Mormon Child Abuse
Seven years of sex abuse: How Mormon officials let it happen
By MICHAEL REZENDES
August 4, 2022
BISBEE, Ariz. (AP) — MJ was a tiny, black-haired girl, just 5 years
old, when her father admitted to his bishop that he was sexually
abusing her.
The father, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
and an admitted pornography addict, was in counseling with his bishop
when he revealed the abuse. The bishop, who was also a family
physician, followed church policy and called what church officials have
dubbed the “help line” for guidance.
But the call offered little help for MJ. Lawyers for the church, widely
known as the Mormon church, who staff the help line around the clock
told Bishop John Herrod not to call police or child welfare officials.
Instead he kept the abuse secret.
“They said, ‘You absolutely can do nothing,’” Herrod said in a recorded interview with law enforcement.
Herrod continued to counsel MJ’s father, Paul Douglas Adams, for
another year, and brought in Adams’ wife, Leizza Adams, in hopes she
would do something to protect the children. She didn’t. Herrod later
told a second bishop, who also kept the matter secret after consulting
with church officials who maintain that the bishops were excused from
reporting the abuse to police under the state’s so-called
clergy-penitent privilege.
Adams continued raping MJ for as many as seven more years, into her
adolescence, and also abused her infant sister, who was born during
that time. He frequently recorded the abuse on video and posted the
video on the internet.
Adams was finally arrested by Homeland Security agents in 2017 with no
help from the church, after law enforcement officials in New Zealand
discovered one of the videos. He died by suicide in custody before he
could stand trial.
The Associated Press has obtained nearly 12,000 pages of sealed records
from an unrelated child sex abuse lawsuit against the Mormon church in
West Virginia. The documents offer the most detailed and comprehensive
look yet at the so-called help line Herrod called. Families of
survivors who filed the lawsuit said they show it’s part of a system
that can easily be misused by church leaders to divert abuse
accusations away from law enforcement and instead to church attorneys
who may bury the problem, leaving victims in harm’s way.
The help line has been criticized by abuse victims and their attorneys
for being inadequate to quickly stop abuse and protect victims. Yet the
Utah-based faith has stuck by the system despite the criticism and
increasing scrutiny from attorneys and prosecutors, including those in
the Adams case.
“’I just think that the Mormon church really sucks. Seriously sucks,”
said MJ, who is now 16, during an interview with the AP. “They are just
the worst type of people, from what I’ve experienced and what other
people have also experienced.”
MJ and her adoptive mother asked the AP to use only her initials in
part because videos of her abuse posted by her father are still
circulating on the internet. The AP does not publish the names of
sexual abuse survivors without their consent.
William Maledon, an Arizona attorney representing the bishops and the
church in a lawsuit filed by three of the Adams’ six children, told the
AP last month that the bishops were not required to report the abuse.
“These bishops did nothing wrong. They didn’t violate the law, and
therefore they can’t be held liable,” he said. Maledon referred to the
suit as “a money grab.”
In his AP interview, Maledon also insisted Herrod did not know that
Adams was continuing to sexually assault his daughter after learning of
the abuse in a single counseling session.
But in the recorded interview with the agent obtained by the AP, Herrod
said he asked Leizza Adams in multiple sessions if the abuse was
ongoing and asked her, “What are we going to do to stop it?”
“At least for a period of time I assumed they had stopped things, but — and then I never asked if they picked up again.”
‘THE PERFECT LIFESTYLE’
The Adams family lived on a lonely dirt road about 8 miles from the
center of Bisbee, an old copper-mining town in southeastern Arizona
known today for its antique shops and laid-back attitude. Far from
prying eyes, the Adams home — a three-bedroom, open concept affair
surrounded by desert — was often littered with piles of clothing and
containers of lubricant Adams used to sexually abuse his children,
according to legal documents reviewed by the AP.
Paul’s wife, Leizza, assumed most of the child-rearing
responsibilities, including getting their six children off to school
and chauffeuring them to church and religious instruction on Sundays.
Paul, who worked for the U.S. Border Patrol, spent much of his time
online looking at porn, often with his children watching, or wandering
the house naked or in nothing but his underwear.
He had a short fuse and would frequently throw things, yell at his wife
and beat his kids. “He just had this explosive personality,” said
Shaunice Warr, a Border Patrol agent and a Mormon who worked with Paul
and described herself as Leizza’s best friend. “He had a horrible
temper.”
Paul was more relaxed while coaxing his older daughter to hold a
smartphone camera and record him while he sexually abused her. He also
seemed to revel in the abuse in online chat rooms, where he once
bragged that he had “the perfect lifestyle” because he could have sex
with his daughters whenever he pleased, while his wife knew and
“doesn’t care.”
He would later tell investigators the abuse was a compulsion he
couldn’t stop. “I got into something too deep that I just couldn’t pull
myself out of,” he said. “I’m not trying to say the devil made me do
it.”
The Adams family was deeply involved in the Mormon community, and on
Sundays they attended services in Bisbee. So Adams turned to his
church, and to Bishop Herrod, when he sought help and revealed his
abuse of MJ.
Herrod later told Homeland Security agent Robert Edwards he knew from
the start that Leizza Adams was unlikely to stop her husband, after he
called her into the counseling sessions. The bishop, who was also
Leizza’s personal physician, said she seemed “pretty emotionally dead”
when her husband recounted his abuse of their daughter. The bishop also
recognized the harm being done to MJ. “I doubt (she) will ever do
well,” he said in his recorded interview with Homeland Security agents.
Herrod also told Edwards that when he called the help line, church
officials told him the state’s clergy-penitent privilege required him
to keep Adams’s abuse confidential.
But the law required no such thing.
Arizona’s child sex abuse reporting law, and similar laws in more than
20 states that require clergy to report child sex abuse and neglect,
says that clergy, physicians, nurses, or anyone caring for a child who
“reasonably believes” a child has been abused or neglected has a legal
obligation to report the information to police or the state Department
of Child Safety. But it also says that clergy who receive information
about child neglect or sexual abuse during spiritual confessions “may
withhold” that information from authorities if the clergy determine it
is “reasonable and necessary” under church doctrine.
In 2012, when Herrod rotated out of his position as bishop of the
Bisbee ward — a Mormon jurisdiction similar to a Catholic parish — he
told incoming Bishop Robert “Kim” Mauzy about the abuse in the Adams
household. Instead of rescuing MJ by reporting the abuse to
authorities, Mauzy also kept the information within the church.
In a separate recorded interview with federal agents obtained by the
AP, Mauzy said church officials told him he should convene a
confidential disciplinary hearing for Adams, after which Adams was
ex-communicated in 2013. Mauzy and other church leaders still didn’t
report Adams to the police.
Two years later, in 2015, Leizza Adams gave birth to a second daughter.
It took her husband just six weeks to start sexually assaulting her,
recording the abuse, and uploading the videos to the internet.
The revelation that Mormon officials may have directed an effort to
conceal years of abuse in the Adams household sparked a criminal
investigation of the church by Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre,
and the civil lawsuit by three of the Adams children.
“Who’s really responsible for Herrod not disclosing?” McIntyre asked in
an AP interview. “Is it Herrod,” who says he followed the church
lawyers’ instruction not to report the abuse to authorities? “Or is it
the people who gave him that advice?”
‘THE CALL COMES TO MY CELL PHONE’
When it comes to child sexual abuse, the Mormon church says “the first
responsibility of the church in abuse cases is to help those who have
been abused and protect those who may be vulnerable to future abuse,”
according to its 2010 handbook for church leaders. The handbook also
says, “Abuse cannot be tolerated in any form.”
But church officials, from the bishops in the Bisbee ward to officials
in Salt Lake City, tolerated abuse in the Adams family for years.
“They just let it keep happening,” said MJ, in her AP interview. “They
just said, ‘Hey, let’s excommunicate her father.’ It didn’t stop.
‘Let’s have them do therapy.’ It didn’t stop. ‘Hey, let’s forgive and
forget and all this will go away.’ It didn’t go away.”
A similar dynamic played out in West Virginia, where church leaders
were accused of covering up the crimes committed by a young abuser from
a prominent Mormon family even after he’d been convicted on child sex
abuse charges in Utah. The abuser, Michael Jensen, today is serving a
35- to 75-year prison sentence for abusing two children in West
Virginia. Their family, along with others, sued the church and settled
out of court for an undisclosed sum.
“Child abuse festers and grows in secrecy,” said Lynne Cadigan, a
lawyer for the Adams children who filed suit. “That is why the
mandatory reporting came into effect. It’s the most important thing in
the world to immediately report to the police.”
The lawsuit filed by the three Adams children accuses The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and several members, including
Bishops Herrod and Mauzy, of negligence and conspiring to cover up
child sex abuse to avoid “costly lawsuits” and protect the reputation
of the church, which relies on proselytizing and tithing to attract new
members and raise money. In 2020, the church claimed approximately 16
million members worldwide, most of them living outside the United
States.
“The failure to prevent or report abuse was part of the policy of the
defendants, which was to block public disclosure to avoid scandals, to
avoid the disclosure of their tolerance of child sexual molestation and
assault, to preserve a false appearance of propriety, and to avoid
investigation and action by public authority, including law
enforcement,” the suit alleges. “Plaintiffs are informed and believe
that such actions were motivated by a desire to protect the reputation
of the defendants.”
Very few of the scores of lawsuits against The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints mention the help line, in part because details of
its operations have been a closely guarded secret. The documents in the
sealed court records show how it works.
“The help line is certainly there to help — to help the church keep its
secrets and to cover up abuse,” said Craig Vernon, an Idaho attorney
who has filed several sex abuse lawsuits against the church.
Vernon, a former member, routinely demands that the church require
bishops to report sex abuse to police or state authorities rather than
the help line.
The sealed records say calls to the help line are answered by social
workers or professional counselors who determine whether the
information they receive is serious enough to be referred to an
attorney with Kirton McConkie, a Salt Lake City firm that represents
the church.
A document with the heading “Protocol for abuse help line calls,” which
was among the sealed records obtained by the AP, laid out the questions
social workers were to ask before determining whether the calls should
be referred to the lawyers.
Mormon officials in the West Virginia case said they did not recognize
the Protocol and could not authenticate it. But a ranking church
official in a separate sex abuse lawsuit in Oregon confirmed that those
answering the help line used a “written protocol” to guide them.
“There would be a page containing various topics to discuss and
handle,” said Harold C. Brown, then director of the church’s Welfare
Services Department.
The Protocol instructs those staffing the help line to tell callers
they are to use first names only. “No identifying information should be
given.” Under the heading “High Risk Cases,” it also instructs staffers
to ask a series of questions, including whether calls concerned
possible abuse by a church leader, an employee, or abuse at “a
church-sponsored activity.”
The protocol advises those taking the calls to instruct a “priesthood
leader,” which includes bishops and stake presidents, to encourage the
perpetrator, the victim, or others who know of the abuse to report it.
But it also says, in capital letters, that those taking the calls
“should never advise a priesthood leader to report abuse. Counsel of
this nature should come only from legal counsel.”
That counsel comes from attorneys from Kirton McConkie, which represents the church.
Joseph Osmond, one of the Kirton McConkie lawyers assigned to take help
line calls, said in a sealed deposition that he’s always ready to deal
with sex abuse complaints.
“Wherever I am. The call comes to my cell phone,” he said. He then
acknowledged that he did not refer calls to a social worker and
wouldn’t know how to do so.
Osmond declined to comment through church officials. Peter Schofield, a
Kirton McConkie lawyer long associated with the help line, also
declined to answer questions from the AP.
Maledon, the attorney for the church in the Adams lawsuit, said church
clergy or church attorneys have made “hundreds of reports” of child
abuse to civil authorities in Arizona over an unspecified number of
years. But he could not say how many calls to the help line were not
referred to police or child welfare officials and could not provide a
referral rate.
Two church practices, identified in the sealed records, work together
to ensure that the contents of all help lines calls remain
confidential. First, all records of calls to the help line are
routinely destroyed. “Those notes are destroyed by the end of every
day,” said Roger Van Komen, the church’s director of Family Services,
in an affidavit included in the sealed records.
Second, church officials say that all calls referred to Kirton McConkie
lawyers are covered by attorney-client privilege and remain out of the
reach of prosecutors and victims’ attorneys. “The church has always
regarded those communications between its lawyers and local leaders as
attorney-client privileged,” said Paul Rytting, the director of Risk
Management, in a sealed affidavit.
AN OMINOUS TIME
Mormon leaders established the help line in 1995 and it operated not
within its Department of Family Services, but instead in its Office of
Risk Management, whose role is to protect the church and members from
injury and liability in an array of circumstances, including fires,
explosions, hazardous chemical spills and severe weather. The
department ultimately reports to the First Presidency, the three
officials at the very top of the church hierarchy, according to records
in the sealed documents.
Risk management also tracks all sex abuse lawsuits against the church,
according to a sealed affidavit by Dwayne Liddell, a past director of
the department who helped establish the help line. He said members of
the church’s First Presidency knew the details of the help line.
“I have been in those type of meetings where ... the training of
ecclesiastical leaders (and) the establishment of a help line have been
discussed,” Liddell said. When asked who attended the meetings, he
answered, “Members of the First Presidency and the presiding
bishopric,” or the top leaders of the church.
Before establishing the help line in 1995, the Mormon church simply
instructed bishops to comply with local child sex abuse reporting laws.
At the time, child sex abuse lawsuits were on the rise and juries were
awarding victims millions of dollars. The Mormon church is largely
self-insured, leaving it especially vulnerable to costly lawsuits.
“There is nothing inconsistent between identifying cases that may pose
litigation risks to the church and complying with reporting
obligations,” church lawyers said in a sealed legal filing.
But one affidavit in the sealed records which repeatedly says the
church condemns child sexual abuse, also suggests the church is more
concerned about the spiritual well-being of perpetrators than the
physical and emotional well-being of young victims, who also may be
members of the faith.
“Disciplinary proceedings are subject to the highest confidentiality
possible,” said Rytting. “If members had any concerns that their
disciplinary files could be read by a secular judge or attorneys or be
presented to a jury as evidence in a public trial, their willingness to
confess and repent and for their souls to be saved would be seriously
compromised.”
A GLOBAL INVESTIGATION
In 2016 police in New Zealand arrested a 47-year-old farm worker on
child pornography charges and found a nine-minute video on his cell
phone, downloaded from the internet, showing a man in his 30s raping a
10-year-old girl.
A global search for the rapist and his victim was on. It started with
Interpol and led to the U.S. State Department, where investigators
using facial recognition technology matched the rapist with a passport
card photo of a U.S. Border Patrol employee living in Bisbee, Arizona,
according to a Homeland Security synopsis obtained by the AP.
Agents rushed to the Naco, Arizona, Border Station and arrested Adams,
then a lanky, bearded mission support specialist with the Border
Patrol. After some coaxing, Adams admitted to raping MJ and to sexually
assaulting her younger sister, and to posting video of the assaults on
the internet. When agents raided his home, they seized phones and
computers holding more than 4,000 photos and nearly 1,000 videos
depicting child sex abuse, many featuring the Adams daughters.
But the nine-minute video stood out. “This video is one of the worst
I’ve ever seen,” Homeland Security agent Edwards later testified,
adding that haunting dialogue between Adams and his older daughter
helped make the video “stand out in my mind and continue to stand out
in my mind.”
That video represented nine minutes and 14 seconds in seven years of
continual and unnecessary trauma for MJ — and a lifetime of abuse for
her tiny sister — while Bishops Herrod and Mauzy and church
representatives in Salt Lake City stood by.
After Paul Adams died by suicide, Leizza Adams pleaded no contest to
child sex abuse charges and served two-and-a-half years in state
prison. Three of the Adams children went to live with members of
Leizza’s extended family in California. The other three were taken in
by local families.
THE SURVIVORS
MJ’s little sister was only 2 when she met her adoptive mother for the
first time. The toddler wrapped her arms and legs around Miranda
Whitworth’s head, buried her face in her neck, and refused to look up
to say good-bye to members of Leizza’s family. “It was the craziest
thing,” said Whitworth who, with her husband, Matthew, welcomed the
toddler into their family. “It was like when you see a baby monkey or
baby gorilla cling to their mother, and they just won’t let go.”
Over the next few days and weeks, the Whitworths would see additional
markers of the unfathomable abuse the toddler endured at the hands of
her father — much of it recorded on video. She would howl in terror
when any man attempted to touch her, whether it was Matthew or the
family physician. “The nurse was fine but the minute the doctor walked
in she climbed onto me and started screaming bloody murder,” Miranda
said.
The 2-year-old was also terrified of the water, which made bathing an
ear-splitting ordeal. She wouldn’t tolerate anything wrapped around her
wrists. And at church, she would run and hide behind Miranda whenever
anyone greeted her by an old family nickname.
When they took in the toddler, neither Miranda nor Matthew knew very
much about what had happened to her. But while sitting in on Leizza
Adams’s sentencing hearing, they learned about the repeated rapes, the
videos, and the fact that church bishops knew about the abuse of the
older daughter and did nothing to stop it.
The Whitworths were converts to the Mormon faith and, like many new
followers of a religion, they were especially enthusiastic about The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In particular, they
appreciated the efforts Mormons make to help fellow church members in
times of need through church organizations established to give special
attention to women, teens and children.
“It’s all about family,” Miranda said. “That’s one of the things we absolutely loved.”
But after learning about what Adams did to their new daughter, and the
failure of the church to stop him, the scales fell from their eyes. “We
decided to remove our records from the church,” said Matthew Whitworth.
“I personally couldn’t continue to provide tithing money to a church
that would allow young children to be abused and not do anything to
prevent it.”
Unlike the Whitworths, Nancy Salminen has never been a member of the
Mormon church. But as a special needs teacher and a rape victim
herself, she has a special affinity for MJ and others like her. Over
the last five years, she has opened her home to 17 girls and boys who
needed a safe place to stay. Her house is a modest, ranch-style
structure she bought out of foreclosure.
“Everything’s a little broken here and that’s perfect because so are we,” she said.
Salminen said she met MJ after receiving an urgent call on a Friday
evening to rescue a 12-year-old from another family. “She was pretty
scared and pretty confused when I picked her up,” Salminen recalled.
“She spent a lot of time in her closet in her room when we got home,
but we got to know each other and got to like each other.”
Like the Whitworths, Salminen knew very little about what MJ had endured until Leizza Adams’s sentencing hearing.
“What I heard made me want to throw up,” she said. “And the more I
learned the more I wanted to help her fight this fight that she didn’t
even know about.”
Safely settled in Salminen’s household — which today includes a foster
girl Salminen also plans to adopt — MJ has been transformed from a
victim of unimaginable abuse to a bubbly 16-year-old who plays in the
high school band and proudly dons a crisp, new uniform for her job at a
fast-food restaurant.
“She had every excuse to fail and to just fold into herself and run
away,” Salminen said. “But instead, she came back stronger than anyone
I’ve ever known.”
So strong that she appears eager to play an active role in the battle
she and her two siblings are waging against The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints. “I just want them to do what they’re supposed to
do and report to the police,” MJ said.
The adoptive parents of the third Adams child who has filed suit
declined to speak to the AP about the case. Like MJ, Miranda and
Matthew Whitworth said they joined the lawsuit against the church on
behalf of their young daughter not in hopes of a payday, but to change
church policy so that any instance of child sexual abuse is immediately
reported to civil authorities. “We just don’t understand why they’re
paying all these lawyers to fight this,” Matthew Whitworth said. “Just
change the policy.”
THE PRIVILEGE
That policy is the key to the church’s defense. In a recent filing
asking a Superior Court judge to dismiss the case, Maledon and other
lawyers for the church said the case “hinges entirely on whether
Arizona’s child abuse reporting statute required two church bishops ...
to report to authorities confidential confessions made to them by
plaintiffs’ father.”
Whatever moral or public policy arguments one could make that the
church should have told authorities that Paul Adams was raping his
daughters are irrelevant, the lawyers argued. “Arizona’s reporting
statute broadly exempts confidential communications with clergy, as
determined by the clergyman himself,” according to the church motion to
dismiss the case. “Reasonable people can debate whether this is the
best public policy choice. But that is not an issue for a jury or this
court.”
Bishop Herrod, in his recorded interview, said church officials told
him he had to keep what Adams told him confidential or he could be sued
if he went to authorities.
But McIntyre, the Cochise County attorney, said that’s false, noting
the Arizona reporting law says that anyone reporting a belief that
child sex abuse occurred “is immune from any civil or criminal
liability.”
Aside from the legal arguments over whether Bishops Herrod and Mauzy
were excused from their reporting obligations under the clergy-penitent
privilege, critics of the inaction by the two bishops and the broader
church have raised ethical issues.
Gerard Moretz, a seasoned child sex abuse investigator for the Pima
County, Arizona, Sheriff’s Department and an expert witness for the
Adams children, is one of them.
“What aspect of your religious practice are you advancing if you don’t report something like this?” he asked.
___
Associated Press editor Brady McCombs in Salt Lake City and
investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to
this story.
Navajo Siblings Claim ‘Horrific’ Sexual Abuse; Sue Mormons
Alysa Landry
4/5/16
Indian Country Today Media Network
Two Navajo siblings are suing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, claiming they endured “horrific” sexual abuse while
participating in the church-operated Indian Student Placement Program.
The lawsuit, filed March 24 in Navajo Nation District Court in Window
Rock, Arizona, alleges that a brother and sister were removed from
their home on the reservation in the 1970s and placed with foster
families in Utah. Both plaintiffs claim they experienced repeated
sexual abuse and rape while on the program, which operated from 1947 to
2000 and attracted Native students from all over the United States and
Canada.
Attorney Billy Keeler said his clients—age 10 and 11 when the alleged
abuse began—were living with 10 other siblings in Sawmill, Arizona.
After their mother volunteered them for the program, several of the
children were baptized into the church and moved to Utah.
The sexual abuse started in the siblings’ first foster families and
continued after they were moved to other homes, the lawsuit states.
They also witnessed abuse of other siblings by foster families or
associates.
Keeler said his clients told at least two program leaders of the abuse,
but their “cries for help fell on deaf ears as they were placed in
homes where they were abused again.”
The clients, who are not being named because of the sensitive nature of
the case, were victimized twice, Keeler said. “They were victims of
sexual predators and an organization that failed to protect them, even
after it had notice of what was happening.”
The lawsuit alleges that the LDS Church (also known as the Mormons)
failed to protect children in members’ homes and then concealed
instances of sexual abuse by instructing members and leaders not to
report abuse to criminal or civil authorities. It seeks unspecified
damages for physical, emotional and spiritual suffering, as well as
written apologies, changes in church policy and the creation of a task
force to work with the Navajo Nation to address cultural and social
harm.
In a statement, church spokeswoman Kristen Howey said the church will
examine the lawsuit and respond appropriately. The church doesn’t
tolerate any kind of abuse, she said.
The church’s official statement about child abuse claims that the
church is almost never sued for abuse perpetrated by its bishops.
Instead, such cases usually involve one member who has abused
another—often outside of any official church activity.
“No court in the United States has held a religious institution
responsible for failing to protect its members from abuse by other
members,” the statement reads. “To do so would turn religious
institutions into police instruments, its leadership into law
enforcement officers.”
The Indian Student Placement Program, the brainchild of Mormon apostle
Spencer W. Kimball, offered Native children “educational, spiritual,
social and cultural opportunities in non-Indian community life.” It
also sought to restore Native people—sometimes called Lamanites—to
their “prophetic destiny.”
Mormons believe that America’s indigenous population fled from Israel
in the year 600 B.C.E. After settling in an unspecified location in the
Americas, the people split into two groups: the Nephites were righteous
and civilized while the Lamanites were “idle, savage and bloodthirsty.”
God cursed the Lamanites with a “skin of blackness” to distinguish them
from the Nephites.
The Indian Student Placement Program, which pulled children as young as
8 from their homes and sent them to live with Mormon foster families,
helped reverse the curse. In 1960, Kimball claimed Natives who
participated in the program were gradually turning lighter, becoming
“white and delightsome.”
“The day of the Lamanites is nigh,” Kimball said, claiming that Navajo
placement students were “as light as Anglos” and, in one case, several
shades lighter than parents “on the same reservation, in the same
hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather.”
This “curse doctrine” itself is problematic, attorney Craig Vernon
said. Children are brought up in the Mormon Church believing they have
a responsibility to reach out to Natives and bring them back into the
fold.
“It’s all rooted in this racist doctrine,” he said. “Whenever you have
a group of people who feel superior to another group of people, it’s
ripe for this kind of abuse.” You’ve got little kids away from their
home, and frankly they’re second-class citizens. Perhaps this was
well-intentioned by the church, but there’s a problem when kids are
told that if they’re righteous their skin can become white.”
The lawsuit names as defendants the LDS Church as a corporation, along
with the presiding bishop, the church’s department of social services
and the church as an “unincorporated religious association.”
It seeks to hold the church “vicariously liable” for the actions of its members.
Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that the church protected its image
above the interests of the children. Church policy directs members to
report child abuse to clergy instead of law enforcement, the lawsuit
states. Leaders are instructed to “avoid testifying in civil or
criminal cases or other proceedings involving abuse.”
Vernon said the church did not provide enough oversight. An estimated
40,000 Native children and teens from 60 different tribes participated
in the program.
“The church assumed that if these people were Mormon, they were good
people and that was the end of it,” Vernon said. “The problem with the
Mormon Church is that you have lay clergy making decisions on child sex
abuse, and then you run into trouble.”
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