SPRING CITY—Joe and Lee Bennion have won a battle in their legal fight to dispel claims that they are leaders in an LDS Church of Satan, and as such, have participated in crimes ranging from child sexual abuse to cannibalism. But they haven’t won the war.
In September, Judge Kasey Wright of the 4th District Court in Utah County, denied a motion to dismiss a suit for defamation and other injuries that the Bennions had filed against Jason and Alexia Preston of Lehi, and “We-are-the-People,” their far-right social media company.
In a terse, three-page opinion, Judge Wright took up seven grounds that the Prestons, through their attorney, Frank D. Myler, had laid out in a 34-page motion to dismiss the Bennion lawsuit. One by one, the judge denied all the defense arguments.
But that doesn’t mean the case, one of four the Bennions have brought in connection with Satanism allegations, is over, says Caleb Proulx, their attorney and son-in-law. Now the case moves into a long slog through court, possibly toward an out-of-court settlement, possibly toward a jury trial.
According to a court document filed by Myler on behalf of the Prestons, We-are-the-People posts podcasts and other content on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other web-based media. The document states the Prestons have upwards of 60,000 followers on their sites.
In their initial complaint filed with the court, the Bennions say the broadcasts they complain about in their lawsuit received 469,000 views.
Events leading to the lawsuit started in fall 2023 when Jamin Daniel Darcy, then of Fountain, Fla., and the proprietor of a substack (a paid website) titled Investigations into Ritual Abuse, visited Utah, including Spring City.
According to the Bennion complaints, while in the state, he videotaped three interviews with the Prestons. On Jan. 3, 2024, the Prestons posted two video podcasts under the title, “Shadows of Power: How Utah’s Elite Maintain Power While Hiding in Plain Sight.”
In introducing the first segment, Jason Preston says an LDS Church of Satan, which Darcy refers to as “CS,” has infiltrated the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Later Jason Preson adds, “This is not just [a] church…These guys have infiltrated government, attorneys, judges. I mean this is a group of people that basically…rule the state of Utah.”
Then, according to the Bennion lawsuit, Darcy comes on air and begins reciting some of the crimes allegedly committed by LDS Church of Satan members.
He quotes from “victim statements” written by daughters of David Hamblin, a one-time psychologist from Provo who, in the 1980s and 1990s, owned a second home in Spring City across the street from where the Bennions lived at the time. The Bennions and Hamblins became friends.
Darcy cites a statement in which one of the daughters claims to have seen what she thought were “mannequins set up in sexual and violent poses,” only to realize they were arrangements of deceased victims that had been skinned by a Church of Satan member.
According to the Bennion lawsuit, later in the interview, Darcy identifies Bennions as being among “the most frequently mentioned CS members of the Hamblin victim statements. They allegedly participated in child rape and multiple murders involving child sacrifice as well as the killings of adults.”
Part 2 of the “Shadows of Power” podcast, was posted the same day as the first part. Alexia Preston introduces the program. According to the Bennion lawsuit, she says, “I do want to reiterate. These are not speculations. This is all based on witness statements, court documents, verified and corroborated by multiple sources…”
Then, according to the lawsuit document, Darcy begins responding to interview questions from the Prestons. He claims the victim statements document 17 murders by Church of Satan members. “I’m only counting the specific homicides that are mentioned…So there’s probably more than 17 distinct homicides, but the Hamblin girls only describe 17 specific homicides.”
Darcy goes on to describe a murder that supposedly occurred near what was known as the White Rock on the Hamlin property in Spring City.
In a victim statement, one of the Hamblin daughters claims her father, David Hamblin, and other Satanists forced her to slice a naked boy under his ribs. The statement says the boy died from the alleged attack.
Reading from the victim statement, Darcy says participants in the ritual, including the Bennions, cut off pieces of his flesh and ate it. Finally, the witness statement claims, Joe Bennion, David Hamblin and David Leavitt (a brother of former Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt who has served as Utah County attorney), put the remains of the boy in a bag, carried it to Joe Bennion’s pottery shop (which is several blocks from the White Rock), dumped it in his pottery kiln and turned on the gas.
Darcy quotes more of the victim statement: “The kiln was sometimes used to destroy evidence of murder. David (Hamblin) said that burning people in Joe’s kiln was one of the best methods of hiding any evidence and destroying a body. I remember them stuffing people into the kiln several times.”
The third segment of “Shadows of Power,” aired in July 2024, about six months after the first two. The podcast focuses on Joe Bennion’s involvement with the conventional LDS church as well as his volunteer work at the Central Utah Correctional Facility (CUCF).
In an interview with the Prestons, Darcy reports that “Joe Bennion currently serves in his ward in Spring City in a calling where he assists missionaries.”
According to the lawsuit, Darcy adds, “What makes it even more insane is that I have personally written reports, like summaries, of the allegations against some of these people, which have been passed up the ladder to church authorities, and nothing has been done.
As a volunteer at CUCF for more than 30 years, Joe Bennion has facilitated Native American inmates in practicing their religion, including gathering in a sweat lodge on the prison grounds.
But according to the Bennion lawsuit, the Preston broadcast suggested Joe Bennion also operated sweat lodges in Spring City. The lawsuit quotes Darcy as saying, “I’ve talked to multiple people who said there are teenage boys and girls who attended those sweat lodges who were provided with peyote. And that the sweat lodges involved the participants undressing before they entered the lodge.
“So this is a grown man in his forties or fifties during the time this activity took place. And he’s in a sweat lodge with somebody else’s child.”
(Joe Bennion denies ever having undressed teenagers in a sweat lodge and ever giving peyote to anyone.)
According to the Bennion lawsuit, the podcast concludes with Jason Preston saying, “This is a place were we need men to stand up…demand of our sheriffs and our law enforcement and our judges…to investigate these people and to rid these animals out of our state…”
In December 2024, shortly before the statute of limitations for filing a defamation lawsuit was scheduled to run out, the Bennion, through their attorney, issued a “cease and desist” order. The order notified the Prestons that if they broadcast or published anything further connecting Joe and Lee Bennion with Satanic activity or sexual abuse, they would be hit with a lawsuit.
According to the Bennion complaint, far from ceasing and desisting, the Prestons aired further programs on Jan. 16, Jan 23, Feb. 19, Feb. 21 and Feb. 26, 2025. The programs variously stating that they (the Prestons) weren’t going to let a lawsuit deter them, that the Bennions were one of four parties most involved in the Church of Satan, that the Bennions were trying to criminalize investigative journalism, that there were “pedos” (pedophiles) in the Utah Legislature and that 15 perpetrators were mentioned in the Hamblin daughters’ statements who have never been investigated.
The Bennion lawsuit contends that because some of the Preston podcasts identify the Bennions as members of the Church of Satan, all statements about the alleged church and its practices “impliedly refer to the plaintiffs” (the Bennions).
On March 31, 2025, the Prestons, through their attorney Frank D. Myler, filed a motion to dismiss the Bennion suit.
The filing asserts the Bennion lawsuit fails to establish a valid claim because it wasn’t specific enough. Most of the potentially defamatory statements aired, the motion says, were made not by the Prestons, but by the Hamlin sisters in their witness statements. Then Darcy quoted the statements in his interviews with the Prestons.
The Bennion lawsuit, the Preston motion says, does not state “with the appropriate degree of specificity which actions are alleged against the business entity (We ARE the People), against individuals or against nonparties (to the lawsuit)….This undifferentiated pleading fails to provide the necessary factual specificity required to sustain a valid claim for relief and warrants dismissal.”
In defamation law, a statement can only be considered defamatory if it is found to be false. The Bennion complaint declares many statements in the Preston podcasts to be false, but according to the motion for dismissal, the complaint doesn’t prove falsity. “They (the Bennions) offer nothing to show the statements are false except conclusory assertions…”
Under common law, one defense against libel is fair comment. The defense motion says “expressions of pure opinion” that are “incapable of being verified…cannot serve as the basis for defamation liability.
“…Most of the statements attributed to defendant(s) Jason Preston and Alexia Preston are pure opinion speech,” the motion states. “Because many of the pure opinions are critical to the plaintiffs’ complaint, they cannot be used to make a defamation case against the defendants, and the defamation action should be dismissed for this reason alone.”
Much of the rest of the motion to dismiss centers on First Amendment or free-speech protections. In recent years, numerous states have passed what are known as SLAPP laws. The acronym stands for “strategic lawsuits against public participation.”
The idea is to authorize courts to quickly dismiss defamation suits when the plaintiffs are individuals or companies who have been the targets of investigative journalism or public controversy.
The goal is to prevent such persons or companies from filing suits with the goal of shutting off reporting or public discussion because of the cost journalists or participants in public discussion would bear to defend the suit.
The Utah version of a SLAAP law is called the Utah Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA), which permits courts to dismiss lawsuits involving discussion of public issues that may be “cloaked as…standard claims of defamation, civil conspiracy, tortious interference and invasion of privacy.”
The motion for dismissal claims the statements in the Preston podcasts, and other Preston statements in public speeches and rallies, represent “exercise of the right(s) of freedom of speech or of the press” and as such are protected from civil suits under UPEPA.
Under U.S. Supreme Court interpretations of the First Amendment, another element of defamation (or libel) law concerns public officials and public figures. Since public officials are working for the government, and the press and public must be free to criticize the government, public officials can collect for libel only if they can show something was published with “actual malice.”
Actual malice is when the speaker or publisher knows a statement is false but publishes it anyway, or publishes with “reckless disregard” for whether it is false or not.
The same “actual malice” requirement has been extended to very well known public figures who insert themselves into public debate.
The motion for dismissal argues that the Bennions, because of their recognition in the arts community and longtime involvement in civic affairs in Spring City, are public figures. As such, the defense argues, they must prove knowing falsehood or reckless disregard for truth to collect for libel.
“Yet the (Bennion) complaint pleads no facts that any defendant entertained serious doubts about the truthfulness of statements in the podcasts,” the motion for dismissal states. “The fact that the Hamblin daughters’ witness statements were still being investigated by police in 2023, and in 2023, police reported that the Hamblin sisters “stand by the 2012 victim statements to a degree” shows publication was not reckless.
To counter the motion to dismiss, the Bennions brought in Michael Teeter, a law school faculty member at the University of Utah who specializes in defamation.
Teeter kicked off a brief submitted prior to a day of oral arguments in court on the Bennion lawsuit by characterizing what he said were lies the Prestons had spread about the Bennions.
“Those lies are not of an ordinary kind,” he states in his brief in opposition to dismissal of the case. “Rather…defendants assert that the Bennions are participants in a Satanic organization that murders, skins and consumes children. Defendants have called upon their audience to take up arms in God’s battle against the Bennions and others.”
The Teeter brief says that the defense, in arguing the Bennion complaint isn’t specific enough, are relying on a single federal court case that doesn’t apply in Utah.
“There is no Utah law directly requiring that the complaint…allege with complete specificity which defendant made which allegedly defamatory statement.”
In fact, Teeter argues, the original complaint clearly identifies statements the plaintiffs regard as defamatory and who made them. And if the defendants have questions about who the speaker was for a given statement, “the appropriate action is to file a motion for a more definite statement…”
“…The Bennions have alleged all elements of defamation against the defendants,” the brief states. “Thus, it is the defendants’ actions that give rise to the claim.” So there’s no need to bring other parties into the suit or apportion fault among everyone who made a defamatory statement about the Bennions.
In the law, the terms “publishing” and “publication” include broadcasting and dissemination over the Internet.
“The publisher of a false statement made by another person, when the publisher knows the statement to be false, is not protected by the fact that someone else made the statement,” the brief says. “Such a person is liable for the publication, even though he or she is only repeating the defamatory statement of another and is careful to ascribe statements to the original speaker.”
As to the argument the Prestons are protected by the fair-comment defense, the brief opposing dismissal includes a bulleted list of 12 statements by Jason or Alexia Preston in which they tell their listeners they are presenting facts, not opinion. A couple of examples: Jason Preston says he “guarantees” that the Bennions “have judges, politicians who don’t care about religion.” Alexia Preston says “So what we’re saying now is not speculation. We’re not judge and jury, but we’re just simply stating facts for you to either research yourself or dig into.”
The Teeter brief also addresses the argument that while the Bennions assert various statements aired in the Preston podcasts are false, they don’t prove it.
The brief argues that at the pretrial stage in a defamation case, no proof is required. The burden is on the defense to prove statements are false. If the defense can’t prove falsity, the case goes forward, and truth or falsity of the Preston statements is determined at trial.
But the brief goes on to state evidence of the falsity of several Preston statements. The Bennions, the Teeter brief says, have made “direct and specific denials of allegations under oath.”
The original complaint says the whole narrative about the existence of a Church of Satan and its supposed activities is ‘fantastical and improbable,” which is evidence of falsity.
The sites of the supposed torture, murder and destruction of bodies are “very public,” making it likely someone would have seen and reported what was going on, the Teeter brief says.
And investigating officers have stated that no corroborating evidence has ever been identified by law enforcement despite “years of investigations.”
The Teeter brief also takes up the First-Amendment question of whether the Bennions are public figures. It quotes case law stating that an “all-purpose” public figure is someone who has amassed the “power to capitalize on his general fame by lending his name to products, candidates and causes.”
The Bennions, the brief argues, do not fit that description. Rather, they are private figures who need only prove negligence by the people who have made defamatory statements about them.
“However, they have done more than that, pleading facts demonstrating the defendants acted with actual malice…”
The Bennions are seeking recovery for defamation; “false light,” a civil injury similar to defamation; and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
They are seeking “general damages” for injury to their reputations and the distress they’ve been through; special damages for actual monetary losses such as legal fees; and punitive damages “in an amount sufficient to punish them and to deter them and others” from engaging in such conduct
They are also seeking “Injunctive relief” to prohibit the Prestons from further publication of defamatory statements.
That means Judge Wright’s denial of the motion to dismiss is just chapter 1 in the case. “We’re just going into discovery now,” the Bennion’s attorney Caleb Proulx says. “There will be requests for depositions. The earliest it will be set for trial is probably late 2026 or early 2027.”