is the kingston clan still active is the kingston clan still active

. Shuvrajit Das Biswas. But residents who are aware of fumarase deficiency fear that the number of children afflicted with the disease will indeed increase. requote from Steve's excellent post ! . . "Another of Rugg's full sisters, Andrea Johnson, died in 1992 of complications of pre-eclampsia, a condition of pregnancy that was not treated until after the young girl, swollen with toxic fluid, was rushed to the emergency unit at University Hospital. While Charles W. Kingston was the first to oppose the Church, the primary mover in the Kingston Group was his son Elden. "This gene cluster effect happens when people with common ancestors marry and bear children. "Fast-forward . 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. Connie Rugg, one of Ortells plural wives remembered: [Ortell Kingston] experimented inbreeding with his cattle and then he turned to his children.[4] Ortell desired to perfect his own bloodline and implemented practices that encouraged marriages of close relatives. I hate to talk like this about my own genealogy,' Wyler says, 'but, literally, they are keeping all the breeding stock--the women, the [strictly faithful] men--and weeding out the disobedient men. Never miss a story. . As people age the chances of children inheriting mutant genes increases. According to Kingston teachings, this scripture should not be taken too literally, and all of the efforts commenced through Joseph Smith came to a dead halt in 1934, thereby necessitating Elden Kingston to initiate a new dispensation. 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. In recent years, former members have lobbied for law enforcement to take action against the sect. . 'I didn't dare talk about it,' she says. As a symbol of their renunciation of worldly goods, the outer clothing contained no pockets in which possessions could be carried, although later an inside pocket was provided for the sanitary measure of carrying a handkerchief. . . "In 1996, the now 31-year-old Kingston mother of two slow-growing children sought explanations at Primary Children's Medical Center. It is true that the LDS Church has collected tithes and offerings in the millions of dollars over the past decades. Sally Kingston, a wife of one of the brothers, and. . . Accordingly, Elden became the first prophet of the Kingston Group and established the Davis County Cooperative Society. . . . _____. . . [50][51], Davis County Cooperative leadership and members swiftly condemned the fraudulent behavior stating that "[Jacob] broke from tradition in many ways" and stressing "to members and non-members alike that this behavior is not in line with our beliefs or principles." . 'Warren Jeffs is also trying to breed a perfect race.'. Elden passed away from cancer in 1948 and was succeeded by his brother John Ortell Kingston (commonly known as Ortell). But rather than amassing a fortune for the sake of accumulating wealth or to simply sustain a few selected leaders, donations flow into the Church coffers and out again to provide financial support for the accomplishment of the Churchs responsibilities regarding missionary work, temple work, and providing for physical welfare needs. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use Indeed, regardless of facing crushing federal government opposition to polygamous inbreeding, true-blue Mormons remain convinced that you can't keep a good man of God down To them, polygamy will be coming back some day, with sizable numbers of the faithful flock confident that its eugenic genetics will return by order of Joseph's Jesus. One nurse confided, 'We see too many trisome l3 and l8 babies.' The Kingstons are a Mormon splinter group, founded in the 1930s by Mary's great-uncle Elden. "John and Charles' brother, Merlin Barnum Kingston, married and had children with four nieces and a half-sister, say ex-members, including one of his own daughters. . mating in a way that increases genetic diseases, that the public ends up supporting, it becomes a matter of public interest.'. [32] He was arrested and pleaded "no contest" to the charge of child abuse and served seven months in jail. One outspoken Mormon matriarch who attended the same Sunday meeting for 50 years commented about the health of the polygamous descendants versus the monogamous descendants, 'You see it in the obituaries. "Tarby says the disease could begin to show up in children at Warren Jeffs' new FLDS headquarters . As bad as this past is, the mounting evidence is far worse. it is the only popular religion there,", -The Prophet Brigham Young, "Deseret News," 6 August 1862, "This law of monogamy, or the monogamic system, laid the foundation for prostitution and the evils and diseases of the most revolting nature and character under which modern Christendom groans, . From the article, "Mormon Polygamy: Frequently Asked Questions": "[Mormon] Church founder, Joseph Smith, said he received a revelation from God, which is still canonized Mormon scripture as Doctrine and Covenants Section 132. "If descendants of polygamy do not look critically at the ideas of their ancestors, Utah children may be increasingly at risk. "Of all the arguments against incest, says Jorde, the likelihood that genetic abnormalities will be passed to succeeding generations is the most persuasive. "Every person carries some lethal genes. ", -Apostle Heber C. Kimball, "Journal of Discourses," vol. The Kingstons represent an intriguing branch on the Mormon fundamentalist tree. A brief review of the accomplishments of the Co-op produces an impressive spreadsheet with assets in excess of $200 million. 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. . By the time Joseph Smith Jessop died in September 1953, he already had 112 grandchildren, the majority of them directly descended from him and Yeates. During the 1920s, hundreds of dissenters from the LDS Church gathered into specific groups across the Wasatch Front. . . 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. Because I fell down this rabbit hole and now so do you all. A seventh son, Hyrum Dalton Kingston, is a polygamist but has not married incestuously, according to ex-members. 'We do know there are biological hazards. . Because God loves that man, and because he honors his word. [47][48] The remainder of the transactions (over 94%) were to entities associated with Lev Derman, who prosecutors allege was the mastermind of the scheme. . And the Genealogy Department advises genealogists to follow only their direct line; in this instance meaning only the wife who is their mother, not other wives of their father. 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. --Letting the Genetic Genie Out of the Bottle: God Commands the Mormon Church to Enter Into Biologically-Destructive Practice of Polygamy. Most populations outbreed and so these lethal genes rarely match to cause any serious diseases. . Tarby recounts a conversation he had with a member of the Barlow clan in which he tried to explain why so much fumarase deficiency was occurring among Mormon polygamists. By l980, this theory changed dramatically as many other Utah families accepted the diagnosis. "Her half-brother is still married to another half-sister (whose parents also were half-sister and brother) and are still members of the Kingston's order. Those unions fell within Utahs consanguinity restrictions and, if discovered, would be considered incestuous under the laws of the state. 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. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. 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[8][3] There are approximately 3,500 members,[9] some of whom are known to practice polygamy. 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. However, Grant claims she endured years of sexual abuse by a half-brother as a child. living in Colorado City and Hildale are blood descendants of the Barlows and the Jessops, says Benjamin Bistline, a lifelong resident of the area who has published a book . . Such a system was commenced by the founders of the Roman empire. . . [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. One of the most devastating hereditary malformations is fumarase deficiency, a rare genetic condition marked by severe mental retardation and seizures. [4] Andrea Moore-Emmett, Gods Brothel (San Francisco: Pince-Nez, 2004), 88. 13, p. 195, "We breathe the free air, we have the best looking men and handsomest women, and if they (non-Mormons) envy us our position, well they may, for they are a poor, narrow-minded, pinch-backed race of men, who chain themselves down to the law of monogamy, and live all their days under the dominion of one wife. . [45] Members allege to have been targeted for audit at a rate over 9x the published IRS average for the general population, with no pattern of fraud being found outside of a couple of bad-actors. So when you see all of these diseases occurring in the children, it's possible some are the result of inbreeding.'. "While discussing health problems at a family gathering with some of my cousins wives, we discovered astonishingly that three out of four of us, all polygamy descendants, had borne a son with a clubfoot. I promised myself to find out the truth when I grew up. [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. Three of their children suffer from serious inherited disorders. 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. 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. [8], In the late 1990s, three members of the LDCJC faced scrutiny for entering into incestuous relationships. http://www.gallup.com/poll/24388/one-four-americans-think-most-mormons-e http://www.i4m.com/think/sexuality/homosexual_ruin.htm, http://www.humanistsofutah.org/2005/UnderstandingPolygamy_July-05.html, http://human-nature.com/science-as-culture/walker.html, http://www.renewamerica.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=13723. "The disease is not widely known about even in Colorado City, a place where even normally public events such as marriages are conducted in secret. 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. That's the big problem.' _____, --Petri Dishes of the Genetically-Destructive Effects of Mormon-Driven Polygamy: "Modern"-day Utah and Cross-Border Towns. . . . His father wrote: Brother Elden received a new covenant up on the top of the highest mountain that is east of Bountiful, Utah. 'In the meantime, the taxpayers have to pay the bills. "Buried quietly on family farms, without notice of birth or death, child death often remains undocumented in polygamy clans. We dont expect any of the claims to prevail in a court of law.. thus marking the first time news media reported this human and civil rights nightmare accurately since the 1850s. "Farm Roots of Incest: Marriages in the Kingston clan must be sanctioned by [the] current head of the church . "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. "An unknown number--but believed to be in the thousands--of Barlow/Jessop descendants carry the recessive gene that causes fumarase deficiency. [2] Also known as the LDCJC,[3] the Kingston Clan, and The Order,[4][5][6] it is a religious organization created by members of the Davis County Cooperative Society or DCCS in 1977. She says her parents, Merlin Barnum Kingston (John Ortell's brother) and Joyce Fransden, were uncle and niece. 'And is that religion popular in heaven?' . Escaping Polygamy is an American documentary television series that premiered on December 30, 2014, on LMN.The show now airs on Lifetime, but can also be viewed on Tubi, and follows the work of three sisters who left the Kingston clan, a polygamous group based in Salt Lake City, Utah known as The Order, as they help family and/or friends break free of polygamy. 1,000 GOAL. '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. 'If the community gets larger, the number of people with fumarase deficiency gets larger. . "I never knew if I carried this deadly disease or if any preventative measures would halt its insidious march. The Twelve Apostles of Mormonism then acted to increase this familial relationship by marrying other relatives until in 1877, at the end of Brigham Youngs reign as Mormon Prophet and King, the polygamous hierarchy became l00% interrelated. The Kingston Group is believed to have a few thousand members, mostly in Utah and Idaho. "In addition, the Mormon Church touts itself as the quintessential traditional family values church . [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. One child born with an incomplete liver died. "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. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. 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? . Not one defect, but many. He faces up to 30 years in. If these couples are . . . When asked to name his offspring by plural wife Mattingly Foster, Kingston came up with about five names before faltering, saying he was very nervous. After viewing a list of the children, he then attempted to name them but once more fell shortprompting the judge to supply the final child's name for him. . So many young people.'. he says. Family members attribute the defects to the advanced ages of the mother and father -- he was 64, she was 45. From her article, "Fatal Inheritance: Mormon Eugenics": "[My] cousin], [her sister] and I all grew up to marry and start families of our own. [Mormon] [h]istorian B. H. Roberts, notes an eugenic attitude regarding polygamy: "'It was in the name of a divinely-ordered species of eugenics that Latter-day Saints accepted the revelation which included a plurality of wives. The Kingston Group stopped proselytizing new converts when the cooperative became successful, and today they perform no missionary work of any kind. When a group inbreeds, as polygamists have, more and more lethal gene matches occur. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. . Certainly the British and French education systems make it clear quite early on (13-14 yrs old). . _____, --How "God's Genes" Do Ugly Things: The Biological Attack on "Modern"-day Followers of Mormonism's Originally-"Revealed" Doctrine of Polygamy. "'My father manipulated and controlled people,' Rugg says. "Warren Jeffs, like Joseph Smith before him, has emphasized the importance of obedience among members of the church. 'As soon as I saw her, I knew she had the same thing as her brother,' Tarby says. Various congenital and genital defects, dwarfism, fused limbs, fingernails lacking, mental illness and mental retardation, spina bifida, and microcephalous are some of the diseases and mutations. "'They are in terrible shape,' says Dr. Kirk A. Aleck, director of the Pediatric Neurogenetics Center at St. Joseph's Hospital. soon . . "For more than 70 years, all marriages in the isolated towns have been arranged by the leader of the FLDS, a breakaway sect of the Salt Lake City-based Mormon Church. I think most people are made aware of the problems caused by inbreeding (a nicer word than incest) when they are still young teenagers. "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. [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. "It was . [20] Long-time leader John Ortell Kingston lived in a small one-story clapboard house in Salt Lake City up until the time of his death in 1987. In addition, placing the law of consecration at the pinnacle of divine laws is inconsistent with scripture and restoration history. . "But this is a very unlikely scenario for FLDS faithful, who practice a religious doctrine that requires men to be strictly obedient to religious leaders and requires women to give birth to as many children as possible to increase the sect's numbers. . "'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. "[44] Members claim they have been broadly and unfairly targeted by authorities for the negative actions of a small few. 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. [11] On February 7, 1941, the community founded by Elden Kingston officially declared themselves the Davis County Cooperative Society Inc. . If male, some of these same 'worker bees' marry only once. 'It's like any inbred disorder,' Tarby says. "'Those boys are the most moral, upstanding and wonderful people I know,' she said, clutching a grandchild to her thin hip. Video unavailable This video. "Ex-members' claims of incest are bolstered by court records claiming John Ortell 'failed either to support or acknowledge' three children by his niece, (Susan) Mary Gustafson. . [O]ver the first 50 years of Mormonism, a highly inbred hierarchy became even more inbred through their illegal marriage and childbirth practices. . _____, --Inbreeding for the Lord: the Mutative Aftermath of LDS-"Inspired" Polygamy Among Mormonism's Doctrinal Adherents. 'They have the authoritarian structure necessary to keep this from happening, but I don't think they have the advanced thinking,' Aleck says. The Kingston Group is not affiliated withthe Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) based on the Utah-Arizona line that is run by imprisoned leader Warren Jeffs, who is serving a life sentence in Texas for sexually assaulting girls he considered brides. ", -Apostle Orson Pratt, "Journal of Discourses," vol. 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. Carolyn regularly worked at and tended . "My dad had a thing that was supposed to shoot radio waves or something like that, that . Several people also wonder if parts of 'Escaping Polygamy' is dramatized. "With a well-thought-out plan," Hope After Polygamy explains, "she was successful; the judge granted her emancipation when she was 17 years old. 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. . . Children of the latter variety, he says, 'can't crawl. Aleck is a geneticist who participated along with Tarby and others in the groundbreaking study of several polygamous families with fumarase deficiency in the late 1990s. With the dawn of the twenty-first century, lawsuits and education among Kingston followers would combine to create new obstacles, as leaders perpetuate this financially spiritual hybrid organization. . Grant determined to keep marrying until he found a woman to bear him living sons. Mormon Church presidents and "prophet"-leaders have blamed monogamy a host of terminal afflictions that have been delivered upon the world. Current scientific knowledge indicates Grants lack of sons resulted from his own genetic defect, since only men carry the male Y chromosome to make a son. The Prophet Josephs priorities of missionary work, temple ordinances, proxy work for the dead, and feeding the poor appear to have been lost somewhere. For a man of God to be confined to one woman is small business. . "There is no cure for the disease, which impedes the body's ability to process food at the cellular level. It is these discredited ideas that foster this genetic legacy. ', "Aleck says the fact that so many people in the polygamist enclave are blood relatives of the founding Barlow and Jessop families 'shows the magnitude of the problem.'. "Some are very debilitated and some aren't," he says. . The notoriety will just make them zoo specimens. During a recent interview with the Intelligence Report, Jessica Kingston, a former member of the secretive, Salt Lake City-based cult and a star of the A&E reality series "Escaping Polygamy," remembered, when she was 12, her Sunday school teacher coming into class with a bucket of water and a vial of black food coloring. . ", -Prophet John Taylor, "Millennial Star," vol. They operate in Salt Lake Valley, Utah. 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". "In polygamy . "It is important that Mormons fight the tendency to discount history and the actions of their leaders in favor of a faith- promoting history while neglecting important facts. 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. Therefore, to keep the bloodline 'pure,' the Kingstons intermarry--half-brothers and sisters, uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews, and so forth. [27] It is not affiliated with the mainstream LDS Church. . If such a test were developed, a community-wide screening program could be instituted that would identify those carrying the fumarase gene. A Kingston Family Primer. on the history of the fundamentalist community. "'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. 'But just on general principles, the offspring of uncle-niece, or half-siblings have an elevated level of genetic disease. ", (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 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": ". 'I've seen some children that can talk and communicate a little,' Wyler said. 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). [18][7], The Cooperative had its birth during the Great Depression when many families struggled immensely to provide for their families. "The ultimate decision on marriages rests with FLDS Prophet Warren Jeffs. : 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. . Once a baby is born with the condition, Aleck says, 'You really can't treat the underlying disorder.' . The corporation produces goods and services that are used by members, and sold or traded to other cooperatives and to the public. In response to questions from the newspaper, Kent Johnson, a spokesman for the Davis County Cooperative. . Lucky was the first to die in my generation. "I know these people personally.'. . . "While none of these can positively be linked to incest without DNA testing, geneticists say most of the conditions are exacerbated by incest. . The parents said their daughter had cerebral palsy. Kingston was able to name only nine of his thirteen children by a second woman, Rachael Ann Kingston. . The man's response was, "Up here, we are all related," Tarby says. The complaint against the Kingston Group also known as the Order was filed in Salt Lake City last week by 10 people, including Amanda Rae Grant, who starred in the A&E docu-series Escaping Polygamy.. . Branches of the polygamist mans family left out of the genealogy will change the incidence of common ancestors and potentially mask the true disease risk and incidence in the community. Tarby asked them to bring the girl to him for an examination. 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.