Eight children have been removed from a West Valley City home and placed in the custody of Utah's Division of Child and Family Services, after a judge ruled the removal action was reasonable and ordered everyone involved not to talk about why. The children, who range in age from a baby to a young teen, are the children of Amber Stowell, according to the family. Nicholas Young, the founder of firearms manufacturer Desert Tech, is willing to declare he is the father, according to his lawyer.
The case was first reported by KUTV, whose reporter Brian Mullahy detailed how Judge Sandi Clemens kept the children in state custody and barred parties from speaking to the press. The station notes that relatives had offered to care for the children themselves. DCFS has said only that it cannot discuss child cases, and the state has not revealed the specific reasons behind the removal.
A Gag Order Rooted in Utah's Child Welfare Privacy Law
The silence surrounding the case is not incidental — it stems from how Utah structures juvenile court proceedings. Under state child welfare confidentiality statutes, dependency and removal cases are closed to the public specifically to protect minor children, and juvenile judges are authorized to issue gag orders barring participants from discussing the specifics with reporters, according to KUTV. That legal framework is why neither DCFS nor the family can say publicly what evidence led Judge Clemens to conclude the removal was warranted.
The Davis County Cooperative Society's governing board — another name for the Kingston group — confirmed to the same outlet that the court issued a gag order on the case, and said commenting at that time would be inappropriate. The Kingstons otherwise declined to speak about the matter, per the station's reporting.
An Aunt Who Left the Group Speaks Out
Allison Eames, an aunt to the children who left the Kingston group more than 10 years ago, told the station she holds a very close place in her heart for the children and takes no pleasure in seeing her nieces and nephews in state custody. Eames said she thought she herself would be subject to an arranged marriage before she left the community, and she said the children are safe right now.
Nicholas Young's Dual Public Profile
Young's connection to the Kingston group has drawn national scrutiny before. He reportedly has a prominent role in the polygamous group and, per background reported by CBS News, is the nephew of Latter Day Church of Christ leader Paul Elden Kingston and holds a prominent position within the Davis County Cooperative Society as a high-ranking “numbered man.” Members of the group frequently use alternate surnames or a mother's maiden name in public business dealings, CBS News reported.
Young founded Desert Tech, a West Valley City–based manufacturer of precision bullpup rifles and defense weapon systems sold to military, law enforcement, and civilian buyers, originally launched in 2007 as Desert Tactical Arms before rebranding in 2013. During a July 2020 campaign visit to Utah, Donald Trump Jr. appeared in promotional materials shooting Desert Tech rifles alongside Young, generating national coverage of the firearms maker's ties to the fundamentalist group; representatives for Trump Jr. denied any endorsement of the sect at the time. In July 2019, federal prosecutors had also served notice of intent to seize the West Valley City facility Desert Tech leased, as part of asset-forfeiture proceedings tied to a fraud investigation against Kingston family members, though Desert Tech itself was never charged with wrongdoing.
A Group Under Sustained Federal Scrutiny
The Kingston group, formed in Bountiful, Utah, in 1935 by Elden Kingston and known internally as “the Order,” operates a central cooperative financial system and dozens of businesses, with an estimated 7,500 members as of 2019, according to background compiled from Wikipedia. Member wages and business revenues within the group are frequently funneled into a central cooperative fund.
That financial structure came under intense federal pressure in April 2023, when judges in Utah sentenced four Kingston family members — including Washakie Renewable Energy CEO Jacob Kingston to 18 years and CFO Isaiah Kingston to 12 years — for their roles in a $1.1 billion biofuel tax fraud scheme that improperly secured more than $511 million from the IRS, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. IRS Criminal Investigation agents described the case as one of the most egregious tax frauds in U.S. history.
Utah's Polygamy Law Since Decriminalization
The current case unfolds against a backdrop of changed state law. In March 2020, Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed Senate Bill 102, reclassifying simple bigamy among consenting adults from a third-degree felony to an infraction punishable by a maximum $750 fine and community service, according to The Guardian. Lawmakers passed the bill in part to encourage polygamists to report crimes without fear of felony prosecution.
But the revised statute retains second-degree felony penalties — punishable by up to 15 years in prison — if plural marriage is practiced alongside child abuse, coercion, fraud, human trafficking, or underage marriage, as detailed by Reason Magazine. During the 2020 legislative debates, representatives of the Davis County Cooperative Society publicly opposed language linking child abuse definitions to polygamy, arguing such provisions could be used against plural families in child welfare and custody disputes, according to FOX 13 Salt Lake City. It remains unknown, based on what has been made public, whether any of those enhanced provisions bear on the current case involving Young and Stowell's children, since the state has not disclosed its reasoning.
For now, the eight children remain in DCFS custody while the gag order holds. Eames says she continues to hold out hope that they are being cared for, even as the legal process that will determine their future plays out almost entirely behind closed doors.
