Yoko Ono's daughter was kidnapped, raised in cult — and didn't reunite with her mom for decades

Yahoo

25-05-2025

Kyoko Ono is speaking out over a traumatic time in her life.
After she was kidnapped at seven years old by her dad, Anthony Cox, her mom Yoko Ono and her step-father John Lennon moved to New York City in hopes of locating her. However, it wasn't until she was 30 years old that she picked up the phone and called her mother, now 92.
'When people hear about my story, they don't understand what it was like before Facebook,' Kyoko, 61, revealed to the Daily Mail. 'There's my mom and John doing all these things to appeal to me.'
However, she had no idea about the search that was underway for her, and instead, grew up in a cult.
Cox, who was Ono's second husband, kidnapped Kyoko during their custody battle when he violated a court order.
'It makes me sound heartless. But I was living on a farm in Iowa,' Kyoko continued to the outlet. 'We didn't own a TV. And a lot of people don't understand that there's a lifestyle like that.'
By that time, Ono had remarried Lennon, the Beatles singer and guitarist who was assassinated in Decemebr 1980.
In 1971, Cox and his new wife Melinda Kendall took Kyoko to Spain, and enrolled her in a meditation preschool in Majorca. Ono found out about the move through her lawyers, in which she and Lennon immediately flew to Spain to pick up Kyoko from school.
They were then arrested in their hotel room for kidnapping.
Kyoko and her parents ended up going to court, in which the judge asked the child who she wanted to live with. Although she didn't want to chose, the judge insisted.
'So, I said my dad, and my mom was upset… I felt like I had an impossible choice to make.'
As for her reasoning, Kyoko said, 'My mom and John were incredibly busy people. Usually when I went and stayed with them, I had a nanny, and I sometimes wouldn't see them all day long. And [with] my dad and my stepmother, I'm their only child.'
Cox eventually took Kyoko back to the United States. and on Christmas Eve 1971, despite Ono having visitation rights, he refused to bring Kyoko to her mother.
'When we left Houston, we were on the lam,' Kyoko admitted. 'And we went to Los Angeles and we went to a church connected with our church in Houston… and they took us in for a short period of time.'
'Then [the congregation] told us, 'We've prayed about it and you really need to return Kyoko to her mother,' which was not what my dad wanted to hear.'
Cox then moved his family into The Living Word Fellowship – which was cult dismembered in 2018 due to sexual misconduct allegations.
'Today, as an adult, the biggest irony to me is we left a cult, in a way, when we left the Beatles and John and Yoko. People are fanatical [about them] on the level of being cult members,' explained Kyoko.
'I was very scared by that fame,' she remembered. 'So being in this very simple Christian community seemed very safe, like an easier life.'
During that time in her life, Kyoko said they never talked about her mom or Lennon, but she said 'there were so many times that I said to my dad, 'I really want to get back in touch with my mom.''
Then, after growing up, getting married in 1992 to Jim Helfrich and becoming a teacher, Kyoko decided to call Ono.
'By that point, I'd been teaching at public school for six years,' she recounted. 'And I really understood kids and families better than my parents ever had. She wanted to see me right away and then we just started spending time together.'
These days, Kyoko lives a quiet life outside of the spotlight. She and Helfrich, who she divorced in 2018, share kids Emi, 27, and John, 25.
However, Kyoko wants to be able to set the record straight on her life, and her mom and step-dad's relationship. Ono and Lennon went on to have one son together, Sean, 49. He was also dad to son Julian, 62, with ex-wife Cynthia Lennon.
'I'm not really interested in being a public figure,' admitted Kyoko. 'But I am also my mom's daughter, and I want the story to be told properly.'
She has also forgave the adults who were supposed to protect her.
'They were all such kids,' stated Kyoko. 'They were just like little children, all of them. It's really crazy. Being a parent – it's a hard thing to do.'