A woman who escaped a ‘polygamist sect’ known as the Kingston Group has detailed the exact moment she knew she had to get out.
Priscilla Tucker, who is from Utah, was raised in the Kingston Group, which encourages polygamy and marrying someone within your own family.
Priscilla, who has since escaped and is living a very different life at the age of 27, has been speaking about her time in the ‘cult’ on social media and podcasts.
At the age of 17, Priscilla was told she’d been marrying her cousin.
A disturbing family tree
“My whole entire family wanted me to marry my first cousin,” she told the Cults to Consciousness podcast. “But I didn’t want to marry my first cousin. So I told him not to propose to me, and he said he wouldn’t.”
Priscilla added: “”It was such a weird feeling for me because his mom is my mom’s sister and then my dad is his dad’s uncle so I was related on both sides.
“Normally in The Order, when you marry your cousin, you don’t grow up playing with them and doing everything with them but I did because it was our moms that were sisters.
“It was just so weird because his mom would be like, ‘Oh my gosh I’m so happy because I know that you’re going to be so amazing and I already know you’.
“And then our grandma said, ‘Oh my gosh I’m so happy that my two grandkids are getting married’.”
Priscilla didn’t end up marrying her cousin, and managed to put together an escape plan to leave the life she was brought up within.
Plotting to escape
She ultimately got away from her family at the age of 17 by moving to a safe house – but her family were certainly not going to let her leave without a fight.
Priscilla’s mom organised a ‘kidnapping’ which saw her taken to a camp where they taught women the teachings of the sect.
She did manage to escape once more, but it was certainly an eventful one.
“I ended up running away in the middle of the night and I took a bus to Las Vegas,” she explained.
Priscilla’s life is very different nowadays, living with her partner and their daughter.
“There’s so many issues and honestly I feel like the main issues are mental,” she added.
“Like, you can obviously tell from the physical issues, but the mental issues are so much worse.”
