Cult kidnapping

[JamesVincent]

Wasn't sure which sub to put this in since it apparently had a couple different beliefs in it. If anyone thinks of a better place feel free to move it.

Long story short. Couple goes through divorce. Mother doesn't want Dad getting custody. Mother kidnaps 4 year old daughter and flees Utah to go to Missouri. Mother hides in a cult compound belonging to a fundamentalist group of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Cult leader espouses couple different things, like praise for Bitcoin and Native American rituals.

A Utah woman is accused of kidnapping her then-4-year-old daughter in January 2023 and evading law enforcement for 18 months, with help from her adult sons, before she was finally caught.

At the time when Kimberly Dell Davidson-Drolet, 53, allegedly kidnapped her daughter, she and her now-estranged husband, Laurence Drolet, were in the process of getting a divorce.

https://www.fox6now.com/news/kimberly-d ... t-compound

Seems that everyone involved in the plot, like the mother and her adult sons, have been charged with kidnapping and conspiracy to commit except the cult leader who actually hid the mother and daughter, while knowing she had taken the daughter illegally. Apparently the end goal of all this was to raise money for the mother and leader to flee to Thailand.

More info from the Federal Attorney's office.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ut/pr/non- ... s-compound



edit"added second link

[CrankyBoomer]

This reminds me of the Hampstead Hoax (though there wasn't any actual kidnapping there) and of the kidnapping in Anglesey a few years ago that Wilfred Wong was involved with.

Getting back to the Utah case, I don't know the ins and outs of USA Federal Law or Utah State Law but could it be argued that the cult leader didn't strictly speaking take part in kidnapping. The cult may have provided a refuge for the Mum but could have taken what she said at face value. But as I say I don't know American Law.