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Weeks before 15-year-old Andrea Johnson's family rushed her to University Hospital in Salt
Lake City, her body had ballooned with toxic fluids.
When doctors finally saw the teen-ager, they ordered an emergency Caesarean section to save
her 1-pound, 11-ounce baby boy. Fourteen days later, Andrea was dead.
Connie Rugg, Andrea's sister, claims members of the Kingston polygamous clan did not drive
the girl across town to the hospital for fear authorities would learn that her husband was actually
her half brother.
Claims of neglect against the family were ``substantiated'' by a caseworker with the Utah
Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS), who determined Andrea's cause of death --
eclampsia -- could have easily been prevented.
``Had prenatal care been received, that girl's life could have been saved,'' Ken Patterson, the recently appointed director of DCFS, acknowledged in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. Yet DCFS placed Andrea's baby with the same family whose alleged neglect led to her death, Patterson said. He blamed that decision on an ill-equipped child-protection agency that had less than half the staff it does today.
``In retrospect,'' Patterson said, ``the agency today would not investigate and engage the same
way we did in 1992.'' The agency even lost track of the baby, who is now 6 years old and has
cerebral palsy. But The Tribune learned the boy is living with Jason Ortell Kingston and his
second wife (who purportedly is also Jason Kingston's niece), and that the boy has been pulled
out of the Salt Lake City School District, which has specialized classes for disabled children.
Patterson said the breakdown in this case suggests DCFS needs to undergo agencywide
training to help caseworkers better recognize patterns of abuse, neglect and incest in the
thousands of polygamous families living in Utah. ``We are probably going to have some
orientation or training sessions for working with the polygamous culture,'' said Patterson. ``Like
no other previous generation, Utah child-protection workers [are going to have] to go in and sort
this out.
``But our position is real clear, if a child under 18 is having sexual relations with an adult and
it is not a legal marriage, then sexual abuse has occurred . . . Incest is also a form of sexual abuse
[and it] would also be grounds for removal of a child.''
When Andrea's baby was released from University Hospital, nurses handed him over to
Jason Kingston, the man DCFS today acknowledges that anonymous informants had told them
six years ago was Andrea's half brother.
The young couple, she was 14, he 17, were married in a wedding approved by the wealthy
and secretive Kingston polygamous clan, Rugg said.
In 1992, caseworkers could not substantiate the tip about incest, Director Patterson said,
although he did not know if or how extensively they probed the allegation. DCFS relied almost
exclusively on University Hospital officials to approve the transfer of custody.
In another unexplained development, officials from the same University Hospital told a
DCFS caseworker and a detective with a subpoena from the Salt Lake County
Sheriff's Office that Andrea's medical file was missing, scuttling a criminal investigation of
her death.
But last week, University Hospital gave the medical files of Andrea and her baby to county
detectives -- without a subpoena. Today, the boy remains in the custody of Jason
Kingston, now 24, a state auditor and the youngest son of polygamous patriarch John Ortell
Kingston and John Ortell's legal wife, LaDonna Kingston.
Despite Jason's late father's estimated $70 million estate and the now more than $150 million
fortune of the Kingston clan, Andrea's $48,000 hospital bill was paid for by
Medicaid -- government assistance for the poor, according to hospital records.
State investigators say John Ortell also is Andrea's father. When he died in 1987, John Ortell
gave his entire fortune to his Latter Day Church of Christ -- which is now controlled by his
children. Not one child or wife objected to his will, although on paper, many were supposedly
left penniless.
The Tribune was not able to determine who paid hospital costs for Andrea's baby during the
weeks he spent recovering in the neonatal intensive care unit at University Hospital. But, in most
cases where Medicaid covers a mother, the federal insurance program also pays the medical bill
of the baby, said Randa Pickle, a health program representative for Utah's Bureau of Eligibility
Services.
``Sometimes,'' she added, ``the baby is covered for up to a year.''
Now rearing the boy with Kingston is Rosalind Kingston -- Jason's niece who also is his wife
-- according to a sworn deposition by Rosalind's mother in a 1994 civil case.
``We did not place the child in custody -- the child left the hospital with family or kin,''
Director Patterson said. ``The referral was not on risk to the child, it was on the risk to Andrea,
and it came too late.''
DCFS attorney Kate Lahey and Director Patterson said a Utah record law prevented them from
releasing Andrea's case file to The Tribune. However, Patterson agreed to discuss aspects of the
case and the agency's role.
And on the heels of a renewed probe into Andrea's untimely death by the Salt Lake County
Sheriff's Office, Patterson said his agency may revive its own 6-year-old inquiry into the plight of
Andrea's now-6-year-old boy and the role played during the fatal pregnancy by Jason Kingston
and other members of the Kingston clan.
The move is the latest re-examination of polygamy. Recently, Gov. Mike Leavitt reversed
himself after stating that plural marriage is simply an old-fashioned and harmless religious quirk.
Now, Utah Atty. Gen. Jan Graham is leading the call to target the pockets of incest, child
abuse and welfare fraud within some polygamous clans.
But the fate of Andrea's baby remains in doubt. Said DCFS spokesman Randy Ripplinger on
Wednesday: ``We didn't know until yesterday that there was even a baby alive.''
And, the division itself remains embroiled in its own fight against charges that it is failing in
its mission to protect children from abuse and neglect.
For the past four years, welfare officials have labored under an out-of-court agreement
requiring vast improvements. The settlement grew out of a 1993 class-action lawsuit filed by the
National Center for Youth Law in San Francisco, based on claims from child-advocacy groups
and even the state's own caseworkers who say Utah's child-welfare system has repeatedly placed
children with abusive foster families, failed to follow cases adequately and consistently ignored
children's educational and medical needs.
Under the agreement, DCFS has received a 108 percent increase in its budget and hired 600
additional employees, including 60 new caseworkers. Gov. Leavitt has touted the improvements,
but an audit released this month showed the state has not complied with 69 percent of the
agreement's health and safety measures considered vital to children's well-being.
Private Life: It was the spring of 1996 and it seemed like a normal question asked in any
classroom in America: Do you have brothers and sisters?
But the little boy in a wheelchair seemed hesitant to answer, managing a faint ``Yes'' before
glancing at his glowering stepmother.
And then he adjusted his answer. He said ``No.''
Teachers at Lincoln Elementary School in Salt Lake City had always thought the boy's answers
were odd, but they shelved them with other family oddities: the mother's refusal to allow in-home
assistance; the father's rare appearances at the school; and the reluctance of the boy to share
details of his life.
What they didn't know -- until now -- was the boy was the son of Andrea Johnson who had
died at age 15, shortly after giving birth.
Jason Kingston told the Salt Lake Tribune in a meeting this week that he videotaped, that he
``does not grant personal interviews.'' He refused to answer questions about Andrea or the baby.
Rosalind Kingston, 22, shares a home with Jason and the boy at 1760 S. 500 East in Salt Lake
City, ex-members say.
``I knew the baby survived and was living with somebody, but I wasn't sure who the baby was
living with until now,'' said Elaine Jenkins, a woman who left the 1,500-member Kingston
polygamous group after her husband died in a central Utah mining accident. ``I knew Rosalind,
though. She was young, quiet. She did what she was told.''
Although the boy reportedly has cerebral palsy and little motor control, his intelligence is
normal.
In the spring of 1996, he was enrolled in a special-education preschool class designed to
augment speech and physical therapy he received at Primary Children's Medical Center.
But as of Friday, Jason and Rosalind Kingston had not registered the boy for public school
classes. They have also failed to apply for the home-school exemption or to obtain an attendance
release from the school district for other reasons.
On Monday -- if one of those three things have not been done -- the parents could be in
violation of the state's compulsory-schooling statutes. Salt Lake School District would be within
its right to file a petition with the Juvenile Court, according to Doug Bates, attorney for the Utah
Office of Education.
``He was taken out after January -- in fact he never attended last year and we don't have any
record of enrollment for this year,'' said Bates. ``That would be a violation of the
compulsory-attendance statute. We will know that next week [but] you would think that if he
were attending, he would have been registered by now.''
Future Prospects? Kingston family members say the boy is alert and friendly. He often attends
the Kingston's Latter Day Church of Christ, which his uncle Paul heads, with Rosalind. But they
fear his chances for a normal life could suffer if he is kept out of school.
``He has had some problems as a result of his early birth,'' said Rowenna Erickson, a former
church member who helped organize a support group for ex-polygamous wives and children.
Medical experts say cerebral palsy in infants often is caused by premature birth and that
pre-eclampsia, left untreated, is a likely cause of premature birth.
Babies of women who have pre-eclampsia are four or five times more likely to have problems
soon after birth than babies of women who don't have this condition, according to The Merck
Manual of Medical Information, Home Edition. Babies may be small because the placenta
malfunctions or they are premature.
``You can say that the prematurity was a contributing factor to the cerebral palsy,'' said Judy
Gooch, acting medical director for the rehabilitation unit at Primary Children's Medical Center.
``But then the prematurity for the birth is probably related to the pre-eclampsia.''
Gooch is a cerebral palsy specialist at Primary.
She explains the condition this way: ``It is primarily a motor-loss impairment caused by injury
to an immature brain.
``Typically you can have motor-control damage or disability out of proportion of the cognitive
abilities. Their thinking isn't necessarily normal, but their motor problems are much worse.''
With continued therapy and computer-assisted training available at many education centers --
including the special-education program at Salt Lake School District, children with cerebral palsy
can learn to be highly functional, school officials say.
But that type of training and education is not available in most Kingston homes, said Erickson.
``I'm afraid of what will happen to that boy. To protect their secret, they will do anything,
including hiding that child.''