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. His most bizarre beliefs, though, concerned the occult. He charged across the field and started brutally beating Stephens cousin. The group also teaches its members that only those with so-called pure blood will survive the apocalypse, according to the lawsuit. ", "Girls in polygamous Kingston Group continue to marry as young as 15, records show, sometimes leaving Utah to marry cousins", "Inside 'The Order,' One Mormon Cult's Secret Empire", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Elden_Kingston&oldid=1136713473, This page was last edited on 31 January 2023, at 19:29. Members who have left in recent years say that changed after some of Paul Kingston's brothers were convicted of. He had yet to lose his hair, and thanks to his fanatical devotion to healthy food and alternative medicine, he had the ropy build of a well-toned athlete. Current members dispute those characterizations. With the Orders leaders taking so many wives for themselves, the clans younger men were often unable to find anyone to marry. Kingston had told gaming regulators in California. 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. Paul already had two wives, but he and Richaun were married in a secret ceremony at her parents house. The couples divorce became final in 2011. The ones they dont think they have to worry about, they dont push them as hard.. It was also around then that Stephen, at the age of 14, began to see the clan for what it really was. 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. He bragged that he had worn the same black shirt every day for a year. The woman who married in 2014 at age 16 and asked not to be identified is still with her husband. Women, meanwhile, allegedly gain status by being pure of blood and obedient, becoming the first wives of higher-ranking numbered men, and bearing many children. The Knight brothers werent afraid to fight, or to stand up to authority. All rights reserved. Paul F Kingston. 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. It alleges sex trafficking, sexual battery and child abuse, and seeks a jury trial and unspecified damages. The Mormon Church officially banned polygamy in 1890, and some of the defiant bands of fundamentalists who refuse to give up the practice have been pushed out of the city and into the desert, where they eke out an existence in rusted-out trailers and sprawling compounds. Home. Hansen, 50, in a recent interview, said she told her daughter that wanting to leave home was the wrong reason to get married. The relations are distant enough they wouldnt encounter any of Utahs prohibitions on marriage between siblings, first cousins or aunts/nephews and uncles/nieces. If they are money-laundering or making money in support of polygamy and incest, then they probably meet the statute.. The grift was exposed decades later, in the 1980s, when the clan paid a $350,000 settlement for swindling the government through welfare fraud. The boys also bought cigarettes wholesale through a small clan-owned market run by their older brother and sold them at school. To deaden his feelings of isolation, he started smoking a lot of pot and sitting around the house all day listening to country music. By our latest survey, the majority of DCCS college students were not using government funded financial aid, including many who would qualify if they had applied. I felt for his pulse, but he was already gone., That night, Paul Kingston arrived at the ranch. (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) (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. To go to Colorado, DeRieux said, she and her fianc drove to Price, where they jumped into a 15-passenger van carrying their parents, the other two sets of brides and grooms and their parents. 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.. 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. View Site J.O. Church leader Paul Kingston conducted the service and his brothers John Daniel and David were speakers. From the outside it seemed like a typical suburban home, offering few clues of the secrets that were contained inside. 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. So when her husband pushed for that daughter to marry, too, Hansen thought she was mature enough. Jessica Kingston wore a white dress. Did the Utah Legislature do enough to save the Great Salt Lake? sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. The two boys pulled into the driveway and shifted the green Honda into park. Andrea Johnson was buried on June 13, 1992, at the Bountiful Memorial Park. In the meantime, the police were closing in on the missing silver. When they arrived in Grand Junction, all three couples filled out the papers for a marriage license. Besides, the mother said, the girl needed her husbands health insurance to treat her condition. He served one day in jail. Cousin Carl E. Kingston, an attorney, is said to have a mere two wives. 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. Messages sent to Paul and David Kingston as well as representatives of the Latter Day Church of Christ, the Kingston Groups religious organization, and other named defendants in the lawsuit were not returned. Johnson said the Davis County Cooperative Society takes no position on the issue. According to people who have left the Order, the cult exploits its 2,000 members as virtual slave labor and hides profits from tax collectors. All rights reserved. When he was three, his mother led him into a building controlled by the clan and pointed out an intense man lifting weights in the gym. She is the fifth of her mothers 12 children. The plaintiffs argue a plan to defraud such well-known student aid benefits as Pell Grants and the Ford and Perkins loans began in 2004 or 2005. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. 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Paul married Frances G Chez Kingston. It includes a provision they obtain financial aid. Like other fundamentalists of that era, he believed the Mormon Church had lost its divine authority when it renounced polygamy in 1890, so he persuaded three other families to join him in establishing their own sect. The roof sagged, the carpet was worn, and the place reeked of cheap cologne. Boys as young as 14 labored in the workshop. He then pinned her on a bed, the documents say, and wouldnt let her call for help. Paul Kingston, they said, has 17 wives and nearly 50 children. The Tribune also found three marriages in Missouri, where, until a new law raising the marriage age takes effect Aug. 28, 15-year-olds can marry with a parents permission. The Kingstons operate in a self-contained universe, completely cut off from the outside world. This story has been shared 116,307 times. 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. Brother Ron Tucker, he would intone, come and get your number. According to the Orders interpretation of the Book of Revelations, only 144,000 numbered men will be allowed to rule in heaven under God. My e-mail address; george@eaglefreeenterprises ,com . 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. One day, for laughs, he and his half brother Ron Tucker stole some napalm from an Order army-supply store, drew lines of it in the street and lit it on fire as cars drove by. I dont really have too many friends, but the ones I do, I wouldnt trade for anything., Among Stephens friends were two of his cousins, Luke and Scott Brown. But 16- and 17-year-olds in Utah need only the consent of a parent to wed. Idaho, Colorado and Nevada, where the The Tribune also found Kingston Group marriages, have similar age and parental-consent requirements. Unlike other girls in the Order, Richaun was refined she didnt wear hand-me-downs, and at clan dances, a long line of boys waited to dance with her. Girls who reach their mid- and late teens can start to feel the pressure to wed. Jessica Kingston said when word gets out that a boy or young man has asked a girls father for permission to marry her, friends and family are walking up to that girl asking, Did you pray about him?. Jessicas father relented during the meeting and gave his approval for his daughter to marry her No. You could be such an asset to the Order., Trending 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. At 15, Snow ran away from home, wound up in a foster home and later was returned to her mother. Boys are taught that the prophet demands absolute loyalty and that they should be prepared to defend the clan. According to former members of the Order, decades of inbreeding have resulted in rampant birth defects throughout the family. Each daughter married one of their cousins, who also are pictured with their parents. During his tenure Kingston has followed his father's practice of plural, child, and intra-family marriage. A lawyer and an accountant by trade, Stephens father hardly looked like the sort of man who could command the unquestioned loyalty of thousands of followers. To her horror, all that remained was a ring of dust, marking the place where a chest of gold coins had once stood. You had to be, like, a son of the prophet to know where it was.. Its his father, the prophet, calling to coax his wayward son back into the fold. 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