Kansas cult where kids were forced to work 16 hour days

The chilling story behind an evil Kansas cult where children were starved, beaten and forced to work 16 hour days has been exposed in bombshell court documents.

Six members of the scheme known as 'The United Nation of Islam and the Value Creators' (UNOI) were convicted of conspiracy to commit forced labor earlier this week after a 26-day jury trial.

They were all high-ranking members or wives of the late founder, Royall Jenkins, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. One of the six, Kaaba Majeed, 50, was also convicted of five additional counts of forced labor.

The depraved group, branded a cult by a federal judge in 2018, operated in the shadows for over a decade between 2000 and 2012.

Victims as young as eight were beaten, starved and sexually abused. Children were forced to live in rodent-infested facilities and worked inhumane hours without pay.

In one of the most harrowing cases, a child was held upside over train tracks because he would not admit to stealing food when he was hungry. Another resorted to drinking toilet water because she was so thirsty.  

The cult was founded by the now deceased Royall Jenkins in Maryland in 1978, before its headquarters moved to Kansas City, Kansas.

Parents in the group sent their kids to a school operated by the cult, which leaders ran without a license.

But what those parents didn't know was that their kids were being sent across the US to work long, physically demanding days without pay, court records and victim accounts revealed. 

As the group lined its pockets with funds from the illegal work, children like Kendra Ross were regularly beaten, starved, and sexually abused.

Ross, who is now 31, was just 11 years of age when she fell under Jenkins' care.  

'There was just a fear of being in danger if I was to leave because of just the things Royall would say about people who left,' Ross told officials in 2018 before the federal case was launched.

'Especially people who left and talked bad about him or his organization, that they were all killed in various ways.'  

When asked why she was pursuing a since-settled lawsuit, Ross said: 'They took my childhood, my life and, I mean, I can't get that back. So I want them to pay for that.'

She was subsequently awarded $8million in damages, for a plight so sordid, that court documents - and Monday's sequence of convictions - barely do it justice.

They show how her mother first joined Jenkin's cult, then the United Nation of Islam, in 1993. It had no relation to the religious organization founded by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930.

Jenkins, a former trucker, had founded the organization more than a decade earlier, eventually amassing hundreds of followers.

At the time, he declared himself to be Allah - before later rebranding the group as The Value Creators in 2015. 

Court documents detailed how he had 13 'wives' at the time of his death, and approximately 20 children. Three of the women have been charged.

He persuaded followers that he was shown the proper way to rule the Earth, after supposedly being 'taken through the galaxy by aliens on a spaceship,' indictments in both cases revealed.

He died in 2021, and had been a member of the actual Nation of Islam until he founded the self-professed sect.

He led it until 2012 - the same year Ross finally amassed the courage to leave the cult after 10 years of grueling work starting in 2002.

'I'll always live with the memories of what's been done to me,' she said in a statement after receiving the restitution for the forced work and other hardships she had to endure.

Barely 11, she was first forced to cook, clean and provide child care for members of the group, before being shipped out of her mother's home to a household of female members the following year.

At 15, she was taken out of school and assigned to work in a diner - one of at least 10 businesses across the country opened and operated by the cult staffed by unpaid child workers, prosecutors wrote in filings used to convict the members this week.

A year later, she was shipped off to Georgia to serve in a home used by Jenkins -  as his cult sent other children at restaurants, bakeries and even a gas station to work shifts that regularly lasted 16 hours.

Prosecutors wrote how handlers would coerce the children - separating them from their families, abusing them physically and verbally, and withholding food. 

When not working, the children lived in overcrowded facilities often overrun with mold, mice and rats, where there here were strict rules about what they could read, how they dressed and what they ate. 

Some were forced to undergo colonics - a painful process that includes flushing out fecal material from one's bowels with 35 liters or more of water.

One of the victims was held upside down over train tracks because he would not admit to stealing food, prosecutors found, while another minor resorted to drinking water from a toilet because she was so thirsty. 

Punishments included being locked in a dark, frightening basement, prosecutors said - and being told they would burn in 'eternal hellfire' if they left.

Members, moreover, regularly beat children while imposing the dietary restrictions, as members fell under the spell of Jenkins, who told them he was abducted by 'angels and/or scientists' and returned to earth to create the group, officials wrote.

He formed communities and businesses in Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Ohio, while christening the one kept in Kansas City 'Heaven.'

There, the group maintained a building off the 1600th block of N. 13th street, which operated as its official headquarters until at least 2018.

During that time, it racked up several unspecified citations from code enforcement, and today has a new owner, Fox 4 reported.

Google street-view searches show how it sported an awning emblazoned with 'the Nation of Islam' in 2007.

Organizers of the group allegedly blocked victims in these locales from reading newspapers or books of their choosing, as they dished out physical and mental abuse on the regular.

Required to live in cramped barrack-style housing, kids like Ross were relocated without notice from one state to another and rarely had an opportunity to speak with their parents outside the presence of cult leaders.

Jenkins and his accomplices, meanwhile, controlled every aspect of their mother and father's lives as well, keeping tabs on women's weight while carrying out marriages where men would bid on women they wanted.

The cult leader - billing himself as the 'supreme being' - shacked up with defendant Dana Peach, 60, and two other co-defendants, Etenia Kinard, 48, and Jacelyn Greenwell, 45, who previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit forced labor.

All three are now awaiting sentencing along with Kaaba Majeed, 50; Yunus Rassoul, 39; James Staton, 62; Randolph Rodney Hadley, 49 and Daniel Aubrey Jenkins, 43, following an eight-count indictment centered around forced labor and conspiracy to commit forced labor that paved the way for the now concluded 26-day trial.

It stated how victims subsisted off a diet confined largely to bean soup and salads, and at times went days consuming only lemon juice. 

They also couldn't travel freely, and rarely received legitimate medical treatment.

Ross, the only victim who is named in the filing, was even forced by a 'psychic doctor' to marry another cult polygamist. 

Unpaid labor appeared to fund the group's operations, as members' kids, were trafficked, at times in the back of delivery trucks, to UNOI businesses located across the country.

The defendants and their immediate families, meanwhile, lived in spacious housing where they were free to eat and work as they pleased, prosecutors found.

They wrote how these high-ranking members - including those found guity this week - would simultaneously encourage parents to sent their children to the unlicensed school in Kansas City.

From there, some stayed to work businesses in Kansas City, while others were trafficked to businesses in New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Maryland, Georgia and North Carolina, the indictment said.

When met with pushback, enforcers like Majeed - who was based in Jonesboro, Georgia - ordered and inflicted punishments, which included beatings and fasting requirements. 

He inflicted these reprimands following perceived violations of UNOI policy, such as making sexual comments, watching pornography, and taking food, witnesses said - adding how Rassoull would also regularly beat youth members.

The Florida man who operated one of the illegal businesses also made members participate in a 'fight club,' the 57-page indictment revealed, while Hadley imposed punishments and discipline out of the Kansas City headquarters.

He did so with approval from Majeed, witnesses said in court - pegging the man as one of Jenkins' main lieutenants. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, while the rest face five.

Aubrey Jenkins, one of the leaders' relatives, 'engaged in sexual relationships with minor female youth members who were not old enough to consent,' prosecutors said - while presenting evidence that the Royall family arranged marriages.  

They revealed how the senior member - who was not confirmed to be one of Jenkins' 20 children - was made to marry a 16-year-old youth member, much like what happened to Ross.

Ross was able to receive help from people who were not members of the group when she was 21, she told Megyn Kelly in 2018 - six years later.

'We were made to submit to everything [he] said,' she said of the cult leader, who died of Covid-19 complications in 2021 just weeks before the indictment went out.  

'Whatever he wanted,' she said of the messages instilled in her and others at the time. 'We were taught how to be a good wife.'

Staton, meanwhile, also participated in physical abuse, including locking an asthmatic youth member in an attic without access to her inhaler.

Peach, meanwhile, beat female members, while also imposing fasting requirements on youth members.

She also provided alcohol and colonics to the young children.

Kinard, another Jenkins widow, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit forced labor, for which she faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. 

She admitted to creating the 'work schedules' for victims at a restaurant in Atlanta, while overseeing the group's 'youth membership' with another of Jenkins' wives.

As part of her plea, she acknowledged helping to decide where to move victims for labor between the years 2000 and 2008, during which time - and for several years after - the firm funded itself 'almost entirely through' that unpaid work, she said.   

Sentencing hearings for her and the others are slated for February, with convictions that carry sentences of up to up to five years. Majeed faces more for his part.

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said of the convictions: 'The United Nation of Islam and these defendants held themselves out as a beacon of hope for the community, promising to educate and teach important life skills to members, particularly children.  

'Instead, the defendants betrayed this trust, exploiting young children in the organization by callously compelling their labor. 

'Prosecuting this case is a testament to the Justice Department’s unwavering commitment to hold human traffickers accountable,' she continued.

'The Justice Department will continue to vigorously investigate and prosecute parasitic criminals who target vulnerable victims to finance their lifestyles.'