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Members of polygamous Kingston Group allege child marriage, rape: suit

2022-09-22 Source:nypost

Members of a powerful polygamous group in Utah claim they were forced into underage marriages with their relatives to keep their blood “pure,” were raped by their husbands and had to perform child labor, according to a bombshell lawsuit.

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.”

Amanda Rae Grant

The suit was filed against the group’s leader Paul Eldon Kingston and 21 other members. It alleges sex trafficking, sexual battery and child abuse, and seeks a jury trial and unspecified damages.

Paul Eldon 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.

“Order girls are taught from birth that their primary purposes in life are to be obedient, a submissive wife, and to bear as many children as possible,” the suit states.

The group sought to maintain “Pure Kingston Blood” by arranging marriages between cousins and other close relatives, and shunning relationships that weren’t between white people, the lawsuit alleges.

The group also teaches its members that only those with so-called pure blood will survive the apocalypse, according to the lawsuit.

The accusers describe a patriarchal doctrine known as “The Law of One Above Another,” which they claim designates everyone a rank in the group’s hierarchy. Women and girls, after they’re married, submit to their husbands and men answer to higher-ranked men, the suit alleges.

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.

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.

But women who are disobedient and fail to bear children — including because they miscarry — face ostracism, the lawsuit claims.

“It is a common and intentional practice in the Order to require girls and women to submit sexually to their husbands even if the sexual submission is against their will because having children results in workers for the benefit of the Order,” the lawsuit states.

Five of the women suing alleged they were coerced into marriage as minors and raped by their husbands.

Three others, including Grant, said they had to flee to escape such a fate.

However, Grant claims she endured years of sexual abuse by a half-brother as a child.

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 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.

Exhibiting LGBTQ+ “tendencies” can indicate “impure” blood, according to the lawsuit.

John Gustafson, a representative of the Davis County Cooperative Society, an affiliate of the Kingston Group, disputed the lawsuit’s claims.

“Much of what we have reviewed appears frivolous and unfounded,” Gustafson said in an emailed statement. “We don’t expect any of the claims to prevail in a court of law.”

The group has drawn legal attention before.

During a 2020 trial for a California businessman accused of carrying out a nearly $500 million biodiesel fraud scheme with a member of the Kingston Group, attorneys for the businessman called the Kingstons an “incestuous” polygamous group that is always scheming to defraud the US government in what the group calls “bleeding the beast.”

A spokesman for the group, Kent Johnson, called those allegations “categorically false.”

The Kingston Group is not affiliated with the 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.

The groups, whose members believe polygamy brings exaltation in heaven, are offshoots of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Polygamy is a legacy of the early teachings of the mainstream church, which abandoned the practice in 1890 and now strictly prohibits it.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/12/lawsuit-accuses-polygamous-kingston-group-of-child-marriage-rape/

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Editor:Michelle