Recent events in the Hamblin case make it more critical than ever that survivors speak up about ritual abuse. This coming Thursday at 8:15 a.m., we will see if the Attorney General’s Office sends a prosecutor to the hearing in American Fork. If they do not, then the criminal case against Hamblin pertaining to his alleged abuse of Emily Sheets is likely to be dismissed for failure to prosecute.
This is despite the fact that Emily Sheets has two eyewitnesses to corroborate her abuse claims. Those two eyewitnesses, Rachel and Eliza Hamblin, have a 2003 custody court ruling that found by clear and convincing evidence that David Lee Hamblin sexually abused them. They have a tape recorded conversation of David Lee Hamblin apologizing to his daughter for raping her. This makes the failure to arrest, try, and convict David Lee Hamblin in 2003, 2014, and the present day even more inexcusable.
In addition, the Hamblin sisters and Emily Sheets have a second male victim in the Manti case who can testify as to Hamblin’s abuse in his case, as well as in the Sheets case in order to demonstrate Hamblin’s pattern of abuse. Prosecutors could also call any number of the patients Hamblin had sex with as a clinical psychologist, at least two of whom testified in his divorce proceedings. They could have already introduced the DOPL findings which led to Hamblin being stripped of his license to practice as a psychologist or counselor, and the prosecution could have called any number of people Hamblin continued to offer counseling services to even after he lost his license.
The nearly two years of delays in the current Hamblin cases are even more egregious in light of these facts. The fact that Governor Spencer Cox and his wife Abby Palmer Cox are Facebook friends with Hamblin’s alleged accomplices in the LDS Church of Satan, Lincoln Kevin and Khaliel Kelly, as well as Joe Bennion, makes Cox’s decision to nominate the sole deputized special prosecutor in the Hamblin case, Ryan Peters, for a judgeship even more suspicious. Kevin and Khaliel Kelly have been called as temple workers in Manti, the same temple that Hamblin and his accomplices James Harmston and Joe Bennion entered after hours to conduct sealings with child brides, who they allegedly raped on the altars in the temple.
Joe Bennion’s bishop is Shawn Lindow, the husband of Bobette Allred, identified by name in the Hamblin Victims Statements as “ritual abusers” who David Lee Hamblin refused to send his daughter Miriam to in Primary because they were of a lower bloodline than his own. The Hamblin Victims Statements identify the Allreds as the original CS council in Spring City, and explicitly allege that Bennion and Hamblin formed a competing CS council of their own. That council logically came to its end when Hamblin was expelled from the Church of Satan in 1999 for his mixture of Indian religious beliefs with CS and LDS doctrine, along with his public arrests for poaching and possession of peyote.
Joe Bennion has continued to conduct sweat lodges involving underage boys and girls to the present day. In those sweat lodges, peyote has been allegedly administered to children. The participants allegedly disrobe during the ceremonies. Any number of these facts would result in excommunication or arrest for most Latter Day Saints, but Joe Bennion has evaded even the slightest culpability for his actions. He openly embraces apostate doctrinal positions, arguing for the acceptance of LGBTQIA+ relationships within the church, a movement that flies directly in the face of clear scriptural teachings. Bennion also endorses heterosexual relationships outside of wedlock, which should not be be surprising given his alleged extramarital relationship with Roselle Stevenson or his alleged sexual relationships with teenage girls such as the Hamblin sisters.
Under Shawn Lindow, Bennion has remained in his calling as an assistant with the ward missionary efforts. He has not faced a High Council. He has avoided any real consequences whatsoever for openly embracing apostate doctrinal positions, as well as openly illegal conduct involving a controlled substance. It was on Joe Bennion’s recommendation that Tobias Schroeder’s parents sent their son to David Lee Hamblin for therapy. During those therapy sessions, Tobias was repeatedly abused by David Lee Hamblin. His siblings are identified as participants in a game of No Bears Are Out Tonight that occurred in Spring City, during which at least one child was allegedly raped in the bunkhouse behind the Hamblin residence.
The reason Bennion, Hamblin, and others have evaded culpability in Spring City might have something to do with the fact that Craig Christensen’s brother Clarke was the Spring City police and fire chief for years. Craig Christensen is the husband of Susan “Suki” Hamblin, David Lee Hamblin’s younger sister and alleged incestuous paramour. Hamblin’s current residence is located in an apartment complex that is at least partially owned or managed by Craig and Susan Christensen.
Combined with the fact that the church leadership in Salt Lake City has repeatedly refused to open their eyes to the reality of what is occurring in Spring City, with regards to a number of teenage girls in the Young Women’s group in Joe Bennion’s ward demonstrating fluency with the occult and witchcraft, along with the requisite mental and spiritual illness that accompanies such pursuits, Joe Bennion, David Lee Hamblin, and their accomplices have avoided any consequences for nearly forty years of alleged rape, torture, and murder. Those accomplices include David Leavitt, the former Utah County Attorney and brother of Mike Leavitt, the former governor of Utah.
IRA understands the frustration survivors feel watching David Lee Hamblin on the cusp of yet another escape from legal culpability for his misdeeds. The corruption is obvious. What is even more obvious is the fact that silence is the single biggest enabling factor in David Lee Hamblin’s escape: survivors have spoken to IRA by the dozens, but none have been willing to go on record with IRA or with the Utah County Sheriffs Office. They tell stories that are identical to the allegations in the Hamblin Victims Statements from 2012-2014. They name David Lee Hamblin, Joe Bennion, David Leavitt, and others over and over again. They name dozens of others who do not appear in the Hamblin Victims Statements, but who have documented prior relationships with Hamblin and his alleged accomplices. Those relationships stretch back over forty years.
Some victims who have spoken to law enforcement have been instructed that speaking out publicly will imperil their chances of seeing Hamblin prosecuted. At this stage, this is nonsense. For forty plus years, the individuals who committed this atrocities against children have been aided and abetted by a culture of silence with regards to ritual abuse. If we are ever going to expose the perpetrators, build public pressure on the Church and law enforcement to confront the scourge of ritual abuse directly, and see men like David Lee Hamblin put in prison and publicly ruined, it will be because survivors chose to speak out without regard for the system that insists on their silence as a trade off for the possibility of a court date, only to rob them of that possibility over and over again.
Many of the survivors I have spoken to have waited three to four decades to see their abusers face a reckoning. They have done what law enforcement and attorneys instructed them to do in maintaining silence out of fear that their public declarations would jeopardize any chances of success. Silence has yet to work for any of them. The public needs to hear from survivors as to how widespread and prevalent ritual abuse truly is, and they need to hear who is involved.
That is why I am calling on those I have spoken to for IRA and those I have not spoken to to speak out now. Tell you stories. Make a YouTube video or a TikTok video, and if you need help, I’ll give you all the help I can give. If you want to be interviewed by me on video, on the record, I will do so. The only way David Lee Hamblin and his accomplices succeed is in an environment of continued silence and subterfuge, where survivors are told that their silence might result in accountability, only to see accountability delayed time and time again.
The Hamblin cases are simple. There is a victim with two eyewitnesses. The victim and the eyewitnesses are telling the same story about the episode of abuse. There was never any reason for Ryan Peters to take over a year to bring the Hamblin case to trial, or to make a mess of the discovery issues within the current cases. The Hamblin case should have been brought before a jury swiftly, and the jury should have been empowered to determine which side they believed: a disgraced therapist with a history of sexually abusing his patients, who was previously found to be sexually abusive to two of his daughters by another court, or the three women who testify that he abused the victim in the current case.
The fact that Ryan Peters delayed for over a year gave the defense ample opportunity to raise one issue after another with regards to discovery. The handling of the case by individuals within the Utah County Sheriff’s Office with regards to their willful communications that undermined the credibility of their own victim and witness also enabled the defense to raise further issues as to the eyewitnesses and the victim. The defense didn’t have to be particularly competent when people within the UCSO and the special prosecutor were clearly throwing the game. In fairness, David Lee Hamblin’s attorneys took the opportunities they were given by the people who were supposed to represent the victims, and they have done what they could do to reach this point: the edge of another dismissal of David Lee Hamblin’s case.
What survivors do this week in terms of publicly declaring what they suffered at the hands of David Lee Hamblin and his accomplices will determine the future course of the criminal investigation and possible prosecutions of David Lee Hamblin, Joe Bennion, David Leavitt, and others. A year and ten months into this, I can only pledge that I will work regardless of what happens on Thursday. I believe the victims. I believe what they declared in 2003, in 2012, and what they have declared in the present day.
Come forward. Take away their shadows, and in doing so you will strip them of their power. Call the State Attorney General’s Office. Call Mike Smith. Call Jeffrey Gray. Call your elected representatives. Go on social media and tell your story. Let people know what happened to you, and who was responsible for it.
I know of a survivor who said Gordon B Hinkley raped her at age 3 and sat her on his lap and told her he is her spiritual father now. She was also hunted in the woods of Kaysville, Utah, for sport at a young age. I met her in 2022. She wasn't shy about it. She had been adopted into an "upper class mormon elite family." She left Utah recently in an attempt to move on with her life. Unfortunately I have lost track of her. I know of another survivor in her 40s who relayed in 2018 that she was stripped naked with other young children (around age 7), in an industrial sized kitchen, and they were shoved into big ovens. They were told by the leaders that if they did not perform well at their prostitution jobs, they would be cooked alive and then eaten. To make a point, they shut the door on one little girl and cooked her alive. Then, the leaders ate her in front of the children. This gal, raised in Utah County, I do know. She would come forward, but says she was so drugged much of the time, that she does not remember names. She is fortunate, she says, that she got out of that pattern of abuse when she married a good man, and further when she became a mother, she was able to heal a lot of past abuse. Unfortunately, I believe a lot of abuse victims may not recall the amount of details necessary to really succeed in coming forward. If you want to hear another victim from Utah County speak, listen to a recent episode of WE ARE THE PEOPLE, where a lady named Ashley recounts some of her ritual abuse memories.
What about a class action suit? The survivors should sue the government for not protecting them and other children. The citizens in general should sue the government for not protecting our children. We just need to find a lawyer who really knows how to bring this down,.