A 20-year-old woman says she has spent the majority of her life living in a tight-knit community that she alleges brainwashed and coerced her into an underage, abusive and bigamous marriage to her uncle.
Now, she is alleging that the group, known as the “Kingstons” or the “Order,” is a “criminal organization that has operated for decades under the pretense of a religious community,” and accusing it of being a “racketeering enterprise, hate group, and corrupted polygamous cult.”
In a federal lawsuit filed in Utah last month, Kathrine Nichols contends the group’s leaders and the entities that they lead pressured her into the marriage through strategies that include teaching kids to fear outsiders, requiring members to work for the Order and maintaining a closed-off community that threatens “the loss of their children” if mothers leave.
“Children have also been tied up or locked in rooms and basements, and occasionally restrained in garbage cans, as discipline for disobeying,” the complaint states.
The Order, the lawsuit alleges, arranges bigamous and underaged marriages. It asserts that fathers’ names are often left off their children’s birth certificates to prevent them from being prosecuted.
Nichols alleges sex trafficking, sexual battery and abuse of a child, sexual battery and rape of an adult, and infliction of emotional distress, among other allegations, and is demanding a jury trial to award damages and determine their amount.
The lawsuit names several defendants — the Davis County Cooperative, Davis County Cooperative Society and the Latter Day Church of Christ, as well as her own parents, grandparents, great-uncle and the uncle who is now her ex-husband.
According to the Davis County Cooperative Society’s website, the Latter Day Church of Christ was founded by its members in 1977, though membership in the church is not required to retain membership in the cooperative society.
“We have not fully reviewed the details of the civil suit filed by [the plaintiff],” Davis County Cooperative Society governing board representative John Gustafson said in a statement responding to a request for comment. “It is the longstanding position of the Davis County Cooperative Society (DCCS) that marriage is a lifelong decision that should be left up to each individual and their families.”
“The DCCS does not officiate or solemnize marriages, and insists individual members be over the age of 18 or to have obtained a legal marriage license before the DCCS will formally recognize each marriage or household,” the statement continued. “The DCCS encourages all members who wish to marry to do so within the legal age of consent.”
Gustafson said the cooperative society is “not in a position” to speak on behalf of the Latter Day Church of Christ. Attempts to reach church representatives were not immediately successful.
The complaint identifies Nichols’ grandfather, Paul Elden Kingston, as the organization’s head who directs “Order” activities. The cooperative society considers the group’s nickname a term of endearment, according to its website.
Paul Elden Kingston did not respond to a request for comment sent to an email address listed under his name on the Utah State Bar’s website.
Husband options were selected for her, lawsuit alleges
From a young age, the lawsuit states, Nichols was taught that she was to enter into an “Order Marriage” — a marriage largely dictated by the Order’s leadership to keep the family bloodline “pure.” To arrange these marriages without causing birth defects, Nichols alleges, she had her blood tested when she was 10.
The Order, the complaint states, is proactive in deciding who its young members will marry, and it believes “a girl’s impressions about who she may like or marry are from Satan, unless that direction is approved by Paul Elden Kingston in what is known as an Engagement Meeting.”
It says the Order regularly holds dances, and girls are given “dance cards” denoting the boys and men they are allowed to dance with. Then, when they are to get married, the card lists those whom the Order has determined are options. At 16, Nichols had three, all of which were “her uncles by blood,” the complaint states.
She picked her husband, who was 19 at the time, because he was the youngest of the options; she would be his third wife, according to the complaint.
In taking Nichols from state to state for multiple ceremonies, the lawsuit alleges, the Order committed trafficking as defined under federal law.
At a first ceremony in February 2021, the suit alleges, her father read wedding vows from the Order on the side of a road in New Mexico. The next was in March 2021 in Rhode Island, where the lawsuit says the groom “signed a falsified State of Rhode Island Marriage Worksheet” but didn’t disclose his other marriages, in order to get a license.
The third was in Utah later that month, where the lawsuit says “a large, lavish, extravagant” wedding was held.
In addition to seeing glamorous weddings and being taught that marriages within the Order were important, the lawsuit alleges, she “was promised and received a car, a phone and a raise at work for entering into her Order Marriage.” The lawsuit also alleges she was promised raises for each birth of a child.
“Without the pressure placed on [the plaintiff] as a child growing up in the Order, and without Paul Elden Kingston’s approval, she would never in a million years have entered into an Order Marriage with her uncle,” the lawsuit states.
In April 2021, she became pregnant, the lawsuit states. “She was subjected to a procedure at a hospital where a needle was used to draw fluid through her abdomen from the amniotic sack,” the lawsuit says. “This amniotic testing indicated that pregnancy could continue.”
Her second pregnancy was around June 2022 and ended with a miscarriage, the lawsuit states. Her third pregnancy came around four months later, and, according to the lawsuit, an amniotic test “showed a defective baby.”
Paul Elden Kingston advised her to have an abortion, the lawsuit alleges, and it states that after obeying, she fled the group in 2023.
Annulling the marriage, and escape
In December 2023, Nichols obtained an annulment of the Rhode Island marriage, the complaint states. Her then-husband’s attorney had argued against the annulment, pointing to what the lawsuit describes as “an antiquated Rhode Island law that he claimed allows marriages of kindred members of certain ancient Jewish sects.”
Now, the lawsuit alleges, Nichols “realizes that the blood testing, grooming, dance card options, coercion, marriage ceremonies, sexual abuse, rapes, and amniotic testing” was all done to tie her to and benefit the defendants.
Though it was difficult for a 19-year-old single mother, and though she relied on the Order for employment, day care and housing, the lawsuit states, she knew she had to leave — and, gradually, she did.
Attorneys for the defendants have not yet filed a response to the lawsuit.
