Church leader guilty of nine assaults

OWEN SOUND - It didn't take much to set off Fred King, the leader of a small, isolated church in Chatsworth Township.

 Sometimes he'd deliver “corrections and chastisements” by punching, kicking or spitting on parishioners, an Owen Sound court heard Tuesday. Other times he used humiliation or did something such as squeezing a child's hand with crushing force for fighting with a sister.

The victims were his parishioners. In one case when a teen tried to run away, his grandmother tattled and Fred King, who was known simply as “The Prophet,” retaliated fiercely with a beating at a Sunday church service.

“The blows were all over his body, sometimes on the back of his head, but mostly on his arms and legs,” Grey County Crown attorney Michael Martin said while reading into the court record a statement of facts agreed to by Crown and defence.

King, 57, of Chatsworth Township, pleaded guilty before Superior Court Justice Clayton Conlan Tuesday to nine assaults which took place between Dec. 12, 1988 and Aug. 10, 2008, mostly in Chatsworth Township or Grey County, and in one case in Peel Region, involving four church members.  (more...)

Church leader guilty of nine assaults

The true story of a brave woman’s nearly 40 years in a polygamous cult, her eventual escape, and her struggle to integrate into a world she barely knew. 

In the early 1970s an innocent teenager who had led a sheltered life was forced to leave her family and enter into a polygamous, abusive, and deviant relationship with a man called the Prophet. In 2008, nearly 40 years later, she fled his religious sect.

Property is not a misnomer. It accurately depicts how the women in the sect were treated. Carol Christie reveals the degradation, abuse, and brainwashing that the Church Wives endured. She exposes the physical abuse, the mental cruelty, the slave labour, and the sexual deviance that took place near Owen Sound, a small community just a few hours north of Toronto, as well as at other locations. She describes the many opportunities that officials had to investigate but walked away from, swayed by the charismatic Prophet.

Carol is building a new life, one of freedom and options. With no money and no job she started again and is now dedicated to helping others who have escaped while raising awareness about the dangers of the cult.