I wrote about the Arizona sex abuse case a while back when the AP News article first broke, but it’s made its way back in the news because the Arizona Supreme Court recently ruled in the case that the LDS Church can “refuse to answer questions or turn over documents under a state law that exempts religious officials from having to report child sex abuse if they learn of the crime during a confessional setting.” The Church applauded this ruling in the same breath that it reiterated that it doesn’t tolerate abuse. Umm, sure.
This ruling isn’t surprising to me.
It is also totally irrelevant to the Church’s moral (and arguably legal) culpability here, but I keep seeing people misrepresenting or misunderstanding what’s going on.
What’s going on here is that, according to the bishop who learned about the abuse, Church attorneys (including this guy and this guy) falsely and recklessly advised an LDS bishop that he was not permitted to disclose to authorities abuse he learned about in connection with his responsibilities as a bishop. They falsely and recklessly advised him that he could be legally liable for doing so.
That is not what a legal privilege is. A legal privilege–as was addressed in the Arizona Supreme Court case–is about whether or not the government can require a person (such as a clergy person) to disclose information obtained in connection with that person’s role as a clergy. It is not about whether a clergy person could voluntarily report ongoing abuse in order to protect a victim.
So, to be abundantly clear:
When Church lawyers told this bishop that he was not permitted to voluntarily disclose abuse, they were at best giving terrible, incorrect legal advice that prevented authorities from obtaining voluntarily-provided information that could have been used to stop abuse. They were at worst lying, although why they would lie about this and whom they thought they were protecting is lost on me.
They weren’t protecting the Church, which wouldn’t really have been liable for this abuse because it’s not like it was being committed in connection with Church activities. (In a case where, for example, a Church YM leader was abusing a YM in his class, I can see there being an argument that the Church is protecting itself from liability. Whether or not that’s the right thing to do, at least there is a rationale for the Church protecting its legal interests. In this case, there is no such rationale.)
They weren’t protecting the bishop, who wouldn’t have been in trouble for reporting and in fact would have avoided being on the spot for declining to report. If anything, they’ve done the bishop an enormous disservice by asking him to live with that knowledge, to do nothing about it, to get wrapped up in this legal case, and also potentially to put him in conflict with his mandatory reporting obligations as a physician.
They weren’t protecting the child, whose horrific abuse went on for years. There’s not even the remotest argument they were protecting the child.
The only person they were protecting, and this is what is so baffling, was the abuser. (Even that is debatable, since he ended up arrested and died by suicide. Not exactly a great outcome for anyone.)
I don’t know if these lawyers are stupid or evil or both. But the Church needs to stop defending this position, and people need to stop mischaracterizing the actual issue here which isn’t legal privilege. It’s false, reckless legal advice that prevented a bishop from taking steps to prevent years of horrific advice. Don’t let the legal technicalities of the privilege, which the Church keeps returning to, obfuscate that reality. The reality that the LDS Church’s reflexive response to reports of abuse is to stay silent, regardless of the specific circumstances of the case, the question being asked, or the actual state of the law.
And, lawyer to lawyer, I’m calling on lawyers to stop defending evil stuff. Criminal defendants are entitled to representation and there are important constitutional reasons for that right. But beyond that, no one is forcing you to take the Church’s money to protect abusers. Seriously, just stop it.
Wheat & Tares 
Given that church members will defend the indefensible, deliberately turn a blind eye to the facts of this case, and that for some utterly unfathomable reason the Church is completely in bed with Kirton-McConkie, I don’t see this changing. That case was horrific, and the advice given the bishop was simply untrue. I’m not remotely surprised that an AZ court upheld it because despite what some of our leaders like to tell everyone, religious freedom is not what’s under assault in this country. It’s religious freedom, religions getting away with things we would never tolerate in the public, doing the harm to people more often than the other way around.
This upsetting pattern, I think, is another example of what we see every time the Church weighs in publicly on “morality” issues, such as advocating for laws against LGBTQ discrimination while quietly carving out exceptions for themselves. Not to confuse LGBTQ rights issues with child sex abuse, which are two completely separate things (though not always in the eyes of the Church, which has an internal system in place to prohibit out gay members from holding callings that work with children, meanwhile does nothing to prevent actual child predators from using Church settings as their hunting grounds). But it seems like anytime Dallin H. Oaks opens his mouth, he firmly supports the notion of “rules for thee, but not for me”, which is quite disturbing coming from a distinguished jurist who was once shortlisted as a potential SCOTUS pick. I’ll wager that a not-insignificant number of Church leaders and orthodox members truly, deep down, believe that the institutional Church is above the law and accountable to no one on earth. The Church is going to extraordinary lengths to avoid background-checking youth leaders, which it can easily afford to do. When the Church divorced from the BSA and launched their own hollowed-out youth program, they also failed to develop any kind of youth protection/abuse awareness training to replace the robust program the BSA uses. The only reason I can figure for this is incredible hubris on the part of the Church’s senior leaders, and their lawyers.
@Elisa, I hope I’m not misrepresenting your prior posts and comments, but you have made the point multiple times in the past that the church’s primary aim is to protect itself, and not necessarily to protect the interests of church members. I agree.
No wonder the church was delighted by the Arizona court’s ruling. And whether the church received incompetent or evil council matters less because the church’s primary interest is self-protection.
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy perfectly describes the dynamics inside the institutional church. The law of bureaucracy states this: “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always gain control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence over time, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.” This explains why the church places the protection of its liabilities over the welfare of its members when the two are placed in competition. And as we have seen, this is true even when the members are sexual abused children.
The LDS church is less about “the one” and more about itself.
I hope Michael Rezendes and the AP will continue to tenaciously grind away at their investigative work. If courts of law won’t compel the church to change, perhaps the court of public opinion can.
@bigsky, yes, that’s a fair characterization.
And that’s not surprising, and I try not to get upset when an institution acts like an institution.
What’s so odd to me about this case is that the Church really wasn’t even protecting its own interests. It was protecting absolutely no one. It was incredibly foolish, harmful advice.
Also, fine if the Church wants to protect itself, but for it to continue to assert that it doesn’t tolerate abuse is dishonest. So that bothers me too.
@Elisa, agreed.
And I should have made my thoughts more clear. My expectations are for our church NOT to act like an institution. I thought we were supposed to be “peculiar.” It makes me bristle that the “one true church” can’t find better ways to align its policies with fundamental Christian virtues. Nothing makes me steam more than the way the church prevaricates on the topic of sexual abuse reporting and protecting child victims.
Is there an argument to be made that if the church advised this particular bishop, in this particular case, to report, but advised bishops in other situations/for other reported crimes _not_ to report, that they would have some increased risk to the church?
In other words, if the perpetrator had reason to believe that they would _not_ be reported, and then they were, could he sue on the premise that he was singled out and reported where others were not? Note that I’m not _at all_ defending the church here, I’m just curious if they were actually protecting the church in this way.
I think you’re factually mistaken on a number of fronts. First, the Arizona Supreme Court just refused to take the appeal (denied cert, as it were); it didn’t rule anything itself. The appellate court has a detailed opinion ruling in the church’s favor which I’m guessing you haven’t read, because its language contradicts most of what you say above (2022 WL 17727582). Second, contrary to your position above, in which you seem to argue that this is strictly about a government compelling disclosure, the appeals court cites a long line of Arizona cases and states that: “the priest *cannot waive* the penitent’s privilege. The privilege afforded by the statute belongs to the communicant: a clergyman *may not* disclose the communicant’s confidences without the communicant’s consent.ā
I read you to be taking the position that this rule only applies to the government making priests testify, but the nature of this case belies that assumption. This is a civil matter to which the government isn’t a party. So this is one civil party telling a priest in a civil action that they want to see privileged files, and the court saying that the priest has no right to turn them over, since the penitent specifically said no.
I think there’s a stickier issue as it relates to how to read Arizona Statute 12-2233, which says that a priest “shall not” waive the privilege without the penitent’s consent, alongside 13-3620(L), which seems to phrase it as the priest “may” not report. But given that the former is mandatory and the latter is permissive, I think the former would control. At the very least, it’s a better argument.
I guess the clergy could choose to break his oath and report, and maybe that’s what you’re getting at, but if you and I were to do so in purposeful violation of the attorney-client privilege, we’d be sued for malpractice and fraud. And people admit horrible things to attorneys all the time.
In short, I think the Kirton McConkie lawyers probably had it right. And as much as I like you, I think you’re arguing with your heart rather than your head. Is this bad policy? Maybe, but that’s a question for the Arizona legislature, not the Church.
I’ll also point out that large chunks of your August post haven’t aged well as the evidence has come forth. You stated then, “He could have chosen to report the abuse, or he could have encouraged the husband to report the abuse, or asked the husband for consent to report the abuse, or more strongly encouraged the wife to report the abuse, or a whole number of other options to try to get help for a vulnerable girl who was suffering unspeakable horrors.” Taking those piece by piece:
“He could have chosen to report the abuse”: not according to the case I cited in my last post, your contrary view notwithstanding.
“He could have encouraged the husband to report the abuse”: the evidence that has emerged is that this guy showed up to church exactly 3 times in 7 years, and confessed to the bishops involved on 2 of those occasions. And in both cases the bishops did very strongly encourage him to report the abuse. Like completely laid into him. Turns out he didn’t want to turn himself in.
“…asked the husband for consent to report the abuse.” Did that too. Strongly.
“…or more strongly encouraged the wife to report the abuse.” Did that too. She went to jail because she preferred not to report in spite of the bishops’ urging.
“…or other options to try to get help for a vulnerable girl.” Letters exist wherein the bishop implored the daughter to go and report herself. He literally said he’d drive her to the police station himself and hold her hand. She didn’t want to do it.
Jimbob, youāre wrong about the law. Thatās all Iāve got for you.
That said, thanks for the cite for the decision. I tried to find it but couldnāt so was relying on how it was being reported (and was wrong about the procedural posture).
Maybe read the case first, then decide whether I’m wrong. It doesn’t seem to go your way.
@JimBob, you are confused about the difference between “privilege” (an evidentiary rule that only applies in the context of legal proceedings, both civil and criminal) and “confidentiality” (a duty that may exist outside of the context of legal proceedings). Everything in the case and all of your quotes about the privilege not being capable of being waived by the priest have to do with the decision to produce documents or testimony in a court case. That has nothing to do with communications outside that context. Privilege is inapplicable to any other context.
So I’m not saying the case was incorrectly decided w/r/t privilege law. I’m saying that it is not relevant to my position here, which is that KMC was wrong when it advised the bishop that he was not allowed to report abuse. If KMC had advised him that he was not allowed to produce testimony in a deposition or legal proceeding, that may have been correct. But that’s not what the advice here was.
The issue before the court in the case was whether the abuser had waived the clergy-penitent privilege by publicly broadcasting his crimes in videos, and whether therefore the Church was required to turn over documents and a Church clerk required to provide testimony regarding disciplinary proceedings: “Relevant here, in resolving those disputes, the respondent judge addressed whether LDS was required to disclose the file related to Adamsās disciplinary council proceeding and whether a witness to that proceeding, Richard Fife, was constrained by the priest-penitent privilege from testifying about the proceeding.”
That’s the issue in this case. The issue is not whether the bishop could have reported the abuse to authorities years ago. That is not addressed in the case. When you reference the court stating that a clergy-person can’t choose to waive the privilege, that is *still* talking about a disclosure in connection with a civil action via testimony in that action. It is not addressing a disclosure outside of the context of a civil action / decisions to testify.
In addition, as I addressed in my initial post, the relevant statute says: āIn a civil action a clergyman or priest shall not, without the consent of the person making a confession, be examined as to any confession made to him in his character as clergyman or priest in the course of discipline enjoined by the church to which he belongs.ā This expressly applies to (1) civil actions and (2) “examinations” (i.e., deposition or witness testimony or document production). This statute does not speak to whether a clergyperson could voluntarily report abuse to authorities. (Your distinction about the Church not being a party to the case / it being civil is irrelevant because the case is talking about compelling the disclosure of documents and testimony, which can occur in civil cases just as it can with criminal cases. Indeed the statute expressly refers to civil actions.).
Finally, you’re right that as lawyers we can’t disclose client confidences but that’s because we have a duty of confidentiality. That’s completely separate from the legal privilege that allows us to refuse to turn over documents or testify as to privileged matters. I’m not aware of a legal duty of confidentiality owed by bishops to their congregants. There may be an expectation of confidentiality from culture or the handbook or whatever, but that’s not a legal duty. Indeed, bishops would be in trouble all the time if they have such a duty given what’s talked about in ward councils.
Privileges don’t protect people outside of court. They are evidentiary rules. The Church could decide from a policy / ethical perspective that it wants confessions kept confidential and so advise the bishop not to report the abuse for policy reasons, but that’s a policy / ethics call (and IMO an incorrect one at that). So yes, it can and unfortunately does choose not to report abuse for its own reasons, and it actively advocates against mandatory reporting laws that would require reports. But that’s a policy choice. Not a legal one. KMC was wrong.
The fact that this bishop worked so hard to try other avenues at getting the abuse stopped IMO makes this case even sadder, and shows me that the Church did him a great disservice when it incorrectly advised him that he was legally prohibited from simply reporting the abuse to relevant authorities. He carries a great weight that he had the power to stop abuse and didn’t do so. That’s on the Church.
Also in response to your comments about actions that could have been taken:
He could have chosen to report the abuseā: not according to the case I cited in my last post, your contrary view notwithstanding.
-wrong. He could have. See previous comment.
āHe could have encouraged the husband to report the abuseā: the evidence that has emerged is that this guy showed up to church exactly 3 times in 7 years, and confessed to the bishops involved on 2 of those occasions. And in both cases the bishops did very strongly encourage him to report the abuse. Like completely laid into him. Turns out he didnāt want to turn himself in.ā
-this goes to show that no good came of not reporting. Like, there was no real relationship between this guy and the bishop that would have been ruined by reporting and he wasnāt working privately with the bishop to change his behavior.
āAsked the husband for consent to report the abuse.ā Did that too. Strongly.ā
-didnāt need consent in the first place
āā¦or more strongly encouraged the wife to report the abuse.ā Did that too. She went to jail because she preferred not to report in spite of the bishopsā urging.
-sheās another casualty of the bad advice, then. If heād reported sooner and it had been dealt with maybe she wouldnāt have ended up in jail herself.
āā¦or other options to try to get help for a vulnerable girl.ā Letters exist wherein the bishop implored the daughter to go and report herself. He literally said heād drive her to the police station himself and hold her hand. She didnāt want to do it.
-umm, this is a gross argument. She was literally an infant – AN INFANT – when the abuse started. The bishop did his best but he was in no position to know how to help. Turns out there are people whose job it is to help, who werenāt able to because KMC told the bishop to keep his mouth shut.
Iām not convinced you arenāt thinking with your heart here JimBob and itās a bit of a distressing heart position to take tbh.
Iām well aware that Iām speaking out about this from my heart (but also believe Iām right about the law). What is motivating you to defend it?
ā Jimbob, youāre wrong about the law. Thatās all Iāve got for you.ā
Apparently not.
Again, you may want to read the case first, Elisa. You seem to be going off half-cocked.
Umm I did read it before I wrote my full response. Hence my ability to quote directly from it.
Iām not wrong.
Frankly reading the case made me quite baffled about your arguments because it is so clearly about an evidentiary privilege in civil proceedings.
I donāt know what kind of lawyer you are but Iāve discussed this with a lot of lawyers and I myself used to be a litigator and am very familiar with how privilege works ā¦ and every lawyer Iāve talked to about this agrees with my read of it.
Sorry for the serial comments I have been in and out of meetings and will stop it now.
By all means then, point me to the case in Arizona which makes the distinction youāve created and as a result of that distinction finds that a priest *can* choose to waive the privilege without liability, thereby abrogating clear Arizona law which says that the privilege belongs to the penitent and can only be waived by same. I assume you have that one handy and that lawyers that do this for a living were just silly for having missed it.
Elisa, you rock.
BigSky, thank you for introducing me to the Iron Law of Bureaucracy which, when googled, also led me to the concept of the Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone (a system that has no purpose other than to sustain itself).
Itās hard to weigh if the institutional church is a net positive or net negative in peoples lives. If the primary service the church provides to its members turns out to be only metaphysical (or, god forbid, imaginary) and its social utility and charity is outweighed by all the familial and emotional turmoil it causes, perhaps the church is becoming a self-licking ice cream cone. It still wouldnāt explain the bad legal advice to that bishop though.
@jimbob, did you even read my comment?
I didnāt ācreateā the distinction. The statute and the law of privilege does. The statute says āin a civil actionā. Full stop. Thatās what it says. Reporting to police or social workers isnāt āin a civil action.ā Testifying in a legal case that emerges from such a report would be.
Likewise, privilege is not a concept that exists outside the context of testimony or production of documents in a legal case. Itās just not. There is no such thing as a legal āprivilegeā that would preclude a bishop from reporting abuse as opposed to testifying in a legal case.
If a lawyer disclosed privileged communications say to the press or to the police, a client may have a cause of action for breach of confidentiality or malpractice. But they would NOT have a claim for ābreach of privilegeā because thatās nonsensical. It isnāt a thing.
And there is no corollary confidentiality rule or professional standard for a bishop. Maybe thereād be a claim for like, invasion of privacy or something. But if Iām choosing between defending a claim for invasion of privacy (which I donāt think would stand in any event) vs preventing abuse I am pretty sure I know the correct answer.
You are fundamentally wrong about what privilege means and therefore fundamentally misunderstand the case. So your arguments honestly donāt make sense because your entire premise about what privilege is is incorrect.
If you want to find *me* a case that says that clergy are *not permitted* to report abuse to child welfare services or the police, go for it. You wonāt. It isnāt a thing. Itās not what the statute says.
On the contrary, thereās a statute that makes such reporting MANDATORY except for clergy exceptions that *permit* clergy to *choose* not to report (this is described in my original post), which is why the bishop isnāt in trouble for failing to make an otherwise mandatory report. But, for the one-millionth time, that doesnāt mean he was legally precluded from reporting. It means he was legally permitted to choose not to report.
A penitent can invoke privilege to stop a bishop from testifying in a legal case. He cannot invoke it to stop a bishop from reporting to authorities. So there is no such thing as a āwaiverā of the privilege to prevent a report to authorities because thereās no privilege to waive in the first place. It doesnāt exist.
Soā¦no case?
Has there ever been a situation where an abuser confessed to an ecclesiastical leader and has then confessed to the police? I mean, as in this privileged confession rule actually working? Where the confidential counseling of the abuser actually produced justice for the victims?
The only incidents that I ever seem to hear of are where the ecclesiastical leader didn’t report it, and the abuse continued regardless.
Honestly JimBob, why? What is your point? Just donāt want to be wrong in your original comments? Are you secretly working at KMC?
Youāve not responded to a bit of the actual argument and explanation Iāve given for why there wonāt in fact be a ācase.ā
I will find you a case that says that when you find me a case that makes a distinction between murdering a unicorn and murdering a mermaid.
Spoiler alert, neither of us will, because itās not a real thing and courts arenāt in the business of writing opinions about things that donāt exist. Like a āprivilegeā preventing a clergy person from reporting abuse to authorities. It is as mythical as a mermaid.
Iām not arguing this anymore. Massive waste of time. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify, several times, what a legal privilege means but this argument has run its course and I honestly donāt care about convincing you, just making sure readers get the full explanation and werenāt confused by your incorrect comments. They have that now so my job here is done.
jimbob, just stop. Elisa has caught you with your pants down. If you keep pretending to be an idiot, people will start to believe you are an idiot.
I also have to say, though, that we are all in your debt. Thanks to your confusion, we have Elisa’s explanation of how the distinctions among evidentiary privilege, the duty of confidentiality, and mandatory reporting play out in this situation. Elisa’s comments should be a pretty good reference for future use, because it seems unfortunately likely that this sort of thing is going to come up again.
My best to you, Elisa. Iām sorry we canāt see eye to eye on this issue.
She hasnāt, Ben, and I think she knows it. Sheās preaching to the home crowd and most of them donāt know enough to know who is right, given this is a complicated interplay of statutes, case law, and common law. She doesnāt have a case for the facially untenable proposition that you can breach your privilege and tell a cop, but have to stop short of telling a judge, because that proposition just doesnāt exist in the law. So sheās making a long and tortured results-based analysis in hopes of convincing like-minded people who are looking for a reason to still blame the church that the law says one thing when the cases cited say the opposite. Thatās why Iām asking her to produce a case and she canāt do it.
But again, my best to you, and her.
jimbob, Elisa has a case. It’s the one that you have so embarrassingly misunderstood. But Elisa doesn’t even need a case, because she has the statutes. You know this, but you keep pretending otherwise. It’s not a good look for a person who wants to be seen as a competent lawyer.
@jimbob, I donāt appreciate you ascribing dishonest motives or actions to me. Saying āmy best to youā and then accusing me of being a manipulative liar doesnāt jive.
Itās not complicated, and whether or not you think Iām wrong, I can guarantee you I am sincere. And yes, I do think people should be mad, because wrong was done. Anger is an appropriate response to this kind of harm. Defending it and digging in is a problematic response to it.
Not cool.
And holy hell. There is no case law because there is no issue to write a case about. That argument is beyond, beyond ridiculous. Which would be fine and you can make ridiculous arguments but to accuse me of acting in bad faith is too much.
Reporting something to the police does. Not. Implicate. Legal. Privilege.
It doesnāt.
It could violate confidentiality.
Not privilege.
I am concerned about lawyers such as those at KMC that do not know the difference.
Understood, Elisa. I imagine weāve both felt attacked personally tonight; thereās a lot of ad hominem in your comments I found ānot coolā as well. Hard issues can do that to good people. Seems like weāll have to try for a more civilized exchange on another occasion.
It is sad that loyalty to an institution makes people think that the question of whether someone should report horrific ongoing abuse of an infant is āhard.ā
That said, sorry you felt attacked. But I never said I wished you all the best š
For what it is worth, I’m a litigator that deals with privilege issues all the time, not just limited to the attorney-client privilege – spousal privilege, doctor/patient privilege, priest/penitent privilege. Elisa is right regarding a privilege being a rule of evidence and not an independent source of liability for those who breach the privilege against the wishes of the person who “holds the privilege.”
If the bishop had reported to the authorities, and criminal abuse charges had been brought, or a civil suit had been brought against the abuser, then the bishop’s report would not be admissible into evidence because the bishop did not “hold the privilege” (i.e. cannot waive the privilege). So the report would be inadmissible as evidence, and other evidence that was discovered as a result of the bishop’s report would also possibly be inadmissible, but that does not necessarily mean that the bishop would be liable to the abuser in any way for the report/disclosure. It just means the report/disclosure could not be used as evidence against the abuser.
As Elisa already said, it is different for attorneys because we have a duty of confidentiality to our clients that is independent of the attorney-client privilege, or any other type of privilege. I agree that some crafty plaintiff’s lawyer could come up with a theory of liability to test against the bishop (such as emotional distress or something, like Elisa already mentioned), but otherwise I don’t see any legal basis for a civil cause of action against the bishop, and certainly no criminal liability (unless there is a statute making breach of a privilege a criminal offense, which, c’mon, you know the AZ bar has better lobbyists than that).
@elisa is right, never change your username š
Also everyone thatās not me. I promise.
Elisa is on point saying “There is no such thing as a āwaiverā of the privilege to prevent a report to authorities because thereās no privilege to waive in the first place. It doesnāt exist.”
No law prevents a clergyman from blabbing confessions to others. Confessors trust their secrets will be respected but no law requires it. That the LDS legal advice to a bishop made aware of child abuse was to not intervene in stopping that abuse is legally defensible but morally repugnant.
BigSky said it best. The leaders of the institutional church care most about the institution. I am confident the institutional leaders rationalize everything they do as a benefit and service to the greater membership. But the priority is to always place the interests of the institution first. As a consequence of putting the institution first, members may need to suffer. Bishops may need to suffer. People will suffer. That is the sacrifice the church leaders deem necessary to protect the institution.
Is that what Jesus would do? Absolutely not. Jesus said it was better a millstone was hung on the neck of the person and he was drowned at see, rather than a person cause a child to suffer. Judgment day will yield a great many surprises.
The fact alone that lawyers disagree on this issue should be enough prevent us from hastily assuming that the church tolerates abuse–especially when folks who work for the church’s hotline will tell you that — according to those who are in the know — that is absolutely not the case.
Elisa,
I don’t know enough about these things to judge who — between you and jimbob and others — has got it right vis-a-vis the specific argument you’re making. But even so, it seems to me that we can’t really make a judgment call on the morality of the whole thing without being intimately aware of the details involved. There’s a forensic aspect to this sort of thing that should be understood thoroughly before we come down on one side or the other.
A Disciple: ” Jesus said it was better a millstone was hung on the neck of the person and he was drowned at see, rather than a person cause a child to suffer. Judgment day will yield a great many surprises.”
I agree–and (with fear and trembling) I’m of the opinion that the vast majority of us will have some portion of hell to pay because of the way we’ve treated each other. Even so, I think the Savior’s words in that particular instance also apply to those who are “babes” in the gospel. And this is where the argument about the institution verses individuals really comes into play. IMO, what may look like the church protecting itself often has something to do with its concern for protecting the “Lord’s little ones.” Whether it’s locking the gate at the top of the stairs (by way of analogy) or the sliding door at the back of the dinning room. They may seem like measures put in place for arbitrary reasons–but in reality they’re vital for the safety of little children.
Hey Jack,
Does every classroom in the church have windows yet? (No). Does the church require background checks for anyone who works with youth (No. Not church wide… Only in areas where legally forced to do so). They tolerate abuse. Those are two very simple things that they can do to protect children, but choose not to. Also, your comment about not knowing every intimate detail before making judgement is garbage. Your wishy-washy, shoulder shrugging “welp, we just don’t know” attitude only acts as a barrier to enacting needed change.
Jack, please. The “forensics” on this case has been thoroughly done already. There has been a *ton* of reporting done by highly respected journalists. There are really no unknowns or unanswered questions here. I agree that jimbob muddied the waters here a bit, but all of the reporting I’ve read on this case indicate that Elisa is correct. Just google the case if you want to read up on it.
The family of the abused girl has brought a lawsuit against the Church seeking monetary compensation for the suffering the girl faced because Church lawyers incorrectly told the bishop that he could not report the abuse (again jimbob is wrong, Elisa is right). Clergy are actually required to report sexual abuse *except* in cases where the abuser reveals the abuse a part of a religious confession as was the case here. I’ll call this the clergy-penitent exception from now on. The lawyers representing the family are arguing (for various reasons that I won’t go into) that the clergy-penitent exception shouldn’t apply in this case, so the Church needs to provide records and possibly testify about this case to the court and can potentially be found liable and required to compensate the girl for the suffering it caused. Instead of accepting fault and paying damages to the abused girl, the Church is using the clergy-penitent exception as its defense. And, so far, it appears that the Church’s defense will be successful. By successful, I mean that the Church may very well avoid having to compensate the girl for the sexual abuse she suffered that could have been prevented if the Church’s lawyers hadn’t given incorrect and immoral advice to this bishop.
Do I think that the Church should compensate this girl for the suffering caused by Church lawyers? I absolutely do. While no amount of money will right the wrong, that’s the best the Church can do in this situation. While the Church may not legally be required to compensate the girl, it is the morally correct thing to do. In fact, by using legal maneuvers to avoid paying this compensation, the Church is actually showing one way that it tolerates sexual abuse. Sure, I do believe that Church leaders are sincere where then openly condemn sexual abuse. However, when the rubber hits the road, and the Church screws up and is truly responsible for sexual abuse, it chooses legal maneuvers over compensating the victim. That is a form of tolerance of sexual abuse.
Moving on, please stop fawning over the people manning the Church sexual abuse hotline. I’m sure that they are, for the most part, fine people. However, the Church sexual abuse hotline is completely, 100% answered by Kirton-McConkie lawyers working for the Church (once the call screener determines the matter is serious enough to go to a lawyer) working within the Risk Management arm of the Church institution. If the Church was serious about not tolerating sexual abuse, calls to the sexual abuse hotline would go to social workers and counselors who would get the victim to safety and then get them into counseling and whatever else they might need. In fact, Church HQ has no such resources for victims that bishops can contact through the hotline at all. Bishops have to seek out these social workers and counselors on their own at the local level, and many of them struggle to do so simply because they aren’t trained in those areas. Risk management lawyers are supposed to protect the Church. Sure, they may be trained to protect the victim as well, but there is a huge conflict of interest there as the interests of the institution in sexual abuse cases may often be in direct conflict with the interests of the victim. By routing calls to the hotline directly to risk management lawyers instead of to trained social workers or counselors to help the victim, the Church is showing where its priorities lie. As happened in this case, a risk management lawyer counseled a bishop to do the wrong thing, and a girl was abused for years as a result. If the hotline had gone to a competent social worker instead of a risk management lawyer, you better believe that the abuse would have been immediately reported. In short, this is another way that the Church (yes, perhaps somewhat indirectly) is tolerating sexual abuse.
In summary, I’ve explained three different ways that the Church is tolerating sexual abuse today:
1. The Church sexual abuse hotline sometimes counsels bishops to not report sexual abuse. Bishops should always be counseled to report sexual abuse. Always. Period.
2. The Church uses legal maneuvers (the clergy-penitent exception in this case) to avoid compensating victims of sexual abuse. It may be legal, but it’s morally wrong.
3. The Church prioritizes institutional risk management in its sexual abuse hotline over protecting victims. Victims should always be protected first. That means that social workers and counselors should be answering the hotline, not risk management lawyers. Risk management lawyers can get involved later, if at all (see #2 above).
What would Christ do if He were physically present on the earth today and running the Church? Would Christ tell bishops not to report sexual abuse to protect the Church institution? Would Christ use legal maneuvers to avoid compensating victims? Would Christ route hotline calls to risk management lawyers, or would he route them to competent and empowered social workers?
Finally, I find your comment, “IMO, what may look like the church protecting itself often has something to do with its concern for protecting the ‘Lordās little ones'” absolutely disgusting in light of the Arizona case (which is what we’re talking about here). The Church’s own risk management lawyers manning the sexual abuse hotline gave incorrect and immoral instructions to this poor girl’s bishop, and the Church is currently using legal maneuvers to try to avoid compensating this girl for the suffering it caused. I honestly can’t understand how you could possibly suggest that the Church institution protecting itself in these ways actually helped this poor girl at all.
Note: I am most definitely not a lawyer, so if any of my commentary above is not legally sound, I respectfully ask the lawyers out there to set me straight.
mountainclimber479,
This article from last year provides some (counterintuitive) information having to do with a number of your conclusions:
https://www.deseret.com/faith/2022/8/17/23310740/statement-from-church-on-arizona-sex-abuse-case-mormon-lds
Chuckling how Jack enters stage left as soon a jimbob exits stage right. You never see them in the same room together either! š
And where is JCS with his crocs and Dua Lipa gyrating with a hotdog?
LOL–I wish I were half as smart as jimbob.
Here’s a site with a treasure trove of useful information on the subject: https://mormonr.org/qnas/tpo8C/failure_to_report_sexual_abuse_bisbee_arizona
Jack,
The synopsis provided in the link is informative. What it conveys is the institutional / corporate church follows a policy of “I don’t care.” It would rather not get involved in matters and allow bad situations become worse, than get involved and incur corporate liability.
This behavior is what we expect of corporations and “limited liability companies”. It is not the behavior we expect from Jesus’ anointed disciples. What is legal is a far different standard than what is moral. The LDS church policy is to abide the legal standard and dismiss the moral obligations as inconvenient.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is wholly applicable. The “hotline” seems to operate mainly as a means of ensuring the church legally avoids social responsibility, not as a means to helping local leaders fulfill their Christian ministry to save souls.
mountainclimber479,
I think there are complexities about this case that are not being addressed as thoroughly as they should be. I’m not a lawyer–so I can’t pretend to know the intricacies of the laws involved with this particular case. But there are some important details having to do with the timeline that (I think) are getting passed over–details that could alter the way we frame the moral questions involved.
As best as I can tell:
1) Both Bishops assumed that the abuse happened only once — because of Adams’ faulty confession — and that it happened in the past.
2) It seems possible (to me) that the counsel that Bishop Herrod received from the hotline may have been different had it been understood that the abuse was happening in the present.
3) It seems likely — though we can’t know for certain — that Adams’ was excommunicated (in 2013) for reasons other than the abuse.
4) Both Bishops had no knowledge that there was ongoing abuse until Adams was arrested in 2017.
More could be said–but the reason I share these particular details is to highlight what was *not* known on the part of the Bishops or the hotline. My sense is that they would’ve received different counsel perhaps causing them to reach out immediately to law enforcement had they known that it was an on going problem. Even so, Bishop Herrod did all that was in his power (as he understood the situation) to help that family — even to the point of getting Paul Adams to move out — and that was under the assumption that the abuse had occurred only one time at some point in the past.
And so, while it’s certainly possible that the hotline was misinformed on the applicable laws in the state of Arizona, we ought to at least try to understand how these details might’ve shaped the counsel that was given. And even if we were to learn that the counsel was flat out wrong we should try understand how that came to be by getting the details on the transaction — if such are available — rather than assume that it must’ve come about because of a macro flaw in the church’s operations.
A Disciple,
The folks who work at the hotline would tell you otherwise.
Why don’t we believe them?
Jack,
In what way did the church minister to the needs of this family and children?
@jack, āthe folks who work at the hotline would tell you otherwise. Why donāt we believe them?ā
Because they are lawyers whose job is it to protect the church and whose client is the church.
Some things that were noted in the original discussion that are relevant:
1 – the bishop was counseled not to report to authorities, but was told to convene a disciplinary counsel (after subsequent confessions). So around 18 people in the stake were told about the abuse. None of them reported it. Apparently itās ok to tell other people about abuse if they are part of the priesthood inner circle but not otherwise.
2 – the august post had multiple bishops comment about their interactions with the hotline. It was mostly depressing (with one exception who had a different experience).
3 – if a BYU student or employee confesses to a bishop, it is not kept confidential. It can be shared with Mr Gilbertās minions or the honor code office (and in Provo, confidences are shared between the police and the honor code office – not for the purpose of assisting victims but for the purpose of disciplining students).
4 – I shared on the other post that I have a friend whose abuser confessed, was excommunicated, but whose abuse was never disclosed to the police which allowed him to continue to abuse kids in the community. Given that he was excommunicated, why would any kind of penitent-clergy privilege or expectation of confidentiality apply? They arenāt his clergy anymore. At least one of the men who knew about the abuse was a mandatory reporter (a psychologist) who apparently privileged his duties to the church to his professional duties as a psychology. Disgusting.
Excellent, spot-on analysis. I’m not surprised by the AZ Supreme Court decision either, given the laws that protect clergy from being required to submit to examination in a court of law regarding information disclosed in a confessional setting. I’m tired though of seeing people (the church’s defense included!) misconstrue those laws as also prohibiting clergy from voluntarily reporting disclosed abuse to the authorities. These are NOT the same and AZ state law even makes this clear in ARS Ā§ 13-3620 subsection L, where it explicitly states that:
“Nothing in this subsection [regarding being examined as a witness] discharges a member of the clergy, a christian science practitioner or a priest from the duty to report pursuant to subsection A of this section” [i.e., the section that lists clergy as mandated reports while simultaneously not compelling them].
The bishops COULD have reported but they were told they were legally prohibited. The church knows better because they argued the other side of this in a dismissed 2020 case in Oregon where they defended a bishopric member who opted to report but was being frivolously sued by the offenders spouse. They absolutely know, in 2023, that in NO STATE are clergy PROHIBITED from reporting, but EVERY STATE provides good faith reporters with some form of immunity from prosecution for filing a report.
The church knows the laws and they know what they are trying to get away with here. It’s despicable, cruel, and dangerous.
@scott thanks for pointing out that subsection and the Oregon case. Super helpful additional background.
Realizing now that I should have provided a link to the 2011 version of the statute in question: https://law.justia.com/codes/arizona/2011/title13/section13-3620/
Subsection L differentiates between the privilege regarding being examined as a witness and still having a duty to report.
Subsection J specifies that those who voluntarily report are “immune from any civil or criminal liability by reason of that action unless the person acted with malice.”
@scott, right, so actually thereās no reason to believe the bishop would have been liable for invasion of privacy or any other claim on the basis of his report.
Not a hard case yaāll. KMC was wrong. The bishop absolutely could have reported with no fear of personal legal liability, and doing so may have prevented years and years of horrific abuse, the mom ending up in jail, and the dad dying by suicide.
But he didnāt, because KMC lawyers gave him negligent and incorrect legal advice at best or lied to him at worst.
The end.
@scott where were you last night man? Would have shortcut a lot of aggravating argument. Or I could have just looked at all the sections of the statute. Almost as bad a lawyer as the KMC guys.
I rarely agree with Jack on anything because of his insistence on coming to conclusions first and then searching for whatever he needs to rationalize those conclusions to be true, but I finally found something I agree with him on: He is definitely not a lawyer.
Elisa: “The bishop was counseled not to report to authorities, but was told to convene a disciplinary counsel (after subsequent confessions). So around 18 people in the stake were told about the abuse. None of them reported it. Apparently itās ok to tell other people about abuse if they are part of the priesthood inner circle but not otherwise.”
I think you might be begging the question. You’re assuming that the convening of the council had to do with the abuse which is doubtful because both Bishops have said that they were unaware of any ongoing abuse until after 2017 when Adams was arrested–which happened four years *after* his excommunication. Also, several people — who are somehow “in the know” — have stated that Adams was excommunicated for having intimate relations with his mother. And so (IMO) there wasn’t anything to for those eighteen people to report.
That said, don’t you think the hotline may have offered different counsel had they known that it was an ongoing problem and not only something that happened once at some point in the past? Because if they would have counselled the Bishop differently — as a result of accurate information — then that might change the way we frame the morality of the case.
@jack they did know it was ongoing. There were multiple communications. The bishop says he knew it was ongoing because of the way the wife (who was his patient) behaved.
I donāt know where youāre getting your facts on this. I also know that the facts donāt matter to you. Only protecting the good name of the LDS church and apparently now KMC does.
Also, you should read the original post and article. It was the churchās practice to destroy call records every single day so no record was left. And, they asked reporters not to give the name of the perpetrator.
They clearly didnāt care about āongoing abuseā because destroying records daily would prevent them from even knowing that if multiple calls were made, and not asking for the perpās name would likewise prevent them connecting the dots.
So to the extent it was unclear it was ongoing, that was a design feature not a flaw. The church doesnāt want to know.
And itās fine if they donāt want to know. They shouldnāt be handling it. But thatās why they should tell people to report to authorities so the appropriate people can address it.
Whether the abuse was a single act in the past or a continuing crime has no relevance to the legal correctness of the hotline attorneys’ counsel that the bishop could face legal liability if he were to report. In both scenarios that advice would be inconsistent with what the law is. And to the extent those attorneys had an attorney-client relationship with the bishop, that bad legal advice could potentially give rise to a malpractice case by the bishop (and by the church for that matter).
@elisa I tried to respond last night but for some reason it really didn’t want to let me do it from my phone so I made a note to come back when I was on my office desktop. You’ve been doing great work here correcting the misinformation. I know how exhausting it can be; I’ve been having this conversation off and on on Twitter since August. There is just soooo much deflection and misunderstanding online and it gets old really fast explaining something that really isn’t that complicated.
To the lay apologists posting deflections and dismissals of the reporting on this case: Ask yourself, why are you using your time and energy trying to find excuses to justify the church’s inaction in reporting abuse instead of trying to help the church find ways to protect children? What does that say about your priorities? Members need to realize that your friends and familyāmany of whom are the survivors of these very problemsāare watching and recognizing you for perhaps the first time. Do better.
Some people, including the institution, accept an enormous amount of collateral harm in order to attempt to ‘protect the good name of the Church.’ Some problems with such an approach, however: those attempts don’t often protect the good name of the Church in the long run, but instead harm it, and the harm often directly contradicts Christ’s teachings and pushes members away. Not to mention the infantile behaviors of lying, hiding, not taking responsibility, and gaslighting. Also, though, I am left wondering more and more how much of a good name the Church has anymore. Not that they or people like Jack care. For them, the more the Church is seen badly by others, the more it must be true. Which is, of course, the big threat about the institutional Church: it has a narrative for every occasion, even harm, that it can twist for its benefit and that some people will always accept. Calling bad things the church does ‘good’ is exactly what the Church does. And some members clearly do the same thing. The damning nature of such on their intellectual and spiritual growth is obvious. And is frequently on display by defenders of such actions. It’s pushed many, many members away. I’m in no way convinced that the cost-benefit analysis is their favor.
Lawyer friends:
Is there an argument that a Utah-based attorney licensed in Utah giving legal advice about Arizona law to an Arizona resident / bishop calling from Arizona constituted the unauthorized practice of law?
I just really think this hotline needs to die. Bishops should be trained and instructed in the handbook to report abuse to local authorities. Full stop. The church needs to get out of the business of advising people here because itās doing a terrible job.
@Sea Urchin
I am aware of one situation where an abuser confessed to his bishop. The bishop strongly counseled him to turn himself in the police, which he did the next day.
Just because we don’t read front page articles about cases where the system works, doesn’t mean we can assume it never happens.
@karl The issue isn’t that it works in some cases. The issue is that it fails in some cases and spectacularly so. And the issue is compounded by the church’s resistance to fix the ways that the system fails but instead to litigate for their ability to continue committing those catastrophic failures.
Elisa:
“The bishop says he knew it was ongoing because of the way the wife (who was his patient) behaved.”
Both bishops declare in sworn affidavits that they did not know of ongoing abuse until 2017. So it could be that the information you point to might’ve been something that was mentioned in passing as a possibility–but it is not concrete evidence.
Elisa is right:
“Whether the abuse was a single act in the past or a continuing crime has no relevance to the legal correctness of the hotline attorneysā counsel that the bishop could face legal liability if he were to report.”
However true that may be, that’s not to say that the hotline would *not* have counselled the bishop differently if they had been given correct information. My sense is, if it had been understood that the abuse was ongoing–the fact that a child was imminent danger would have drastically changed the hotline’s response. In fact, the bishop would have needed to look no further than the Handbook of Instructions to get the appropriate counsel.
Scott:
“To the lay apologists posting deflections and dismissals of the reporting on this case: Ask yourself, why are you using your time and energy trying to find excuses to justify the churchās inaction in reporting abuse instead of trying to help the church find ways to protect children?”
Can’t we do both? I joined this discussion because I want to make sure that we’ve got our ducks in a row before we claim that “the church very much tolerates abuse.” That rather bold declaration — if it is not factual — can needlessly hurt a lot of people too.
@karl – honestly so what? I hope that if that man hadnāt turned himself in within a certain period of time, the bishop would have reported him.
@jack – who is hurt by a claim that the church tolerates abuse? Specifically who? Because I can name specific people who are hurt by the *reality* that the church tolerates abuse.
Elisa: “I just really think this hotline needs to die.”
Come now, Elisa. You’d say that without knowing how much good the hotline has done? What if the number of failures on the part of the hotline amounted to only 2%? Or 5%? Or even 10 %? How many hundreds or even thousands of victims have been helped by its services?
@jack, I dunno, you tell me: how many hundreds or even thousands of victims have been helped by its services? Iām not aware of a single one. Not one.
I am aware of many people who were harmed. People I know personally. The people in this story. People who have done interviews on forums like Mormon Stories. Etc etc etc.
Itās not the churchās job to handle abuse between members of its congregation. Itās local authoritiesā jobs. The church is interfering with their ability to do that job by preventing reports from being made.
“Who is hurt by a claim that the church tolerates abuse?”
Many for whom it might be the last straw. Plus those who might be tempted to look no further than the AP article — which is a terrible piece of journalism — and then become even more disillusioned. To imply that people are getting abuse because the church tolerates it is a live grenade, my friend. Be careful.
“How many hundreds or even thousands of victims have been helped by its services?”
That’s my point–I don’t know. No one knows–because they don’t make that information accessible. But the fact that it is still in operation probably means that there’s a need for it.
@jack, how is the AP article terrible journalism? Enlighten us.
Iām not *implying* that people are suffering continued abuse because the Church tolerates it. Iām stating it quite expressly, because itās a fact.
Obviously the Church does not ācauseā the initial abuse. But the minute abuse is reported to the hotline and the hotline advises not to report to appropriate authority, ongoing abuse *is* happening because the Church tolerates it. Because it would rather protect the secrecy of its internal disciplinary proceedings than allow appropriate authorities to intervene.
That is a fact. It is a reality experienced by people I know personally, have listened to, and the reality of the girls in this case.
If that fact causes people to question the Church, thatās not my fault. Itās the Churchās.
People are entitled to know how an institution they give their time, talents, and loyalty behaves. And then they can choose whether to defend it, or not care, or speak out, or leave. Information gives people agency.
@jack, itās in operation because the church wants to protect itself from liability. It never was and still is not about protecting victims. Internal church documents make that abundantly clear.
As for last straw, I think you should know that, for many people, the ālast strawā may be hopping on a blog to read about something that deeply distresses them and seeing people like you go to absurd lengths to defend it. Do you realize that your continued defense of the institutional Church is actually a major turnoff for many people who decide āif thatās what members of the Church think, and are unwilling to ever, ever question or think critically about anything church leadership does, then thatās not an institution Iām interested in participating in.ā
I mean it. People like you are just as likely to drive people out through your dogged insistence on blind obedience and absurd defenses of evil as people like me who refuse to watch the Church lie and hurt people and so speak out. So maybe you should consider that.
@Jack, even if you just blindly accept the Church’s statements and the Church’s timeline where the bishops didn’t know about the ongoing abuse: It. Doesn’t. Matter. This guy was a confessed sexual predator. The chance that a sexual predator will repeat offend, especially without facing prison time or counseling, is extremely, extremely high. Alarm bells should have been going off–this guy is super dangerous. If the hotline call from the bishop went to a social worker or counselor, they would know this, and the abuse, even if it was not immediately known was ongoing, would definitely have been reported. Since this poor girl had been previously abused, and she was still living with her abuser, the chances of ongoing abuse (and abuse of additional children in the home) was astronomical. The abuse should have been reported even if it was not immediately known it was ongoing. Period. End of Story. No need to debate whether or not the abuse was ongoing. In fact, the bishop, as a clergy member, would have been required by Arizona law to report the previous abuse (even it is was unknown if it was ongoing abuse) if it wasn’t for clergy-penitent privilege. Instead of a social worker or counselor handling the hotline call (or, as has been already noted, the Church should just get out of the hotline business and have bishops report directly to local authorities), we had a risk management lawyer handle the call who counseled the bishop that either the abuse didn’t need to be reported, but could be reported if the bishop so desired (if you believe the Church) or that the abuse did need to be reported (if you believe respected journalists). The hotline absolutely should have counseled this bishop, in no uncertain terms, to immediately report the abuse. Whatever you think the hotline told the bishop to do, they definitely didn’t tell him to do that. And. That. Was. Wrong.
And yes, Jack, there is still systematic tolerance of child sexual abuse in the Church today:
1. I was taught that the repentance process involved paying restitution to those we’ve wronged. However you want to paint things, the Church screwed up and failed to protect this girl. Now the Church is hiding behind clergy-penitent privilege to avoid paying restitution to this girl.
2. The Church hotline goes directly to risk management lawyers instead of to counselors, social workers, or just telling bishops to immediately report to local authorities. Elisa’s previous post describe other bishop’s negative interactions with the hotline. It isn’t just this one case.
Again, how do you think Christ would handle situations of child sexual abuse if He were in charge? Do you think the Church institution is behaving the same way that Christ would?
Oops, “the abuse did need to be reported” should have been “the abuse could not legally be reported”.
Just one thought. Years ago I saw the effects of child sex abuse. I can never forget what I heard and saw as those children struggled to normalize themselves in society. A decade later they still struggled with issues. I last saw those children thirty years ago, yet their experience still enters my nightmares. Their childhoods were stolen, their minds and bodies were damaged. Any person who refuses to see, to hear, to act to end such abuse has lost their soul.
This thread is enlightening on multiple levels. Kudos to Elisa for staying the course and shining a light on the truth. It is well established that the Q15 and KMC are well versed in the fine art of institutional deception (for supporting evidence, look no further than the recent SEC fiasco). I find it abhorrent that the Jacks and jimbobs of the world continually defend the church at the expense of those who are victimized.
Engaging with Jack on these issues is a waste of time. In any circumstance where objective reality or other demonstrable facts contradict his foregone conclusion that the church and its leaders are (for all intents and purposes) perfect/never wrong, there is always a tub of “unknown” information in the ether somewhere that we are all not privy to that, of course, if known, would enlighten us all to the truth that the church is correct in everything it does and says, and always has been. I’m not going to divert this conversation away from the topic of the OP by responding to whatever apologetic drivel he says in response to this, but I just wanted to point out that Jack is essentially the TBM-version of a polite internet troll who has nothing of substance to contribute other than an obsession on playing an intellectually hollow devil’s advocate in favor of all things church. Again, engaging with Jack is a waste of time.
āWhat if the number of failures on the part of the hotline amounted to only 2%?ā
Luke 15:4
What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?
Just in case anyone needs help with the math, one sheep out of a hundred is 1%. The Savior made it abundantly clear that if 99% of people are helped, but one is harmed, the focus should be on the 1%.
I honestly donāt get why this is so hard to understand. Are we trying to follow the Savior or not?
At the risk of making myself vulnerable I’m going to share something very sensitive. I was sexually abused as a children by at least two different perpetrators. There may be a third–but my memories are a little fuzzy so the jury is still out on that one.
May childhood was both wonderful and very difficult. And the difficulties caught up with me about twenty years ago–and now I live like a hermit in my room. I rarely groom or leave my house. I have long hair down my back and a long beard down my front. I wear only my undergarments most of the time and hide from company when they come by for a visit. I’m on medication and I talk with a professional semiregularly.
There are three reasons for my condition. The first I’ve already mentioned above. The second is that I’m a child of three divorces. And the third is bad genes. My family has a history of these sorts of difficulties.
So please, my friends, don’t assume that I’m turning the blind eye or that I’m naive. I know first hand the kind of pain that comes from abuse.
Thanks for hearing me out.
@jack, I am sure we are all very, very sorry about what you suffered. Sincerely. Thatās awful.
Being a survivor doesnāt make someone an expert on the right way for an institution to approach abuse, though.
I would hope that if there had ever been an opportunity for someone to have intervened on your behalf they would have. And if they didnāt, Iām sorry. Iām sorry that you didnāt have anyone protecting you and while my first hope would be that no child were abused, my alternative (more realistic) hope is that anyone who learns about the abuse would do everything in their power to stop it.
@Elisa the advice to not report the heinous abuse not only tolerates it but also enables it.
How many Sunday lessons and talks have we all sat through emphasizing that there are both sins of omission and sins of commission? It’s wrong to abuse someone – it’s also wrong to know about the abuse and do nothing. The church may have dodged a legal bullet, but in doing so it morally shot itself in the leg.
Some people will perform all sorts of mental gymnastics to try to justify the fact that the organization they rely on as a source of good and moral guidance abandoned little girls to the unconscionable abuse of their now-dead father.
Whether the church is legally in the clear or not is irrelevant, and the idea that the hotline may have helped other victims doesn’t offer absolution – the church morally failed in this case. There is no argument that can step around that fact, and it needs to be redressed no matter what the legal outcome was.
Margot,
In this case the 100 are the 1.
et al,
Perhaps I’m overly biased–but in all honesty most of what I’ve read so far on this thread is a product of narrative building. No one can say how much good the church does with regard to these issues. And yet because of a few failures — and we don’t even know if all of the supposed failures are indeed failures — up pops this narrative that paints the church in the horrid light. You may find some consensus for that view here (and at other sites with a similar bent) but there are a lot of smart people out there who disagree W&T’s narrative. I’m not a lone wolf.
This isn’t really the point though. This one case matters very much, and it was a failure on the part of the church. The church helping a bunch of other people doesn’t absolve it of responsibility in this case. The church and its leaders can do lots of good…but that doesn’t mean they get a pass on the errors, especially on this scale.
ONE confession of child sexual abuse, ONE, should impel church leaders and all human beings to immediate action, reporting the crime to child protective services or law enforcement. We are all mandatory reporters. Common sense tells us children must be removed to safety immediately and the family thoroughly investigated. It is morally repugnant to leave tiny babies and children helpless in the the hands of a sick depraved “father”, and a “mother” in such a pathological state of denial she would not protect her own children as in the Bisbee case. Yes, retaliation by the abusers on the victims daring to report the crimes themselves will happen. Victims need responsible adults to listen, believe and rise up in courage as their advocates. Pedophiles deceive, manipulate, gaslight. They become “slaves of sin” and rarely stop their cycle of violence until they are caught. What perverse “legal” obfuscation can possibly justify believing the pedophile would stop simply because he “confessed”? Read the research on pedophilia and abuse. Open your eyes to reality. Listen to the still small voice. Listen to your gut. Please. These tiny sisters were abandoned by those they trusted, leaving the girls in a perpetual state of terror, of searing physical pain, of emotional anguish, somehow enduring seven years of rape? In 1992, disciple of Christ, Chieko Okazaki, rose up and fervently pleaded, visibly shaking in empathy for survivors of sexual abuse, saying we must REFUSE to accept abuse, men and women must stop enabling sexual predators. Excusing abuse comes at the cost of the victims sanity, future, even their very lives.
I stand with Chieko. Holding abusers accountable is often the only way they will change.
Jesus weeps and I weep with Him.
The patriarchy exists to protect the patriarchy. Full stop.
Thanks for your kind words, Elisa. And you’re right that my personal experience doesn’t make me an expert–though I have learned a thing or two over the last twenty years as I’ve sought to understand what precisely is going on in my wacky brain.
Re: the AP article being off target–here’s where I started: https://publicsquaremag.org/sexuality-family/sexual-abuse/ten-ways-ap-abuse-misrepresented-evidence/
AP or PublicSquare as more reliable news source? Hmmm. . . . Off course you started there, Jack. Of course you did. That doesn’t help your cause here, Jack.
Friends, for some reason a higher-than-normal number of comments got stuck in our spam folder. Apologies as I know it’s super frustrating to write a thoughtful comment and have it stuck. I’ve been checking frequently but I missed some.
Lawyers doing all they can to protect their clients, even if that client is in the wrong, is unsurprising. The church may have dodged a legal bullet, but by doing so it morally shot itself in the leg.
People can do all sorts of mental gymnastics to try to square up the idea that the church they rely on for moral guidance failed morally. That doesn’t change the reality of the situation.
How many lectures about sins of omission have we sat through in church or in general conference? Perpetuating abuse is wrong – so is knowing about it, having power to stop it, and choosing to do nothing.
The heinous abuse of little girls by their now-dead father was allowed to continue because of a misguided attempt to legally protect the church. No matter the legal outcome, the moral failure needs to be redressed.
Sorry @jack I am allergic to the Public Square magazine. It is not reporting in any sense of the word. It is apologetics. And unlike W&T they delete any comments that don’t agree with them so it’s not a space I respect or am interested in.
Comparing Public Square to the AP article would be like comparing this blog post to the AP article. I am not claiming to be a reporter, am not qualified to be a reporter, and am not held to the same professional standards as a reporter.
Looks like I accidentally posted nearly duplicate comments – sorry about that. I thought the first submission failed š
Jack, balance the Hess article in Public Square with this account on Reddit of an exchange an Arizona attorney claims to have had with Jacob Hess.
The money quote from Hess as alleged by the author: “You’re right that there are other documents I didn’t have time to review or include – choosing to focus on the documents that demonstrated the primary sources, the bishops themselves.”
Make of Reddit what you will …
Brian,
The sad reality is that most news outlets are already sold on the prevailing narrative before the ink is even dry. So that’s where we have to go sometimes to get a “second opinion.” But just so you know–the author of that article does have a PhD in a field that is related to the topic of the AP article. And frankly, the mistakes that he finds are easy catches. It doesn’t require a lot of literary acumen to see how far off base the original article is.
@thepiratepriest yours were stuck in spam. Sorry.
All good, np
I am very aware that the plural of anecdote is not data.
I have personally had one contact with KM through the abuse hotline. Decades ago while serving as Relief Society president, I was made aware of sexual abuse of a child in my ward. Not knowing what to do, I went to my bishop. He called the abuse hotline, then told me that we were not to report it.
I complied.
It haunts me.
Some of the comments here, if in another situation, might make me want to tell people to go get a room. We don’t need to see it all in the living room. I am not an attorney, but after reading a few posts it has become clear to me that intelligent and good-hearted people can disagree on complex things, but some people will force you to agree or to be silent. Sometimes we can say our piece, have a polite exchange (not an “I’m right and you’re wrong” exchange), express our opinion without denigrating the opinion of another, and then press on. What would Jesus do? Bad things happened when He was on the earth, and I don’t recollect reading about Him leading the slaves in revolt, or freeing women from the chains of marriage and patriarchy, or stealing from the rich to give to the poor. So WWJD today? No one really knows, do we? He would certainly have called upon the father in this case to repent and to cease. Would He have delivered him to the Romans for execution? I am not sure that the record points to a clean answer. Jesus possesses the power today to strike child abusers dead with lightning before they act, but He does not. Can we say that He tolerates abuse? It sounds to me, from what I’m reading here, that the law is on the side of the Church in this case (I think some have acknowledged that the Church might be legally right but morally wrong). Judges rule on the law, not on the morality or on the emotion. Maybe we should look at changing the law for the future, but the past is governed by the law at the time.
@jack,
The sad reality is that you and Public Square magazine already sold on the Church-protecting narrative before the ink is even dry.
News outlets have many checks to make sure they arenāt reporting false information. I was pretty surprised at the lengths they had to go to, for example, in reporting the Weinstein abuse (having read She Said).
Youāre just conspiracy theory at this point when it comes to the press.
@georgis, in what sense is the law on the Churchās side? Or rather, how is that relevant to this discussion? Iāve never argued that the Church broke the law. I donāt think youāve read very carefully and youāre conflating a lot of issues.
My argument is simply this: The legal advice that the bishop received that he was not allowed to report was wrong.
I have never argued the church is a mandatory reporter and violated the law in that sense. And I have never argued the AZ case addressing privilege waivers is wrong. Iāve never argued the church did something āillegal.ā
Iāve only argued that the advice not to report was incorrect and hurt someone. Thatās actually not that complicated. The people who are complicating things are the ones trying to argue somehow that the church at every step did the right thing. Or something. I donāt even know honestly.
jaredsbrother,
The time that has passed between then and now has provided folks with enough time (and to spare) to prove that Hess got it right. The AP article as I clever retelling of the events that paints the bishops and the church as a whole in the worst possible light.
Having said that, it’s quite possible that the journalist was still feeling the momentum of the work he had done on the Catholic Church–and therefore was not as careful as he should have been in telling this story. Even so, he is way off–IMO–on the immediate details of the case as well has how the church operates generally.
Jack, you’re digging yourself in deeper. As others have noted Public Square is not a news source. It has nothing like the same responsibility as an AP news source. It doesn’t accept criticism. Many of the authors have specious background work. You can argue about it all you want (and you will, but you’re that sort of person) but that doesn’t change the facts (which you will argue, because you’re that sort of person). We all get it: you will not accept criticism of the church, even to the point of objective denial. I’m not interested in that.
Elisa,
“Youāre just conspiracy theory at this point when it comes to the press.”
I’ve read the AP article–and I’ve read what other news outlets have had to say on the subject. and for the most part they parrot the AP article. As far as public square is concerned there have been some awesome contributors there. so don’t be too quick to dismiss it. Having said that, It’s not a place that I visit very often–maybe once every couple of months. Even so, the reason I agree with this particular article is because even I can identify where the AP article went wrong. The more I learned about the case from original sources the more disappointed I became with the AP.
What ever happened to “do what is right let the consequence follow. . . ” I am a lawyer, but if I was a bishop and someone confessed to sexually abusing an INFANT, I would call the cops immediately. I’d be a hell of a lot more worried about what God would think of me than what the local authorities did.
Come now, Brian. There are lots of places we can go to get valuable in formation.
I named no names. You asked “in what sense is the law on the Churchās side?” From A disciple in this thread: “the LDS legal advice … is legally defensible but morally repugnant.” From Mountainclimber: “While the Church may not legally be required to compensate the girl, it is the morally correct thing to do” and “It may be legal, but itās morally wrong.” From Pirate Priest: “The church may have dodged a legal bullet, but in doing so it morally shot itself in the leg.” I don’t know that the Church did everything right, but I also don’t know if they everything wrong, and there’s often a difference between legally wrong and morally wrong. You add factually wrong to the mix. I don’t think that all will agree on this very fact-based case, and I simply and respectfully suggest that pounding adversaries until they agree or fall silent might not be the best way to advocate for change for the future. Pleasant discussing on a very complex matter, and I’m out with thanks to all for helping to clarify these muddy waters.
@Jack, “There are a lot of smart people out there who disagree W&Tās narrative. Iām not a lone wolf.” I absolutely agree with this statement. Almost 100% of those smart people you are referring to are members of the Church–you simply aren’t going to find too many people outside of the Church defending the Church on this issue. Unlike the Jehovah’s Witnesses, another high demand, authoritarian religion, Mormon leaders encourage members to become educated. As a result, the Church is full of smart, educated people. These same smart, educated people are also repeatedly trained from birth that this is God’s One True Church, that Christ is constantly giving direction to Church leaders, and to never doubt or criticize their leaders–just “follow the prophet”. As a result, many of these smart, educated Church members who would denounce any other organization for similar failings with handling child sexual abuse cases will remarkably defend the Church to the death over the same, exact accusations. In other words, the fact that so many Church members will so stalwartly defend the Church on this issue is another symptom of the toxic plague of claimed prophetic infallibility that has so deeply infected the Church.
I suspect that if we were privy to the training and procedures that the lawyers on the Church’s sexual abuse hotline are asked to follow (and, given the enormous interest, why isn’t the Church more transparent about the hotline???), we would find that the lawyers are supposed to help protect the victims in some ways at least some of the time. However, as I’ve already stated, in many of these cases the Church faces significant liability, so these risk management lawyers have a terrible conflict of interest to deal with between the Church and the victims, and many cases where the Church has chosen to protect the institution instead of the Church have been documented. Furthermore, the Church persists in using the law to protect itself from liability even when compensating victims would be the morally correct thing to do. Even one screw up out of hundreds or thousands of cases is a huge deal when the life of a helpless and innocent child is on the line. The Church needs to do better. It seems so simple–the Church should just report, report, and report. The risk management lawyers can come in later–and, in as Christlike a way as possible–deal with the mess after the issue has been reported and the victim is safe.
@Lily @Elisa and other legal folks: From a legal standpoint what would be the realistic exposure of the church in the very hypothetical situation where the abuse is reported, the scumbag abuser sues the church, and then somehow wins the lawsuit? I.e. what was the implied price that was put on maintaining silence?
My point is this: Whatever that price would be, would it be worth paying to rescue tiny children from being horribly sexually abused for YEARS? It needs to sink in for some that the people responsible for the decisions at the church and KM decided it wasn’t worth the cost…
@georgis, thanks for the clarification.
I agree that generally it is best to “say our piece, have a polite exchange (not an āIām right and youāre wrongā exchange), express our opinion without denigrating the opinion of another, and then press on.” However, I think there’s an objectively correct answer as to the state of the law here. Whether the law permitted the bishop to disclose the abuse isn’t really a matter of “opinion”.
The whole reason I wrote this post was because people were muddying the issue online. So when further muddying occurred in the comments, I responded–not because I care to convince that particular person, but because I don’t want the mud there.
Many of the other issues, like whether the Church did the *right* thing, are matters of opinion, although clearly there are really strong opinions when it comes to addressing abuse.
I don’t want to continue engaging in a tit for tat sort of exchange. When I entered the conversation I was interested in understanding how knowing the details of the case might change the moral calculus in the OP. And so I offered theses four details as examples of what might cause that kind of change:
1) Both Bishops assumed that the abuse happened only once ā because of Adamsā faulty confession ā and that it happened in the past.
2) It seems possible (to me) that the counsel that Bishop Herrod received from the hotline may have been different had it been understood that the abuse was happening in the present.
3) It seems likely ā though we canāt know for certain ā that Adamsā was excommunicated (in 2013) for reasons other than the abuse.
4) Both Bishops had no knowledge that there was ongoing abuse until Adams was arrested in 2017.
As I stated earlier: the reason I share these particular details is to highlight what was *not* known on the part of the Bishops or the hotline. My sense is that they wouldāve received different counsel–perhaps causing them to reach out immediately to law enforcement–had they known that it was an on going problem.
I give it to you as my opinion that these details are not mere confetti. Because if what I’ve presented above is at least in the ballpark of reality then we’ve got some rethinking to do on the moral questions involved with the case.
@the pirate priest, that’s what I find so baffling.
As has been addressed above — there is likely no legal liability for reporting *at all* because there is an express immunity for reports provided in the statute, other than reports made with malicious intent. Even without that express immunity, I really can’t envision a strong claim for invasion of privacy or defamation, because a report to police wouldn’t really be a “public” disclosure required by those sorts of claims, let alone that defamation requires that the statement be false. I’m actually quite familiar with the law in this kind of area and I cannot think of a credible claim. At all.
So yeah, it would be one thing if I could somehow identify a legal interest the Church has in not reporting abuse. If the abuse were somehow associated with the Church (like a high-profile Church leader was the perpetrator, or the abuse was in connection with a Church calling) then I can understand an interest in keeping silent. Here, there just isn’t one, other than the Church wanting confessions generally to be kept confidential so people feel comfortable confessing to their bishop–but as was described a bunch in the August post, that’s not a real interest because confessions routinely are NOT kept confidential (ie., disclosure to honor code office, disclosure to members of high council for disciplinary proceedings, disclosure in ward council to “help” someone) and because here there didn’t seem to be much of an ongoing relationship between the abuser and the bishop that would have been worth trying to protect.
It’s seriously so confusing to me. And goes to my headline that the Church does in fact tolerate abuse because it has made a policy decision not to advise people to report it.
5 years ago, I found out that someone I knew was a pedophile and had been excommunicated, but the stake president did not and would not report him (so far as I know there wasnāt direct abuse, but he accessed child sexual abuse material). You know who did end up reporting him? His employer, a large corporation we donāt think of as a paragon of virtue. It was very clear to me that the church was actively doing something wrong by not reporting. It was one of the things that led to me stepping away from the church. Iāve had that choice reaffirmed as the correct one many times since then, and the AP coverage on this story is yet another confirmation that the church is protecting the wrong people.
@Elisa I’m with you 100%. This all smells of a massive screw-up and a CYA attempt. The other option is that it was intentional…which would seem unconscionable. We have no way to know, but this is not something that can be dismissed lightly in either case.
My two take-away messages:
from Elisa-
My argument is simply this: The legal advice that the bishop received that he was not allowed to report was wrong.
I have never argued the church is a mandatory reporter and violated the law in that sense. And I have never argued the AZ case addressing privilege waivers is wrong. Iāve never argued the church did something āillegal.ā
Iāve only argued that the advice not to report was incorrect and hurt someone.
from Georgis-
What would Jesus do? Bad things happened when He was on the earth, and I donāt recollect reading about Him leading the slaves in revolt, or freeing women from the chains of marriage and patriarchy, or stealing from the rich to give to the poor. So WWJD today? No one really knows, do we? He would certainly have called upon the father in this case to repent and to cease. Would He have delivered him to the Romans for execution? I am not sure that the record points to a clean answer. Jesus possesses the power today to strike child abusers dead with lightning before they act, but He does not.
Jack, at lease some of your four points are just wrong. Please read the court documents and the testimony of Agent Robert Edwards. Use this link and start with page 39. It is not true that Herrod was under the impression the abuse happened once and he learned of it well before 2017. Also, why would Adams be excommunicated in 2013 if the bishops didn’t know about the abuse until 2017? Why would Herrod have ongoing ‘counseling’ sessions with Adams if he didn’t know about the abuse?
(This is Elisa adding this warning: this court document includes VERY graphic testimony of sexual abuse. Please be advised before visiting the document.)
Click to access 2018-08-13-STATE_OF_ARIZONA_vs_LEIZZA_ALCANTARA_ADAMS-PRESENTENCE_HEARING_AND_SENTENCING.pdf
Per Edwards’ testimony: “The counseling sessions continued with Paul Adams, to which Paul continued to explain that he was sexually assaulting his oldest daughter. “
@mmunguia, Iāve said this before and people think itās nuts but I mean it:
Every employer Iāve worked for, as far as I know (and frankly I do know a lot of behind the scenes stuff) has been more ethical and moral, and more caring of its employees, than the leadership of the LDS church and its care for members.
mountainclimber479,
“In other words, the fact that so many Church members will so stalwartly defend the Church on this issue is another symptom of the toxic plague of claimed prophetic infallibility that has so deeply infected the Church.”
I admit my bias toward defending church. Even so, I can honestly say that my own investigation has led me to believe that the narrative found in the AP article and elsewhere is just wrong.
Sorry for not saying sooner, but the court document I posted a link to above include VERY graphic testimony of sexual abuse. Please be advised before visiting the document.
@Jack, ” I can honestly say that my own investigation has led me to believe that the narrative found in the AP article and elsewhere is just wrong.” I don’t agree with you on that. However, in a previous comment, I explained that how even if you blindly take the Church’s account of things as 100% truth (and ignore the AP reporting), the Church is still in the wrong. The bishop should have been counseled to report whether or not the abuse was known to be ongoing or not. Instead of defending itself in the current civil case, the Church should compensate the victim for its role in perpetuating the abuse. Yes, the AP article makes things worse for the Church, but I can take the Church’s own statements by themselves and come to the same conclusion that the Church screwed up. And, it’s not just this case–many other cases are documented where the Church chose to protect the institution instead of the victim.
Thanks jaredsbrother. I added a warning to the link.
@Georgis, the question I posed about what would Jesus do wasn’t what would Jesus do in His current state as a being who is not physically present on the earth and who does indeed choose not to intervene in much of the suffering in our world. My hypothetical question was what would Jesus do if he were physically present and sitting in Nelson’s red velvet chair, and like Nelson is today, in a position to directly communicate to the Church institution His desires regarding the handling of child sexual abuse cases in His church. It’s admittedly terribly presumptuous of me to claim to know what Jesus would do if He were sitting in Nelson’s chair, but I guess I’m willing to go out on a limb and claim that whatever Jesus would do, it probably isn’t what the Church is currently doing. (I’ll even go a bit further out on a limb and claim that rather than sit in Nelson’s chair that Jesus would instead chuck that pompous looking red velvet chair out the window of the penthouse suite of the Church Office Building.)
jaredsbrother,
Here’s the sworn affidavit that Bishop Herrod composed under penalty of perjury. It’s quite a bit different — vis-a-vis some of the details — than Edward’s retelling. I hope this link works:
https://mormonr.org/qnas/tpo8C/failure_to_report_sexual_abuse_bisbee_arizona/research#re-XYNbob-0zcW5i
Re: Paul Adam’s excommunication: I think the reason for the bishop not being aware of the abuse at the time of the church court is because Paul was excommunicated for other reasons. Accord to his wife it was because he had intimate relations with his mother.
So, then Edwards committed perjury. Is there an alternative perspective?
Did you read the affidavit, Jack? Look at number 13.
“Indeed, I understood that Church doctrine and Arizona law required me, as Bishop, to maintain in confidence the confidentiality of these communications.”
Jack, 9 and 18 are contradictory, 15 is implausible, and arguably none of these statements are believable unless you argue that a federal agent committed perjury. Once again, if the church or an authorized agent of the church says something, you just believe it. Read the document you linked to more critically.
9. In late 2011, within the privacy of the Bishopās office, Paul Adams made a confidential confession to me in my role as Bishop. Subsequently, I met with Paul Adams and his wife, Leizza, in the privacy of the Bishopās office, and had Mr. Adams repeat that confession to me in front of his wife.
15. What Paul Adams confessed to me was a one-time incident that had not reoccurred. I did not learn that Paul had abused his children after his confidential confession to me, or about the extensiveness of the abuse and other illegal conduct, until Paul was arrested in 2017 and news reports concerning the extent of the abuse were released.
18. Until Paul Adams was arrested in 2017, I had no knowledge of him having abused Plaintiffs John Doe or Jane Doe II. Jane Doe II had not been born when Paul Adams met with me in late 2011.
I was stunned at the cold and smug press release from our church about this situation.
Not the last one about the Arizona Supreme Court but their defense in how their lawyers advised the Bishop in the first place.
It was gobsmacking cold and legal and there was no concern for the victim at all.
Many of my non-member friends and family noticed that right off.
That press release reminded me a lot of the Pharisee’s when they got their long and complicated discussion as to whether Christ and the Apostles did or did not break the law of obeying the Sabbath when they “harvested” a bit of wheat from the field on the Sabbath because they were hungry.
The Pharisees were big on defending their laws over the human being living and what God said was important about His beloved Children here on earth.
That awful press release by the LDS Church could have come directly from those Pharisees.
No word of comfort to the victim, a small child, or the family who was suffering because of this really dumb advice given to the Bishop by a bunch of church lawyers.
And now the LDS Church Pharisees are doubling down on stupid.
And the real victim in this whole thing, the little child whom Christ said was precious, is forgotten in all of the babble of the high and mighty who are in charge.
mountainclimber479,
We’ll have to agree to disagree. The State of Arizona ruled in favor of the church. So at least as far as the courts are concerned there wasn’t any wrong doing on their part. And so it seems to me that when we’re talking about what the church should have done (or failed to do) it can only be in the most abstract sense and not from a legal point of view.
That said, I agree that it’s possible for the hotline to get it wrong. Even so, I believe that there are too many unknowns for anyone looking in from the outside to know for certain that the church was more concerned about protecting itself than the victims. My sense is that a lot of folks default to that position because–well, that’s what a lot of organizations do. But the folks who actually work at the hotline — and I’ve already said this few times — will tell you that that is absolutely *not* the case. In fact, they were brokenhearted by the AP’s take on their role in the case. To them it was the furthest thing from the truth.
jaredsbrother,
I think a more likely scenario is that Edward conflated what the Bishop new *before* Adams’ death with what he learned *after* his death. It also seem like some of his recollection was subject to a bit of the “telephone game” phenomenon. It’s easy to see how some of the details could’ve easily morphed into the way he recalled them.
@Jack, I’ve repeatedly said that as things currently stand, it appears that the Church’s actions in this case were legal in Arizona. I’ve not one time in this thread argued that what the Church did was illegal. I am simply stating that what the Church did in this case was immoral. The damage done to these two girls could have been prevented if Church lawyers had acted competently and morally. Now that the damage has occurred, the Church could compensate the girls for its role in this tragedy instead of defend itself in this civil case rather than hide behind clergy-penitent privilege. I’m not speaking abstractly at all. In fact, I don’t know how my explanation for the moral failings of the Church in this case could be more concrete.
Watch me be a prophet: The hotline, in its current form, operated by conflicted risk management lawyers who may well be making good faith attempts to protect victims of sexual abuse, will have more sexual abuse scandals to deal with in the future. The Church needs to either completely revamp the hotline (hint: lawyers should not be the first point of contact) or just instruct bishops to report to local authorities if it wants to reduce future scandals.
@jack, the āstate of Arizonaā didnāt rule āin favor ofā the church.
The state of Arizona ruled that the church didnāt have to turn over documents.
There was no judgment on the merits of what the church did, nor is that even at issue in the case.
Jack, I am somewhat surprised at your rationalizations in this case, though I should not be. You’ve abdicated your personal morality to the church because you need it to be what it claims. Will you be able to use the Nuremberg defense at the judgement bar?
@Jack what exactly are you trying to accomplish or prove here? It’s just not clear at this point.
The legal advice given to the bishop was wrong…it led to horrible abuse continuing abuse. I’d like to take the church at its work that it didn’t actively try to cover it up…we really have no way to know that for sure, but there was a hotline and some procedures in place (even if they failed).
It’s logical to assume that “Abuse hotline” was actually intended to report abusers and not just cover up crimes. I can’t fault the church for pushing back against the AP on this point either. It’s also reasonable to assume that other abusers have been reported to authorities because of the hotline. That said, we have a glaring case where the hotline actually told the bishop not to report the abuse…even if it’s an anomaly, the dropping of the ball has lead to pain, prison and death.
Unintentional or not, this was a massive screw-up that led the the long-term abuse of multiple children. As with any case like this a bunch of the testimony and affidavits are contradictory…Lawyers are lawyering…Reporters are reporting…none of this is surprising.
My guess is that this is more likely gross error and CYA rather than some massive coverup – I also fully support groups like the AP jabbing hard at the church to make sure that’s actually the case.
Was it a new untrained hotline operator? Some sort of misunderstanding or miscommunication? A wannabe lawyer zealot on the phones? Regardless of the legal intricacies, wrongs need to be righted, amends need to be made, changes need to be actually implemented (not like they’ve kinda put windows on some doors in some church buildings).
As for now, I don’t trust in the church’s ability to appropriately handle claims of abuse. It was sketchy already, and now it’s just been confirmed. I don’t think they’ve taken it seriously enough or been transparent enough. You can disagree, but I wonder what those kids think about how it was handled.
Oh typos…
“ā¦it led to horrible continuing abuse.”
“Iād like to take the church at its word…”
“I am simply stating that what the Church did in this case was immoral.”
Sorry for not stating my position more clearly. What I’ve been trying to say from get go is that we don’t know enough to make that kind of judgment about the hotline. When I spoke of the court decision I was trying to lead into the idea that judging the church’s actions on moral grounds simply cannot be done without knowing more than we do at the present time.
The Pirate Priest.
Remember, the counsel that was given by the hotline was based on the information that the bishop gave them. It’s easy to look back with hindsight and see everything that might have been done to protect the victim. But the fact of the matter is that Paul Adams lied to the bishop from the get go–and so did his wife. My guess is that had the bishop been aware of what was really happening he would have contacted the authorities immediately. The one thing that seems clear to me is that both bishops really had no idea as to how bad things really were.
@Jack I mean, everything is retrospective at this point, and we can all think up hypotheticals that we’d prefer to have happened (including everything after “My guess…” in your last comment). That’s just not going to change things, and none of have a crystal ball or a time machine. It’s still just not clear what you are trying to accomplish.
Here’s what I want: I would like the church to look back (in retrospect), admit that something went horribly sideways, figure out what it was, and then make meaningful changes to try to prevent it from happening in the future. I doubt they will – I hope I’m proven wrong.
Of all the fuzziness in all of this, a few things are clear:
(1) the bishop didn’t know the correct way to proceed and asked for help. I”m glad there was a hotline in place for that.
(2) He probably gave the best report he could at the time, also totally ok.
(3) Whoever was on the other end of the hotline told him he could not go to the authorities and that he may personally be legally liable if he did. This was objectively incorrect advice that led to the abuse continuing. This is where the problem seems to have occurred.
(4) Based on the information that are publicly available, the Bishop(s) tried continued to rely on the bad advice given to them on the hotline, and tried to find ways around it. I wish they’d reported it anyway, but they didn’t.
Whatever happened on the hotline-end of all of this is a black box that only the church and KM can peek into. The AZ Supreme Court has now said the church can keep it a black box by refusing to answer questions or provide documents…the church released a statement that they agree with this decision. That raises some eyebrows for sure. “We’re deeply saddened and have no tolerance of child abuse…we also won’t answer any questions about it or provide documentation about what really happened.” THAT is a moral failure.
Wow, I actually read all of those comments, so kudos to me. A few notes:
1) “Elisa is right” was a very ingenious choice for a screen name because it forced the apologists to type the words “Elisa is right” to respond. A hat tip to you!
2) Since we all know that the Church will absolutely never in one million years admit wrongdoing under any circumstance, what I am curious about is whether this is one of those times where they see that they screwed up and are actually scurrying around behind the scenes to fix / change it, or do they actually believe their own party line (which seems hard to imagine, but since Kirton-McConkie screwed up in giving erronenous legal advice that could make the Church feel less inclined to make a change–instead just shake a finger at KM, and publicly imply the bishop didn’t say what he said so the advice wasn’t really wrong).
3) Does anyone else remember a leak of KM abuse hotline call log notes that came out maybe 5 years ago? It was probably MormonLeaks or somebody else. My impression at that time was that, yeah, the KM hotline is pretty terrible and there is almost no thought to victims, just to preventing their stories from seeing the light of day.
And I agree fully with those who say this is only going to keep happening. Victims (those who survive anyway) will tell their stories, and it will continue to make the Church look bad whenever the abuse hotline comes up in reporting.
@angela, kudos ā¦ or condolences.
It looks like maybe you are referring to this document (link below). In general thereās quite a bit of interesting documentation of the abuse line protocol on Mormonleaks. Itās part of why I donāt get the criticism of the AP article. Most of my issues with the hotline come from the primary sources (the actual Church documents describing protocol).
This is a small sample but it is abundantly clear that the focus is on protecting the Church from liability and not at all on getting help for victims:
Click to access 2012-10-31-Special_Investigations_and_Products-Kirton_McConkie.pdf
Elisa: Oh, yeah, thanks for finding that. It wasn’t a call log. More like meeting notes for specific special cases. Only $10K for the Indian Placement child who was sexually assaulted or “get a lawyer”? Uhm, that sounds pretty lowball to me, but what do I know?
@angela, The reality is the church has deep pockets and Iām sure the lawyers get kind of jaded and intentionally distance themselves from the humanity of victims. I get that.
But they need a reality check and reminder that victims should come first. I canāt stand it when lawyers forget that they are dealing with human beings.
Yesterday, I read the exchange between Elisa and jimbob and thought that I should read the case myself. So I did. And now that I’m ready to comment, the conversation has gone WAY past it. But I’m going to comment anyway.
Elisa got it right.
Here’s some more facts about this specific case. The victims of the sexual abuse are suing the Church for money. This is a civil suit, not a criminal suit. Once you have a lawsuit going, the parties do “discovery” which means they ask for a lot of information. The victims asked the Church to give them the file of the abuser’s excommunication proceeding that took place in 2013. The victims also want a man who attended the disciplinary council, and who is NOT a bishop who heard the confession, to testify about what happened at the disciplinary council.
When the Church said, “no”, the victims asked the Court to order the Church to comply. The judge agreed with the victims and told the Church to turn over the file, and ordered the bishopric counselor (or ward clerk; it isn’t super clear what his exact calling was, but he was at the disciplinary council) to testify. The Church appealed this order, arguing that the priest-penitent privilege meant that they didn’t need to give out this info.
The Arizona appellate court agreed with the Church and overturned the lower court. The appellate court said that the Church does NOT have to turn over the disciplinary council notes, and counselor/clerk does NOT have to testify.
The appellate court came up with a really weird interpretation of waiver. The victims were arguing that the abuser waived the privilege because he posted videos of the abuse online and admitted what he was doing to many people. Obviously, he wasn’t trying to keep the abuse a secret. The appellate court said that there’s a difference between the facts, and what the confession said. The discussion between the abuser and the Church people might have more info than just the facts, and so the priest-penitent privilege applies and the Church can keep that information secret.
What does this mean for the victims? They don’t get information about the disciplinary council in which the abuser got excommunicated, and the counselor/clerk doesn’t have to testify about what happened at the disciplinary council. They may have enough evidence from other sources to still force the Church into paying a sizable settlement, and I hope that’s what happens. Of course, when the Church settles a child abuse case, they typically make secrecy a condition of the settlement.
Anyway. Yes, the bishops could have called the police and reported the abuse. The Kirton-McConkie lawyer was wrong.
Collateral damage from this case is that many members who look to the church for guidance in handling ethical issues in their own lives will come away with a view that it’s okay look the other way when they see abuse and dodge reporting abuse when they see evidence of it..
Seeing the church tolerate abuse will lead to some members similarly tolerating abuse and failing to acknowledge the seriousness of the issue.
The church has a powerful platform; if it wishes to have moral authority it must model behavior it wishes to see among its members.
I agree and thank you Madi.
Reading these comments was a long slog. I fell asleep more than once. Kudos to @Elisa for being present and keeping a clear voice when challenged by dogged obfuscators. I have to express a measure of appreciation to jimbob for facilitating a stellar exchange that clarified and simplified the premise of the OP, so that us lay folk could understand and follow. Unfortunately, I cannot restate the premise of the OP, except to say that bishop-penitent privilege is not a thing. Thatās a win for justice, right? A good thing and a relief that bishops need not be constrained from reporting abuse to local authorities.
But I only feel sad and mournfulā for the little girls, for the wreckage of their family, for the cptsd they now must struggle with, and for the moral failures of the church (and the Arizona systems) made manifest here in these comments. The more things changeā¦
Jared’s Brother, this may be a minor point but I have started to wonder about Agent Edward’s credibility. When the first tone deaf press release came out from the church, I was very upset that it was dishonest. I hashed it out in the comments on bcc and even talked offline with other commenters. Ultimately, though, as I was able to peel back the layers on this and read the transcript of the interview with the bishop, I became concerned that the agent’s timeline and testimony was inconsistent with what the bishop told him. If you read the thread, you can see my biases pretty clearly, but knowing the press release was more credible than it first appeared gave me some peace.
Reading the thread you’ll also see that I made the point made elsewhere here; namely, that the bishop got terrible advice that had real consequences in the lives of the family. I don’t understand the church’s strategy.
Finally, while I have come to appreciate Jack’s presence here and would love a post dedicated to his full life story, I hope this doesn’t come across as supporting his agenda in this context. I disagree fundamentally with his takes in this case and believe the church’s strategic approach to this case is materially flawed. My take is that the bishop wanted to do the right thing and was muzzled by counsel for the church who he wrongfully understood to be representing his interests. Anyway, look particularly at my post on 8.22 at 10:48 if you don’t have the time to read the whole thing. https://bycommonconsent.com/2022/08/19/two-things-the-church-can-do-now-to-improve-its-response-to-child-abuse/
I remain captivated by this case so if any of you see errors in my thinking, I’d love to talk about it.
My last paragraph is flawed. The church may well actually *be* modeling the behavior it wishes to see among its members. But it’s not modeling the behavior it needs to model if it wishes to have moral authority. I have realized in recent years that I have to determine on my own the ethical principles I will follow; unfortunately the church is too often at odds with those ethics. Seeing the ethical misdeeds of the larger church is both helpful and heartbreaking. The church may well have a legal right to act as it has, but as Elisa and others point out, that doesn’t make it okay.
Btw did @grandscoobah’s discussion of statutory language ever make it out of the filter? I’ve searched and can’t find it but don’t know if it’s a me problem.
@madi those comments made it through under a different account eventually. I edited my comment so people arenāt confused looking anymore.
I’ve been mentally chewing on all this and trying to consider other angles and perspectives…with this being a civil suit, it’s not surprising that the church wants to avoid being compelled to hand over mountains of documents to those suing them. They likely want to choose to release docs for criminal investigation and hold them back for civil actions against the church. The lawyers hired to legally defend the church are doing exactly that using any tool available…that’s what lawyers are for.
Accidentally hit post too fast..
HOWEVER, there was still a big mistake made. The church is now paying a high PR price even with the legal upper hand.
I want to see real change happen. I want to know what is being done internally to actually address this. The lack of news may be because they’re waiting for the lawsuits to play out? The whole thing still smells, and I’m still very upset about the handling of it and lack of transparency.
Iym interested to see what happens once the lawsuit plays out.
Unrelated topic, but Iām not sure how else to share this feedback on this forum. Elisa is my favorite author because she responds to many posts written by participants. This thread is an example where Elisa is very involved in the conversation . Many other Wheat and Tares authors rarely respond directly to posts, but they do respond to their favorite participants, often other W&T authors or other attorneys.
I am wondering how many people who have left comments actually paid attention to the totality of the case and decision. The attorneys in question simply followed the law. Section 13-3620 of the AZ code does not require anything. The Bishop asked twice to report the abuse from the people involved. You may not like the final decision of the Bishop but that seems to imply you have an issue with the law and it should be changed.
@legal nonsense, if thatās what you think the post is saying youāve not read it.
legal nonsense, I’m not sure whether anyone said a bishop is a mandatory reporter. I think he had a duty as a human being to report and I think he knew that. But he called the hotline and was told he couldn’t report, which is just not the law. Here is the language of the statute: “A member of the clergy…. who has received a confidential communication or a confession in that person’s role as a member of the clergy… in the course of the discipline enjoined by the church to which the member of the clergy… belongs MAY withhold reporting of the communication or confession if the member of the clergy… determines that it is reasonable and necessary within the concepts of the religion. This exemption applies only to the communication or confession and not to personal observations the member of the clergy… may otherwise make of the minor.”
It is worth mentioning that the holder of the privilege in this case killed himself after publicizing his abuse on the internet, so like…. What are they hiding?
Legalnonsense, before reproaching commenters for not giving our due diligence, perhaps read the earlier comments where itās made clear that while the law doesnāt require the bishop to report, it also doesnāt constrain him from reporting. And yet the KMC lawyers who āadvocateā on the church hotline did exactly that in advising him that he wasnāt allowed to notify authorities about an abuser in his congregation.
And I agree with Toad, Elisa is an excellent monitor of her posts.
Jesse,
I know I’m dealing hypotheticals here but my sense is–if the bishop had known the full truth (and relayed it to the hotline) the counsel he received might’ve been quite different. They probably would’ve told him to contact the authorities immediately. But because Paul Adams made it seem like there was only one incident that occurred at some point in the past the bishop received counsel that the hotline believed to be commensurate with the transgression according to the “concepts of their religion.” And, IMO, those “concepts” included prioritizing the maintenance of the family. And that’s why (IMO) rather than turning Paul immediately over to the authorities — which would’ve presented a greater risk of fracturing the family — the bishop did all he could to get Paul and his wife to seek the help they needed on their own But of course the whole thing was a fib. The Adams’ knew that if they got professional help it likely would have opened the door to uncovering the awful truth–and that’s why they resisted the bishop’s counsel.
All of that said, if what I’m suggesting is at least within the ballpark of truth then we need to place the blame where it rightly belongs–and that’s with the Adams themselves. They’re the ones who kept the severity of the situation under wraps and who refused to seek professional help at the behest of the bishop. And even if the hotline did make a mistake in judgment (based upon what they knew) the blame must still be laid for the most part upon the shoulders of the parents–they’re the monsters not the church. (Though the wife being somewhat of a victim herself should not be placed in the same category of evil as her husband, IMO).
And so, speaking analogically, we have to be careful not to blame the police–who gave chase–for the terrible loss of the pedestrian who was runover by the perpetrator–especially when they (the police) were acting within the boundaries of established protocols. Certainly we might argue that the protocols need to be adjusted — and I think that’s what some folks are arguing on this thread — but even so we shouldn’t assume that because the protocols are faulty (according to our own lights) that the weight of morality involved (with the loss of the pedestrian) should be shifted away from the perpetrator and towards the police department.
P.S. I appreciate your kind words. Thanks.
Jack, I hope you’re right on the hypothetical. But I’m almost positive you’re wrong on the record in this case. The bishop knew enough to want to turn him in and indeed begged him to turn himself in. He conferred with another bishop. He wanted to keep the kids safe. He knew they were at risk. Your supposition that he wanted to keep the family intact is unsupported by all of the reading I’ve done of the record in the case and is inconsistent with his pleading with the parents to go to authorities. His conscience told him what to do and the hotline told him he could not do it. Read the Edwards transcript.
I’m not sure why you’re so dead set on defending this action by church lawyers. Maybe when w and t let’s your write your personal story post it’ll make sense, but until then, maybe you can help me understand you. Can you even entertain the possibility that mistakes were made here?
Anyway, here is the transcript
https://mormonr.org/cmsfiles/0/L3VzZXJzJTJGWFFMcFd5bGlDdlMyRzkzUzZUa2IwdkcxMnV4MiUyRnNjYW4tN2UxZGM0ZTEtYWFlZC00NGRjLTgyMTQtNTcxMTliMzk4ZDdhLnBkZj9hbHQ9bWVkaWEmdG9rZW49ZDBmM2E1M2EtY2NhYi00NzU4LWEwYTMtNDkwMDYzNTVkNTEz/de7a1192e78fd57227ddd4d4f1dd84d8da961d63b7afb0b17558fda2fda38322/filename.pdf%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3Dd0f3a53a-ccab-4758-a0a3-49006355d513
Jesse, I could be way off on the details of my hypothetical. But just to clarify–I was suggesting that not turning Paul in for that reason (among others) was the hotline’s call–not the bishop’s. Even so you (and others) may be right that the counsel was based solely on how the hotline interpreted the law. But the problem is we’re not privy to the exchange between Herrod and the hotline. And so we really don’t know all the details involved in the hotline’s reasoning–except the little bit that Herrod shared with Edwards.
That said, the real crux of my argument has more to do with moral culpability than anything else. And so the reason I present a hypothetical is to pose the question of how the counsel that Herrod received may have been *different* if he–and therefore the hotline–had known how bad the situation really was. I’m guess that the hotline would’ve told him turn Adams over to the authorities immediately. And if I’m right on that point–and that’s a big if–how does that inform us vis-a-vis any moral culpability on the part of the church?
Sorry, Jesse. I forgot to answer your question:
“Can you even entertain the possibility that mistakes were made here?”
Of course. The church might’ve made a mistake–that’s a distinct possibility. But what I don’t want to do is jump to that conclusion before knowing the details involved. That’s exactly what the AP article does — though sadly their twisting of the narrative may have been somewhat deliberate — and they create a rather fanciful version of the story.
That said, it becomes doubly challenging to get at the truth when there are some details that we may never have access to. Even so, I don’t think that ambiguity should give us license to etch our conclusions in stone as per the AP.
Thanks, Jack. In the law, litigants don’t get the benefit of the doubt regarding the absence of facts they’re intentionally hiding. We don’t know all of the facts about the church’s rationale because they destroy the hotline records and are spending thousands of tithing dollars to make sure that the facts that remain known to them never see the light of day. When someone is actively hiding something I don’t assume it will help their case.
We do know that the bishops wanted to report and were muzzled. They had sufficient facts to implore the abuser and his wife to go to authorities. They knew enough to call the hotline. Sure, there may have been a set of facts where the hotline folks might have had no choice but to advise the bishop to report, but that’s irrelevant. The church literally tolerated known abuse and hung the bishops out to dry.
I don’t think it’s that simple, Jesse. The affidavits make it clear that the bishops were unaware of any abuse — let alone any signs of abuse — except for what Paul had confessed–and that’s over a 5-6 year period. Of course, in a certain sense the counsel they received may have “muzzled” the bishops. Even so, if they had become aware of any ongoing abuse during those 5-6 years I’ve no doubt that they would’ve turned Paul in to the authorities. To me that changes the entire calculus of the morality involved. There’s a huge difference between who and what Paul really was and the person he made himself out to be. And if the church had known the difference between the two then the outcome would’ve been completely different. That’s where the nexus of the whole tragedy is–Paul’s lies.
With regard to why the hotline counseled the bishops not to reveal Paul’s confession–yes it’s possible that it may be due solely to their interpretation of the law. Even so, the fact that their counsel would have been different had they known what was really happening means that Paul’s fake confession had something to do with steering them toward the choices they would ultimately make–even if they misinterpreted Title 13. More than anything else–it was the Adams’ lies that kept the door open to the destruction of their own family.
They were unaware of any abuse? Did you read the interview transcript I linked? Why did they ask him to turn himself in? Why did they call the hotline? I hope you’re keeping a tally of folks you utterly exhaust on here š as I think I’m wearing out.
The church itself is the root of a large amount of abuse.
And maybe worse is that they refuse to recognize or correct it.
Thanks Jesse for pointing out that the reason we donāt have the details of what the Church officials did and didnāt know is because theyāve chosen not to provide those details.
Why one would ever assume the best in that situationālet alone when the available evidence tells us that, whatever he did or didnāt know, the bishop wanted to turn Adams in and was told not to.
Jack, no one is saying the abuse isnāt Adamāsā fault. Obviously it is. But the reason we have mandatory reporting laws is because we know that abusers tend not to stop and tend not to turn themselves in, and that their victims often have no recourse. Yet the church lobbies against mandatory reporting laws and uses exceptions to those laws whenever it can to avoid reporting.
Because it tolerates abuse.
It values its own internal proceedings and governance over the disclosure of abuse.
Which means it tolerates abuse. When faced with competing sets of values, it chooses its own protection over that of victims.
That means it tolerates abuse.
You can talk all you want about what we donāt know and it may be true that the bishop and hotline didnāt know the extent of the abuse. But it doesnāt matter. The church tolerated abuse it. Whatever degree of abuse it thought was going on, even if that degree was less than what was actually going on, it tolerates abuse.
And you know what would have revealed the extent of the abuse?
If the bishop had been advised to report to authorities so that they could have investigated the abuse. Because a short call on a legal hotline with a hotline respondent who is not an expert in abuse and therefore could not have assessed the situation appropriately or determined whether additional information was needed is not a substitute for reporting abuse to people who are trained to do that.
And by staffing those kinds of people on the hotline (risk management folks, not abuse investigators or victim advocates), the church is telling us it tolerates abuse.
You can be right about your read of the case Jack. I donāt think you are, but you could be. And that wouldnāt change the fact that the church tolerates abuse in the very manner in and purposes for which the hotline is set up.
When the church says it does not tolerate abuse, it is wrong. Its actions speak louder than its words.
The church tolerates abuse.
As a former RS and YW president and childhood abuse survivor, yes, in my lived experience I have witnessed several leaders in the church tolerating known abuse, thus enabling abusers to continue. I’ve witnessed other leaders rise up in courageous integrity, in righteous indignation and do the right thing with Christ leading the way, because they deeply care about protecting innocent children.
I’ve noticed when reporting abuse, leaders who have a family member experiencing the effects of abuse or who have personally experienced it themselves are more empathetic.
Abuse does not magically stop simply because an abuser seeks to absolve himself confessing to church leaders.
In my extended lds family, known abuse of all kinds reverberates through the generations.
Enmeshed family members have been trained from childhood to simply go on with life as if nothing happened when they or another suffers abuse.
Victims martyr themselves at great cost because they’ve experienced no who cares enough to protect or take action on their behalf.
Layer upon layer, year after year, ignoring trauma does untold damage to our spirits.
When abuse is swept under the rug by those who know better, evil abusers triumph and lives are ruined.
Dear Jesse,
I explicitly state: “the bishops were unaware of any abuse . . . *except for what Paul had confessed*. . .”
So–yes–they were aware of what they were led to believe was a one-time “indiscretion.”
But the point I was really trying to make is that they would’ve turned Paul in if they had become aware of any continuing abuse during the five to six years between Paul’s confession and his arrest. And that fact should figure heavily in the moral calculus of the situation–IMO.
Elisa,
My guess is that you’re aware of the literature–for and against–having to do with priest-penitent privilege. Those who a for it (as well as those who are against it) base their arguments on moral grounds vis-a-vis what they believe produces the best results in reducing abuse (and other crimes). And so, to say that the impetus for the church’s position means that it “tolerates abuse” might be bit rash considering the likelihood that the church has carefully thought through the ramifications of taking such a position.
@jack, the church tolerates abuse.
The express purpose of the hotline is to protect the church, not to protect victims. Iām basing that on primary sources: ie, the actual documents about what the hotline was and how it works.
There is no suggestion anywhere that the church keeps reports confidential in order to put it in a better position to learn about and stop abuse. In fact, when it does learn about abuse, it does nothing about it. Also, as has been noted elsewhere, confessions arenāt confidential. They can be shared with BYU in the case of students and faculty, and other ward members. Thereās literally no expectation of confidentiality with respect to anything anyone tells a bishop.
The church tolerates abuse. When preventing or addressing abuse conflicts with church values of independence and insulation from civil authorities, or with potential liability for abuse in the case of senior church leaders or acts committed in connection with a church calling or on church property etc, the church chooses itself over victims.
The church tolerates abuse. That is not a stretch.
Iām reluctant to engage with Jack because I donāt wish to fuel him tying himself into knots any further trying to āget at the truthā ā all for the sake of the squad of attorneys running that hotline. Scouring those links of the legal filings canāt be good for oneās fragile mental health. Iām happy to leave that to the lawyers who are trained to sort that stuff. My perspective is that apologists will cherry pick any shred of narrative that can be spun into plausible deniability.
But the main reason I donāt want to fight those battles is because it doesnāt matter anymore who knew what and when they knew it. All of us know nowā we know the extent of the abuse and the extent of our failures to protect those girls. Know better, do better, right?
So what changes are the wise attorneys of KMC, and their Client making? Have they changed the management policies of the hotline to help bishops provide any pastoral care for victims? Hired any trauma informed counselors or other specialists? How have they received the civil lawsuit by the representatives of the victims? Are they cooperating or stonewalling?
Iām weary too.
I posted before finishing my comment, but wanted to add:
The church tolerates abuse.
161 comments in, Iām not sure who is still reading this thread.
And like many others, I try not to engage with Jack too much, because it only results in 1/2 of the comments being by him.
But I cannot, in good conscience, stay silent when someone refers to the sexual abuse of a child as an incident, complete with quotation marks.
For anyone reading this who has been sexually abused, please know that many, MANY people recognize the evil that has been done to you and are angry on your behalf.
Elisa, maybe itās time to close down the commenting? Because Iām thinking this discussion has played out, and any further comments will do more damage than good.
Jesse, thanks for you earlier post. I’ve wanted to respond but simply have not had time to read all the related material. This thread may close, it sounds like, but I appreciate your attention to this appalling case and the seriousness that you obviously give to the questions it creates about how the church handles this and similar cases.
I have to state that I am an admirer of Elisa. Some will think that my saying this means I totally agree with her on every OP and every comment she makes. While it is true I often find my thinking aligning with her arguments, that is not the only reason for my respect.
IMHO, I think it is important for all W&T commenters to keep in mind that writing an OP is an act of vulnerability. The writer takes on the onus of presenting an argument and then defending it. Taking on the onus always means taking on a lot of work. It is much harder and more time consuming to state an argument than to criticize it.
While time often limits my comments to ‘top of mind’ remarks, I try to remember that I need to offer a reasoned response, one that is logically sound and bears true premises. If I’ve done my job, I’ve offered a cogent response. I often fall short of this. But that is my intent. There are times when I realize I don’t have the time to respond with a defensible comment, and I pass on participating and don’t enter the thread.
I want to be careful how I state this because I am one who encourages anyone to comment what they please. But I will also assert that some comments are not deserving of a response by the OP writer. And it feels to me a little like Elisa has had to deal with Brandolini’s Law on this comment thread. And that is a lot of work for her. I admire Elisa for her commitment, but also feel like it’s an unreasonable expectation to make of her–or any OP author–to display this kind of commitment to responding, particularly to commentors who are more committed to disruption than advancing the OP.
LOL. Well, all I can say at this point is–I gotta hand it to the church. They’re not swayed from doing what they honestly believe is right–even if the whole world brands them as intolerant of virtue and tolerant of vice.
A note to Margot: I recognize that my comments can get out of control on some threads. But in my own defense, I can get a lot of responses because of my rather contrary take on certain issues. And so, sometimes I don’t know when to stop.
Jack said” Theyāre not swayed from doing what they honestly believe is rightāeven if the whole world brands them as intolerant of virtue and tolerant of vice.”
You know, Jack. That isn’t necessarily a virtue. Having enough humility to always be learning and to question our own paradigms based on more knowledge, understanding and experience is usually a good thing.
@jlm exactly. Setting aside I think itās gross to say āI gotta hand it to the churchā when what happened here hurt so many people ā¦ even if the church was well-intentioned, having seen now what resulted from the way the hotline operated, there is absolutely nothing to applaud if the church doesnāt make changes to prevent something like this from happening in the future.
“I gotta hand it to the Church. Theyāre not swayed from doing what they honestly believe is rightāeven if the whole world brands them as intolerant of virtue and tolerant of vice.”
Actually, Jack, Church history tells a much different story. The Church has a lengthy track record of changing in response to internal and external criticisms while at the same time denying that it was responding to such criticisms. That’s why all the negative PR that the Church has received from this case is so important. Hopefully, the Church is receiving enough bruises from this case that it has/will make substantive changes so that cases like this are less likely to happen in the future–even though it will never openly admit that the activism directed at it prompted the changes. If everyone just always gave the Church “the benefit of the doubt” like you tend to do, then we’d probably still have a church that denied the priesthood and temple to blacks, allowed men to marry multiple women, prohibited women from using birth control, prohibited women from giving prayers in sacrament meeting and GC, insisted that LGBTQ people chose to “be that way”, denied baptism to the children with a gay parent, refused to teach evolution at Church schools, denied women the option from working outside the home, denied birth control coverage for Church employees covered by the Church DMBA health plan, encouraged sharing of information between BYU police and the Honor Code office in sexual assault and other cases, insisted on marathon 3 hour Sunday worship sessions, refused parents or trusted adults to accompany a youth to a bishop’s worthiness interview, required endowed members to wear garments extending to the wrists and ankles, etc. In fact, it is typically only when the “world brands [the Church] as intolerant of virtue and tolerant of vice” that positive changes are finally made.
I need to hand it to mountainclimber479 for giving such a concise yet complete summation of the history of this evolving and responding organization called The Mormon Church. I think somebody ought to take that entry and expand it into a full W&T entry. Any volunteers?
I can tell you what happened here about 15 years ago which was very different. A girl went to her bishop accusing her father of abusing her. The bishop immediately called the police and
they removed the father from the home –and he never returned.The father claimed his daughter was spitefully doing this to hurt him –that he was innocent. Everyone assumed him guilty including the bishop and stake president. The stake president told him he would make him an example of him to show abuse is not tolerated. The father lost his business dealings with the church and other businesses rendering him unemployable. His siblings believed their niece. The church held court and excommunicated him. The bishop and stake president didn’t encourage him to repent and return. They made him a pariah in the community and this father had to move to another state and start over again. The father kept maintaining his innocence and said he was shocked that the bishop and stake president did not have the discernment to know he was innocent. I don’t know whether he was or not. But he sure was treated differently than his bishop calling a church hotline and being told not to
report it.
On a lighter note (and yes, this whole topic is very disturbing and āstomach turningā) I have to ask āDo you folks have jobs?ā Several of the āgreat wall of wordsā shown above ā seems to be illustrative that some folks really have a great deal of time on their hands!
@mez, that’s a pretty different situation since it was a kid reporting abuse to a bishop (and not a person confessing that they were abusing). So I can understand why the police would be notified. (Of course, I think they should be notified in either situation.). And for every story like that, I’ll see you and raise you a story where a girl told a church leader she was being abused and the church leader encouraged her not to report. There are plenty out there.
As for the rest, well, I don’t really think that has much to do with the question of whether the abuse should have been reported to the police. It sounds like all the stuff that happened with the ward and stake would have happened whether or not authorities got involved.
Bottom line is the Church, bishops, stake presidents, all of them – they aren’t in a position to know how to handle abuse. They should report it to people who are.
Someone once said, āElisa, youāre magnificent!ā
Itās hard to engage with the last two commenters because neither one has anything of substance to contribute to the specific case discussed for the last 175? comments. People are worn out and might be touchy. The third-hand account of the poor guy who lost his business and had to start over, etc. lacks specific details that might help an analysis, and it would be an unnecessary threadjack anyway. The query about jobs? Inaccurately lumps all 175 ish comments together, responding would be a threadjack as well.
But my good news is that I looked up Brandoliniās law, a.k.a. the BS asymmetry principle, which states, āthe amount of energy needed to refute BS is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.ā
Because geeks have questioned if the mathematical formula of an order of magnitude is accurate, there is a generalized corollary: āBS often takes more energy to refute than to create.ā And some wag named Hartley came up with his own corollary:
āBrandolini was an optimist.ā
Thanks to BigSky for his nice, long, wordy comment that was full of genuine discussion which enriched our commentary.
My point is that the police are the ones to call no matter who you are.
mountainclimber479,
As Raymond Winn said (in so many words) your comment probably deserves a thread of its own. But let me just say–I don’t think the primary impetus for the changes you speak of was to avoid being branded negatively by the world.
@jack, should have done this a long time ago but forgot about it until the comments about Brandoliniās law:
I hereby invoke Hitchens’s razor and decline to address your claims, and I recommend other commenters do the same. We are weary of you.
I’m trying to be done…
Elisa, in conversations like these Brandolini’s Law can go both ways. From my PoV the argument for why the church tolerates abuse seems rather facile. To me it looks like: a + b = c. Some times arguments can be reduced to that level of simplicity and elegance. But in this particular case there is so much that we *don’t* know that if we’re not careful in our assessment of what we *do* know we may find ourselves 180 degrees out of phase with the truth–kinda like a geocentric vs heliocentric solar system. They both seem to account for the “known” facts–but they’re vastly different in their design.
Re: Hitchen’s Razor: his rule can be useful as far as it goes–but the problem is that it typically doesn’t go very far. Because if we utilize it in the way that Hitchen’s intended it only accepts evidence that fits within his narrow epistemological framework. Anything outside of that is suspect and therefore not received as evidence.
No Jack, when you say stuff like āBut in this particular case there is so much that we *donāt* knowā you continue to make arguments based on non-facts. And itās a waste of everyoneās time to expect them to respond to arguments made (that have already been made and responded to multiple times) based on non-facts.
Give people a break.
The Texas sharpshooter fallacy on display.
Jesse, not sure if you are still lurking here, but I finally went back and read the Edwards section of Leizza Adams sentencing hearing, the Herrod affidavit, and your responses to Sam Brunson’s post on BCC. What a can of worms.
I know you suggested above that Edwards may have given inaccurate testimony, and I can understand that perspective given that his testimony differs significantly from the Herrod affidavit, but I don’t see anything specific on which to make that assumption other than the fact that his story and Edwards’ story are materially different. Why does Herrod get the benefit of the doubt and Edwards does not? Does Edwards have a history of embellishing? Not that we know of.
I will say this: As a practicing physician, Herron is a mandatory reporter in AZ, even if he was NOT occupying that role primarily in this situation. It seems clear that all kinds of alarm bells went off for him the first time he learned of Paul Adams behavior. It also seems plausible, as a mandatory reporter, that he would be familiar with AZ law in this regard. Perhaps he should have pushed back on the advice he got from the hotline. It doesn’t seem at all implausible that he would meet with Adams more than once after the shock of the initial meeting.
I also find the Herron affidavit really off-putting. It was clearly drafted with the assistance of a church attorney, in my opinion. To me, it makes every effort to establish Herron as a good-faith, if somewhat overwhelmed, participant in a horrid scenario. The affidavit hits the confidentiality button again and again and again, while still never acknowledging that confidentiality is not required by AZ law in cases such as this. It sounds willfully naive. Herron says his understanding was that AZ law required confidentiality, and he was going to honor that standard, dammit, even if the understanding was the product of bad legal advice from SLC and also even if it was contrary to what Herron himself may have known about AZ law as a mandatory reporter.
As a physician, it doesn’t boggle my mind to also think that Herron is making the “it only happened that once” argument in bad faith. A healthcare professional really believes that pedophiles act out just the once out of curiosity and then regret the behavior? Nope. These are rare, but usually serial offenders. I think he might have known that. The Herron affidavit is a proactive CYA action to me, and I don’t think there really is a risk of perjury (which attorneys probably told him) because he had the option of NOT reporting given the clergy-penitent relationship.
Herron also claims to have been nervous and intimidated by Edwards, which contradicts what Edwards said about Herron when they met. He implies that he was coerced by a federal agent in a case where you’d think he would be eager to assist. Again, he wants to create the idea that he was a good-faith actor overwhelmed by a horrid scenario and a ruthless federal government.
So, what to make of the contradictions? Particularly, why does Herron say he was unaware that Adams was videotaping his activities until Adams was arrested in 2017, but Edwards recalls Herron having mentioned the video specifically as part of Adams’ initial confession in 2011 or 2012? If Adams wanted to unburden himself to Herron regarding heinous behavior, what is the likelihood that he would just omit the video component? And number 18 in the affidavit is just a straight-up fabrication. “Until Paul Adams was arrested in 2017, I had no knowledge of him having abused Plaintiffs John Doe or Jane Doe II.” Of course he did, because Adams told him years prior, which he already conceded previously in the affidavit. That part is just blatant and odd to me.
So, what am I missing?
I will say, after reading this crap I’m quite glad that Paul Adams is dead, and I don’t envy the role of bishops in horrors like this. That seems like a perspective to rally around.
Jaredsbrother, at first, I was weighing the church’s statement against Edwards’ testimony. I assumed there was no way Edwards would get the material details wrong and was worried the church lied. However, when I compared the Edwards affidavit and the Edwards interview transcript, I noted material inconsistencies that favored the church’s statement. As to the knowledge of abuse of John Doe and Jane Doe 2, my recollection, is that he potentially knew about the abuse of Jane Doe 1 but not of abuse regarding some of the other kids. I’ve read a fair amount on this so I’d need to go back and confirm but I don’t know exactly where I’d find that info. According to this article they had three kids, so that could explain the testimony. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/lawsuit-in-arizona-says-utah-firm-and-lawmaker-helped-mormons-hide-abuse
As to the video, my read of the interview transcript is that he learned about that after he was released as bishop (when more of the story came to light in the community) and he gets the benefit of the doubt from me because he urged the parents to report, called the hotline, and urged the father to move out. I feel like he wanted to help but was advised (wrongly in my view) that he legally could not do more.
Thanks, Jesse. The abuse of Jane Doe one was active when Herron first met with Adams; Jane Doe 2 was not born yet. I think the statement as given in the Herron affidavit is partially inaccurate and I’m surprised he signed it. The Adams’s had other children, but from Edwards testimony I understand all other kids were male.
I feel empathy for Dr. Herron and the difficult situation in which he found himself. I don’t think he is responsible for the continued abuse of the Adams girls. That said, he does not get the benefit of the doubt from me simply because he could have done more without tremendous effort. Learning more about AZ’s mandatory reporting laws would not have been a heavy lift, but perhaps he trusted the hotline lawyers and didn’t even think of doing some research himself. It’s easy to Monday-morning-quarterback everything, but in hindsight any failure to act that left the Adams girls in the home makes both Herron and Mauzy look ineffectual, uncertain, and perhaps focused on the wrong things.
That’s my take, but I have not read the Edwards affidavit. Do you have a link handy?