So what should we make of a religious group
that exists in the shadows?
[narrator] When a self-proclaimed profi
claims a 16-year-old Carol Dennis as his bride..
[Carol] I just started crying hysterically,
but my mother said, "This is your calling."
[narrator] ...it's just the beginning o her hell on Earth.
[Carol] He brought in another wife
and he would have sex with h
with me in the bed.
[narrator] But in a world where the law of the Lord trumps the law of the land..
[man] They were beaten, assaulted, kicked.
King was a violent master manipulator.
[narrator] ...those in powe make their own rules
and escape is the only option.
[Carol] He would say, "Don't ever leave.
I will track you down and I will kill you."
I thought for sure he would find me.
I was high-energy.
From the time I was born,
I was happy-go-lucky.
Anything to do with outdoors brought me joy.
But my mom thought the world was evil
and, one day, God would destroy it.
My dad didn't really pay any attention to any of it.
He worked all the time.
He drove a bus and taxi cab
[narrator] It's the late '60 in Owen Sound, Ontario.
Carol Dennis' mom takes her to a new church
founded by a charismatic Mormon minister.
[Daphne Bramham] Stan King told everyone that God had spoken to him
and that this was his destiny
that he was to be the profit.
[Carol] And my mother got all interested in it
and joined Stan's church,
the Church of Jesus Christ Restored.
And that's how it all starte
I didn't know all the hidden secrets at that time.
As Stan got to trust my mother a little bit,
she was brought into that inner circle
where some of these secrets were being shared.
There was a lot of whispering going on.
Mom was receiving phone call
[narrator] As a sheltered teen, unexposed to the outside world,
Carol is ill-prepared for the day her mother sits her down for a talk.
She said, "God has a special calling for you.
He wants you to be Stan King's wife."
I looked at her in disbelief.
I said, "Well, he already has a wife.
That's not possible."
She said, "Well, this is what God wants.
This is your calling."
[Daphne] The doctrine of polygamy is really based
in Joseph Smith's teaching that having many wives
was important in order to get to the kingdom of heaven
So who better to groom a young girl to become a polygamist wife
than her mother?
If God is speaking to the man who wants to marry your daughter
you give up your daughter
because your family gets to go to the celestial kingdom with you.
[Carol] She said, "You are going to give birt to special children,
special sons that will do great work for God."
I just started crying hysterically.
It was just revolting to me
I said,
"He's old. He's double my age."
I'd be 16, 17.
From that point on,
my life was sheer hell.
She started giving me medication,
sedating me to calm me down
What she gave me, I don't remember.
Finally, I was just a walking zombie.
I started to lose Carol.
I had to become somebody else.
It's a grueling process. It's a slow process.
If you don't follow the rule
you don't get into heaven.
And those are very, very powerful ideas.
[Carol] Finally, there was a little trial run
There was a member that lived in Owen Sound
and I was to go to this lady's house.
And when I got there,
everybody left.
Except Stan.
We joked and chitchatted,
and the next I knew, he was on top of me
and I was horrified.
And I jumped up and started screaming.
So he phoned my mother and she came and got me.
A few days later,
Mom received another call from the same lady,
"Bring Carol. Stan's not here."
And when I got there,
she started yelling at me.
"How dare you? Don't you reject him like that."
So Mom took me home after that episode,
and things proceeded from there.
My mother continued to manipulate me
and work with me
until, eventually, I gave up.
[narrator] In 1971, when Carol is of legal age,
she feels she has no choice but to move to Stan King's farm
where he has established a commune of about a dozen followers.
[man] Owen Sounds about two and a half hours north of Toronto.
So when most people think of cult,
they might think of jungles in South America.
They might think of very remote places in the middle of the desert.
Not the case.
Cults take places, as we've learned, anywhere.
And they can take place close to population bases.
And that's certainly what happened in this case.
And it was a surprise, a shock to a lot of people.
[narrator] Stan's legal wife Erna, lives at the farm,
although she spends most nights away
working as a nurse.
Also part of Carol's new family
are Stan and Erna's sons,
Judd, Joe and Fred,
one of whom will be Stan's future heir.
[Carol] They were around my age.
I did like them.
I knew them from the young people's group
at the church.
But Fred, he was the youngest son.
He didn't really like everybody being there.
His normal life changed when Stan took on wives.
It upset his world
and there was a resentment.
[narrator] Carol has been saving herself for marriage
I dreamed of the day that I would find the right fella
and fall in love.
[narrator] But now, she wil be Stan's fourth wife.
[Carol] A legal wife, you have the paperwork to go with it.
A church wife, there's no paperwork involve
It's the sex act that makes you a spiritual wife.
I was expected to sleep with the profit,
but I just could not do it.
I would go to bed with my clothes on.
And that went on for the longest time.
And in the meanwhile, they were teaching me things around the farm.
We had a lot of company coming and going all the time.
So there were a lot of people to feed and a lot of dishes to do
and a lot of cleaning to do
I didn't drive, but I was allowed to go for walks.
I could go and sit by the river
and just enjoy the peace.
Those are the things that kept me going.
But I was always frightened
especially at bedtime.
One of the paradoxes in these polygamist groups is that
they don't teach them anything about sex.
Most of them don't know. It's all very hush-hush.
[narrator] Finally, the day comes
when the profit grows tired of Carol's resistance.
[Carol] I was ordered into the bed
and he was having sex with me
and that's all there was to it.
I didn't wanna go. I was terrified.
[narrator] This sexual assau is just the beginning
of Carol's unrelenting nightmare.
[Daphne] Pedophiles will charm the parents
and then they give up their children.
Stan King followed the playbook.
[Carol] He brought in a wife
She was 14 at the time.
[Daphne] They are expected to do what the profit wants them to do.
[Carol] It was horrible,
absolutely horrible.
[narrator] A few months afte Carol Dennis moves onto his farm commune,
Stan King makes her his church wife
by taking her virginity.
[Carol] I guess you could call it rape.
And from that time on,
I was his wife and expected to perform like a wife.
There was a lot of psychological control.
You had to make the profit happy.
Eventually, he brought in a wife,
a young girl, and she stayed with us.
And he would have sex with her
with me in the bed.
Her name was Lollie.
She became Stan's wife when she was ten years old.
So she was quite comfortabl with that life.
[Daphne] The expectation when you're a polygamist wif
is that you will do whatever you're told.
If your husband says to you,
"You must come to my bed tonight,"
and he asks two other wives, or three other wives,
they all must show up. And when they show up,
they are expected to do what the profit wants them to do.
[Carol] You just learn to be obedient.
If you didn't please the profit
or showed any kind of resistance,
nobody in the house would talk to you.
That was a very lonely world.
[Daphne] Everything in polygamy comes down to arithmetic.
If one man has five wives, it means four men have none.
It's not good for anybody unless you're the leader.
Eventually, there would be group sex.
And certainly that was even worse than one wife in bed with you.
It was horrifying, but it made him happy
and that was life.
[Daphne] While Carol's night duties are in the bedroom,
her days offer little respit
[Carol] It was a busy, busy life.
We raised turkeys and pigs on a large scale.
[Tamming] To keep a cult going,
it needs income. It needs financing.
And it's really easy to make money
when you don't pay your employees.
They were working long hard hours.
He started a health food business.
I became very involved with all of that.
I've always had somewhat of a business mind anyway.
[narrator] Carol's involveme in the cult's business
helps compensate for a lack of family contact.
Her mother moves to Missour on behalf of the cult
while her father remains in Ontario and rejects the religion.
[Carol] Stan didn't want my father around
to influence me in any way.
[phone ringing]
He would phone to the farm,
but he was told I wasn't there.
[phone continues ringing]
[narrator] In 1976,
Carol finally makes good on her most important job.
[Carol] When I was about 23
I had a large cyst on my ovary
which was removed.
Three months after surgery, I was pregnant.
My father didn't know anything about it.
But about six weeks before my son was born,
he worried for my safety.
He didn't always understand everything that was going on,
but he loved me and he couldn't understand
why I couldn't pick up the phone
and just call him and say, "Hi, Dad,
I'm okay."
So he contacted the police.
[narrator] This presents the opportunity that Carol had been hoping for.
Police intervention.
I wanted to leave.
I wanted to be saved.
But when police arrive at the farm,
Stan orders Carol to hide.
[Carol] Stan went outside and we could hear everything
They were just chitchatting
and Stan reassured them that I was fine.
He suggested that perhaps my father
had mental issues.
After all, Carol's an adult, 24 years old.
So everything was dropped
and the police were pleasan
and they drove away.
[narrator] Now, Stan takes action to embed Carol even more deeply into the cult.
After that episode,
they made me marry his eldest son, Joe King,
to protect my unborn child.
Stan, being the father,
they didn't want that reveal
that he had a polygamist wife,
let alone many polygamist wives.
So the marriage to Joe was a sham marriage,
on paper only.
He never touched me.
[narrator] On July 2nd, 1977
Carol gives birth to a baby boy.
It was...
[voice breaking] It was amazing.
It brought me so much happiness.
So much.
And then 18 months after he was born,
I had my second son.
Two bundles of joy.
It gave me reason to... to live.
Stan would beam when he was around them.
He just loved them. He adored them.
And my sons adored him, too.
They loved him so much.
[narrator] For the first tim in five years,
Carol feels some contentmen in her life.
But Stan's youngest son, Fre
doesn't share the sentiment
[Carol] Fred King showed episodes of jealousy
towards my sons.
He would torment them.
"Here's a candy," and would almost be in their hand,
and he'd take it away and put it in his own mouth.
He was just mean to them.
[narrator] By 1982,
Stan's cult has grown to include 80 congregants
in the surrounding area.
[Carol] There was a lot happening.
Stan eventually bought a printing company,
which still exists to this day
and is very successful.
[narrator] Stan also buys a former ski lodge
just outside Owen Sound
to accommodate his growing flock.
There was a lot of heavy-duty renovation
and everybody was working at it to help.
We had a church branch in India.
We supported an orphanage there.
[narrator] By 1986,
Stan has seven wives and ten children.
He has fulfilled his dream
and Carol has come to terms with her role
when tragedy strikes.
[phone ringing]
[Carol] One day one of his wives phoned me and said
"I think Stan has had a stroke.
He wants you here. Now."
They did some testing
and said he had two aneurysms on his brain.
And the doctor said he would need surgery.
So the decision was his
and he said no.
So he went back home to die
And the last day came.
I was with him and I did see him take his last breat
and I felt his last heartbeat.
Fred was really angry
and he blamed Stan's death on the members,
on all of us.
And then he decided to resuscitate him.
Fred did the heart compressions
and then I was told I would do the mouth-to-mout
He would swear at me, "Keep going, bitch.
Keep going."
[narrator] Stan is unresponsive.
But Fred will not be deterre
[Daphne] She has to try and wash the body
and try and keep the body clean.
Even as it's decomposing.
[Carol] It is the worst smel I have ever smelled.
I still have a nightmare about it.
[narrator] Carol will soon learn that Fred's wrath
has only just begun.
[narrator] Hours after the death,
Fred King remains convinced that his father will rise from the dead
and insists that Carol continue to care for him.
[Carol] It was unbelievable
I knew he was gone, and I did not believe he was coming back.
But I had to bathe the body every day.
And I would have to tie a scarf around my mouth
so I didn't breathe it in
because it would make you feel so nauseated.
But also his body was going puffy and distorted.
It was horrible, absolutely horrible.
After almost a week, a priesthood member said,
"Look, this body needs to be buried."
And Fred agreed.
So the ambulance, the coroner were all called
The police were there.
We had to write out what happened.
We were to say that his wife, Erna,
just could not give up the body.
And that reason was accepted by the police.
And no charges were laid.
I eventually had to tell my children that their father died.
That was hard.
Some years before,
Stan said that Fred would take over his position.
But I worried about Fred
because I knew he didn't like me.
And I thought, "Will Fred be able to lead this church?
Or will we all go to hell?"
When Fred took over,
he kicked myself and my two sons out of the farm
and I was supposed to move to Guelph with another church wife,
Angie, and her children.
[narrator] Although Carol continues to attend church every weekend,
her new home is two hours away.
[Carol] It was a really big deal for my children.
They were country boys
and, suddenly, we had neighbors all around us.
And Angie didn't really like me.
But at least the church wif thing would be over with.
And I was looking forward to that part of it.
I was told to pick up a cleaning job
and every cent I made was handed over to Angie
because I wasn't trustworthy
It was a new chapter, a very different chapter.
[narrator] A year later,
one of Carol's main assumptions about her new li
is shattered.
It was conveyed to Angie to tell me
that Fred would be taking over all the wives.
And so I would be married to Fred.
The horror to me was being married to someone
that I did not want to be with.
I thought I would not be that type of a slave anymore.
I was overcome with the shock of it all.
[Daphne] It's like property
The new profit will quite often take the previous profit's wives
And in this case,
it was a toxic mixture of Fred with Carol.
[Carol] He showed up at my house
and he said, "Take your pants off
and get on the bed."
And he had sex with me.
I felt degraded. I found him revolting.
He was considered my stepson
and half brother to my own children.
But I had no choice.
And I was in the same situation all over again.
It was so depressing.
Fred just didn't preach.
He started pointing out how sinful everyone was.
In the church, there was an 80-year-old lady.
We called her Nana.
One night during a night service,
she dozed off.
Fred rose his voice
and preceded to chastise her.
She was forced to stand up
and pull her pants down to her ankles
for the rest of the night.
When chastisement started,
you would just see every head in the room
just immediately... [makes shooting sound]
If anyone ever intervened,
they would be dead meat.
Various people were physically assaulted.
[Daphne] Many of these profits,
it depends where they come in the lineage.
Stan King had to be a charming guy
in order to get people to follow him.
Fred doesn't have to be charming.
He has inherited this.
As a mother, seeing my sons assaulted,
it just shattered me inside
I would think to myself horrible things about Fred.
Like "Should I get his butcher knife
and slit his throat?"
You were a work slave. You were a sex slave.
He took his frustration out on all of us.
One time, my son and I
wanted to buy a couple of books for Fred's sons
who were having a birthday.
But we didn't have the money
so we knew if you went picking raspberries,
you could get paid.
So we did this, and within a few days,
Angie went to Fred and tattled on us.
[narrator] The following Sunday at church,
Fred asked Carol to step outside.
[Carol] I tried to explain to him
that we were going to buy a couple presents for his two sons.
But he just roared at me.
I was "evil." I was a "pig.
And he started throwing me against the pillar on the porch.
I lost track of how many times he slammed me
And then I was on the cement ground.
Obviously, I had been unconscious.
But he was still screaming at me.
Finally, he informed one of his other church wives,
"Get her something to wear. And he left.
My clothes were ripped,
my nose was bleeding, my mouth was bleeding.
And she looked at me
and filled with tears.
He didn't know it, but she gave me a hug.
To this day, I am in pain
because of that beating.
[narrator] Five years later
when Carol's eldest son is 30 years old,
he wakes her up one day with some life-changing news
He said that I have someone picking me up
and I'm leaving.
I was shocked.
He didn't want to leave us behind.
But his chastisements were getting so severe.
He said, "I know you two are not ready to leave yet.
But I just can't do it. I can't take any more."
So I stayed for my youngest son.
But I couldn't quit crying.
I was falling apart.
I was in so much trouble because my eldest son left.
My life was just even worse, if you can imagine that.
I was chastised because I was an "unfit mother."
[narrator] A year later, the pain becomes unbearable
[Carol] And I thought then,
"Look around at all the people you love.
Because you'll never see them again."
Monday morning when I get home and everybody's gone to work,
I will sneak out and phone my eldest son.
I made all the arrangements to leave
and a time was set.
When my youngest son came home, he said to me,
"I'm too afraid I will go to hell."
I said, "He's going to kill me."
But he didn't want me to leave.
He blocked the door.
[narrator] Carol King has finally mustered the courag
to escape Fred King's tyrann
But she's faced with an impossible dilemma.
Her 29-year-old son refuses to leave.
Finally, my youngest son moved away from the door
and let me leave.
I said, "I love you,"
and grabbed my belongings.
Everything I had in the world was in two garbage bags.
My eldest son arrived with a vehicle
and I was out of there.
Leaving my youngest son behind was torture to me.
But he knew if he wanted to leave,
he could reach out to me.
Maybe someday he would.
[narrator] Carol has been with the cult for 37 years.
It's all she's ever known.
[Carol] Eventually, my eldest son and I
landed back in Owen Sound
and we started a new life.
I landed a job cleaning offices.
Things were difficult.
I didn't always have enough food.
I had to walk everywhere.
I worked all day and most evenings.
[Daphne] Carol was lucky.
She was lucky that her son chose to leave
and was the catalyst to her leaving.
She was lucky that she was resilient.
And she was extraordinarily lucky
that one of the people she met while she was cleaning was John.
[John Christie] When I met Carol,
I was a city councilor in Owen Sound.
I was also doing some contract work at Bayshore Broadcasting.
This lady named Carol started to appear
at the radio station.
He introduced himself and a friendship blossomed.
He could make me laugh.
And it really felt good to laugh
because I had lost my sense of humor over the years.
Eventually, he did ask me out to dinner
and I said yes, which shocked me.
And our friendship grew into a romantic situation.
It was the first time I had ever been in love.
This is what it's like.
I was totally smitten.
[laughs] Just totally.
Three or four months into our relationship,
she decided to sit me down
and tell me what her past wa
When she finished that she said,
"If you decide to walk away,
I will understand."
And I said, "Well, what do you want me to do?"
And she said, "I want you to stay."
And so, here we are.
I couldn't propose to Carol until her divorce came throu
from the sham marriage to Joe King.
It was essentially uncontested.
And then it was time to propose to her, because now
she's legally available material.
[Carol] We were married in October.
It was such a happy day.
Very small wedding
and a new chapter on that path of freedom.
[narrator] But despite Carol's happy ending,
she hasn't yet dealt with her own demons.
And the trauma she suffered for so many years
was brimming under the surface.
A winter coat that John had bought me
that meant so much to me
was stolen.
For someone to steal that off a coat rack,
I just could not get over that.
And that's when I said, "I'm tired of being a victim."
I want to do something about Fred.
He caused so much pain and agony,
he needed to lose all his pleasures and privileges
And that's when legal actions were started.
[John Tamming] So many time I've interviewed clients
that have suffered deep sexual abuse.
And it's incredibly painful to go through those memories.
It just is.
And many of them are very busted-up human beings.
But Carol, from somewhere,
was just like a Rock of Gibraltar.
And I remember just being gobsmacked by what I was being told.
And I just let Carol talk
and talk and talk.
We knew that the criminal justice system in this country,
the sentences for even some of the worst sexual abuse
just often are not very meaningful.
Let's be blunt.
If you want to get to somebody like Fred, you get his pocketbook.
[John] We filed a civil sui
which spelled out a number of abuses,
including physical, sexual,
financial and psychological
And there was a price put on each of those things.
And early February of 2010,
Fred King was served with the papers.
It was the first time Fred had ever been sued
over anything or taken to court.
I can imagine he didn't like it.
[Tamming] When I first met Fred,
I just felt like I was in the presence of evil.
His eyes were dead.
And it occurred to me that this was one of the first times
in his life
that somebody was not really that intimidated by him.
I get to probe about, "What did you think the beating of her sons?"
In front of Carol.
"What did you think, Fred, that would do to the group?"
It was not a good day for Fred.
[narrator] Immediately following the interview,
Fred's lawyer settles with one stipulation.
Carol may not go public with the dollar value.
I was quite happy about it.
It helped me out a lot.
The bank teller said it was the largest check
she had ever deposited in her career,
which was a lengthy career.
A couple of days after we deposited the check,
we met for lunch, a celebratory lunch,
with John Tamming.
And he said to us,
"You're free to do whatever you want,
as long as you don't disclose the amount.
You could write a book.
You can go to the media."
So we decided to do both.
[TV show host] A secretive sect, a dominating leader,
young brides taken on faith
-Ten was the youngest. -Ten?
[Carol] He would scream, "If you leave this church,
I will hunt you down and kill you."
[narrator] Carol's bold choi to tell her story
will have unexpected consequences.
As I first watched this on television,
I was, uh, very surprised
that this was happening right under our noses.
I was anxious to get him into custody.
[narrator] Grey County Polic are launching an investigati
into Fred King's polygamous cult.
First step was to go and meet Carol Christie.
The whole story is so bizarre
that it is somewhat unbelievable.
But they believed me.
[Peter] We're trying to put together enough evidence
to have a formal interview with Fred King
and his legal wife Linda King.
So we have to get the interviews done
of all the other people first.
I did find it odd that the different church wives
would actually give the same answers
and, particularly, as far as "Who's the father of your children?"
Their answer being "I don't know,"
was somewhat scripted.
I heard that over and over.
[narrator] Police also tracked down a few other cult escapees.
They told us a number of cases where they were physically
beaten, assaulted, kicked,
or the allegation of Fred grooming a very young girl,
eleven to thirteen years of age.
Fred King was a violent master manipulator.
[Carol] When Fred got wind of it all,
he disappeared.
[reporter] Police are still looking for 55-year-old Frederick King.
He has been charged with assault, sexual exploitation
assault causing bodily harm
uttering death threats and assault with a deadly weapon
[narrator] Weeks pass and finally there is a brea in the investigation.
A license plate associated to Mr. King
had been run by an officer in front of a motel.
And he advised me that a woman had booked in
by the name of Linda King.
[narrator] Detective Ridgewa sets up surveillance
outside the motel.
Hours later, he observes Linda King
heading towards the parking lot
where she gets inside a van.
And sure enough Mr. King emerged from the motel room.
And, uh, went straight into the passenger side of the van.
I got out of the police unit,
opened the passenger side of the van
and I advised Mr. King that was under arrest for assault
[Carol] Detective Ridgeway phoned me,
he said, "Hi, Carol. We got him."
"You did?" [laughs]
[John] I felt elated.
This was a 16-month investigation
and now we've come to this.
That was a great feeling.
[Carol] There was a plea bargain.
The crown attorney felt
if we accepted it,
Fred would get some jail time.
Our witnesses were escapees
They had their fears.
We were afraid we were gonna lose them.
The advice was that we shoul accept the plea bargain.
So we did.
[narrator] Prosecutors decide to drop the sexual offence charges.
Fred King pleads to nine counts of assault.
And on September 14, 2016,
he is sentenced to 18 months in prison.
When I heard Fred was actually going to jail,
I rejoiced. I was happy.
But not totally satisfied.
He received 18 months,
but he only had to serve 12 months in jail
and go on his merry way.
I think Fred is still running his cult
because, remember, this is God's will.
[Daphne] Neither Fred, nor Stan,
was ever charged with polygamy.
There's only been two cases in Canada
in the last 100 years
where polygamy has been charged
and people have been convicted.
[Tamming] Is justice done in a criminal court sense?
I don't know.
What we hand out for sentences for some of this stuff
is pretty light.
Was justice done in the civil court?
We inflicted a lot of financial pain on him.
I hope it was sufficient.
[Carol] I've been able to he other escapees as well.
We were able to help five others sue.
And Fred was hit pretty hard.
Still, I'm hoping to bring attention to polygamy
will help the whole situatio
Polygamy is against the law.
And it needs to be enforced.
[Daphne] I think the generosity of Carol's spiri
in terms of being able to share her story
and to not just be a victim.
She is a victim but she's so much more than that
And that's inspiring.