Woman born into polygamous cult reveals dad tried to make her marry her cousin at 16

A TikToker has racked up tens of thousands of views by sharing her experiences growing up in a polygamist cult.

Nicole Mafi - who goes by @koles_place on the social media platform - is the daughter of infamous cult leader Paul Kingston, who heads up an offshoot of the mainstream Mormon church known as The Order.

Per news.com.au, Mafi runs a popular TikTok series titled 'leaving the cult', in which she explains to her 76,400 followers how she escaped the group when she was in her teens.

She also opened up about the experience on Reddit in 2018, in the popular 'Ask Me Anything' thread. There, she explained that one of her breaking points was when her dad tried to marry her off to her cousin.

"My dad sat me down on my 16th birthday and told me I had to get married,” she said. "I knew I was leaving about that point even if I couldn’t admit it to anyone yet," Nicole wrote.

"I had a choice between a first cousin and a second cousin. 1st cousin was 19 (I was 17). 2nd cousin was 27 (I was 16)," she added, explaining: "Getting married is a business transaction. You are given to a man as payment for something else (money, a business, strengthen family ties, etc.)"

Elsewhere in the Redditt thread, Nicole described how she escaped.

"One night, when I was 17, I packed my photo album, journals, and some clothes in the back of my car and I disappeared. I was homeless for a month, before I found a friend who allowed me to stay with him," she wrote.

She then says her family brainwashed her into returning - but then, at 18, she left again. "I stayed with a boyfriend’s parents while I waited tables and struggled through college."

Since leaving the cult, Nicole has self-published a book about her experiences titled 'The Leader's Daughter'. She also uses social media - in particular TikTok - to unmask the truth about cult's like the one she grew up in.

In one video, she revealed: "My dad had 27 wives, don’t know how many kids." In another, she estimates that her father has somewhere "between 200 and 300 kids."

"When I counted when I left 10 years ago it was about 200, and he’s had quite a few more in the last 10 years," she added.

Formally known as the Latter Day Church of Christ, The Order was founded by Elden Kingston in the 1930s. Its views about polygamy were influenced by the now-infamous Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is also the subject of a recent Netflix documentary 'Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey.'

Featured Image Credit: Bob Daemmrich / Alamy