Kansas City officials helped ‘cult’ flourish despite warnings of child abuse
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KANSAS CITY, Kan. — For nearly two decades, local government officials in Kansas City, Kansas — operating under the pretense of reviving a neighborhood they considered blighted and dangerous — aided a quasi-religious group whose leaders now face federal charges of trafficking children.
Eight people connected to an organization formerly known as the United Nation of Islam are set to go on trial Thursday in federal court on allegations the group forced children as young as 8 to work without pay. The indictment says the group, which a federal judge labeled a “cult,” also beat children, denied them health care, and forced them to eat strict diets.
“You have to recognize this was an organization. This is a system, a business, right? A business has to actually engage with political members to do what they have to do,” a woman who was trafficked by the group told Kansas Reflector. “So, if that’s the case, how did they do this for years?”
The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City and a public school board ignored warning signs as they helped the United Nation of Islam flourish.
In 1996, a group from UNOI led by the late Royall Jenkins, a leader who claimed to be Allah, told the city commission the group was moving to Kansas City to create its headquarters. Group leaders had decided to make Kansas City their “heaven.”
The UNOI ruled over the Quindaro Boulevard area starting in 1997 — running storefronts like “Your Diner,” “Your Bakery,” “Your Gas Station,” and others.
A Kansas Reflector investigation uncovered details of the group’s activities and local officials’ support through federal and state court documents, city records, and interviews with the human trafficking survivor, a former city commissioner, a Department for Children and Families spokeswoman, and a human trafficking expert.
Nathaniel Barnes, a city commissioner in 1996, said he “raised an eyebrow” when Jenkins claimed to be Allah. But Jenkins promised big ideas — like creating housing and storefronts.
From 1998 to 2000, the Unified Government donated five buildings to UNOI, all on or near Quindaro Boulevard. Barnes said the government just needed to make sure the group was classified as a nonprofit, which it was, before donating the buildings. These buildings were used for labor trafficking of minors, sexual and physical abuse, fake schooling, and unregulated medical practice, according to prosecutors and survivors.
The woman who talked to Kansas Reflector about being trafficked by Jenkins as a child said she suffered severe panic attacks and depression after she escaped UNOI. She recalled a three-month stay at a mental health hospital, where she told her doctors of the physical, sexual and psychological abuse she suffered and witnessed. She did not press abuse charges. Kansas Reflector doesn’t identify survivors of domestic and sexual violence without their consent, and she asked that her name not be used.
She said government officials enabled UNOI because it allowed them to “take the burden off” of running the Quindaro area, an area of low socioeconomic status and high crime rates. Defendants called the area the “dangerous part of town,” court documents show.
One of Jenkins’ daughters told The Pitch in 2003 that at least five members had called the state’s child abuse hotline, including her. She died in 2008, and court documents show that Jenkins announced to members that he “had his daughter killed.”
An employee at the Department for Children and Families, known at the time as Social and Rehabilitative Services, told The Pitch she had joined law enforcement to investigate, but the group’s security guards blocked her from entering the property.
Erin LaRow, spokeswoman for DCF, said local law enforcement would have been aware of the allegations at the time.
Despite the warning signs, in March 2003, the Unified Government donated another building.
Content retrieved from: https://kansasreflector.com/2024/07/31/kansas-city-officials-helped-cult-flourish-despite-warnings-of-child-abuse/.
