. 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. "Dr. Tarby, who routinely treats fumarase deficiency children at a state-funded clinic in Flagstaff, says, 'They are funny-looking kids [with] biggish heads and coarse, thick features.' [11] Some members had begun the practice of plural marriage years before the establishment of the cooperative. "Her book . This is a rare disorder and medical descriptions of trisome infants are too dreadful to describe here. ", (Greg Burton, "When Incest Becomes a Religious Tenet: Practice sets 1,000-member Kingston clan apart from other Utah polygamous groups," in "The Salt Lake Tribune," 25 April 1999, at: http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy25.html She says her parents, Merlin Barnum Kingston (John Ortell's brother) and Joyce Fransden, were uncle and niece. "Dr. Theodore Tarby has treated many of the children at clinics in Arizona under contracts with the state. ', "The ultimate goal of the breeding program, Wyler says, is to create the perfect race. 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. The Southern Poverty Law Center recognizes the Kingston clan as an " incest and white supremacy " group for its practices outlined in Escaping Polygamy, which include teaching children to not associate themselves with non-white people and, as mentioned by the lawsuit, marrying underage children off to family members of The Order. Thanks for signing up! [O]ver the first 50 years of Mormonism, a highly inbred hierarchy became even more inbred through their illegal marriage and childbirth practices. . "The only long-term solution to the health crisis is for Barlows and Jessops to have children with spouses from outside the polygamist community. 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. "Genetic testing confirms that there is a high prevalence of various birth defects in polygamous populations. 13:1). Re: Polygamy's Patriarchy-Poisoned Bloodline: The Genetic Catastrophe That Has Sprung from Joseph Smith's "Divine" Breeding Program of Mormon Mutation . Young is the owner of Desert Tech, a Utah gun manufacturer. 'They have the authoritarian structure necessary to keep this from happening, but I don't think they have the advanced thinking,' Aleck says. [31][32][33] During this time, some non-members and ex-members began claiming the practice stemmed from theories of genetic purification held by past leaders. . The records of the marriages sealed at the Nauvoo Temple before the general exodus to Utah in the 1840s, may be the most important ones of all; yet, these are . . The Kingstons claim that Elden received a new dispensation is problematic in another way. That leads to problems." . Nearly all the Mormon founding families were relatives, so the first polygamists enjoyed relations to different degrees when the divine experiment began. "'My mother should not have produced another baby," says Rugg, also Isabell and John Ortell's daughter and the baby's full sister. 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. . . "Tarby says members of the community made it clear that neither choice was acceptable. But [FLDS members] don't think of it as sexual predation. The brother missionaries have been in the habit of picking out the prettiest women for themselves before they get here, and bringing on the ugly ones for us; hereafter you have to bring them all here before taking any of them, and let us all have a fair shake. . "In the FLDS community, marriages with cousins and other relatives are common, Bistline said. However, Grant claims she endured years of sexual abuse by a half-brother as a child. In the l950s, research doctors thought we were one of the few families in the world with this form of nephritis, known as Alports syndrome. Charles Zitting (one of Lorin C. Woolleys High Priest Apostles) introduced Kingston to plural marriage, causing Kingston to be cut off from the Church in 1929. "'All my life, my family told me I had to marry a Kingston,' says Rugg. . Even the few highly educated people there . 'I said, "You're married to somebody you're related to. . 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. During the 1940s, Ortell worked on a dairy farm owned by the Co-op at Woodscross, Davis County, Utah, where he reportedly developed theories on genetics, theories he later decided could be used to purify his own family pedigree. Never miss a story. "Tarby said the victims require constant care from parents and close relatives. "Although it is a felony under Utah law for close relatives to have sex, only one Kingston--John and LaDonna's fifth son, David Ortell--has been criminally charged with incest. According to Mormonism's top leaders: "Since the founding of the Roman empire monogamy has prevailed more extensively than in times previous to that. 'And I've seen others that are totally laid out. . . 100 years later, eugenics is a discredited science, yet some followers still believe. Kingston members today generally claim that keys were received anew from heavenly messengers directly to Elden in 1935, although it appears he left no formal testimony to that effect. "John Ortell Kingston was the first Kingston to experiment with incest, marrying and bearing children with two half-sisters and two nieces, according to numerous ex-members of the clan. . 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. . "I remembered the studies conducted on my brother and I as children at the University of Utah . "If both parents are descendants of polygamy, the children may be at even greater risk. "'It makes you sick; it turns your stomach,' she says. For a more detailed view the the Kingston's historysee Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism: The Generations After the Manifesto (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2006). "There is no cure for the disease, which impedes the body's ability to process food at the cellular level. Yet, this practice may hide the actual genetic kinship and can further exacerbate genetic problems. . . Cases of fumarase deficiency have shown up in the FLDS communities in Colorado City and Hildale, and doctors believe that the incidence of the condition in these communities will increase in coming generations. "'They are in terrible shape,' says Dr. Kirk A. Aleck, director of the Pediatric Neurogenetics Center at St. Joseph's Hospital. 'Warren Jeffs is also trying to breed a perfect race.'. "Genealogists and especially epidemiologists must be scrupulous in identifying all the wives and children of any polygamist man. "Fumarase deficiency is caused by a lack of the fumarase enzyme, an essential component in a biological process called the Krebs cycle, which converts food into energy within each cell. "A few years later [my cousin's] sister . "Farm Roots of Incest: Marriages in the Kingston clan must be sanctioned by [the] current head of the church . Bearing in mind I'm not American and have only a vague knowledge of Mormonism, a video came across my youtube from a former member of the Kingston clan/the order and wow is this terrifying. [9][34], Active members and a recent independent research article by a professor from Santa Clara University have attributed the practice to "endogamous preference and the small size of the groups population". Kimball. . While his children and wife initially resisted his new religious position, they eventually joined him in asking their names to be removed from LDS Church records. . . . The Kingstons are a Mormon splinter group, founded in the 1930s by Mary's great-uncle Elden. . _____. . . At least six of Merlin's incestuously conceived children in turn married half-siblings, couplings that subsequently produced children with various deformities, says Rowenna Erickson, an ex-member who left her polygamous husband. . . . Over the past decades, the Kingston Group has maintained extreme secrecy while developing an extensive cooperative system, with wealth in at least 50 corporations in Utah and scattered across the West. "When asked, a little boy and girl at the home acknowledged who their mother is. Members' financial holdings are believed to include: a 300-acre (1.2km2) dairy farm in Davis County; a 3,200-acre (13km2) farm in Tetonia, Idaho; a coal mine in Emery County;[24] 1,200 acres (4.9km2) in Terreton, Idaho; a cattle ranch and a discount store; Desert Tech Firearms; a grocery store; and a restaurant supply in many western cities including Tucson, Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, Boise, and Portland. died of multiple sclerosis, also leaving a family of small children behind. The two Kingston brothers and their business partner, Lev Dermen, are in jail awaiting trial, scheduled to start in July and last six weeks. They purportedly have 10 children, the girl told police. They are lucky if they can even move their head and eyes a little bit.'. I'd never heard of them, a polygamist, fundie cult where even 14 year olds could . . "If you look in the literature, you won't find another dozen cases in the world that have been reported," says Tarby. [14] Some of their secrecy might be attributed to a fear of arrest for living in plural marriages, as had happened in 19591960 when being investigated by the Davis County Grand Jury, which some members claimed was organized by LDS Apostles Mark E. Peterson and Spencer W. . Elden received the covenant of consecration and also the plan of temporal salvation.[2]. . ", (Bruce, R. McConkie,'Mormon Doctrine,' 2nd ed., under "Plural Marriage" (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, Inc., 1966], p. 578) She suffered from. Even if a genetic screening test were available, Wyler says, Jeffs would have to be cautious about how he allowed it to be implemented. _____, --Inbreeding for the Lord: the Mutative Aftermath of LDS-"Inspired" Polygamy Among Mormonism's Doctrinal Adherents. Family members attribute the defects to the advanced ages of the mother and father -- he was 64, she was 45. 'And is that religion popular in heaven?' . He believed he had superior bloodlines.' The organized Ku Klux Klan movement saw a boost in its membership in 2017. Moore-Emmett suggests that the heavily Mormon Utah government is unduly tolerant of polygamy and reluctant to acknowledge the abuses of many polygamous families. The 1996 Utah Legislature approved first-cousin marriages, only after age 65, or age 55 if the couple cannot conceive children. [13][verification needed], The Latter Day Church of Christ is based in Salt Lake City, Utah, with a presence in Bountiful, Utah. [I]t appears that Joseph Smith Jessop and his first wife also passed on the rare genetic disorder fumarase deficiency. . 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. This story has been shared 112,868 times. As bad as this past is, the mounting evidence is far worse. 'And yet nobody wants to do anything about it. [1] Charles William Kingston, Autobiography, 2324; spelling and punctuation standardized. Outwardly, she appeared to have no sex organs. . J. Ortell Kingston aggressively pursued a financially-expansive agenda for the Davis County Cooperative Society Inc.[25] in the hopes of improving the financial condition of his followers. . "In May, the girl said she was belt-whipped by her father inside a Kingston-owned barn in Box Elder County for fleeing the marriage, and was abandoned in the home of another of John Daniel's wives. Since most Kingston children are born in homes under the scrutiny of trusted and secretive family midwives or clan leaders, documentation of medical abnormalities is rare, but not unprecedented. [21] Over the past 25 years, many members have become college-educated and live in middle-to-upper-middle-class homes throughout their communities. [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. "'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. "The clan's other numerous incestuous couplings among consenting adults . 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. . 'The downside is that if you don't start with good genetics, and if there is baggage in the genes of the individual, inbreeding will uncover that baggage. Asserting that 'the attitude between Mormons and Mormon fundamentalist polygamists is that of kissing cousins with more similarities than differences.' In the 1940s and 50s, Kingston followers designed and wore unique outer garments, the wearing of which led other people to refer to them as blue-coats. Men and boys wore a blue coverall-type suit tied with strings, while women and girls wore plain blue dresses. Paul continued to practice his fathers ideas regarding intra-family marriages. on the flat hay fields that stretch from the edge of Woods Cross to the crusty shores of the Great Salt Lake, that John Ortell Kingston studied the genetics of in-line breeding. . The couple had lived together since the age of 7, when the mother of the woman's half-brother died. soon . My great-grandfather, like scores of English immigrants eager to escape a life of poverty, . "'Incest as a policy or routine practice is rare,' says Melvin Williams, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan and a leading expert in the study of kinship systems. . Click to reveal . Men and boys wore blue coverall-type suits tied with strings; women and girls wore plain blue denim dresses. He tells community residents that they should undergo genetic screening before marriage, but they've ignored the suggestion, Tarby said. Among the participants was Charles W. Kingston. The accusers also claim that the group arranged child marriages so that girls would become pregnant and beholden to their husbands and the religious sect. To date Mormons have only paid lip service to stopping polygamy. "'We have and will have a continual output of children with this condition,' Tarby says. . . Women and girls, after theyre married, submit to their husbands and men answer to higher-ranked men, the suit alleges. ". : About half of the 8,000 people living in the towns are blood relatives of two of the founding families that settled in the 1930s on the desolate high desert plateau against the base of the Vermillion Cliffs. . . . Early persecution seems to have conditioned Kingston leaders to maintain the utmost secrecy, but third generation officers seem to use ignorance as a tool to enhance control of their followers, especially of women. . Eldens solo experience of receiving the priesthood keys and authority is truly singular and contrasts the pattern previously given by the Lord for important priesthood conferrals that require more than one witness. . He prepared urine samples and sent them to the University of Colorado Science Center's Dr. Steve Goodman, a professor of pediatrics who runs a laboratory that detects rare genetic diseases. "Then, as generations of polygamous Kingston children have been taught, they demurred to questions about their father. . . He faces up to 30 years in. Source: Twitter Jessica with her husband and three daughters. Performance & security by Cloudflare. They are coming out of polygamous communities proliferating in Utah because Mormons are unable to face their history or follow sound marriage and childbirth practices. [32] He was arrested and pleaded "no contest" to the charge of child abuse and served seven months in jail. "Nearly everyone in Colorado City, Arizona, and the adjacent town of Hildale, Utah, was a member of a fundamentalist Mormon sect that practices polygamy and had long encouraged multiple marriages between close relatives. The girl's father and mother, Susan Nelson (one of John Daniel's many wives) are half-sister and brother. "Including Utah, 37 states outlaw first-cousin marriage. Still, if children are caught up in an abusive or incestuous situation, Williams would encourage policing. The Kingston Group is believed to have a few thousand members, mostly in Utah and Idaho. Children are allowed to attend public school and many go on to college. refuse to accept advice from any outsider, including doctors such as Tarby, who has treated their children for years. . "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. Initially, she tried to conceal her marital relationship. http://www.azcentral.com/health/news/articles/0209PolygamyBirthDefect09- http://www.childbrides.org/taxes_PNT_forbidden_fruit.html, http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy25.html. 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. "The widespread presence of the fumarase deficiency gene in the bloodlines of the founding families of Colorado City is going to make reaching any such goal extremely difficult. "This great-grandfather married two sisters which meant the 22 known children were double cousins or as genetically similar as brother and sister. [21][26], The Latter Day Church of Christ is based on a belief in Jesus Christ and the restoration of his gospel in these latter days. . They maintain a secretive but powerful presence in Utah's Salt Lake Valley, and their estimated 7,500. One recent morning [John Ortell's niece and third wife, Mary Gustafson] defended her complicity in arranging her daughters' marriages to their half-brothers, sons of John Ortell and LaDonna. The baby survived, but has cerebral palsy. "Some genes linked to conditions like microcephaly and dwarfism are 'autosomal recessive,' and are found among the 22-linked pairs of chromosomes that do not include the X and Y sex chromosomes, says Lynn Jorde of the University of Utah's Eccles Human Genetics Institute, a leading genetics research center. shocking stuff AFAIK it's quite contrary, for example MENA / Pakistan people very often marry 1st cousins. Fear began to overwhelm me, for the future, and for my own son. "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. "Of the Kingstons, Williams says: 'There is not much you can do about them. Much of what we have reviewed appears frivolous and unfounded, Gustafson said in an emailed statement. "'They claim to be the chosen people, the chosen few,' Bistline said. "Rather than polygamy being about religion, Moore-Emmett believes that many polygamous marriages are about sex and power. The FLDS was formed by Mormons who refused to give up polygamy. [w]omen do not have the freedom to consider how often she can give birth and maintain her health. hello "Farm Roots of Incest: Marriages in the Kingston clan must be sanctioned by [the] current head of the church . "By the late 1990s, Tarby and his team had discovered fumarase deficiency was occurring in the greatest concentration in the world among the fundamentalist Mormon polygamists of northern Arizona and southern Utah. [22][23] Currently the group claims that although different skillsets bring different financial outcomes, there is no homelessness within the DCCS, and internal programs exist for those experiencing financial poverty.[2]. "When ancestors are revered as prophets and kings, it is difficult to admit or examine the possibility of this legacy. . . . [40] In 2009, the then-Attorney General of Utah, Mark Shurtleff, claimed that child marriages within polygamous societies in Utah, such as the Latter Day Church of Christ, had "effectively stopped". And it is my purpose to provide for my saints, for all things are mine. In the revelation, the Lord commands him to take virgins 'an hundredfold in this world' for the purpose to 'multiply and replenish the Earth' so 'they may bear the souls of men.' . That means the number of cases likely will grow. . 15, p. 227, -Kimball, "Journal of Discourses," vol. Kingston was able to name only nine of his thirteen children by a second woman, Rachael Ann Kingston. People most at risk likely lived and married within the same small communities their ancestors founded. Jeffs is following a long-established practice -- started by Smith 170 years ago -- of excommunicating those who do not strictly adhere to church leaders' commands. "Warren Jeffs, like Joseph Smith before him, has emphasized the importance of obedience among members of the church. [7] Upon the creation of the LDCJC, most members of the DCCS became members of the church and most retain dual membership in both organizations to this day. ", -Apostle Heber C. Kimball, "Journal of Discourses," vol. Precisely where Elden obtained valid priesthood authority is a matter of dispute. "If descendants of polygamy do not look critically at the ideas of their ancestors, Utah children may be increasingly at risk. "It is Moore-Emmett's belief that the LDS Church who started polygamy in this country should take responsibility and provide financial aid and other resources for those polygamous families who have been abused. She's worked for lawyers who brought these cases to light and needed help with mormon terminology and ward politics workings. . . In fact, the leaders of the Co-op just seem to be getting richer and the poor get essentially ignored. BungieBungie.netBungieBungie The notoriety will just make them zoo specimens. "Some fumarase deficiency children, he says, develop a small degree of motor skills over time: 'They don't remain infantile their entire life. [8][3] There are approximately 3,500 members,[9] some of whom are known to practice polygamy. "'They are discouraging any new blood," historian Bistline says. The Kingstons are members of the Davis County Cooperative Society or the Kingston Order, which practices polygamy. ". 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": ". The Kingston family first embraced polygamy around 1931 when, according to author Max Anderson, Charles W. Kingston helped produce a pamphlet that contained a version of Lorin C. Woolley's claims that former LDS Church President John Taylor had set aside a select group of men to carry on polygamy even as the church publicly disavowed the practice. Articles of Incorporation of the Davis County Cooperative Society, 7 February 1941. . 'They don't believe anything written about Colorado City [by outsiders, even medical experts] carries much truth,' Tarby says. Consanguinity also causes rare recessive disorders to mask as dominant. John Gustafson, a representative of the Davis County Cooperative Society, an affiliate of the Kingston Group, disputed the lawsuits claims. . . I think most people are made aware of the problems caused by inbreeding (a nicer word than incest) when they are still young teenagers. . From the previously-cited article, "Understanding Polygamy": "The polygamous Kingston family professes that their genealogy line traces back to Jesus Christ, and so they possess holy blood. But in a 2News . Assets are generally estimated to be in the range of $200 million, although one Colorado competitor gave an even more stratospheric guess, pegging the clan's wealth at $11 billion. We've received your submission. Early polygamy was rife with incestuous and eugenic ideas and practices as well. . [10], According to his autobiography, Charles W. Kingston became disenchanted with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in 1926 because it abandoned plural marriage. Naming a father could expose the truth, unveil secrets of paternity and subject the clan to further scrutiny from those who don't approve of incest. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. . 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. 'They are functioning way below their chronological age.'. And her ex-husband's parents, Merlin and Carolyn Kingston, were uncle and niece. Their brains, he says, 'are strangely shaped' and are frequently missing large areas of brain matter that has been replaced by water. ", -Apostle George A Smith, "Journal of Discourses," vol. Kingston Clan. Some of these marriages will include parents who both are carriers of the fumarase deficiency gene, making it certain that more children will be afflicted with the disease. Many members of the fundamentalist community don't even know it's occurring. The group has drawn legal attention before. This is a humane coping strategy devised to deal with a dilemma that devastated a woman taught from birth her only value was in the number of children she bore for the Kingdom of God. The FLDS already has moved several hundred men, women and children to the compound, many of whom very likely carry the fumarase deficiency gene. "The Kingstons are among a small number of family groups in the world who marry closer than first cousins on a regular basis. Not one defect, but many. . "', "'Joseph Smith was also selecting for the "obedience gene." "Another problem in polygamy is a mans breeding years are expanded sometimes into his 80s by the taking of new wives. . This resulted in his excommunication from the LDS Church in 1929. . It is the power of God through the law or covenant of consecration given to Brother Elden in 1935. '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. requote from Steve's excellent post ! Well, law enforcement often tends to look the other way in cases like polygamy, unless specific reports reach the agencies. Tarby asked them to bring the girl to him for an examination. This lack of information upset me as a child when to my fervent, 'Why?'