‘No checks’ against allegations by internet warriors
Bennions go to court to fight claims of Satanism, ritualistic sex abuse
Since Joe and Lee Bennion moved to Spring City as newlyweds in 1977, they’ve been involved in almost every aspect of community life.
Both are BYU graduates and working artists. They were among the founders of Friends of Historic Spring City, the group that restored the historic Spring City School. They helped found Spring City Arts, which markets the work of Spring City artists and sponsors an annual plein air painting competition and artist studio tours.
Joe Bennion has served on the Spring City Council, Board of Adjustment and Historic Main Street Committee. He recently stepped down after seven years on the Planning and Zoning Committee. And he has volunteered at the Central Utah Correctional Facility for nearly 30 years.
But since 2022, the couple’s lives have been a nightmare because of allegations and threats published on a substack (a subscription-based website) called “Investigations into Ritual Abuse” (IRA).
The site is operated by Jamin Darcy of Fountain, Fla., who uses the penname “Goel” (which, in Hebrew, means avenger) and who has attracted more than 1,000 subscribers from throughout the nation.
In a nutshell, the site accuses the Bennions of being leaders in the Spring City branch of an LDS Church of Satan (often referred to online by the acronym “CS”). In his writings, Darcy claims the Bennions, among others, have participated in an array of acts so bizarre and heinous as to hardly be plausible.
The acts include sexual assault, sexual abuse and sexual molestation of children; torture, murder, cannibalism, physical abuse, physical assault and desecration of corpses.
According to Caleb Proulx, the Bennions’ son-in-law and also their attorney, Darcy has even found some “confederates” in Spring City. One is Ken Krogue, recently appointed to the Spring City Council.
But in the past six months, the 6th District Court in Manti has issued injunctions against both Darcy and Krogue that could give the Bennions a little relief.
In October, 2024, the Bennions, through their attorney, Proulx, requested an injunction against Krogue. The injunction was granted, but recently Krogue has challenged it in court. The matter is still pending.
As it now stands, the injunction orders Krogue not to monitor or follow the Bennions or their three daughters, not to go on their home or work properties, to stay away from two Bennion family vehicles, and not to communicate with any of the Bennions by phone, text or email.
On Jan. 30, Judge Randall Skanchy, a senior judge in the 6th District Court, issued a 12-page opinion also granting an injunction against Darcy, the man who runs the substack.
That ruling is more detailed than the injunction against Krogue. It bars Darcy from engaging in conduct banned under the Utah civil stalking statute. That includes coming near the Bennions’ residence or place of employment; or contacting them directly or indirectly, including personal, written or telephone contact with them, their fellow workers or “others with whom communication would be likely to cause annoyance or alarm.”
“I have never been
involved in any kind
of abuse of people,
children, men women,
sexual or otherwise,” he
adds. “The allegations
that have been made
are just not true…The
only crime I am guilty
of is being someone’s
friend (referring to David
Hamblin). I was friends
with the wrong person.”Joe Bennion, in November 2024
The judge cites language in the statute that bars communicating “to or about an individual” so as to cause the target to fear for his or her safety or suffer emotional distress.
And, Judge Skanchy ruled, the First Amendment does not protect speech that meets the definition of stalking in the state statute.
“In a court of law, the bar of proof is quite high,” Bennion says. “…In the court of public opinion, there is no standard. These Internet warriors who are defaming me and my family, there’s no checks. You put it out there, that’s the truth.”
To understand what is going on, you have to go back to the 1980s. That’s when David Lee Hamblin, a psychologist from Provo, bought a second home across the street from the Bennions in Spring City.
Hamblin; his wife, Roselle; and their four daughters became close friends with Joe and Lee Bennion and their three daughters. Bennion says he and David Hamblin became like brothers.
That is until 1999. That’s when a young man named Brett Bluth telephoned Bennion and asked him to set up a meeting of him, his father and Hamblin. Bluth said he had been in therapy with Hamblin years earlier, and during at least one session, Hamblin convinced him to perform a sex act on Hamblin, purportedly to help Bluth heal from trauma.
The Bluths asked Bennion to accompany them on their visit to Hamblin, which took place in Hamblin’s office, located in his home in Provo. “I was there to witness him being confronted,” Bennion says. “The victim wanted me there as a witness.”
His experience in the confrontation ended his relationship with Hamblin, Bennion says. “In the next little while, I realized this (friendship) was over.” He says he has not seen Hamblin since.
Bluth demanded that Hamblin turn himself into state licensing authorities and said if Hamblin didn’t do so, he would report him. Hamblin did turn himself in. The board found he had engaged in sexual behavior with multiple clients and revoked his license. The revelations also led to the dissolution of Hamblin’s marriage.
Then in 2012 (about 13 years later), there was a development that was to spark the Darcy substack, other online videos and podcasts, and in short, all the grotesque allegations that have been hurled against the Bennions and others since 2022.
Three of David Hamblin’s four daughters—Rachel, Eliza and Katherine, who by then were adults—wrote so-called “witness statements” describing what they said had happened to them as children. The combined documents came to 459 pages. The women turned the documents over to Provo police.
According to Proulx, the statements were a classic case of so-called “recovered memories,” the notion that people may suppress memories of painful incidents they experienced as children, only to remember the incidents years later.
The witness statements, Proulx says, accuse somewhere between 140 and 160 people of being involved in a wider sex ring. “My understanding is that the…Hamblin daughters have accused their father, their mother, (and) everybody else in the extended family,” he says.
“Of the people named in the Spring City and Mt. Pleasant area,” Bennion says, “you’re talking about a deceased stake president,…a deceased bishop who also served as a first counselor in a stake presidency, another bishop—these are the kind of people they’re accusing.”
Bennion adds, “(It’s as if) they went through their parents’ address book.”
The “witness statements” describe scores of rituals supposedly carried out by participants in the LDS Church of Satan.
The daughters claim they witnessed CS members, wearing LDS garments, forcing children to sing Primary songs while they sodomized the children.
The statements say Satanic rituals, which included human sacrifice, frequently occurred in the Hamblin home. “They were not always murders,” one of the statements says, “but sometimes people in the group, especially victims and children in the group, were tortured but not killed.”
Possibly the most disturbing allegation in the documents is about the murder of a boy at the “White Rock,” a prominent rock on Hamblin’s property in Spring City.
One of the daughter’s statements says David Hamblin took her by the hand and sliced the boy under his ribs with a knife.
“I tried to kill him fast and lunged for his neck so I could kill him,” the statement reads. “But David grabbed me and told me it wasn’t time, and that I needed to see the boy’s strength.
“I tried to slice my own neck, and David grabbed my hand and didn’t let me to it. It was common to try and commit suicide during these episodes. David Leavitt, one of Joe Bennion’s friends that he had brought, walked up next to the boy and stood by him to ensure that I couldn’t kill myself if I tried….Many people punched, hit, yelled and sexually grabbed the boy.”
(David Leavitt, who, like the Bennions, is frequently mentioned in the witness statements, is the former county attorney in Utah County.)
According to the statement, the child finally died. “They each sliced a piece off him and ate it. That night I was raped by several people, including David Leavitt and Lee Bennion.”
The document claims David Hamblin, David Leavitt and Joe Bennion put the boy’s body in a black bag and carried the bag to a kiln behind Horseshoe Mountain Pottery, the shop Bennion has operated for decades on Main Street in Spring City.
“Joe opened it (the bag) up, and people stood around to watch. He took the boy out of the bag and put him in the kiln and lit it on fire with gas.”
Between 2012 and 2014, Provo police conducted an investigation based on the statements. And the Utah County Attorney’s Office filed charges, but only against David Hamblin, not against the Bennions, the Leavitts or any of the scores of others named in the statements.
According to Proulx, the charges against Hamblin ended up being dismissed. In court, prosecutors said they had not been able to obtain records from the Utah Division of Family Services (DCFS) that were important to their case.
But Proulx believes the real reason for the dismissal was that “there was no way the prosecution could avoid the extent of the extremely bizarre and hard-to-believe allegations that would come out on the stand. Behind closed doors, I think they recognized that.”
“In a court of law, the
bar of proof is quite
high. In the court of public
opinion, there is no
standard. These Internet
warriors who are
defaming me and my
family, there’s no checks.
You put it out there,
that’s the truth.”Joe Bennion
As will be described later in this article, in 2022, at least eight years after the Utah County charges had been dismissed, new charges of sexual abuse of a child were filed against David Hamblin. The new charges were based on a new victim coming forward, not on the Hamblin daughters’ writings.
In 2023, an attorney defending Hamblin in the new case filed a document with the court reporting that back in the 2012-14 period, the Utah Attorney General’s Office had looked into allegations in the witness statements.
The Hamblin defense produced a “declination letter” the Attorney General’s Office had issued to Provo police in 2014, stating that the office was declining to prosecute because “the findings resulting from your investigation do not meet the reasonable-likelihood-of-conviction standard.”
Also in 2023, the Hamblin defense filed a summary of investigative conclusions the Provo police had written with the court. The summary was based on new, recent interviews with the Hamblin sisters.
The police reported that the girls stood behind their 2012 victim statements “to a degree.” The police summary said “investigators do not believe parts of the allegations against David Hamblin.” The document added, “Despite years of investigation, there is no corroborating evidence aside from witness statements—there are no photos, video, DNA, etc.”
One of Proulx’s court filings notes that the White Rock, where the murder of the young boy allegedly occurred, is easily visible from the road, as are Joe Bennion’s pottery kilns. The implication is that if such an incident had taken place, surely someone would have seen, heard and reported the commotion.
After the Utah County charges against Hamblin were dismissed and after the Attorney General’s Office declined to file charges in 2014, the allegations by the Hamblin sisters “more or less lay fallow,” Proulx says. “…The extent of what the girls said, that did not hit the public consciousness until several years later.”
In May, 2022, in the wake of the allegations by the new victim, the Utah County Sheriff’s Office issued a press release stating it was investigating “ritualistic child sexual abuse and trafficking that occurred in Utah County, Juab County and Sanpete County between 1980 and 2010.
“We are pleading with the public and encourage victims, or individuals with knowledge of these crimes, to contact the Utah County Sheriff’s Office Special Victim’s Unit,” the press release stated, “so that they can be offered all the assistance possible.”
As might be imagined, the Utah press jumped on the press release, Proulx says. One or more reporters submitted GRAMA requests. The Utah County Sheriff’s Office handed over the 459-pages of witness statements.
By December, 2022, Darcy, from his headquarters in Florida, had launched his “Investigations into Ritual Abuse” substack and was posting what can only be described as vicious attacks, primarily against Hamblin, the Bennions and the Leavitts.
On Dec. 19, 2022, he announced on his substack that his goal was for “as many of the named perpetrators as possible to go to prison and suffer significant financial [losses]… The goal is to financially cripple this group and any related group that enabled them, up to and including the [LDS] church.”
In the Dec. 19 post and other posts dated Jan. 9, 2023, Darcy talked about what readers could do to “confront…the Church of Satan.”
He said Joe and Lee Bennions’ home, barn and (pottery) business were scenes of crimes involving the CS. He posted the Bennions’ home address and addresses of three of their daughters and wrote, “Any of these locations represent a potential site for CS ordinances involving Joseph and Lee Bennion.”
Darcy suggested that birthdays presented good surveillance opportunities. “If one knows that Lee Bennion’s birthday is in May, then one can look out for activities around the Bennion residence around May of each year….Joseph Wood Bennion’s birthday is in September, which would provide another timeframe in which CS ordinances would take place.”
On March 17, 2023, Darcy made some veiled threats of violence. “Perhaps one day, I’ll venture up there to Utah, and raise hell in the process,” he wrote. “I just need rural land upon which I can install my trail cameras, my RV with septic tank and well, and clear lines of sight for my rifles.”
One of his followers responded that Darcy might be in danger from “demon killers.” Darcy said, “I’m armed to the teeth and willing to kill and die for this.”
On Christmas in 2023, Darcy posted an exceptionally harsh statement about alleged CS members, which obviously included the Bennions. “They are fat, retarded, infertile demon worshippers. Treat them as such, with their rainbow flags and their pandering embraces of whatever flavor of the moment is being pushed by cable news. They deserve your ridicule, and they deserve to be excluded and even bullied because they are weird and inappropriate.”
Darcy even created fake videos in which an artificial-intelligence (AI)-generated image of Joe Bennion talks openly about his association with the supposed Church of Satan. The videos were posted to Darcy’s IRA substack, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Tik Tok.
One of the videos shows Bennion both singing and speaking. “I feel pretty, I feel pretty, I feel pretty and witty and gay. And I pity any girl who isn’t me today,” he sings.
Then he says, “Come on down to Horseshoe Mountain Pottery down in scenic Spring City, and I’ll sing for you (and) sell my pottery imbued with the spirits of the many innocents I have allegedly slain for Satan, marked with the ‘Y’ that is the LDS Church of Satan’s symbol.”
Darcy hasn’t limited his activities to Florida. In fall 2023, he reported on his substack that he had visited Spring City, including the former David Hamblin home across the street from where the Bennions lived for many years. (Hamblin no longer owns the house. In recent years, the Bennions have moved to a different house in Spring City.)
“I successfully resisted the urge to do doughnuts and burnouts for Jesus in the Spring City Cemetery,” he wrote.
While in Utah, he gave interviews for some podcasts broadcast by an operation based in Lehi called “We are the People.” The organization, registered with the state of Utah as a limited liability company (LLC), describes itself as “true conservative media focused on Utah.” The owners are Jason and Alexia Preston, a husband and wife.
According to the We-are-the-People website, the organization posts its podcasts on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and the website itself.
Between Jan. 3 and July 8, 2024, We are the People aired three programs based on interviews with Jamin Darcy, who is identified in the podcasts as Goel.
“There are people
who don’t talk to me
anymore. There’s one
business in town that
asked me not to patronize
them anymore. It’s
heartbreaking.”Joe Bennion
In the first program, Alexia Preston says, “Everything we’re going to be presenting today has been substantiated. We have all the source documents here in the studio.”
Jason Preston states, “What he (Jamin Darcy) is laying the case for is these people are getting away with it, and they’re being protected by the judicial system.”
Later he says, “This is not just a church, this is politicians, this is government. These guys have infiltrated government, attorneys, judges. I mean this is a group of people that basically…rule the state of Utah.”
And, the program says, Joe and Lee Bennion “are among the most frequently mentioned CS members of the Hamblin witness statements. They allegedly participated in child rape and multiple murders involving child sacrifice as well as killings of adults.”
In the second podcast, Darcy talks about the allegation in the Hamblin statements of a murder at the White Rock in Spring City and the purported disposal of the victim’s body in Bennion’s pottery kiln.
He adds that the witness statements identify 17 homicides committed by the Spring City branch of the Church of Satan. “…There’s probably more than 17 distinct homicides, but the girls only describe 17 specific homicides.”
In the third podcast, the Prestons begin by again saying Darcy’s claims are true. They report they’ve heard from “many victims.”
Alexia Preston tells Darcy, “I think you do an incredible job laying things out, explaining things, not making any assumptions, always backing it up with receipts.”
Jason Preston says, “I’ve heard from people down in Spring City and that area, and it’s crazy that this stuff goes on. There’s no accountability.”
On January 3, 2025, the Bennions filed a defamation (libel) suit in 4th District Court in Utah County against We are the People, including Jason and Alexia Preston.
To win a defamation suit, one needs to prove that statements printed or published could be expected to harm the reputations of the people named. And the plaintiffs must prove the statements are not true. In the suit, the Bennions, cite 15 statements in the podcasts that they claim are false.
The suit seeks general and special damages “in an amount to be proved at trial” and “punitive damages against all defendants in an amount sufficient to punish them and to deter them and others from engaging in such conduct in the future.”
The defendants also seek “injunctive relief in the form of a prohibition on further publication of specific defamatory statements by the Defendants.”
But back to the criminal complaint against David Hamblin by the woman not associated with the witness statements. In 2021, she told Utah County authorities that in the mid-1980s, when she was 6 or 7, Hamblin sodomized her in the basement of his Provo home.
The woman also reported that prior to her 13th birthday, Hamblin and an adult woman joined in abusing her in Hamblin’s home in Spring City.
In July, 2024, several dozen protestors showed up at the Sanpete County Courthouse for a procedural hearing in the case against Hamblin. They came to complain about how long it was taking to bring Hamblin to justice. Hamblin himself was not present.
The group held what was billed as a “Jerico March” around the courthouse. About 30 of them also attended the hearing inside. The same day, they held a “prayer vigil” in Spring City.
The protestors included a man from Alamo, Nevada, who blew a shofar (a horn in the shape of a ram’s horn used in the Bible to sound a wakeup call to the Jews to mend their ways); a woman from Lindon in Utah County, who moderated the prayer vigil; and several Spring City residents, including Krogue.
According to a petition the Bennions filed in 6th District Court seeking a civil stalking injunction, Krogue had a history with Jamin Darcy dating to shortly after he started his substack.
The petition states that in 2023, Krogue asked Darcy to write an “executive summary” describing the involvement of Bennion (among others) with Satanism. About that time, multiple court documents assert, Krogue channeled $20,000 to Darcy’s operation.
The petition seeking the injunction against Krogue cites a deposition Krogue gave under oath during fact gathering regarding the other petition—the one against Darcy. “Despite prevarications by the respondent (Krogue) during the deposition as to his motivations for being involved in the request for and production of the executive summary, petitioners (the Bennions) allege that the respondent was in fact intending by his conduct to induce the LDS Church to excommunicate petition Joe Bennion.”
While in Spring City, the protestors gathered 30 or 40 feet from the Bennion pottery shop. That’s where Charlene Stott of Lindon repeated allegations that the Bennions had been involved in Satanic activity and that children had been sacrificed and their bodies burned in the pottery kiln.
In the deposition Krogue gave when the Darcy stalking petition was before the court, he said as he heard about incineration of bodies, the Holy Spirit came upon him and commanded him to “dust your feet.”
According to the Bennion petition for a civil stalking injunction against Krogue, after the prayer group left the shop area, Krogue returned, stood on the threshold of the front door, and “dusted both of his feet off with his hands.” The act was captured on Bennion’s ring camera next to the door.
Although the practice of dusting one’s feet is not as common in the LDS Church today as in earlier times, the petition says it still symbolizes judgment or condemnation, placing the object of the dusting “beyond what a practicing member of the LDS Church would consider redemption or forgiveness.”
Over the 2022-24 period, from the launch of the Darcy substack through the end of last year, there was no letup in written, verbal and sometimes physical confrontations of the Bennions.
In May, 2024, Bennion’s pottery shop was egged for the first time.
In October, 2024, Lee Bennion was outside the Bennion house and heard a drone hovering over their property. That was concerning, Proulx says, because Darcy has suggested his followers monitor properties with drones.
In November, 2024, someone drove over the Bennions’ front lawn repeatedly with a truck, leaving tire tracks 2-3 inches deep.
“To my knowledge there
was never a Satanic
church or group in
Spring City. I’ve never
heard or seen anything
about that.”Joe Bennion
“For 45 years, I’ve run my pottery shop there on Main Street,” Bennion says. “And I never locked the door…It was always open 24-7. I’ve had people come in and say, ‘Hey, thanks for being open. I realized the night before Mother’s Day that I didn’t have anything. I went in after midnight and was able to get something for my wife.’
“That’s all gone now. I’ve had to lock the doors…I have surveillance cameras up…It breaks a longstanding trust between me and my public.
“There are people who don’t talk to me anymore. There’s one business in town that asked me not to patronize them anymore. It’s heartbreaking.”
“Someone asked me recently, ‘Joe, how do you hold up?’ I said simply because I know I am a person who is honest, who has integrity, I know who I am. People who choose to believe these other narratives, that’s them. It hurts. It’s discouraging. But I’m not planning to withdraw from the public sphere in my town.”
Regarding reports of a Satanic church, he says, “To my knowledge there was never a Satanic church or group in Spring City. I’ve never heard or seen anything about that.
“I have never been involved in any kind of abuse of people, children, men women, sexual or otherwise,” he adds. “The allegations that have been made are just not true…The only crime I am guilty of is being someone’s friend (referring to David Hamblin). I was friends with the wrong person.”
Proulx believes that some of the people who believe in widespread, unreported Satanic ritual abuse have a savior complex. “They’re out there to save the children, and they think they’re the ones to do it because law enforcement’s not doing it.
“All of these people believe they’re doing great, important work,” he adds, “and some of them believe they’re being directed by God to do it.
“What concerns me most, besides, obviously, how it’s affected Joe and Lee, is that it’s had a really damaging impact on Spring City. It’s really driving a wedge in the community.
“The spreading of these obviously false narratives—I see nothing good that’s come of it. And I’m really concerned about it getting worse. I would simply say, to some degree, the community is being driven apart.”