Man raised in incestuous cult opens up about abusive father who had 163 children
A man who grew up in a Mormon cult has opened up about the horrors that he was subjected to by its abusive leader.
Val Snow, 35, grew up in Utah in a strict community called the Kingston Group – officially known as the Davis County Cooperative Society and internally as The Order.
The Order is a cult that was started during the Great Depression which promotes polygamy and incest to keep bloodlines ‘pure.’
Val is the oldest of 12 children that his mother gave birth to in the cult and has over 150 half-siblings.
In the podcast Cults to Consciousness, Val opened up about the physical and sexual abuse he faced at the hands of his father, John Daniel Kingston.
Val admitted he didn’t even know that John Daniel Kingston – who he calls Daniel – was his biological dad was until his sister figured it out.
He added he and his father, ‘didn’t really hang out a lot,’ and when they did, he was ‘being punished or abused.’
He told the podcast: ‘[Daniel’s] way of raising kids was to first establish fear, and then with fear comes respect and with respect comes love, [that] is his philosophy.’
He also expressed he has a lot of respect for his mother, who is Daniel’s seventh wife, quipping: ‘[I] love that girl.’
‘A lot of my experiences of my father [are] my mom rescuing me from him,’ he admitted.
Daniel was sentenced to prison in 1999, after forcing his then 16-year-old daughter to marry his brother, and then beating her with a belt when she escaped the polygamist marriage.
Val also had to pay ‘child support’ – which was a ruse to send money straight to the church – and relied on dumpster diving to help his mom to support nine children.
He revealed he got his first job at age eight, working at a True Value store which was owned by The Order, working for ‘probably 10 cents an hour.’
Although the Kingston Group wasn’t in a compound and lived individually as families, they were still very much separated from society and only really interacted with each other.
He then briefly explained the banking system, with everything that is earned going to The Order’s bank, and every member only seeing an account balance monthly.
Val recalled the times Daniel would beat him, adding that he had physically abused him in his office as a kid.
He told listeners: ‘Beyond the physical abuse there was sexual abuse from my father,’ Val added. ‘And the crazy part was I don’t know to this day that he was actually finding pleasure in the sexual side of it.
‘He enjoys seeing someone in pain.’
‘Whenever he’s nice, that’s when you know you’re in trouble or something bad is going to happen,’ he said.
‘We went on a truck drive, and he was going to teach me how to drive a truck, and it ended up being where I got molested and then beat afterwards,’ he somberly recalled.
‘Then he leaves me in the field to just finish moving the water lines at the farm,’ he continued, adding he had ‘no idea’ what had happened.
‘There’s never been any kind of sex education,’ he pointed out.
He said luckily his mother noticed that he was extremely resistant about going to the ranch after that and didn’t force him to return.
He noted that when their moms weren’t around, Daniel would beat the kids until they were bleeding and crying.
Val, who is gay, also spoke about his experience of coming to terms with his homosexuality as someone who grew up in the Mormon church.
Val said: ‘I knew I wasn’t attracted to women I just thought that that attraction would come with marriage,’ he admitted. ‘[I thought] I would just get a become attracted because I’m supposed to be and God would help me.’
When his father found out he was gay, he kicked him out of the family and church, after urging him to undergo conversion therapy.
The young man, who changed his name from Gerald when he left The Order, parted ways with the cult in 2011.
He recalls making two online dating profiles when he was first exploring life outside The Order – one for dating men and one for dating women – before deciding to just date men.
Val now has a YouTube channel where he has shared his story, and promotes self-love and creativity.
His younger sister Shanell also left the Kingston Group after being forced to marry her first cousin at 18.
She went on to star on the Lifetime reality series Escaping Polygamy alongside half-sisters Andrea Brewer and Jessica Christensen.
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