Cooperative, alleging intentional sexual abuse of a child and intentional infliction of emotional distress, but the lawsuit was eventually dropped without any settlement. Active members and a recent independent research article by a professor from Santa Clara University have attributed the practice to "endogamous preference and the small size of the group’s population". These relationships are defined as incestuous according to Utah's Criminal Code 76-7-102 (2021), which states: "Related person" means a person related to the provider or actor as an ancestor, descendant, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, or first cousin, and includes: (i) blood relationships of the whole or half blood without regard to legitimacy; (ii) the relationship of parent and child by adoption; and (iii) the relationship of stepparent and stepchild while the marriage creating the relationship of a stepparent and stepchild exists. Pedophilia and underaged marriage The Kingston family and other members of the LDCC have faced two lawsuits, one in 2006 and another in 2022 accusing members and the organization as a whole of sexual abuses, including pedophilia and underaged marriages, within their membership. The 2022 complaint was filed by attorney, Roger Hoole, an attorney known for representing ex-members of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In 2009, the then-Attorney General of Utah, Mark Shurtleff, claimed that child marriages within polygamous societies in Utah, such as the Latter Day Church of Christ, had "effectively stopped". Despite this, the latest suit alleges marriages as young as 16 within the Latter Day Church of Christ have continued. The suit includes ten former members alleging the organization used marriages to "unlawfully make girls and their children religious martyrs and traffic them for sexual and labor purposes". The organization continues to publicly denounce the practice of child marriage, and maintains that marriages within the group are not coerced. In 2007, the group told Deseret News that it was encouraging its members to wait until their partners were 18 to marry them, with one member reporting that "we do encourage them to be 18 now". Responding to child marriage allegations in September 2022, the organization told The Guardian that "current policy prohibits plural marriage for members under 18" and "once an individual has made a decision on who to marry, members are encouraged to seek the blessing of their parents, family and/or church leaders, but to say that one individual chooses or heavily influences who will