Kansas City officials helped ‘cult’ flourish despite warnings of child abuse

By Grace Hills

Kansas City, Kansas — 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.

About the United Nation of Islam

The United Nation of Islam, which rebranded as the “Value Creators” and “The Promise Keepers,” is a breakaway sect of the Nation of Islam, a . After Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammod’s death in 1975, Jenkins said he was visited by angels or scientists who took him around the universe to show him how to rule earth. He said those who chose to follow him would be protected when the “final destruction” came.

Jenkins told members to give up everything to UNOI: their money, their food stamps, deeds to their property. Even their children.

The survivor who was abused by the group said that when she was moved from her home state to Kansas City, she and other children ages 7 to 12 were picked up in the middle of the night and transported by a charter bus, purchased by UNOI. Neither the parents nor the children knew where they were going. A week after their arrival in Kansas City, the children were allowed minimal, monitored contact with their parents, she said.

Children worked up to 16 hours per day in UNOI storefronts without pay. Court documents show that although members could be of any age, the defendants primarily used the labor of minors, the youngest 8 years old. In return, they would get meals, accommodations and housing, according to court documents.

Restricting meals was often used as a form of punishment — the meals they did receive were small and sparse, and Jenkins only allowed them to eat  “clean” foods, which were bean soup, salad and occasionally fruit, former members told federal investigators. Court documents outline the colonics members were forced to get, which is a medical procedure designed to “cleanse” the colon by flushing water through it. It is considered unhealthy and dangerous by doctors. Documents also outline weekly weigh-ins and mandated weight for women and girls.

Court documents show members were not allowed to consume media that was not approved by Jenkins, and were not allowed to wear clothes or use toiletries not made by UNOI. Members had to make requests for any outside item, and requests often were denied.

The survivor who talked to Kansas Reflector said the children lived in houses with other families within UNOI. Court documents show that if children did not live with other families, they would live in UNOI-operated barracks in “crowded conditions” and be forced to follow a strict diet, while the defendants lived “in spacious accommodations and ate as they wanted.” Children were “rarely allowed to live with their families.”

While under the group’s control in her home state, the survivor lived with a woman who would threaten to harm her and watch her bathe. In Kansas City, she was expected to wake up at 5 a.m. to prepare 10 children for school and act as a servant for the adults — especially the men, she said.

Men had multiple wives, and Jenkins married his stepdaughter, and at least 12 other women, court documents show. Jenkins told women their duty was to serve Black men, he said in his conferences.

Jenkins told them this was their duty to Allah. He emphasized the “eternal consequences of noncompliance,” and if they attempted to leave they would suffer physical and mental abuse, court documents show.

He proclaimed this loudly, starting in basements before moving to an online platform, and eventually gained a following of a couple hundred people spanning multiple states, his daughter told The Pitch.

United Nation of Islam takes over

The UNOI presented itself as a church, and the group incorporated as a religious nonprofit in Delaware, business records show.

Court documents show UNOI operated at least 10 businesses around the United States in their “temple” cities, including Wichita, entirely staffed by unpaid UNOI members. The documents also show UNOI would “dispatch” young members from Kansas City to work in new operations in other states, including Georgia, Maryland, New York, Ohio, North Carolina and New Jersey, without alerting their parents.

The multi-jurisdictional factor of this operation posed significant challenges, the survivor said. The UNOI ran multiple operations in other states, frequently sending children across state lines. This all started before the The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, which gave the U.S. government tools to have a “comprehensive and coordinated campaign to eliminate modern forms of slavery,” according to the Department of Justice website.

It would take nearly two more decades after the Trafficking Victims Protection Act for federal authorities to start investigating the UNOI, according to an episode of A&E’s “Cults and Extreme Beliefs.”

Sharon Sullivan, a professor emeritus at Washburn University who is a subject matter expert in human trafficking, said this made the group's case “despicable and classic.”

“We’re groomed to respect other religions,” Sullivan said.

She drew parallels between what happened with UNOI to the abuse within the Catholic Church, highlighting how such actions went unchecked for decades. She argued that the government sets the standard for community interactions with religious groups and pointed out that the lack of transparency surrounding these organizations is a significant issue. This opacity, she said, contributed to UNOI's ability to take control of the Quindaro area, particularly as the group was perceived so positively.

Barnes, the former city commissioner, said he never found a reason to be “incredibly suspicious” of the group.

This, according to the survivor, was not true.

“They were never supposed to be able to take over the whole city,” she said.

Through a lack of oversight and alleged conspiring, she believes, “political people allowed this to occur.”

Government-aided corruption

In April 2000, city records show, the KCK Public Schools board transferred the former Roosevelt Elementary schoolhouse to UNOI for a symbolic $1. UNOI repurposed the building into the "University of Islam," where children received instruction from non-certified teachers and endured public humiliation, a survivor told A&E.

The Pitch reported that the school board did not investigate UNOI’s background or check if the teachers were board certified. The school’s principal, who was one of Jenkins’ wives and also his stepdaughter, only had a sixth-grade education. Then-school board president Gloria Willis told The Pitch she was “not sure why” this wasn’t investigated. None of the seven current school board members responded to requests to comment for this story.

For A&E, one of the exploited children explained “the mic” during “math” class. Children who did anything deemed as wrong that day — like walking the wrong way down the street, or saying “hi,” a word banned by Jenkins because he said it was connotated with hell — would be brought in front of an auditorium of people and publicly humiliated. Their “disciplinary action” would be physical assault, with members of the group punching the subject in the chest. Court documents show that sometimes physical punishments would leave members unconscious.

Most Children, like Kendra Ross — a woman who sued Jenkins for human trafficking in 2018 and won nearly $8 million — were taken out of school around age 15 to work at UNOI storefronts.

Court documents show parents from other states were encouraged to send their children to Kansas City for a “fulsome education,” not informing parents that their children would work “extended hours in lieu of school” or be sent to other UNOI businesses around the country. If members did not move their children to Kansas City for schooling, they were expected to work at UNOI storefronts as their “education.”

The survivor who talked to Kansas Reflector said she was taught years below her grade level, and when she returned home she had to do years of catching up.

She spent time at “Heaven’s Inn No. 1,” the house Jenkins and his family lived in that was notably more lavish than the others. She said she overheard a conversation between UNOI’s lawyer and Jenkins regarding the transaction to purchase the schoolhouse for $1. She said they brokered an agreement with local officials to provide security for nearby low-income housing areas, where no members resided, in exchange for the schoolhouse.

The Pitch reported on a court case from July 2002 that involved members of “the fruit of Islam,” the group’s paramilitary consisting of teenage boys, beating a non-member for walking his dog on school grounds.

The Unified Government also donated a building at 1121 Quindaro Blvd., which became “Your Colonic Center,” where members were forced to get colonics by Dana Peach, a defendant in the upcoming Aug. 1 trial.

Jenkins taught members to stay away from medicine and health care. He believed sickness was brought on by personal will, and he ensured his members immortality.

Jenkins died of COVID-19 complications.

Court documents show the defendants denied a child, who will be a witness at the Aug.1 trial, his inhaler.

Court documents also show that when members were allowed to seek medical care, which was rare, members were forced to see Peach, one of Jenkins’ wives. Members were to call her “Dr. Peach,” despite her lack of certification. Instead of medicine, members were told to eat garlic, even when there was a ringworm epidemic in the group, former members told The Pitch.

According to the survivor who talked to Kansas Reflector, Peach treated any kind of illness.

“But because they were low income, the city government just looked the other way,” the former member said. “Aren’t you supposed to have some type of regulation in regards to that?”

In 2009, Shaquanta Williams, a 14-year-old who was trafficked by the group, died of cancer. According to A&E, former members remember her begging to go to the hospital, but Jenkins refused. He said her illness was “her will.” The day before her death, after months of begging, she was taken to Children’s Mercy Hospital, where she died.

What happens next

Although Jenkins died in 2021, eight other leaders will be on trial: Peach, Kaaba Majeed, Yunus Rassoul, James Stanton, Randolph Hadley, Daniel Aubrey Jenkins, Etenia Kinard and Jacelyn Greenwell. Court documents show that while Jenkins created the rules, the defendants enforced them.

Court documents show the government plans to dispute the defendants’ claim that they "withdrew from the conspiracy," an argument that means they left the group.

Scott Toth, who represents Majeed, said he will argue the “premise that UNOI facilitated human trafficking is categorically false.” Other defendant attorneys declined to comment.

Sullivan, the human trafficking expert, said prosecutors will have to prove fraud, coercion and force in order to convict the UNOI leaders.

UNOI lost its properties after failing to file paperwork on time, and the group is no longer operating under “Value Creators,” “The Promise Keepers” or its original name.

The survivor the Kansas Reflector interviewed believes more people need to be prosecuted.

“I’m never going to forget,” the former member said, “that a city allowed this to happen.”