High-ranking members of a group that a judge has previously termed a “cult” were convicted Monday of taking children from their parents and forcing them into unpaid labor, squalid living conditions and disciplinary beatings.
Six leaders of the United Nation of Islam were convicted of conspiracy to commit forced labor, and one was convicted of six additional forced labor of minors charges. Two others previously pleaded guilty to the same charge, which covers actions spanning from 2000 to 2012.
The Kansas City, Kan., organization promised to safely house and teach children, some as young as 8, from across the country.
“Instead, the defendants betrayed this trust, exploiting young children in the organization by callously compelling their labor,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in the prosecutor announcement.
The group kept children in overcrowded rooms, limited their food and communication to their families, and harshly punished them, including physical abuse, prosecutors said. Some leaders held “Fruit of Islam Beatdowns” — or “FOI Beatdowns” — in which they beat male members as punishment.
Kaaba Majeed, 50, faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The five others face up to five years in prison.
Majeed’s attorney W. Scott Toth told The Washington Post on Wednesday he plans to ask the court for a new trial but declined to explain on what grounds.
“As a member of the defense group that was involved in this, it wouldn’t be prudent of me to comment on the specific evidence and put forth gut reactions to the verdict until the defendants have exhausted their ability to continue to pursue their position,” he said. (The other defense teams did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.)
The other five group members convicted this week are Yunus Rassoul, James Staton, Randolph Rodney Hadley, Daniel Aubrey Jenkins and Dana Peach.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree referred to the group as a “cult” in May 2018, when he ordered the group to pay $8 million to a woman it trafficked for a decade and shipped against her will to work for free in the group’s bakeries and restaurants.
The group’s origins begin in 1978 when, according to its founder, the late Royall Jenkins, he “was abducted by angels who transported him through the galaxy in a spaceship and instructed him how to rule on Earth,” according to an indictment from October 2021. Jenkins died in 2021 of complications from COVID-19, according to court records.
Jenkins was a member of the Nation of Islam until he had a falling out with the Nation’s firebrand founder Minister Louis Farrakhan, according to a cached page of the United Nation of Islam (UNOI) website. The group started in Maryland but moved to Kansas City in the late 1990s. Membership numbered in the hundreds, prosecutors wrote.
The organization opened businesses, including restaurants and bakeries, in Kansas City and a number of east coast cities, including New York City, Atlanta and Baltimore.
The group also ran a sewing factory that wove the only clothing members were allowed to wear, and a factory that produced the only hygiene items members could use.
The businesses ran on one of the core tenets of the faith: unpaid labor, or “duty,” as it was known in the group. The full-time members lived in provided housing, and the part-time workers donated funds.
Many of the children were sent to Kansas City under the guise of them attending an unaccredited school named the University of Arts and Logistics of Civilization and worked in one of the businesses, “promising a fulsome education and the development of life skills through working in UNOI-operated businesses,” prosecutors wrote.
But the group didn’t tell parents that the children would work long hours — sometimes in lieu of school — or be sent to work at the other businesses around the country, prosecutors wrote. Children were kept on strict diets and lived in crowded dorms or barracks overrun with mold and rats, prosecutors wrote, while the leadership lived in spacious housing and ate what they wanted.
Prosecutors said leaders controlled the food members ate — usually just bean soup and salad — their medical treatments, the clothing they wore, the toiletries they used, the way they showered and the books they read. They also made members seek permission to speak to family and outsiders.
Infractions allegedly led to a variety of punishments, such as being locked in the dark or forced to remain silent for two weeks. In one instance, a child who burned a pie was allegedly made to work until midnight. Prosecutors said members were convinced that they would burn in “eternal hellfire” if they didn’t follow the rules or left.
Female members were subjected to weekly weigh-ins, prosecutors said, during which they would be humiliated and forced to fast.
Many of the defendants forced some people to undergo colonic procedures performed on them by adult members, according to prosecutors.
The cached UNOI website referred to colonics as “the Fountain of Youth,” saying: “Internal Cleansing removes the toxins which retard health … treatments at ‘The Fountain of Youth’ are important activities for rejuvenation and long life.”
Those convicted were also accused of beating children.
Prosecutors said Jenkins, Majeed and Hadley paddled minors; and Rassoul prevented a child from receiving medical care after the child fainted and hit their head on a brick floor while working at a restaurant Rassoul managed.
Some of the defendants held a hungry child upside down over train tracks because he would not admit to stealing food, prosecutors said. Another victim drank water from a toilet because she had not been allowed to drink, they said.
The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 18.