AP: 4 takeaways from AP's Mormon church sex abuse investigation

[China]

4 takeaways from AP's Mormon church sex abuse investigation

 

When an Arizona bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church, learned that a member of his ward was sexually assaulting his 5-year-old daughter, he followed church policy and called the Mormon Abuse Help Line.

 

The bishop later told law enforcement that church attorneys in Salt Lake City who staff the help line around the clock said that because he learned of the abuse during a counseling session the church considers a spiritual confession, he was legally bound to keep the abuse secret.

 

Paul Douglas Adams, a U.S. Border Patrol employee living with his wife and six children in Bisbee, Arizona, continued abusing his daughter for as many as seven more years, and went on to abuse a second daughter. He finally stopped in 2017 with no help from the church only because he was arrested.

 

The Associated Press obtained thousands of pages of sealed court documents that show in detail exactly how the church’s “help line” can divert abuse complaints away from law enforcement, leaving children in danger.

 

The seven years of secrecy in the Adams case began when church attorneys in Salt Lake City advised Bishop John Herrod and later Bishop Robert “Kim” Mauzy they were exempt from reporting requirements under the state’s child abuse reporting law because of the law’s so-called clergy-penitent privilege.

 

“You absolutely can do nothing,” Herrod said he was told during an interview with federal investigators.

 

Arizona’s child sex abuse reporting law, and similar laws in more than 20 states, says clergy, physicians, nurses, or anyone caring for a child who “reasonably believes” the 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.

 

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[Destino]

The fact that such an exclusion exists in the law is also the church’s doing, right?  I can’t imagine that just popped into the law on its own.  

[Riggo-toni]

It is law that confessions to a religious authority cannot be used in court, much like attorney client privilege.

The big difference here between this and the Catholic Church scandal is that they weren't protecting their own clergy, and I am guessing those who molested children would have been excommunicated; I have a family member whose Mormon husband confessed to adultery and was excommunicated.  It does look like the Arizona law may have given these bishops some wiggle room to legally report the crimes... I'm not sure, but no help line in Utah is going to know every state's statutes. Likely reporting could have pushed the children into foster care but couldn't have been used to prosecute the parents... but I am just guessing here.

[Larry]

The fact that the "help line" is staffed by lawyers whose client ( and therefore, whose obligation to promote the interests of) is the church, says something.