While the Kingston Group, founded in 1935, is not affilated with the FLDS, members practice a fundamentalist version of Mormonism that involves polygamy. They had sped off in a Honda sedan. My e-mail address; george@eaglefreeenterprises ,com . While all that is happening, the potential bride is supposed to have been praying about whom to marry. The Order stays as far away as possible from police, and this was like inviting them in your front door., With its vast wealth suddenly exposed to public view, the clan moved quickly to hush up the scandal. 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. She grew up in Woods Cross and hated The Order all her life, she said in a recent interview. It alleges sex trafficking, sexual battery and child abuse, and seeks a jury trial and unspecified damages. He told her he believed one did not need to practice polygamy to reach heaven. Or wed set traps and raise them as pets., In many ways it was an idyllic childhood, except for the fact that the ranch also doubled as a work camp for disobedient clan wives and rebellious kids. The couples wedding certificate says Stoddard officiated the ceremony April 26, 2008, in West Valley City. Those families have intermarried to the extent that half brothers and sisters are now marrying one another, as well as uncles. To get out of this s----y situation, I have to get into another s----y situation, said Kollene Snow, who married at 16 and is DeRieuxs full sister. 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. Andrea Johnson was buried on June 13, 1992, at the Bountiful Memorial Park. Copyright 2023 Penske Business Media, LLC. He thinks about his mom, and wonders if she misses him. The lawsuit describes crimes and issues within the Kingston Group that have no direct relationship to the student aid applications. This article appears in the June 23, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. She and her husband had four children with whom they share custody. He served one day in jail. Former and current members of the Kingston Group say that kids are taught from a young age they one day will need to pray about whom to marry. Girls are told they will need to pray to God so he might show them who their No. If I had done it, the Order probably would have killed me. Stephen didnt know what the law said he only knew that the people he loved were being abused and exploited by his own father. Stephen hangs up and drives home in silence. It begins with the potential groom. (Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Salt Lake Community College Redwood Road campus is pictured Thursday, Dec. 12, 2019. While the sect is headquartered in Utah, members will travel to Colorado to wed because cousin marriages are legal there. 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. Paul F Kingston. Paul passed away on month day 1973, at age 92 at death place, Oregon. 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. He became obsessed with homeopathic treatments and herbal remedies, teaching followers that through proper diet they could live to the age of a tree. When lightning struck a tree at the Home Place, he taught his followers that the tree had divine powers and was a gateway to heaven. Boys as young as 14 labored in the workshop. Their divorce was finalized in July 2012 a little more than three years after they married. To hide the scope of his organization, J.O. Thats when Nicole Mafi, one of Paul Kingstons daughters, says in the lawsuit she was called into a meeting of recent high school graduates to discuss going to college. One crime had been solved but the chest of gold stolen from Patty Kingstons closet remained a mystery. Members are primarily born into the. When people hear organized crime, they think of mobsters. Kent Johnson, a spokesman for the Davis County Cooperative Society (DCCS), which also is named as a defendant, said members are strongly encouraged to strictly adhere to every legal guideline when applying for financial aid. Besides, the mother said, the girl needed her husbands health insurance to treat her condition. Five of the women suing alleged they were coerced into marriage as minors and raped by their husbands. He went days at a time without eating, convinced it helped provoke visions, and believed that by the laying on of hands he could heal his followers from sickness and disease. It was all fun, Stephen recalls. If they are money-laundering or making money in support of polygamy and incest, then they probably meet the statute.. [4], Plural marriage is practiced by some members of the DCCS, and members make their own choice in who they marry. They are paid not in cash but in scrip, an arcane form of credit used by the Mormon pioneers that can only be redeemed at company stores. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. At Washakie, he forced clan children to decapitate cows with chain saws to toughen them up, and sometimes beat the children for some infraction of the Orders rules like forgetting to face the Home Place three times a day and pray. Within the clan, the pieces started to add up. When he noticed that the boys had stopped working, he became enraged. The Kingstons operate in a self-contained universe, completely cut off from the outside world. When Stephen was a boy, the clan would gather for the New Year in a warehouse in the city for its annual ritual: the numbering of the men. The lawsuit from Michaels and the Nelsons asserts the defendants are liable for up to $27 million in damages and another $20 million in penalties. But because they were the sons of the prophet, they got away with it., Stephen vehemently denies that he or his brothers had anything to do with the heist. Nor are youths from polygamous sects the only teens who marry in Utah. He died on 6-4-1998 at the Beckley Veterans Administration. Wed sleep on the chicken coop in the summer and shoot raccoons. We figured it was ours anyway, says Stephen, explaining that the clan hadnt paid the boys for bagging coal. When Rachel Young, a stern and humorless woman, got home, she discovered that several crates of silver in her basement had been pried open whoever had robbed the place had clearly been in a hurry and had left with only a small fraction of her silver. You could be such an asset to the Order., Trending It was a total spur of the moment thing, Brown says. Paul Valls's wife is Sharon Vallas. They belonged to the Order and had toiled in the cult for years. Two are nieces. 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. He picked fights at school, shot a teacher in the face with a water gun and refused to do homework or answer questions. And it would be several years after that before he stole from his father for the first time. Paul already had two wives, but he and Richaun were married in a secret ceremony at her parents house. Some former teenage Kingston Group brides acknowledge they werent forced to marry; they made a choice. A copy of the lawsuit also is available there, though no other filings in the case are. When one of his favorite wives died, he missed her so much that he dug her up from her grave. 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. Earlier in its history, the Kingston Group had plural wives under age 18. Mysterious cars followed his girlfriend, and he once came home to find that someone had rifled through his drawers. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. 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Paul Kingston is one of eight men named as defendants in the lawsuit. 12 Paul J. WILFONG was born on 4-13-1912 in Marlinton. The education figures he cited would be a few percentage points higher than the average for Utah as a whole, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The lawsuit was filed May 24 in Salt Lake Citys federal court by Mary and Bryan Nelson. I felt for his pulse, but he was already gone., That night, Paul Kingston arrived at the ranch. Another group of kids called the Lost Boys, who were kicked out of the polygamist cult the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, ended up on the streets of Las Vegas and Phoenix, some turning tricks for drugs like meth and heroin. But women who are disobedient and fail to bear children including because they miscarry face ostracism, the lawsuit claims. The 100 Best Albums of 2022. It wasnt forced, said the woman, who asked not to be identified because of stigmas that often come with being associated with a polygamous sect. Regardless, all those applying should do so legally.. 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. They threw away their possessions, donned matching blue overalls, and pitched canvas tents on a patch of land north of Salt Lake that would come to be known as the Home Place.. Very little is publicly known about her or their marriage but Paul shared a heartfelt Facebook about . Only the inner circle knew the hoard even existed, says Christian Kingston, a former Order member. After the boys were taken into custody, one of their first calls was to Stephen. While his dad was running the order from Salt Lake City, Stephen grew up on a cattle ranch called Washakie, near the Idaho border. Nevertheless, waves of audits of State taxes, Federal taxes, corporate taxes, DWS, SNAP, WIC and regulatory compliance in day cares among other things, have been levied against individuals and corporations with known or suspected ties to the DCCS. Four of those appear to be couples from polygamous groups. 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. 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. When a girl doesnt want to be a polygamist, that information is shared among boys and men in the sect. The DCCS is a financial cooperative established by his uncle Elden Kingston in 1935. Three of Kingston's 14 wives also are in the photo. Her husband, John Daniel Kingston, told his children to marry up, she said, meaning marry into a well-regarded family in the Kingston Group. But lots of people in the sect are already descended from that family, Hansen said; thats why there are so many cousin marriages in the Kingston Group. He trained the women how to rip off the government, a scheme the Order called Bleeding the Beast. J.O. As he talked to the woman who lived there, Luke Brown came out of the house, and his brother Scott soon joined him. Hopefully, the politician is leading a comfortable . Her own father David Kingston has 18 wives and around 200 kids. Knight was born in Salt Lake City, the sixth child of third-generation polygamists. Paul Elden Kingston (1959- ): Known as the "Watchman on the Wall" who claims to hear from God regularly, Paul is the son of John Ortell. Older teenagers were crammed five and six to a room, sleeping on the floors of trailers. 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