On a spring morning two years ago, Kimberly Peck saw something shocking in the hut where her daughters were sleeping. Peck, then a member of the Twelve Tribes religious cult, lived with her family in Quonset-style huts on a Central Florida compound. Her new husband, Jeff Leonard, went over to her daughters' tent every morning to wake the girls, and that, she says, was when she witnessed the abuse firsthand.
As Peck watched in fear, 45-year-old Leonard began caressing one of the girls, kissing his stepdaughter intimately and rubbing his hands over places he shouldn't, she told authorities later. When he was finished, he moved over to her younger sister, Peck claims. Peck said she would've tried to stop it if she weren't so alone in the woods. Soon, Peck would learn how alone she was.
Peck spoke to her children, and all three of them -- two daughters and a son -- said they had been molested by their stepfather,
Meanwhile, in an Arcadia courtroom last week, Leonard asked Circuit Court Judge James S. Parker to release him on bail before his trial. Like others in Twelve Tribes, Leonard wore his jet-black hair in a short ponytail, and his scraggly beard nearly touched his chest. He told the judge that tribe members would likely post his bail. "I have limited assets -- a van, tools," he said. "By our beliefs, we hold all things in common."
The judge agreed to set a $250,000 bail for Leonard.
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