Star of 'My Five Wives' claims male relative repeatedly molested her when she was five years old growing up in polygamist sect

• Rhonda Williams, star of the now-cancelled TLC show My Five Wives, claims she was molested by a male relative when she was a child
• The 45-year-old decided to go public with the story after finding out that two other women claimed they were abused by the same man 
• Williams grew up a member of the Apostolic United Bretren (AUB) church   
• The AUB is the second largest polygamy-practicing branch of Mormonism, behind Warren Jeffs' FLDS 
• The AUB is not recognized by the mainstream church, which banished polygamy in 1890
• Last year Rhonda's sister wife Rosemary went public with alleged sexual abuse at the hands of her father, Lynn Thompson, the current AUB leader 

By Ashley Collman For Dailymail.com

Published: 07:25 EST, 17 September 2015 | Updated: 09:42 EST, 17 September 2015

One of the sister wives at the center of polygamist reality show My Five Wives is speaking out about the sexual abuse she claims she suffered at the hands of an older male relative as a child for the first time, amid fears that there may be more victims.

Rhonda Williams, 45, said the relative, whom Daily Mail Online is not identifying by name, molested her on at least four occasions when she was a child, ending when she was about six years old.

For years, she says, Rhonda suppressed the memories, but they all came back to her when she was 19, triggered by a sex scandal in the Apostolic United Brethren church, the polygamy-practicing offshoot of Mormonism she was raised in. The AUB is not recognized by the mainstream Mormon religion, which banned polygamy in 1890.

Rhonda stayed quiet about the abuse for more than two decades because she thought she was the only victim, and she didn't want to ruin her relative's life.  But when Rhonda recently learned that two other women claimed they had been abused at the hands of the same man, she decided to make a stand against her abuser in the hopes of protecting other children from the same fate.

In an interview with Daily Mail Online, Rhonda explained why she decided to take a stand against her alleged abuser once and for all.  

'I think secrecy is what allows this stuff to continue,' Rhonda told Daily Mail Online.   

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Rhonda Williams, one of the stars of now-cancelled reality show My Five Wives, has come forward to claim she was molested by a male relative as a child. Pictured above with her husband Brady

Rhonda starred on the short-lived TLC reality show My Five Wives, which centers on her husband Brady Williams, her four sister wives and the family's combined 24 children. 

While the Williams family used to be practicing members in the AUB, they left the church in the mid 2000s but have remained a polygamist family unit and still live in a predominantly polygamist Utah town. 

The AUB is the second largest polygamist Mormon group, behind Warren Jeffs' sect in Hildale, Utah. 

Just last year, Rhonda's sister wife Rosemary went public about the sexual abuse she claims she suffered as a pre-teen at the hands of her father, Lynn Thompson, the current leader of the AUB (Thompson has denied the allegations).

It was her sister wife's bravery that in part inspired her to share her story with the world.

My Five Wives followed the polygamist Williams family and their combined 24 children. From left to right: Paulie, Robyn, Rosemary, Brady, Nonie and Rhonda 

As a warning, some of the incidents recounted in this article may be disturbing for readers.

While Rhonda isn't sure when the abuse started, she says she's certain that she was at least molested by the relative four times and that the abuse stopped when she was about six years old - when a female relative walked in and witnessed him violating her.

The alleged abuse included forcible oral sex but may have included rape - though Rhonda was so young she was never sure what happened. 

As a child, Rhonda says she always thought of the relative as 'fun' so it was probably no surprise that her first memory of abuse starts with her running around and playing in his bedroom. 

But playtime stopped when the relative entered the room suddenly and shut the door behind him. She claims he then took off his pants, laid down on the bed and coerced her to perform oral sex on him, saying 'everything would be OK'

'I said it was dirty and I didn’t want to,' Rhonda recalls. Despite her protestations, she claims he was insistent and she eventually agreed to do what the older relative asked had asked. 

Last year, Rhonda's sister wife Rosemary, left, went public with claims that her father Lynn Thompson molested her when she was a pre-teen. Thompson has denied the claims. Pictured above with husband Brady

Lynn A. Thompson (seated far left), is the leader of the AUB, the second largest polygamist Mormon sect behind Warren Jeffs' cult

The next time he allegedly took advantage of her was at a female relative's house in Butler. She remembers that she was five or six years old at the time since that relative had moved to that home when she was about that age.

On this occasion, Rhonda was playing with a younger female cousin when her abuser appeared and offered both of them candy.

'Come on,' he said, according to Rhonda, 'all you have to do is come in my room and I’ll give you a piece.' 

Rhonda says she refused, even though her cousin really wanted the treat and they were rarely allowed sweets.

The relative then allegedly asked if she would be willing to come in the room, if her cousin came with her. Her cousin, desperate for the piece of candy, wore Rhonda down and she says she agreed to go in just to please her playmate.

Inside the bedroom, he opened the top drawer of his dresser and gave the younger cousin a piece of candy and she happily ran away with her treat. But when Rhonda tried to follow her out of the room, she was not as lucky.

Rhonda claims that when she tried to slip out of the room 'he grabbed my arm and held me back, telling me he would let me out in a minute.'

'Then he latched the lock on the top of the door…so high I could never reach it. My heart sunk. I was defeated, trapped, and helpless. He lied,' Rhonda recalls. 

The third incident, she says, happened in a bathroom across from the relative's bedroom. While she doesn't remember the abuse itself, she does remember the horrifying aftermath. 

'When he let me out of the bathroom he told me not to tell anyone,' Rhonda recalls. 

The final memory is the hardest for Rhonda to recall, and perhaps the most painful.

Rhonda says she remembers being naked in the relative's bedroom, lying on his bed while he moved back and forth on top of her. She claims his pants were  down and she felt something between her legs - but she doesn't remember pain, so is uncertain whether he actually raped her.

For years she was afraid that he had deflowered her, taking away her virginity. But on her wedding night, Rhonda said it appears she was still a virgin.

The memory then jumps forward to a female relative coming into the room, seeing what was happening and then quickly leaving and closing the door. The next thing she remembers, her abuser was fully dressed and ordering her, still naked, to hide in the closet and not make a sound. That's when a different female relative came in and demanded to know where she was.

'She took me by the hand and pulled me out of the closet and got me dressed and then sent me out of the room to “go and play”.'

Rhonda's parents were apparently never informed.  

When the alleged abuse stopped, Rhonda says she blacked out the events and for years lived in ignorance. Then, when she was a teenager, more than a decade later, Rhonda's church was rocked with allegations that a different male relative had molested children, and all of sudden she was hit with the memories she had suppressed.

Rhonda pictured center with her four sister wives. Rhonda said that she didn't tell her husband about the abuse before they were married because she thought it might scare him away. But Brady only responded with kindness 

Not knowing whether her recollections were real, and afraid that admitting them might hurt her reputation, Rhonda, did not share her story.

Rhonda thinks part of the reason she waited so long to marry (29 is considered spinsterhood in her church) was because these memories that haunted her. And when she met her husband, Rhonda found herself even more compelled to stay quiet because she felt admitting the abuse would send him running.  

She finally shared the experience though when when one night her husband directly asked her is she had been abused.

'He rolled over, almost on top of me, to get me to look into his eyes, to show me I could trust him, that he loved me. I panicked and shoved him off of me, so I could sit up - I was gasping for air. All I could see at that point was [the relative] on top of me,' Rhonda recalls.

The couple spent the rest of the night crying and praying, until Rhonda was strong enough to share her most painful memories with her husband.

Brady ended up being more than understanding and convinced her to share the story with her father. Rhonda's father and husband together confronted the relative, she claims, and he surprisingly confessed to the abuse.

'He cried and cried, telling them that he had never touched anyone but me, he was so sorry, that some neighbor boys had got to him when he was younger which was why he had done things to me. 

'He said that he thought that he had been forgiven for what he had done because he had received a blessing from a high-up church official that said he had been “forgiven of all past sins”. 

'This was why he had never said anything. He didn’t feel he needed to. He had been forgiven,' Rhonda claims. 

After the confrontation, Rhonda says she decided to forgive the relative, thinking it the Christian thing to do. And for about 10 years she was at peace with the situation. 

But that changed when she learned recently that two other women spoke with her cousin, claiming that they too were abused by the same relative - countering his previous statement that Rhonda was the only victim. Rhonda says the two women are younger than her, but were slightly older at the time of their alleged abuse. Neither is a relative.

Recently, Rhonda says she confronted the relative with a text message and he called her, again denying that he had abused any girls but her. But Rhonda says she doesn't buy his story, and that's why she decided to share her story. 

'[He] is outright continuing to lie and I don’t believe for one second that there are not other little children out there that have been his victims. Nor do I believe that he is not continuing to abuse today. I may have not been courageous enough to say something in the past, but I refuse to keep silent any more,' Rhonda said. 

Rhonda also went to the police who informed her that the statute of limitations for civil suits in molestation cases was dropped earlier this year, meaning both she and any other victims can sue their abuser at any point they like. The previous law gave victims only until their 22nd birthday to file a lawsuit.  

While she is exploring her legal options, Rhonda says the most important thing is protecting other children from becoming victims. 

Rhonda's alleged abuser did not return Daily Mail Online's repeated requests for comment. 

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