreeding practices in his herd so he was probably in the camp that believed superior genetics could be propagated in a particular line,' Green says. . At the time this inbreeding took place these prophets preached and practiced modern eugenic science, the science of controlling the traits of future populations through selective breeding for idealized traits like blond hair, blue eyes and tall stature. [The Lord] had to institute another New and Everlasting Covenant which he gave to another 25 year old boy on the highest mountain east of Bountiful on the first day of the year, 1935. . ", ("Understanding Polygamy," from "Humanists of Utah," at: http://www.humanistsofutah.org/2005/UnderstandingPolygamy_July-05.html). Nobody, from the police to [the governor], cares that these children are abused from conception to marriage.'. . "The children afflicted with fumarase deficiency from these three marriages include the grandchildren of Dan Barlow and his brother, the late Louis Barlow, and Merill Jessop, a top aide to fugitive prophet Warren Jeffs. . . . . (The Church lost its authority to give covenants.) In recent years, former members have lobbied for law enforcement to take action against the sect. My great-grandfather, like scores of English immigrants eager to escape a life of poverty, . states that '[t]he [Utah] state legislature is consistently 90% Mormon . . After two years of investigating, they did not find any welfare fraud. A seventh son, Hyrum Dalton Kingston, is a polygamist but has not married incestuously, according to ex-members. "Tarby believes the recessive gene was introduced by one of the community's polygamist founders. _____. Could my childish intuition that the adults and doctors lips were sealed against my questions involve family secrets; secrets relatives took to their graves rather than betray? '", (John Dougherty, "Forbidden Fruit: Inbreeding Among Polygamists Along the Arizona-Utah Border is Producing a Caste of Severely Retarded and Deformed Children," in "Phoenix New Times," 29 December 2005, at: http://www.childbrides.org/taxes_PNT_forbidden_fruit.html) "Tarby says the disease could begin to show up in children at Warren Jeffs' new FLDS headquarters . . Some of you may not believe this, but I not only believe it but I also know it. . 'Maybe it will just self-destruct,' historian Bistline says of the fundamentalist church he quit 20 years ago because of a dispute over religious doctrine and property ownership. . The Kingstons claim that Elden received a new dispensation is problematic in another way. _____, --Case Study in Mormon-Moored Mutation: Utah's Mormon Offshoot Kingston Clan. ", ("Mormon Polygamy: Frequently Asked Questions," at: http://www.i4m.com/think/polygamy/polygamy_summary.htm). [37], The Kingston family and other members of the LDCC have faced two lawsuits, one in 2006[38] and another in 2022[39] accusing members and the organization as a whole of sexual abuses, including pedophilia and underaged marriages, within their membership. "If female, they are married off to the few, powerful prominent males: incest is the fate of many teen-age girls. Second, that prophet organizes his followers into missionary forces that dispense the truth to all the world, utilizing the priesthood to perform saving ordinances. They can't sit up. That means the number of cases likely will grow. The Kingstons represent an intriguing branch on the Mormon fundamentalist tree. "Parents who share a common ancestor are consanguineous. Since the natural male-to-female ratio is roughly 50-50, the ratio must be manipulated so that there are more females than males for polygamy to work. Excerpts from the article "Understanding Polygamy," distributed by "Humanists of Utah": " . "Marriages among first and second cousins have been common for decades in the community, where religious doctrine requires men to have at least three wives to gain eternal salvation. "Throughout the world, most polygamy is exogamous, or breeding outside the group. "During this early period, polygamy was practiced secretly by the Mormon leadership, men who covertly preached and expanded polygamy while publicly deceiving the general Mormon population about the practice. 'And I've seen others that are totally laid out. The suit includes ten former members alleging the organization used marriages to "unlawfully make girls and their children religious martyrs and traffic them for sexual and labor purposes". "The few dissenters in the community say the serious genetic problems that are beginning to surface are an indication that the closed FLDS society could eventually collapse. "It's believed that more than half the residents carry the recessive gene. "Another problem in polygamy is a mans breeding years are expanded sometimes into his 80s by the taking of new wives. "Of even greater concern was the fact that the recessive gene that triggers the disease was rapidly spreading to thousands of individuals living in the community because of decades of inbreeding. "Genetics of Incest: Pre-eclampsia is a condition that can be traced genetically from one generation to the next and is prevalent among some Kingstons, Rugg says. . If male, some of these same 'worker bees' marry only once. Kingston Clan. . The girl, born to John Ortell and Isabell Johnson, was not the product of an incestuous marriage. breeding really functional? They offer no support, no exit route and no programs for the people trapped inside polygamy endeavoring to escape these closed polygamous communities or compounds. 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. [O]ver the first 50 years of Mormonism, a highly inbred hierarchy became even more inbred through their illegal marriage and childbirth practices. Performance & security by Cloudflare. KUTV When several businesses inside the Kingston polygamist empire, including Washakie Renewable Energy, was raided by federal agents Wednesday, officials where tight lipped. "Medical experts say the incidence of the disorder will increase because the FLDS community is refusing to accept recommendations to reduce the likelihood of producing babies with fumarase deficiency. . . . "Tarby says most of the children 'can say at least a word or two,' but that all of them 'have severe mental retardation' with IQs of less than 25. It is true that the LDS Church has collected tithes and offerings in the millions of dollars over the past decades. ", ("Understanding Polygamy," from "Humanists of Utah, an Incorporated Utah Non-profit Corporation Has a Mission to Promote Joyful Living, Rational Think)ing, and Responsible Behavior," July 2005, at: http://www.humanistsofutah.org/2005/UnderstandingPolygamy_July-05.html) For 5 episodes that aired on Viewpoint on Mormonism between 9/14-18, 2020, click these: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Interview with Doris Hanson Part 1 Part 2 By Eric Johnson Summary. Jeremy Kingston was sentenced to a year in prison in 2004 for taking LuAnn Kingston, his cousin and aunt, as his fourth wife in 1994; their relationship began when he was 24 and she was 15. But now that it was appearing in two children in the same family was an indication it was being spread by a gene that was getting passed to the children by their parents. Satan will try to stop the power of the Lord and that power is where the Lord has given his covenant of consecration and that is: to the Davis County Co-op of Bountiful, Utah. '90% of the community is related to one side or the other,' said Bistline, a former member of the sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. "It was . . Nearly all the Mormon founding families were relatives, so the first polygamists enjoyed relations to different degrees when the divine experiment began. . . Below are further horrific details of the Kingston clan's "God-given genetic calamity, brought to you courtesy of Joseph Smith's Mormonism, as reported in the "Salt Lake Tribune" article, "When Incest Becomes a Religious Tenet": ". Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more. Gallup Panel survey [conducted in August 2006] show[ed] that Americans are much more likely to believe most Mormons endorse practicing polygamy than to believe most Americans support it. . "The same right of marriage approval was wielded by John Ortell Kingston, who began the incestuous lineage. He estimates the test would . . . "'All my life, my family told me I had to marry a Kingston,' says Rugg. Jacob Kingston told prosecutors the company was capable of producing some amounts of biodiesel, but in no year did it ever produce more than 8.5 million gallons. "Fumarase deficiency began to manifest in the community when three sets of Joseph Smith Jessop and Martha Moore Yeates' great-grandchildren married each other. 3, p. 291, "I have noticed that a man who has but one wife, and is inclined to that doctrine, soon begins to wither and dry up, while a man who goes into plurality [of wives] looks fresh, young, and sprightly. . "'Polygamy leads to sexual predation, and that leads to genetic problems,' says . This practice has been attributed to "endogamous preference and the small size of the groups population" according to recent research from the University of California. "If both parents are descendants of polygamy, the children may be at even greater risk. "[52][46][53] In a recent lawsuit, ex-members allege that the WRE case was an example of the concept of "bleeding the beast." . . Only the FLDS prophet can arrange and perform polygamous marriages, and those marriages are taking place in a community in which almost everybody is related. Kingston began preaching polygamy amongst fellow members of the LDS Church and distributing pamphlets and the book he had co-written, Laman Manasseh Victorious: A Message of Salvation and Redemption to His People Israel, First to Ephraim and Manasseh. "15 years ago, a strange-looking child suffering from severe physical maladies and acute retardation was brought into the office of [pedatric neurologist] Dr. Theodore Tarby. . I owe my children and all children who risk becoming the next unwitting victims of this tragic genetic legacy the best information regarding the prevention of this lethal family inheritance that I can find. . Those unions fell within Utahs consanguinity restrictions and, if discovered, would be considered incestuous under the laws of the state. . All are retarded, the neurologist told Salt Lake City television station KSL-TV. Two weeks after is excommunication, Kingston had a dream wherein he believed he was visited by Jesus Christ and God the Father. Isaac Wyler, another lifelong Colorado City resident who was excommunicated from the FLDS in January 2004. "Recently, another cousin fathered a child born with spinal bifida, inherited paralysis, an anomaly related to nephritis. As found in: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Factional breakdown: Mormon fundamentalist sects, "Unlikely whistleblower helps uncover alleged half-billion tax scam by secretive polygamist sect members", "Inside 'The Order,' One Mormon Cult's Secret Empire", The Primer, Helping Victims of Domestic Violence and Child Abuse in Polygamous Communities, "Plural Marriage and Mormon Fundamentalism", "John Ortell Kingston (Elden's Brother) Leads 1948-87", "Patterns of Polygamy Davis County's Kingston clan - County's polygamy roots run deep", "Kingston pleads guilty to incest charge", "Incest could be behind probe of Kingston family", "2021 Utah Code:: Title 76 - Utah Criminal Code:: Chapter 7 - Offenses Against the Family:: Part 1 - Marital Violations:: Section 102 - Incest -- Definitions -- Penalty", "New allegations of abuse in the polygamous Kingston family", "Utah polygamist sect accused of indoctrination, rape and child marriage", "As trial nears end, critics of polygamous towns wonder whether verdict will matter", "Polygamists are urged to make public statement", "Shurtleff: Child bride polygamous marriages appear to have stopped", "No longer performing child-bride marriages? Consanguinity causes aggregate clusters of deleterious genes to collect in families, which then express themselves as rare recessive disorders like nephritis, cystic fibrosis, biliary artesia, albinism, short stature and many others. Isaac Wyler, a former FLDS member who was excommunicated from the church . Once a baby is born with the condition, Aleck says, 'You really can't treat the underlying disorder.' "Experts say the number of children afflicted in the FLDS community is expected to steadily increase as a result of decades of inbreeding between two of the polygamous sect's founding families--the Barlows and the Jessops. ', "Wyler says he has seen some fumarase deficiency children who can walk, but others can barely move and spend their entire lives prone. . Rome became the mistress of the world, and introduced this order of monogamy wherever her sway was acknowledged. Interview with the owner of Desert Tech: The son of Paul's sister Rachel herself a daughter of Ortell and LaDonna Kingston [Nick] Young was the only current member of the Kingston clan, out of the many contacted for this story, who consented to a live, on-the-record interview. Elden passed away from cancer in 1948 and was succeeded by his brother John Ortell Kingston (commonly known as Ortell). Elden theorized that living the law of consecration was still required, and he set forth to establish his own united order organization. Breeding within, as Mormons did--endogamous polygamy--is virtually never practiced. John Gustafson, a representative of the Davis County Cooperative Society, an affiliate of the Kingston Group, disputed the lawsuits claims. The man's response was, "Up here, we are all related," Tarby says. "Sterility is another consequence of consanguinity and the evidence of many sterile polygamous wives is overwhelming. "These groups are white supremacists and inbreeding is an essential doctrine in keeping the bloodline pure. WRE has since become defunct. The trial of the man, David Ortell Kingston . The children who can't walk, the medical experts say, have most likely suffered strokes during severe seizures. People most at risk likely lived and married within the same small communities their ancestors founded. . thus marking the first time news media reported this human and civil rights nightmare accurately since the 1850s. Polygamy would have afforded the opportunity of producing from that consecrated fatherhood and motherhood the improved type of man the world needs to reveal the highest possibilities of the race, that the day of the super man might come, and with him come also the redemption and betterment of the race.'. Now, let's examine how "God-ordained" Mormon polygamy has wreaked unholy genetic havoc on its faithful followers: --Case Study on Polygamous Mormonism's Genetic Disease Striking Home: The Linda Walker Story. died of multiple sclerosis, also leaving a family of small children behind. . "The genetic defect has been traced back to one of the community's founding patriarchs, the late Joseph Smith Jessop, and the first of his plural wives, according to medical literature, the Mormon Church genealogy database and residents of the community familiar with Jessop and Barlow family histories. 'Remember how Hitler was trying to breed a perfect race?' They maintain a secretive but powerful presence in Utah's Salt Lake Valley, and their estimated 7,500. . Doctrinally, members of the LDCJC try to adhere to the teachings of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. . The stage was set for the appearance of the rare disease when their 12th child, Martha Jessop, married her second cousin, John Yeates Barlow, in 1923, according to LDS genealogy data and Colorado City historian Ben Bistline. If both parents carry the gene, the likelihood that their offspring will be affected by the disease or become carriers of the gene greatly increases, medical experts say. 'If you stop the sexual predation, you stop the genetic problem as well. In fact more than half of today's Klans formed in the last three years. [N]ew disease classifications belong at the door of the Mormon Church leadership. "If you look in the literature, you won't find another dozen cases in the world that have been reported," says Tarby.