Kenyon Blackmore—Evangeline Blackmore

Kenyon Blackmore—Evangeline Blackmore is a father-daughter relationship that Kenyon recast as a religiously sanctioned marriage. His claim that revelation authorized him to control his daughter culminated in her abuse, abandonment, and separation from her family. Evangeline survived, was rescued by her grandmother, and later spoke publicly about both her own experience and her fear for her younger sisters.

Family Background and Unequal Power

Evangeline was the daughter of Kenyon Blackmore and Gwendolyn Stubbs LeBaron. Before her birth, Kenyon’s first wife, Annie Vandeveer Blackmore, knew nothing of Gwendolyn. Annie discovered the second marriage only when she traveled to Mexico to persuade Kenyon to return to Utah. There she learned that Gwendolyn, a young woman the same age as Annie and Kenyon’s oldest daughter, had just given birth to Evangeline. The baby was born in Colonia LeBaron three days before Dan Lafferty killed Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty. Annie returned home alone, shocked, but remained committed to the marriage; on a subsequent trip in January 1985, Kenyon agreed to return with her. He was arrested after crossing into the United States.

The family arrangement continued to change after Kenyon’s imprisonment and release. Back in Mexico, he married a third wife, Gwendolyn’s half sister, then left with both women and their children to travel through Central America. His children grew up under his authority as the family moved from place to place, while he supported them through assorted work and schemes. This was the setting in which Kenyon’s religious claims would give a father’s power an extreme and personal reach: he treated his own interpretations of divine instruction as authority over his daughters’ lives.

A Claimed Revelation and a Coerced Marriage

After his release from prison, Kenyon’s religious beliefs became more extreme. He received revelations in which, he said, God identified him as the last prophet before the return of Jesus Christ. He further claimed that Christ would return as a child conceived by Kenyon and his daughter. These were Kenyon’s asserted beliefs, not independently established revelations; in the account, they supplied his religious rationale for taking control of Evangeline.

In June 1996, on Evangeline’s twelfth birthday, Kenyon declared her his wife. He believed she should bear a child by him, and explained the timing through his interpretation of the story of Mary and Jesus. Evangeline was a child, while Kenyon was her father and the adult who controlled the family’s movements and contact with others. The language of marriage did not describe a relationship between equals; it was the means by which he presented his abuse as obedience to a divine command.

Evangeline resisted. Kenyon told her that her resistance would condemn her, and used force and intimidation to make her submit. She later recalled being barely twelve, unable to make sense of what was happening, and knowing that she did not want it. Kenyon also prevented her from having friends or speaking with other people. Her dependence on her father and isolation from possible sources of help left her with little power to oppose his claim over her.

Abandonment and Rescue

After many months of abuse, Evangeline became pregnant and miscarried two months later. When she did not conceive again, Kenyon cast her out in April 1997, less than two months before her thirteenth birthday, and left her in Guatemala. The sequence exposed the conditional nature of his supposed care: he had treated her as a wife while pursuing his claimed religious purpose, then abandoned her when she did not fulfill it.

Evangeline lived alone for about four months. When she ran out of food, she stayed with acquaintances in Guatemala City. After roughly six months, they managed to contact her grandmother, Lavina Stubbs LeBaron, in Colonia LeBaron. Lavina drove to Guatemala and rescued her. Evangeline’s separation from her father thus became not only an escape from his control but also a precarious period of isolation before another family member could reach her.

Lasting Consequences and Significance

Evangeline later lived in the American Midwest, married, and had a son. Her account nevertheless presents the abuse as an experience that continued to trouble her, rather than as something ended simply by her rescue. Her concern turned toward six younger sisters who, at the time of the account, were still traveling with Kenyon somewhere in Central or South America. She feared that he intended to claim each daughter as a wife upon her twelfth birthday. The text gives the birthdays of three sisters as May 2001, February 2003, and July 2004, underscoring that her fear concerned a continuing risk, not only a past event.

The relationship also sits within a broader account of religious authority and plural-family structures, without making Kenyon’s conduct representative of every family or believer. In the Colorado City community, Rulon Jeffs was reported to have many wives and to preach total obedience; plural wives could be spiritually married while remaining legally unmarried. The account also describes UEP doctrine under which wives and children could be treated as the priesthood’s property. These details establish a wider setting in which religious hierarchy could subordinate family autonomy, but Kenyon’s claims about his own revelations were his, and the evidence does not establish that another leader directed his abuse of Evangeline. Her story makes the consequence stark: when a father presents his authority as God’s command, a child’s dependence can be turned into a means of control, while escape may depend on help from beyond the household.