When Yoko Ono’s Child Was Taken by a Cult

Before her highly publicized partnership with John Lennon, Yoko Ono had already carved out a reputation in New York’s avant-garde scene, staging experimental performances and pioneering conceptual art. Yet behind the boundary-pushing work was a more complicated personal reality—motherhood.

In 1963, Ono gave birth to her daughter, Kyoko Ono Cox, with her then-husband, Anthony Cox. Though the pair married that same year, the relationship soon unraveled. Even after their separation, they continued to collaborate creatively, but their parenting dynamic grew strained. Cox took on much of the responsibility of raising Kyoko, while Ono remained deeply committed to her artistic pursuits.

Reflecting decades later in the 2024 documentary One to One: John & Yoko, Ono acknowledged the imbalance. “I was an offbeat mother,” she said. “I didn’t know how to balance it all.”

Custody Battles and a Disappearance

The situation escalated following Ono’s meeting with Lennon in 1967. By 1969, as her divorce from Cox was finalized, both had moved on to new partners—Lennon and Melinda Kendall—and initially maintained a workable co-parenting arrangement. That fragile peace, however, soon deteriorated.

A car accident in Scotland involving Ono, Lennon, Kyoko, and Lennon’s son, Julian Lennon, intensified Cox’s concerns. He began insisting on supervising visits, and shortly after, he took Kyoko to Spain, enrolling her in a transcendental meditation preschool. Ono and Lennon followed, but by 1971, the situation had spiraled into a full custody battle.

Kyoko, then a child, was asked in court to choose between her parents—an experience she would later describe as deeply distressing. “I felt like I had an impossible choice to make,” she said in 2025. “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.”

Though Cox was granted custody, the situation took a dramatic turn when he disappeared with Kyoko and Kendall, eventually resurfacing in the United States. Despite Ono and Lennon securing a favorable ruling, Kyoko’s whereabouts remained unknown. Cox later regained custody in a Houston court and denied Ono visitation rights.

In 1971, Ono and Lennon appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, publicly pleading for answers. Lennon detailed the scope of their search: “We’d been chasing her in Europe, in Denmark, in Spain, in Hawaii, in America, back to Europe – this has been going on for two or three years.” He added, “We have the two papers with custody, but we don’t know where she is, still.” Ono echoed the uncertainty, while Lennon admitted bluntly, “We haven’t a clue where she is; she’s in America somewhere.”

Life in Isolation and a Long-Awaited Reunion

Unbeknownst to Ono and Lennon, Kyoko had been taken into the Living Word Fellowship, a controversial religious community founded by John Robert Stevens. Living under the name “Ruth Holman,” she grew up in near-total isolation on a rural commune, cut off from television and the outside world. Her daily life revolved around chores and listening to sermons, while discussion of her mother and stepfather was discouraged.

Looking back, Kyoko reflected on the strange contrast between her early life and the secluded environment she was brought into. “Today, as an adult, the biggest irony to me is that we left a cult, in a way, when we left The Beatles and John and Yoko,” she said. “People are fanatical [about them] on the level of being cult members. I was very scared by that fame. So being in this very simple Christian community seemed very safe, like an easier life.”

Ono, meanwhile, poured her grief into music. Songs like “Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)” and “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” carried echoes of her search, even as direct contact remained painfully limited. A rare phone call between mother and daughter ended abruptly when Ono asked Kyoko where she was.

Years later, Kyoko would break free from her father’s control after meeting her future husband, Jim Helfrich, while attending college in Illinois. The two married in 1992, and in 1994—more than two decades after their separation—Kyoko finally reconnected with her mother. By then, Lennon had already been gone for 14 years.

Despite the trauma of her upbringing, Kyoko ultimately chose compassion over resentment. “They were all such kids,” she said. “They were just like little children, all of them. It’s really crazy. Being a parent – it’s a hard thing to do.”

For Ono, the reunion marked the closing of a long, painful chapter. As she later reflected, regaining her daughter felt like recovering a missing part of herself—an emotional resolution decades in the making.