Painful memories. John Joseph Robinson opens up about his mother’s difficult battle with cancer in Escaping Polygamy‘s Sunday, August 28, episode, as seen in Us Weekly‘s exclusive sneak peek.
The A&E docuseries’ preview clip shows Robinson praising the selflessness of his mom, Patricia Robinson, who raised him and his 12 siblings with limited funds. The family belongs to the polygamist Salt Lake City–based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
“She would basically work all day and all night so that she [could] support her kids without my dad’s help,” John Joseph explains. “She always tried to have just some food on the table, either beans, rice or something. My mom, she’s super amazing. Definitely someone you can look up to.”
John Joseph goes on to say that his mom’s colon cancer was diagnosed in the early stages, and he believes that chemotherapy could have helped. But his mom did not get the treatment and instead followed husband John Daniel Kingston‘s instructions, as the church discourages using doctors who are not part of the faith. (Patricia was one of Kingston’s 14 wives, and the clip does not reveal whether she is still alive.)
“My dad had a thing … that was supposed to shoot radio waves or something like that, that she would sit between for about two hours a day, and it was supposed to somehow get rid of the cancer,” John Joseph tells the camera. “My dad had my mom do a lot of enemas for her treatment. And then he also had a diet that he would have her go on. During this time, she got really, really skinny because she was on such a low-calorie diet, and they told her to do some fasting.”
“My mom actually had some painkillers that she took,” he continues. “My dad found them, and it wasn’t part of the diet, so he took it out, and I was thinking, ‘How could you just take it? If she wants that, then she should get that.'”
Watch the emotional clip in the video above.
Escaping Polygamy airs on A&E Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.
