EXCLUSIVE: Yoko Ono's 'Kidnapped' Daughter's Hard-Knock Life Revealed — From Being Raised in Cult to Barred From Meeting World-Famous Mom
Kyoko Ono spent years away from her mother, Yoko Ono, after being kidnapped and forced into a cult.
June 17 2025, Published 4:30 p.m. ET
Yoko Ono's daughter, Kyoko Ono, was kidnapped by her biological father, Anthony Cox, in 1971, and found herself living on a farm in Iowa, vastly different from her famous mother's life with Beatles star John Lennon, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Kyoko and her mom wouldn't reconnect for another 23 years, but only because Cox had her join a religious cult that forbade communication devices with the outside world.
Kyoko's Life On The Run
Kyoko Ono (middle) was kidnapped by her father, Anthony Cox, in 1971.
Cox had run off with then 8-year-old Kyoko during the former couple's contentious custody battle. Amid the exes' nasty fight, a judge gave the young Kyoko the option of choosing who she wanted to live with.
"I said my dad, and my mom was upset," she recalled. "I felt like I had an impossible choice to make."
She explained her choice: "My mom and John were incredibly busy people. Usually, when I went and stayed with them, I had a nanny, and sometimes I wouldn't see them all day long.
Kyoko was living on a farm in Iowa while her mom lived in New York City with John Lennon (right)
"And with my dad and my stepmother, I'm their only child." However, Kyoko never expected she would be separated from her mother after her father made the shocking decision not to bring their daughter to her mother for a scheduled Christmas visit in 1971.
The now 61-year-old recalled: "When we left Houston, we were on the lam. 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."
A Happy Ending
Yoko and Kyoko would reunite 23 years after she was kidnapped.
Cox's next move was to align himself with the Living Word Fellowship, a suspected Christian cult that closed its doors in 2018 amid sexual misconduct allegations.
According to Kyoko, there were "so many times" she told her dad that she wanted to get back in touch with her mom.
In 1994, however, the duo would finally get what they both wanted as Kyoko, 30 at the time, was able to reach out to her mother in an attempt to reunite.
"She wanted to see me right away, and then we just started spending time together," Kyoko said.
Kyoko also touched on her experience in the 2024 documentary, One To One: John & Yoko, and said how difficult it was to reconnect as social media with non-existent.
"When people hear about my story, they don't understand what it was like before Facebook," she said in the doc. "There's my mom and John doing all these things to appeal to me.
"It makes me sound heartless. But I was living on a farm in Iowa. We didn't own a TV. And a lot of people don't understand that there's a lifestyle like that."
'Nobody Gave A Damn'
'We just started spending time together,' Kyoko said after seeing her famous mom again.
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According to Kyoko, nor her mother or Lennon were brought up while she was on the lam.
"She reflected: "We avoided people who would talk about it. Going into a cult was like the perfect place to go if you were scared of being tracked down by the FBI," she said.
"Nobody there gave a damn. They were in love with the cult leader and trying to read the Bible and do whatever the cult leader said and listen to his sermons."
Cox also told his daughter God did not want Kyoko to see her mom, as it would "put me in jeopardy. Your mom is for sure going to put me in prison."
He was never convicted nor did he face charges for the abduction itself, as Yoko preferred to focus on her daughter.
