. The lot is unmarked and unremarkable. SALT LAKE CITY (CN) Survivors of Utah's notorious Kingston clan filed a lawsuit seeking punitive damages against 22 Kingston members on Wednesday for sex trafficking minors born into the organization, sexual battery, child abuse and more. 'And when you talk about the public interest, you have to consider who pays for the consequences. . The FLDS already has moved several hundred men, women and children to the compound, many of whom very likely carry the fumarase deficiency gene. . She directs me to the houses she lived in after that: her stepdad Jim Jessop's home; then the rotten, roach-infested house she and her mother shared with nearly two dozen cousins and friends after being removed from Jim's following the Judgment. Ortell died in 1987, but his progeny continued the polygamy, the inbreeding and the marriages to young female teens that he instituted. . Accounts of clan babies being born with congenital defects and other problems abound, including dwarfism, albinism and children born minus fingernails or without genitals. . 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. "If descendants of polygamy do not look critically at the ideas of their ancestors, Utah children may be increasingly at risk. "For us parents the future health and happiness of ourselves, our children and grandchildren are at stake. and councilmen.' "Goodman soon made a startling discovery: Tarby's young patient was afflicted with an extremely rare disease called fumarase deficiency. Like polygamy, incest is a third-degree felony in Utah, and as with polygamy, convictions are rare. 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 . . Johnson maintained that The Orders vast array of businesses which includes a grocery store, pawn shops, a garbage disposal business, an insurance company, a politically-influential biofuels plant, and a high-end firearms manufacturer employs individuals of various racial and ethnic minorities. One is a first cousin. [O]ver the first 50 years of Mormonism, a highly inbred hierarchy became even more inbred through their illegal marriage and childbirth practices. "'My mother should not have produced another baby," says Rugg, also Isabell and John Ortell's daughter and the baby's full sister. Mary Nelson, 23, tells "Whistleblower" host Alex Ferrer about how she escaped the Kingston clan, also known as The Order, with the help of her boyfriend Bryan. For fun he and other Order men would go to a park frequented by gay males, looking for victims. when doctors pronounced us a special and important family. He was. Unfortunately, it's still the innocent who suffer due to Joseph Smith's lies. Yet, this practice may hide the actual genetic kinship and can further exacerbate genetic problems. . But that's like spitting in the ocean.'. . Then he scooted away, smiling, aboard a plastic toy car, his feet smacking the sidewalk. The couple had lived together since the age of 7, when the mother of the woman's half-brother died. Still, he conceded that some Order members may have prejudiced beliefs because in our organization people have freedom of choice.. "Religious leaders control all marriages in the community, and many of these relatives have married or likely will marry in the future. "Our ancestral destiny meant we might give birth to sons who would die at maturity or daughters who would carry the trait to the next generation of sons. The defect might be caused by genetics, infection, radiation, or drug exposure, or there might be no known reason. 'If you stop the sexual predation, you stop the genetic problem as well. . So many young people.'. and several polygamist men serve in local government positions, including as mayors . 'In the meantime, the taxpayers have to pay the bills. 6.3M views 6 years ago Profiles by VICE S1 E23 Although the mainstream Mormon church abandoned polygamy over 100 years ago, many splinter groups across Utah still practice plural marriage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmhjgaB2Hi8. We cannot afford to neglect the possibility our ancestors practiced a form of marriage that was unhealthy and debilitating to our children, to us, and to society. lucky These specialty firearms can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $8,000 each. We're sitting in Ron's large kitchen, eating a meal of homemade tomato sauce and sweet Italian sausage that his wife Geria retired marriage and family therapist originally from Hurleyville, NY, who he met six years ago on Zoosk!has prepared in a slowcooker. But residents who are aware of fumarase deficiency fear that the number of children afflicted with the disease will indeed increase. . states that '[t]he [Utah] state legislature is consistently 90% Mormon . "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. . 'We do know there are biological hazards. And her ex-husband's parents, Merlin and Carolyn Kingston, were uncle and niece. ", -Apostle Orson Pratt, "Journal of Discourses," vol. 'As soon as I saw her, I knew she had the same thing as her brother,' Tarby says. . Snow began dating men when he was 22. All of this is to say that incest and inbreeding have been going on for so longand so prevalentlyin the polygamous sects along the Utah/Arizona border that these stories have been woven into the fiber of the communities. "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. Ron Tucker went so far as to call his former brethren white supremacists, and ten times more racist than your run-of-the-mill skinhead. From her article, "Fatal Inheritance: Mormon Eugenics": "[My] cousin], [her sister] and I all grew up to marry and start families of our own. He did not consider this lack of sons might be his genetic inheritance, not his multiple wives. LeBaron Jr. has been accused by three of his own sons, who purport to have DNA evidence obtained by saliva samples, of fathering four children with his own biological daughter. When it comes to racist Sunday school lessons, the polygamous Kingston clan could teach the Ku Klux Klan a thing or two. But by 2006, Dr. Theodore Tarby, of Arizona, had discovered at least 20 more children living with the condition in Short Creek, all within just blocks of each other. Theyre basically the Utah Mafioso of the white power world, Browning told Intelligence Report. . . 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. . In 2006, Warren Jeffs, then the president and prophet of the FLDS, was arrested and charged with accomplice rape, for just two of the underage marriages he had arranged. ", ("Mormon Polygamy: Frequently Asked Questions," at: http://www.i4m.com/think/polygamy/polygamy_summary.htm). "Rather than polygamy being about religion, Moore-Emmett believes that many polygamous marriages are about sex and power. girl, born to John Ortell and Isabell Johnson, was not the product of an incestuous marriage. Obviously, we would love to.. There lives Ross LeBaron Jr., a descendant of another polygamous sect (separate from the FLDS but quite similar in practice) called the Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times. When this got around to his dad, his father packed up Snows belongings and left them in the room of a hotel owned by The Order. Tarby. She explained that they weren't supposed to know who their dad was, only her . LGBT people fare little better in the Kingston clan. . . "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. . . Faced with the forced marriage to an uncle, Rugg left the Kingstons. 'All of a sudden [with] this one little baby, everything tightened up and she arched her back so hard her head was almost touching her toes,' Wyler says. 'Her body tried to miscarry many, many times.'. ("Doctrine & Covenants," Section 132, verses 55, 62-63), "Joseph Smith also testified an angel with a sword came to him many times and commanded him to practice polygamy or else he would lose his life. "'One lady I know, she just cannot physically pick [her son] up anymore to get him into the bathtub,' Wyler says. "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. . "And my oldest daughter, she's 18 and she's dated a couple of my cousins, which makes them her second cousins, and we're like, Eww, that's gross.". So what about polygamy? These conditions are disproportionately common, relative to the size of the general population, in Short Creek. "Every person carries some lethal genes. . It's not really talked about; I don't think [people here] even research to see how related they are. I tell her I'm not sure, given the context. October 15, 2002: "There will be a viewing at father's house at 3p.m. . A simple urine test will reveal whether there is an excess of fumaric acid in the urine, if the other, more external symptoms aren't obvious enough. The 43-year-old Kingston took the witness stand for the prosecution about 2:40 p.m. and is expected to answer questions through Thursday. "The only long-term solution to the health crisis is for Barlows and Jessops to have children with spouses from outside the polygamist community. That's the big problem.' Escaped members report some patriarchs believe it is their duty to give a daughter her first marriage lessons. "A few years later [my cousin's] sister . "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. 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. Almost everyone here is some variation of cousin, and, until Warren was locked up and decided to put a hold on all marriages, most men and women were paired together in order to preserve certain esteemed bloodlines. If such a test were developed, a community-wide screening program could be instituted that would identify those carrying the fumarase gene. Sisters married the same man in polygamous celestial weddings; brothers from one family married sisters from another (meaning their kids are double cousins). The adoption of children among family members sometimes disguised sterility. [N]ew disease classifications belong at the door of the Mormon Church leadership. . "Gradually, I realized the practice of polygamy, especially in Mormondom, might be a prescription for genetic disease. "I know these people personally.'. "Buried quietly on family farms, without notice of birth or death, child death often remains undocumented in polygamy clans. soon . . When a group inbreeds, as polygamists have, more and more lethal gene matches occur. The grave side funeral services will be at the grave side in Babyland at 4p.m.". The girl, who as an adult would unsuccessfully sue the clan, then walked miles to the nearest gas station, where she called the police. "'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. . thus marking the first time news media reported this human and civil rights nightmare accurately since the 1850s. Young is the owner of Desert Tech, a Utah gun manufacturer, which produces sniper rifles and so-called bullpup rifles, The latter, unlike conventional magazine-fed rifles, have shorter barrels, with the guns action located behind the trigger. Their brains, he says, 'are strangely shaped' and are frequently missing large areas of brain matter that has been replaced by water. "'Warren has to be really careful that he doesn't lose his position as a god to these people,' Wyler says. "In addition, the Mormon Church touts itself as the quintessential traditional family values church . The baby cemetery is a mess of overgrown weeds and dry, cracked dirt, home to hundreds of infant and toddler-size graves, not all of them marked. . "Warren Jeffs, like Joseph Smith before him, has emphasized the importance of obedience among members of the church. They offer no support, no exit route and no programs for the people trapped inside polygamy endeavoring to escape these closed polygamous communities or compounds. I pass the dairy, the zoo, the park, the former birthing clinic, the condemned high school built on a foundation of adobe bricks, and so on. [I]t appears that Joseph Smith Jessop and his first wife also passed on the rare genetic disorder fumarase deficiency. Nearly all the Mormon founding families were relatives, so the first polygamists enjoyed relations to different degrees when the divine experiment began. There is also some overlap with Sovereign citizens, he contends. . In order to maintain his familys superior bloodlines, Ortell married and had children with two of his half-sisters and two nieces. 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. A rare neurological disorder characterized by water on the brain, muscular stiffness, adducted thumbs and aphasia, x-linked hydrocephalus is expressed only in men and carried by women. greatly increases, medical experts say. . 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. , says he has firsthand knowledge of multiple fumarase deficiency children in each of the three families. Family members attribute the defects to the advanced 'There are people that have married their nieces, people who have married their aunts,' he said. "Her book . "Victims suffer a range of symptoms, including severe epileptic seizures, inability to walk or even sit upright, severe speech impediments, failure to grow at a normal rate, and tragic physical deformities. This is why those laws need to be enforced. . This racist display was no one-off. . Structural Birth Defects. . "Dr. Theodore Tarby has treated many of the children at clinics in Arizona under contracts with the state. These disturbing accounts offer a look inside the lives of some early Mormon descendants. Convinced they are breeding a pure white master race, they blame the mother if a deformed baby is born then preach she was unrighteous or unclean. Civil rights nightmare accurately since the 1850s, says he has firsthand knowledge of multiple fumarase children... 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