Twenty-two recent cases of criminal prosecution of
Mormons for various forms of child abuse have come to our attention, all
summarized from newspaper accounts or other publicly available
documents. They are:
-
Richard
Kenneth Ray of Mesa, Arizona (1984),
-
Robert
Gene Metcalf of Meyer, Arizona, 1988-89, who was convicted twice
of sexually abusing his children and stepchildren in two separate
marriages;
-
George
P. Lee (1986-89), a General Authority excommunicated "for
apostasy and conduct unbecoming a member," who was later
charged with sexually abusing a child;
-
Arthur
Frank Phillips of Mesa, Arizona (1992-93), who fondled the
breasts of a girl in his Mormon Sunday School class;
-
Robert
Michael Tubbs of Slaterville, Utah (1991-92), who sexually
molested sixteen boys in his Mormon Scout troop;
-
Mark
Edward Morgan of Springville, Utah (1994), a distributor of
Mormon greeting cards, who fondled a boy he was hiring, claiming
that he was fitting him for a uniform; he had a history of child
molestation in Thailand;
-
Michael
Shean, an attorney and former bishopric counselor in Santa
Maria, California (1995), had been excommunicated once for sexually
abusing a boy but was pronounced "cured" by his LDS Social
Services therapist and was reinstated; he was convicted of sexually
molesting juvenile clients;
-
Ralph
Neeley of Beaumont, Texas (1994) who was sentenced to life
imprisonment for molesting an eight-year-old in empty rooms of their
Mormon meetinghouse while services were going on;
-
Christopher
J. Bearnson of Azusa, California (1993), who was convicted of
sexually molesting two girls on a Young Women’s campout where he
was one of the priesthood chaperons;
-
Arlo
Atkinson of Mesa, Arizona, a bishop who impregnated a teenager
whom he took into his home because she had already been sexually
abused; (11) James F. Adams, Jr., active Latter-day Saint of
Beckley, West Virginia, who sexually abused his two children for
five years beginning in 1988; in 1989, he confessed his behavior to
his father, who was also his local bishop, to his stake president,
and to his job supervisor, also a Mormon; and
-
Eleven others about
whom only incomplete information is available.
The Mormon Alliance has conducted no independent
investigation of these cases, and we report them here only to provide
background information on the fact that Mormons in a variety of
circumstances are involved in a variety of types of sexual abuse. We
acknowledge that the information in most cases is incomplete and that
Mormons have no monopoly on such situations. However, what all of the
cases seem to have in common is that the perpetrator’s membership in
the Church and, in many cases, leadership position gave him access to
children and youth and increased his power over them.
Richard Kenneth Ray, a lifelong Mormon, was molested
at a Boy Scout camp when he was twelve. "Because of the church’s
teachings against masturbation and premarital sex, he would always feel
guilty about the one encounter when he was a victim. He never told
anyone." He graduated from Mesa High school in the National Honor
Society, served a two-year mission, and married his wife about three
months after he met her upon his return. They had three daughters.
"His wife said that she tolerated twenty unhappy years of marriage
because of the church’s teachings against breaking up the
family." During those twenty years, Ray later told the police, he
sexually molested thirty-three children, three calves, and a dog
"because of his guilt about masturbation and adultery."
He began sexually abusing each daughter when she was
about six, beginning with fondling, then kissing her genitals, and then
moving on to oral and vaginal sex. One of his daughters began sleeping
under her bed to get away from him. He also abused his nieces, his
daughter’s baby sitters, his daughters’ friends, and his friends’
children.
He confessed to two, possibly to three, Mormon
bishops in 1976 that he had molested another relative. They did not
notify the police. Throughout this entire span, Ray was very active in
the Church and had constant callings.
In 1984, his wife regularly babysat a two-year-old.
"On one occasion, he manipulated his penis around the child’s
mouth until she opened it so he could put his penis inside. Another
time, he removed her clothing, placed his penis between her legs and
rubbed it back and forth." The child’s mother became suspicious
when the toddler began to "seek out [her] father’s penis."
About the same time, stake president Alan Farnsworth received a
telephone call from two Mormon bishops in Virginia who told Farnsworth
that "Ray had molested his niece while he was on vacation."
Farnsworth called Ray in. He confessed. Farnsworth persuaded him to go
the police.
Before Ray was sentenced, the court received a
barrage of letters from LDS Church members and officials, some written
on Church stationery, asking for leniency.
All praised Ray as a hard worker, a good provider,
a man who had even helped to bring about several adoptions.
W. Dale Hall, an LDS high councilor at the time,
wrote that Ray had been "a great influence for good" in the
lives of hundreds of young people. "In view of the good things he
has done throughout his life, I believe firmly that the sooner he is
let back into society, the better for all it will be." …
Ray was sentenced to fifty-eight years in prison.
His wife received two years probation for having known at least
part of his secret and not reporting it.
One of Ray’s victims sued the Church for
negligence, and after arguing in vain before the state Supreme Court
that its bishops were protected by clergy confidentiality, the LDS
Church paid an undisclosed settlement [in 1990]....
Salt Lake City psychologist Lynn Johnson, who was
treating the emotional damage done to one of Ray’s daughters,
[commented]…: "If the father is exonerated or excused in the
least degree, this will be a terrible blow to [his daughter] for the
reason that she will not only be constantly fearful that he will
confront and harm her, but more importantly, she will then feel a
return of the inappropriate guilt. She will then feel that this awful
thing has happened; and if her father is not to blame, then she must
be."
Robert Gene Metcalf was convicted in California in
1974 of sodomizing a young boy. In 1975, he married Gail Coen, mother of
four. Three more sons were born to this marriage. He was an active
Mormon, and it was his second marriage. In 1978, "Gail
Metcalf walked into the living room and discovered her husband engaged
in anal intercourse with a thirteen-year-old boy who was living
temporarily with the Metcalf family. At the time, Metcalf was wearing
his sacred temple garments." He was excommunicated and sentenced to
six years in prison. Gail divorced him and obtained a court order that
kept him from visiting her or their children for six months after his
release.
Before the six months were up, however, Metcalf had
married his third wife, who had three children by her previous marriage.
They took up residence in Meyer, where Metcalf had the reputation of
being "a good provider who looked after his wife’s three children
as though they were his own." Large, stocky, and genial, he was a
good neighbor in a cowboy hat, active in the Church. He "took
charge of [musical] performances the Church put on to raise money, . . -
helped out with the Boy Scout troop, and oversaw the lambs his sons were
raising to earn money and learn responsibility."
In late 1987, Gail Metcalf "developed a brain
tumor and needed extensive medical treatment She contacted her local
bishop, Grant Shumway in Phoenix, to discuss what might happen to her
younger children while she was hospitalized" and Don Excell, Gene’s
branch president in Meyer. She says her bishop and stake president
"ordered" her to send her children to live with Gene. She did.
"‘We are trained in the church to be submissive. … It is a
patriarchal system. I was trying to abide by church leaders’ rules
that they had set down and told me what to do,"’ she says.
According to ... the Church’s local spokesman, the bishop
"listened" and "counseled her on options" but "‘we
do not tell people what to do with their children."’ Gail made
"numerous" calls to Grant Shumway and also to Don Excell. In
August 1988, she sent her children to Gene for about eight months.
That same year, Gene’s six-year-old stepson told
his mother, her parents, and "his church leader in Meyer that
Metcalf had periodically masturbated him and had forced him to
masturbate Metcalf, often in the cab of his truck." No one reported
the incident to anyone outside the church. According to another source,
Metcalf had also molested Scouts in the Church troop of which he was
Scoutmaster.
In 1989, Gail Metcalf’s children told her that
their father had been fondling them and their stepbrothers. Gail
called the police, and Metcalf was convicted for a third time on
sexual deviancy charges.
… An array of people lobbied on his behalf.
Many of them had official connections with the Mormon Church. Former
Prescott city council member Perry Haddon was one of those people.
Another was former state senator Boyd Tenney, who
described himself as a leader in the LDS Church. Tenney testified
that Metcalf was an asset to the community who was likely to exhibit
proper behavior in the future.
The prosecutor ... had a question for Tenney:
"What information do you have that a man who
has been a child molester since 1974, notwithstanding the fact that
he’s had a Church that’s done everything in its power to help
him, what makes you think that now he is going to miraculously be
healed and not commit further felony child molestation offenses
against other innocent children?"
Tenney answered, "I have seen miracles
happen in that direction, and I believe that he could become one of
those miracles."
The court did not. Gene Metcalf was sentenced to
thirty-seven years in prison.
His third wife sat in the courtroom with tears
running down her face, clutching a teddy bear. She had not wanted
him to receive a prison term. She had testified earlier that her
children needed him.
Gail brought suit against Excell and Shumway in 1990;
its outcome is not known.
George Patrick Lee (his middle name was assigned by
teachers at the government boarding school on the reservation) was born
23 March 1943 at Towaoc, Ute Mountain Indian Reservation, Colorado, to
Pete Lee and Mae K. Asdzaat-chii Lee. His father had four children by a
first marriage, his mother two surviving children of four by two
previous marriages. Lee was the second of their nine children. The
family was poor, sometimes desperately so. His father was both an
alcoholic and a shaman. Lee became a star example of the LDS-sponsored
Indian Placement Program, an effort to place elementary- and
high-school-aged Indian students from reservations in LDS homes
throughout the West where they were clothed, fed, and educated at the
expense of the volunteer Mormon family. At age twelve, Lee was placed
with the George and Joan Harker family of Orem. He graduated from grade
school, junior high, high school, and BYU with a B.A., and earned a
master’s degree from Utah State University and a Ph.D. from BYU in
educational administration. He served in the Southwest Indian Mission,
an area which included the Navajo reservation, and married Katherine
(Kitty) Hettich, a Comanche, in the Salt Lake Temple (Spencer W.
Kimball, then an apostle, officiated at the ceremony), and they became
the parents of seven children. Silent Courage, his autobiography,
ends with his calling on 3 October 1975 to the First Quorum of the
Seventy, the first (and so far only) Native American to become a General
Authority. He was thirty-two and president of Ganado College on the
Navajo reservation at the time. His calling was widely attributed to the
long-time interest that Apostle Spencer W. Kimball had in Native
Americans. Kimball had become president of the Church twenty-two months
earlier.
Lee was excommunicated on 1 September 1989, thirteen
years and eleven months after becoming a General Authority, on charges
of "apostasy and conduct unbecoming a member." Five years
later, on 11 October 1994, he pled guilty to attempted sexual abuse of a
child and was placed on eighteen months probation. He was the first
General Authority in the twentieth century to be excommunicated since
Apostle Richard R. Lyman in 1943 for adultery and the first General
Authority to be excommunicated for apostasy since Apostle Amasa Lyman
(Richard Lyman’s grandfather) in 1870.
What happened to the glittering "success
story" of the "redeemed" and spiritually authoritative
young General Authority, seen by many as the literal fulfillment of Book
of Mormon promises about the rise of the "Lamanites" in the
last days? Below is a chronology pieced together, except where noted,
from public records.
As a General Authority, Lee spoke only six times in
general conference in almost fourteen years, at intervals of six months,
two years, two years, two years, and three years. He had not spoken for
almost four years when he was excommunicated. This pattern of public
visibility should not be automatically susceptible to a negative
interpretation. At the October 1976 general conference, a policy was
announced of "reconstituting" the First Quorum of the Seventy
by transferring all Assistants and beginning to call new seventies to
that quorum (and later to a second quorum as well). Six months later in
April 1977, the general conferences were cut from three days, the usual
length for most of the twentieth century, to two days. Thus, the number
of available speaking slots decreased by a third. From that point on,
typically all members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve
who were physically able addressed the conferences with other General
Authorities speaking as time permitted. Speaking assignments could be
three or four years apart before a Seventy s turn came up.
However, the topics which Elder Lee addressed may, in
retrospect, show some significance. Speaking as a General Authority,
Elder Lee gave the following six addresses:
1. "My Heritage Is Choice" (Ensign, November
1975, 100-101), his first address as a General Authority, was explicit
and proud about his ethnic identity. He began by quipping, "I
finally realized how General Custer must have felt," and expressed
pride that he was "a child of the Book of Mormon people. I have
found my true heritage; I have found my true identity." He also
expressed pride as "a descendant" (presumably spiritual)
"of Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, Chee Dodge, Chief Crazy
Horse" and assured Indians on "reservations and in the cities
of our country and through the islands of the sea …. .. that Heavenly
Father loves you." He called on all members of the Church "to
join hands as children of God" and warned, "You will not find
[the] United States in paradise. - - - I will not find an Indian
reservation in paradise. - - -You will not find China in paradise."
2. "‘But They Were in One,"’ (Ensign,
May 1976, 99-100), again contained ethnic references to "my
people," bore a strong testimony to the greatness of Spencer W.
Kimball, and described "heaven" as the "brown faces and
white faces together" that he saw in the tabernacle. Then he issued
a strong call for social justice, reminding his hearers of the ideal
Book of Mormon condition in which poverty was eclipsed by sharing and
service, and asking, "Will you go out of this building and out into
the world and deal justly with your fellowmen7 Or will yoti
compromise gospel principles and standards?"
3. "Staying Unspotted from the World," (Ensign,
May 1978, 27-29), delivered when he was president of the Arizona
Holbrook Mission, was a strong appeal to young people to "let
virtue and purity be your shield and armor, and you will be
invincible," to pray continually (he told of being mocked by his
own brothers for praying in the hogan, but "a Navajo boy, coming
from very simple, humble, poor circumstances because he was on his
knees, became a polished instrument of God"), to "stand up for
the Lord, even against your own flesh and blood, even against your own
brothers and sisters, even against your own loved ones and friends"
(he described fighting off four of his brothers who tried to hold him
down and pour liquor into him), to "become obedient to your
parents, to your priesthood leaders, and to the Lord," and to
search the scriptures. "You’re too choice, you’re too innocent,
you’re too sweet and too pure to lose." I was then on the
editorial staff at the Ensign. The talk that Lee had originally prepared
and had submitted to the magazine staff and translators was a ringing
call for the "Gentile" members of the Church to become the
"nursing fathers" and "nursing mothers" to the
Lamanites that the Book of Mormon assigned them to be and which, to this
point, Lee implied, they had failed to do. A few days later, this
"social justice" address was withdrawn on instructions from
the First Presidency’s office and replaced with the address to young
people that he actually delivered. Magazine staff members speculated
that the reason for the substitution may have been the accusatory tone
in which Lee called the Mormon Gentiles to "repentance" for
their mistreatment of the Indians.
4. "‘Acquaint Thyself with Him, and Be at
Peace" (Ensign, November 1980,65-66) quoted six scriptures
from the New Testament and two from the Old Testament but none at all
from the Book of Mormon, made no references to Indians or Gentiles, and
contained no ethnic allusions. Instead, it cataloged the sins and
dangers of the last days and urged members "to develop a more
personal relationship with the Lord." (Ironically, he was
immediately followed by Elder Gene Cook speaking on "Miracles among
the Lamanites," a description of conversions in Latin America.)
5. "‘Behold My Beloved Son, in Whom I Am
Well Pleased,"’ (Ensign, November 1982,73-75) was a strong
affirmation of the centrality of Christ’s atonement and of Elder Lee’s
testimony of Christ’s divinity.
This same general conference, October 1982, was the
last conference addressed by President Kimball. At age eighty-eight, he
underwent surgery for subdural hematomae that greatly impaired his
ability to speak. He attended some sessions with decreasing frequency
and, finally, not at all, until his death in November 1985 when he was
succeeded by President Ezra Taft Benson, who promptly called for a
rededication of members to the Book of Mormon. During Kimball’s final
illness and afterwards, the Indian Placement Program was sharply
curtailed, a number of Indian services at BYU and on the reservations
were cut back or eliminated, and, according to Lee, full-time
missionaries were removed from Indian reservations. Lee gave only one
more talk in general conference
6. "Can There Any Good Thing Come Out of
Nazareth?" (Ensign, November 1985, 22-24) reminded
his listeners that the Saints have always been "scorned for no
other cause than for preaching the truth in its fulness and purity, and
for standing up in defense of holy and pure principles revealed from
God." He pointed out that Jesus was poor from the manger to the
cross," and then launched into a series of personal expressions,
some of which he repeated as part of his defense at his excommunication
and which, in retrospect, carry a double message: "I will pray for
our critics and enemies. I will be patient and long-suffering toward
them and will return kindness, prayer, and righteousness. ... There is
no priesthood of the Son of God that authorizes any one man to oppress
another or to intrude upon his rights in anyway. We ought to be a
brother and a friend to all men everywhere. We ought not to entertain a
‘Big I’ and a ‘Little You’ feeling toward our neighbors and
fellowmen. .. . If there are any in our own flock who err, let us try to
reclaim them by kindness and long-suffering. If there are any among us
who have a bad spirit, let us show them a better spirit.... Amen to the
priesthood or the authority of any man of God who exercises control,
dominion, or compulsion upon a fellow being outside of the Church or
upon a fellow member in the Church in any degree of
unrighteousness."
He did not address a general conference again.
Immediately after his excommunication, Lee released two hand-written
letters, undated and unsigned, that had obviously been written in the
heat of emotion and which contained numerous spelling and punctuation
errors. The two had considerable overlapping material.
The first document is a fifteen-page letter that he
had written to the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve some months
earlier, consisting of an introductory statement and two lists of
rhetorical questions/accusations, the first numbered "a"
through "w" and the second 1 through 51, followed by a plea
for understanding and acceptance. In a newspaper interview at the time
of his excommunication, he said he had landed in trouble for questioning
Church leadership "two years ago," or about the fall of 1987.
The second is a twenty-three-page document that he
had read at his disciplinary council setting forth his theological
views, asking a number of rhetorical questions and listing ten reasons
why he felt the other General Authorities had already rejected "the
fullness of the gospel."
Both letters charge Church leadership with abandoning
or neglecting the scriptural mission to the Indians and usurping their
proper place as "true Israel" as the Gentiles are only
"adopted" Israel. They had neglected the poor, abused their
priesthood authority, and been guilty of "pride, arrogance, and
unrighteous dominion." Harshly, he accuses: "You are slowly
causing a silent subtle scriptural and spiritual slaughter of the
Indians and other Lamanites. While physical extermination may have been
one of (the] Federal governments policies long ago, your current
scriptural and spiritual extermination of Indians and other Lamanites is
the greater sin and great shall be your condemnation."
Both letters identify disagreements and events which,
although they are not dated, suggest a sequence. According to the first
letter, at some point, he was instructed "not to pray or talk about
Lamanites or the poor." One woman in an East Bench ward in Salt
Lake City about 1984-85 told me that Lee "offended" the
members of her congregation when he spoke at her ward’s reunion by
accusing the members of being materialistic and greedy and of turning
their backs on the poor. She felt that he primarily blamed the women in
the audience and contemptuously told the men to "say no" when
their wives asked for "another fur coat."
He charges that someone among the General Authorities
(not necessarily a single individual) wrote a letter "falsely"
accusing him of "polygamy and teaching false doctrine." (A
teacher at BYU told me that Lee had interviewed her when she was hired.
She recalled her confusion at being asked questions about her belief in
polygamy. Possibly he had made a number of such comments or brought it
up in a number of settings.) In an interview immediately after his
excommunication, Lee said that these charges of "polygamy" and
"‘immorality"’ were made after he was already "in
trouble." Apparently, Lee then "faithfully and honestly opened
up to you in his attempts to answer your questions and false accusations
with a presentation on the chalkboard."
Apparently a cycle of unresolved conflict then began.
Lee claims he was put "on probation without fair hearing" by
someone whom he accused of "delight[ing]" in "acting as
judge, jury and executioner at the same time." It is not clear who
imposed this discipline. The logical body would be the seven-man
presidency of his quorum, though he later refers to meeting with
"apostles" and protests different "disciplinary
practices, rules and traditions … for the 70’s … [than for] the
twelve." He was excommunicated by the First Presidency and the
Quorum of the Twelve.
Nor is it clear what he means by
"probation" although he claims he was "stripped … of
all assignments after he spoke out in a meeting because he was hurt and
was being punished without the Lord’s justice and mercy." Lee
then "sincerely and humbly apologized and asked for your
forgiveness and love in a wonderful June meeting," said he
"fully and completely trusted you and told you he sustained you
100% as apostles and prophets," and promised that he "would
never teach... what he shared with you." Those present in the
meeting told him that he was forgiven and was "completely off
probation." However, he says, he was denied an assignment in an
area presidency, "prohibited … from dividing and reorganizing
stakes and denied … week-end assignments except that he went with
someone else."
A few paragraphs later, he repeats that he had been
denied "certain important assignments such as dividing and
reorganizing stakes since 1975." Although this date is extremely
clearly written in his own handwriting, it cannot be correct. He was not
called as a General Authority until October 1975. It seems improbable
that a General Authority would be immediately denied one of the most
routine functions of a General Authority as soon as he was called. A
more likely date would be 1985, after Ezra Taft Benson became president
of the Church.
He also says he had been called "‘apostate’
‘rebellious’ ‘sick’ ‘crazy’ ‘listening to the wrong voice’
‘speaking against leadership’ ‘dark clouds over your head’ and
etc." He describes "heartaches, mental and psychological
stress" caused to him and his family and says he had experienced
"disdain, snobbery, ridicule, rejection and conditional selective
love" from the other General Authorities.
He describes his hurt, warns of "arrogance"
in how he had been treated, and concludes this first letter with an
impassioned plea for acceptance. "I am crying out to you. I need
your full trust, confidence, and unconditional love. I feel like the
only person who completely trusted me was President Kimball.... To me
you are not a true disciple or an apostle of the Lord if you refuse to
let go of your hostility or unkind feelings toward me." He
expressed complete support for them, described defending them in the
field, and longed to "receive all of my assignments back, this time
with no strings attached," promising in return to accept any
assignment and … go anywhere, anytime faithfully. … I’ll even go
back to Australia [he had served as a member of the Pacific Area
presidency, headquartered in Sydney, Australia, typically a three-year
appointment], to Philippines, to China, to Russia, just anywhere."
Over the next several months, the situation was not
resolved, although he was made second counselor to Elder Loren C. Dunn,
president of the North America Central Area. It is not known what events
precipitated the calling of the disciplinary council. Lee’s second
letter, apparently read at this disciplinary council, repeats
considerable material from the first letter. He describes what he sees
as the different roles of "true Israel" and "adopted
Israel," and then brands as "false teachings" the
doctrine that all members of the Church can be the "‘remnant of
the House of Israel."’ He then accuses the General Authorities of
fostering a "white supremacy, racist attitude, pride, arrogance,
love of power, and no sense of obligation to the poor, needy and
afflicted," of usurping the chosen place of the Lamanites, of
"betraying and turning your backs on the very people on whom your
salvation hangs," and of profiting from their positions by
expense-paid trips, "board memberships and meetings, royalty from
written books, and all donations and gifts from friends, speaking
engagements and etc."
At the end of the meeting in which he read this
letter, on 1 September 1989, Lee was excommunicated by the First
Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve for "apostasy and conduct
unbecoming a member." There is no way of knowing what, exactly,
either charge meant, given their refusal to be explicit. According to an
article in the Deseret News, "Church officials declined to
comment on the specifics of the excommunication, saying that such
actions are private and they desire to avoid further embarrassment to
Lee or his family. But they said the action was taken only after lengthy
and considerable study, thought and deliberation. It was not a
precipitous action." They also "emphasized their commitment to
Indian or ‘Lamanite’ people, not just in the United States but all
over the world." These church officials were not identified; but
Bruce L. Olsen, managing director of public communications, said, "‘The
work among the Lamanite people of the world has accelerated, and great
progress is being made."’ He was probably the "church
spokesman" whom the article quoted as saying, "The Indian
people are loved by LDS Church leaders and the Church has, and will
continue to have, strong and significant programs for them."
The question of sexual impropriety came up
immediately. Responding to a reporter after his excommunication, Lee
specifically denied that the excommunication was for "‘moral
misconduct."’ He said "Mormon officials had accused him of
polygamy and ‘immorality,’ both of which he denied. When those
charges didn’t stick, they accused him of apostasy." In 1993 when
criminal charges were filed against Lee, a Church spokesman said
"they were unaware at the time [of the excommunication] of the
sexual-abuse allegations." Despite the Church’s silence and Lee’s
denial, however, it is not impossible that allegations of sexual
misconduct were known among the other General Authorities, for
simultaneously with the period of probation and the pattern of
intensifying ostracism, Lee was turning to children for sexual
gratification and had been doing so since at least 1986, three years
before his excommunication.
According to newspaper accounts spanning the time
period between the filing of charges and Lee’s plea bargain, there may
have been additional victims. A story published two days after he was
charged states: "Other possible victims are alluded to in the
report, but officials say that for now, only incidents involving the
l2-year-old will be prosecuted." A second newspaper story quoted
sheriffs officials as saying "others allegedly have made similar
allegations against Lee." A third news story, published in May
1994, reported that Lee’s attorney had filed a motion "asking the
judge to exclude ‘any evidence of other misconduct or bad acts
concerning defendant’s sisters-in-law … for the reason that said
incidents, even if true, are irrelevant.’ The motion did not elaborate
on the ‘misconduct or bad acts."’
The case for which Lee was prosecuted was his sexual
abuse of a neighbor child, identified in this account as Karen (a
pseudonym). As related, sometimes piecemeal, in newspaper
accounts, this is what happened: In 1986, when Karen was nine her family
lived near the Lee family in West Jordan, in Salt Lake Valley. She was
near the age of one of the Lee daughters, and her brother was close in
age to one of the Lee sons. According to David Sanders, Lee’s
attorney, George Lee "‘was a good friend to the family for years
and assisted them financially."’
Karen testified that she knew he was a "‘a
religious leader,"’ and prosecutors filed the charge as a
first-degree felony "because he ‘occupied a position of special
trust to the victim’ as a Church leader. . She considered ‘Brother
Lee’ a family friend and important man in the Mormon Church, of which
she is a member."’
Beginning in 1986 when she was nine, she says, she
accompanied Lee’s family to Lake Powell. In the motel, Lee lay down on
the bed between his daughter and Karen and began "‘telling us
stories and scratching our backs."’ Then he "‘put his hand
inside my panties, on my buttocks," Karen testified. After that
incident, Lee "called her into the bathroom. ‘He told me that I
shouldn’t tell anyone because the Lord had told him to do it and it
should just remain between the Lord and him and me. I thought it was
what I was supposed to do."’ She sometimes gave excuses to avoid
visiting the Lee home and tried to stay with Lee’s daughter when she
was there because she "felt safer." Karen also accompanied Lee
and his daughter on church assignments outside Utah where he also
fondled her.
At some unspecified point, Karen’s family moved to
Phoenix. Then during the summer of 1989, Lee came to her home while he
was on a church assignment and offered to take her and a brother back to
Utah for a month-long vacation with his family. The month in question is
not reported in the newspaper accounts; but since Karen accompanied Lee
and his daughter to a conference assignment, at least part of it must
have been in either June or August, since General Authorities are on
vacation during the month of July. In either case, Lee was within weeks—and
possibly within days—of excommunication.
During that trip, she went camping with the Lee
family. Lee disappeared for a day and a night, then returned and brought
her, her brother, and two of his children back to their West Jordan
home. That night, he called Karen into his bedroom and had her sit on
his bed. He told her that he had hiked to the top of a nearby mountain
where he spoke "‘to the Lord and he told the Lord he’d fallen
in love with me.... I was confused and taken aback about him speaking to
the Lord and the Lord saying it was OK."’ Lee then began talking
to her "about polygamy. ‘He said that it was going to be brought
back to the Earth and we’d be asked to live it."’ She left the
bedroom and went downstairs to the bedroom she was sharing with Lee’s
daughter. Unable to sleep, she returned later to Lee’s bedroom, woke
him up, and said, "‘I don’t want my father to have to take
another wife.’ He said, ‘You don’t have to worry about it. He won’t
have to."’ Lee then told her to lie beside him and caressed her
breasts. Frightened, she left the room and returned to her bed, where
she fell asleep. Still later that night, Lee woke her up and said "‘he
was sorry he’d ever started touching me and that he’d never do it
again."’
However, "almost every day" for the month,
he continued the fondling: in her friend’s bedroom, in the family
room, in the pool at the Deseret Gym, on a Heber Creeper train ride, and
in hotels when they traveled to Canada. She testified later that there
were "more than 20 touching incidents" that month.
Once as Lee wrestled with his daughter and Karen, he
playfully held a pillow over his daughter’s face with one hand, kissed
Karen’s neck, and put his hand down her pants.
However, after that month-long visit, the abuse
ended. On 1 September 1989, Lee was excommunicated and did not see Karen
again. He disappeared for four months in the Southwest. "‘I
isolated myself like Moses did. … I had a real nice time going
one-on-one with God,"’ he explained in an interview when he
returned in early 1990. He found a job as principal of Tuba City High
School in Arizona, while his wife and children remained in West Jordan.
In 1990, he became the running mate of former Navajo
tribal chair Peter MacDonald. After a scandal forced MacDonald to drop
out, Lee launched a write-in campaign that drew 11,000 votes and placed
him third in the election. His success encouraged him to plan a 1993
campaign for tribal presidency.
Then in November 1992, Karen dreamed Lee was chasing
her through a forest. "‘I was getting scareder and scareder. He
was getting closer and closer,"’ she described it. The next
morning, she told her parents. They reported the abuse to the Utah
Department of Family Services. According to Sheriffs Deputy Rod Norton,
"The FBI and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
assisted with the investigation" and the sheriffs report was filed
in January 1993. Actual charges against Lee were not filed until
Thursday, 29 July 1993. He was charged in Third Circuit Court with
aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony that carries a
sentence of five years to life in prison.
Lee, who was in Arizona when the charges were filed,
promptly "negotiated a deal with school officials to resign in
exchange for six or seven months of pay," and returned to Utah to
surrender himself. Bail was set at $1,500, and he was released
under orders to have contact with no one under eighteen and only
supervised contact with his five children under eighteen. Because three
other boys were staying with the family, he was required to find
temporary living arrangements. Lee described himself as "‘confused
by the charges"’ and claimed that he "was never alone with
the girl." According to Sanders "the girl fabricated the
incidents" and "‘my client says he is absolutely
innocent."’
Lee’s wife, Katherine, stood beside him as he made
his statement to the press and accompanied him to court with nine
children. She expressed the family’s support:
"‘We love him very much. He’s been my
husband for almost 26 years now. He’d tell me if he’d done something
wrong, and he says he’s innocent."’ She expressed concern about
the expense of defending against the charges and worried that they might
have to sell their home.
On Friday, 30 July, the Tuba City Unified School
Board, which had renewed his contract for a year in June,
"reneged" on their deal with Lee, according to Sanders, voting
to dismiss him "for cause." One unidentified board member
commented, "‘He’s been disappointing to a number of us,"’
but a prepared statement by the board stated: "‘The district has
no knowledge considering the truth of the allegations against Dr. Lee or
the facts of those allegations.... In addition, the district has no
information which would lead it to believe that conduct similar to that
alleged against Dr. Lee’ in Utah ‘ever took place’ in
Arizona." In addition to being fired, Lee also lost his chance for
the tribal presidency. Poised to announce his candidacy in August 1993,
he lost in the primary election after criminal charges were filed.
After his first court appearance and processing for
bail in early August 1993, Lee issued a statement that he was "‘innocent
before God. … This is my Garden of Gethsemane, and my people have gone
through a lot of Gardens of Gethsemane. … What I’m going through is
really nothing new for my people. … This is a trial in the valley for
all of us, but the Great Spirit will help us." He predicted that
"‘what’s happening to me may be a turning point for Indian
people"’ and claimed, "‘This will trigger some great and
powerful things. Get ready, get prepared spiritually and any other way.
… The Great Spirit is about to bless you with some great things. …
This also, I feel will set in motion a chain of events which will bring
the anger and wrath of God against the Gentile nations. The ‘perpetrators
or those who are doing this to me and my Indian people will be dealt
with and punished by God. … They cannot get away with this. … I will
overcome this one for myself, for my family and for [the Indian
people]."’
His attorney, who had recommended against speaking to
the press, said "he did not know who his client was specifically
referring to, but suggested: "‘He identifies himself often with a
lot of problems Indian people have. Indian people oftentimes have been
treated unfairly or accused falsely and have been persecuted like he is
now, but not necessarily for this particular crime."’
Lee refused to explain the "wonderful
events," the "wrath of God against the Gentile nations"
or whom he meant by "the perpetrators." He also "declined
to answer a question about whether sexual improprieties played a role in
his excommunication."
Katherine Lee, who was present with the children at
the press conference, told reporters that Lee "loves children and
has always taken them on trips. ‘It’s always a huge group. He’s
never one-on-one with any child.’ She also balked at the allegation
that her husband spoke with the girl about polygamy. She said that while
he occasionally discussed polygamy as an aspect of Church history, he
never espoused the practice. ‘I’m a one-man woman and that’s the
way it will be whether he likes it or not,’ she quipped.... ‘Any
wife would be disturbed’ at the allegations ... but said she is
standing by him and knows he is innocent."
The immediate reaction of Lee’s supporters was
anger at the Church. According to Romero Brown, a political supporter
from Window Rock, Arizona, the charge was "‘obviously a political
plot’ by the LDS Church to discredit Mr. Lee." He further
claimed, "‘We were expecting something like this"’ because
the Church was trying to "win back fallen members" who were
part of Lee’s "‘huge following."’ According to Romero,
the Church wanted "their tithing money." He also alleged that
"state and federal officials also are scheming against Mr. Lee
because he supports Indian sovereignty."
The preliminary hearing was held on 16 December 1993.
The Salt Lake County attorney’s office tried to have the hearing
closed to press and public, but Third Circuit Court Judge Robin Reese
denied the motion. Karen, the state’s only witness, "wept several
times" during her testimony. She told police that Lee had touched
her breasts, buttocks, and genitals that night in his bed but, on
cross-examination, told the defense attorney, Ron Yengich, that she was
"sure" only that he had touched her breasts. Lee was bound
over for trial.
In May 1994, he asked that Kenneth Rigtrup, the LDS
judge of Third District Court scheduled to hear the case, disqualify
himself and that no other LDS judge be appointed. "Lee said he has
reason to believe he could not receive a fair and impartial trial
because of potential bias and prejudice. ‘I am a former member of the
Council of the Seventy, was excommunicated, and since that time I have
made statements derogatory to the Church,"’ Lee wrote. Rigtrup
had offered to have the case assigned to another judge in January
"to avoid any potential claims of prejudice," but Lee did not
accept the offer. Prosecutor James Cope said "the motion appears
only to be an attempt to delay his scheduled trial."
When the case came to trial on 11 October 1994, Lee,
now fifty-one, in a surprise move, pleaded guilty to attempted sexual
abuse of a child, a third-degree felony. Seventeen-year-old Karen, who
was in court with her parents, prepared to testify, "wept with
relief’ as he looked directly at her, admitted "to touching the
girl’s breasts for sexual gratification," and told the judge,
"‘I want to say, your honor, that I’m very sorry. I’m sorry
for whatever difficult times that I’ve put them through. None of this
will ever happen again."’ Judge Kenneth Rigtrup placed Lee on
eighteen months probation, and ordered him to pay a $1 ,850 fine,
complete sex-offender counseling, write a letter of apology to Karen,
and pay the costs of her counseling.
Assistant Salt Lake County Attorney Greg Skordas told
the press: "‘The victim never wanted him to go to jail. She
wanted him to get help, and she wanted someone to believe her."’
Prosecutors felt positive about accepting the plea bargain because they
were not sure of a conviction. It was Karen’s word against Lee’s—"
‘not a slam-dunk case,"’ as Skordas put it. His boss, Salt Lake
County Attorney David Yocom added that Lee was still considered "a
‘pillar of the community. - . . There is a tendency to believe someone
like Lee, and that makes the state’s burden more difficult."’
Lee wanted to serve his probation in Arizona but
would have to get permission to do so from his Utah probation officer.
Lee and his attorney refused to comment, but Yengich in a news release
said "Lee continued to enjoy the support of family and
friends."
Many questions remain unanswered: Did Lee abuse other
children besides Karen, including the sisters of his wife Kitty? Were
there abuse victims earlier than Karen? What was the influence of his
abusive activities on his "apostasy" and vice versa? What did
other General Authorities suspect or know? What kinds of interventions
did they attempt during his "probation" and why was he placed
on "probation"? What support has been available for Kitty Lee
through her bishop, stake president, and ward members? What efforts at
fellowship and reclamation have been made by Lee’s former quorum?
Since an abuser frequently abuses his own children, what therapeutic
diagnoses have been offered to his children? And what kind of
ecclesiastical support have Karen and her family received during their
ordeal?
Sadly, one question has been answered all too
clearly. Is ecclesiastical office any guarantee that a man will not
become a sexual abuser? The answer is, "No."
A few days after Christmas 1992, fourteen-year-old
Stacy of Mesa, Arizona, received a telephone call from her
Sunday School teacher, forty-three-year-old Arthur Frank Phillips, He
"often told her she could be a model." He persuaded her to
meet him at a bakery, then drove her to Kleinman Park where he "‘explained
that he helped a lot of girls out in the past with modeling."’
Part of this "help" would involve taking nude photos of her.
He assured her that he was married and did not want sex but he removed
her shirt and bra and fondled her breasts.
She didn’t stop him because "it happened so
fast and she was frightened."
Phillips told Stacy not to tell anyone of the
incident because "the Mormon Church frowns upon modeling and might
construe what happened as sexual abuse." Over the next few weeks,
he telephoned her, but she refused to see him or return his phone calls.
However, she became depressed, even "suicidal," and told her
boyfriend about the experience. In February Stacy’s father brought her
to a Mesa police station to talk with detectives. (The newspaper account
does not say who told him.) At the request of detectives, she arranged a
second meeting with Phillips that was secretly tape-recorded. After he
was arrested on 17 March, a camera was found in his car.
He was indicted on a charge of sexual abuse, a Class 5
felony, and two counts of solicitation to commit commercial sexual
exploitation of a minor. One of those counts was a Class 3 felony
because it includes a charge of committing a dangerous crime against
children; the other was a Class 4 felony. He was found guilty of
solicitation to commit commercial exploitation of a minor; but in a plea
agreement, the charge of sexual abuse of a minor was dropped.
At sentencing, Phillips told the judge: "‘I
would like to apologize to all of those who I have hurt. I made a stupid
mistake. I am not going to re-offend, I know that."’
He was sentenced to a year in jail, placed on
probation for four years, and ordered to register as a sex offender.
"‘You basically abused your position with the church," Judge
David Grounds told Phillips. However, Grounds "allowed Phillips to
be released from jail on work furlough."
Neither story mentions whether the Church has taken
any disciplinary action against him.
On 17 February 1994, Robert Michael Tubbs, age
forty-two, of Slaterville, Utah, was sentenced to a prison term of six
years to life and ordered to pay therapy costs for sixteen boys he
sexually abused between June 1991 and August 1992 when he was a Boy
Scout leader in his local Mormon ward. Investigation began in May 1993
when a Mormon bishop reported that he had received a letter from a boy
saying Tubbs had molested him. Tubbs admitted to the deputy that he had
been molesting boys since the early 1970s. In 1985, he had been
assistant Scoutmaster in 1985; he was stripped of his Scout membership
after an allegation of sexual abuse in 1990. No charges were pressed for
lack of evidence, but Tubbs was told "never to take part in
scouting activities again and told to receive counseling by scouting
officials." He transferred activities from his ward in Slaterville
to nearby Harrisville; the crimes for which he was convicted occurred
with Harrisville Scouts.
Mark Edward Morgan, thirty-seven, of Springville, was
charged on November 14,1994 in Fourth District Court with
"first-degree aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14,"
for allegedly molesting a twelve-year-old boy in a ShopKo dressing room
in Orem.
Morgan was an independent distributor for Ramah
International, a company that manufactures Mormon-message greeting cards
for LDS missionaries, the recently baptized, and baby blessings. He
hired the youth "to help him cart boxes of cards to stores because
he has a bad back, said [Michael] Esplin, [Morgan’s attorney]. But
Morgan wanted the boy to be dressed appropriately when they called on
store managers, so they went to ShopKo to buy him some clothes. The
molestation allegation stems from when the youth went in a dressing room
to try on clothes."
According to Esplin, Morgan denies the charge in the
Orem case but admitted an earlier history of legal charges on child
abuse. According to an order signed by Thailand’s Ministry of the
Interior, Morgan entered the country in June 1989 on a temporary visa
and established a halfway house for orphan children. In 1990 he was
arrested for operating the facility without permission, pled guilty, and
was sentenced to three months in prison. In January 1991, he was
convicted of "indecent behavior" with children and was
sentenced to three years in prison. After serving twenty months (his
attorney claimed he was "incarcerated there for several years
before he got to trial"), he received a "royal pardon"
signed by the queen in August 1992 and was ordered out of the country by
Thai Immigration Division on 28 August 1992.
Carmen Cooley, Morgan’s ex-wife, made an earlier
attempt to get ZCMI to remove the cards, but "was turned
down." Then, two days after Morgan’s arrest on 16 November,
Cooley wrote a letter revealing Morgan’s police record and his
association with Ramah International, and sent it to the First
Presidency, ZCMI officials, and the media, demanding that ZCMI remove
the cards and claiming that "Morgan created Ramah in the 1970s ‘to
support his sexual deviancies with children. It is something more than
ironic that these "LDS" cards represent wholesome morality and
that as customers plunk their money down, little do they realize they
are contributing to this child molester’s triumphs," Cooley
wrote. She also claimed that Morgan is a member of North American
Man-Boy Love Association. This group, founded in Massachusetts sixteen
years ago after a mass arrest of men charged with having sex with boys,
"wants to legitimize sex with minors,... Land] end the ostracism
and stigma of men sexually attracted to young, consenting boys."
Supporting Cooley was Howard Ruft, Mormon publisher
of Ruff Times, a financial newsletter based in Mapleton, Utah,
with a circulation of 20,000. In an interview with the Tribune, Ruff
said he went to Thailand on a business trip in the late 1 980s, read
"a heart-wrenching newspaper story" about Morgan’s
orphanage, and used his newsletter to raise $65,000 for the
orphanage. Before releasing the funds to Morgan, however, Ruff
investigated Morgan’s background and obtained "plenty of legal
documents" to establish Morgan’s "sexual appetite." He
personally applied pressure in "Washington and Thailand" until
Morgan was prosecuted. The royal pardon was hardly a personal vote of
confidence in Morgan; the queen pardoned 25,000 convicts on her sixtieth
birthday.
ZCMI, responding to the pressure, pulled its line of
the greeting cards on 22 November. It did not carry a large number, and
its last order had been placed in July, according to the Deseret
News, June, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The LDS
Church owns about 51 percent of ZCMI stock. Deseret Book carried the
Ramah cards until three years ago when it discontinued the line
"after a professional difference of opinion, said Deseret Book
president Ron Millet."
Morgan’s mother, Rae Morgan Barney, who owns Ramah,
did not say that her son was innocent but claimed that Cooley was trying
to "discredit" him. She said that her son has no ownership
interest in Ramah and is not its employee but is an independent
distributor for Ramah and other cards. According to the Deseret News,
Barney said that Morgan volunteered not to distribute cards until
the matter is settled; but according to the Tribune, "After
his arrest, his affiliation with Ramah was terminated, a Ramah spokesman
said Wednesday." Morgan’s attorney Michael Esplin once
represented Morgan’s mother in a divorce case which resulted in her
acquiring ownership of Ramah. He called her "an innocent victim of
the campaign against her son" and claims that "‘no Ramah
profits ever went to Morgan’s Thailand orphanage or to any other of
his activities."’
Morgan posted $10,000 bail on 9 November and was
scheduled for a court appearance before Judge Joseph 1. Dimick on 20
December 1994. "Prosecutors say a plea bargain is possible."
Morgan also uses the name of T.M.Young.
In April 1995, Michael Shean, a
Mormon who engaged in homosexual activity as a Scout, then continued
both homosexuality and pedophilia through a marriage, the births of four
children, the establishment of a law practice in Santa Maria, and
extensive Church service and community service, pled "no
contest" to four counts of sexual misconduct. He was scheduled for
sentencing on May 30 but the case was continued to July 6. (case number
SMO 88-761, Santa Barbara County, 805-568- 2220). In October
1994, a grand jury had indicted him on twenty-six counts of lewd and
lascivious acts with at least nine minors; in a plea bargain,
prosecutors dropped twenty-two of the counts, and he pled guilty. As of
May 21, no action had been taken on Shean’s Church membership.
The Santa Barbara (California) News-Press devoted
169 column inches, including four photographs, two of them in color, to
his case on Sunday, 21 May 1995. The writers, Scott Wilson and Rhonda
Parks, point out in the second paragraph that "some 15 people close
to him" knew for fifteen years of his sexual sins but
"accepted as an article of Mormon faith that his forbidden urges
could be healed.... They may have missed an opportunity to stop a man
described by prosecutors as a predatory child molester."
The article does not mention if Shean, born in 1936,
served a mission, but he married in the temple; he and his wife, Jayne,
had four children.
He was a counselor in the bishopric in January 1980
when two full-time missionaries told church leaders that Shean had been
sexually molesting them. Clark K. McCune, a Lompoc dentist and president
of the Santa Maria Stake, "immediately summoned" Shean to a
high council court. Shean confessed, not only to their charge but
admitted to "decades of extensive homosexual pedophilia." He
was excommunicated, but no one reported Shean’s activities to the
police. Shean moved from north Santa Maria (First Ward) to Lake Marie
Estates (Second Ward) after his excommunication.
Acting on the recommendation and referral of the
stake president, Shean began weekly therapy sessions with Paul Bramwell,
an LDS Social Services clinical psychologist in San Luis Obispo.
Bramwell was one of three church-approved psychologists recommended to
Shean. Bramwell, whose California license expired on April 30, 1995, has
been transferred to American Fork, Utah. A member of an adjoining stake
who knows Bramwell considers him to be "a fruit loop as a
therapist" and reports another case in which he counseled a gay
youngster in his early teens to make himself unattractive to those in
his high school who were picking on him for his effeminate behavior by
eating large quantities of candy to develop pimples. The youth initially
followed this advice but found it unsuccessful. He has since left the
Church, lives out of the country, and is openly gay.
The course of Shean’s therapy with Bramwell is
described in letters from Shean, Jayne, and Bramwell to Mormon Church
leaders after thirteen months of therapy and during the twenty-two
months required to fully reinstate him.
In April 1981, Bramwell wrote to Nolan Phillips,
Shean’s bishop and a special agent with the FBI in Ventura, informing
him that "Shean’s therapy has been a success and
"recommending rebaptism: He added:"’I would have no
hesitation allowing him (Sheanj to work with my own sons.... However, to
ease the minds of those who may be hesitant, I would ask that Mike not
be allowed to work with youth for the next five years.... It is my
opinion that permanent change has taken place in this man."’
Five months later, Bramwell explained in a letter to
President SpencerW. Kimball in September 1981: "The focus of the
treatment was to eliminate sexual desires for male partners, the
abandonment of dual sexual lifestyles, [andl the development of
exclusively heterosexual interests in his wife.. .. I feel we
accomplished all of these treatment goals in the 13 months of active
treatment." This letter also stated that Shean’s confession to
the high council (and presumably to him) had admitted "‘sexual
improprieties with primarily adolescent boys over a period of many
years.... There was almost a compulsive urge to describe all of his
homosexual involvement throughout his lifetime. Unfortunately, he was
not able to view this behavior as adolescent exploration and thus began
a twenty-year quest for sexual gratification through male partners.
Because of his understanding of the unacceptableness of the behavior,
Mr. Shean began to develop what became an elaborate and successful set
of procedures to hide his homosexual behaviors."’
Writing in his own behalf a month earlier (August
1981) to Kimball, Shean said:
I knew that the things I had done were wrong and
abominable in the sight of the Lord, but I convinced myself that I
could fight and win the battle in a secret war. … In the months
before I was called before the High Council court I had come to grips
with the gravity of the offenses that I had committed, and the eternal
consequences of it all. … Spiritually I never doubted the
actions [excommunication] of our Stake President and the High Council
court ... But on many other levels, emotionally and intellectually, I
struggled greatly with the decision. I felt that I wasn’t the same
person who had committed the actions with which I was charged [by the
missionaries]. I had fought the battle for so long, and had finally
gotten beyond its grasps [sic] and had come such a long way, that it
didn’t seem fair, or just, or right to take away all the things I
valued beyond all else.
There have been times in my life, though, when I
have been blessed with the power of the Lord. As a missionary and
teacher I have felt the power of the Holy Ghost. I know by firsthand
experience that the heights that the light of the Gospel brings will
far exceed the depths of solitude and grief that I have felt and so, I
do humbly seek those things.
Shean, Jayne, and Bramwell wrote "several
letters during this period testifying to [Shean’s] mental health and
pleading for rebaptism." Although the letters, according to the News-Press,
are "emotional" about Shean’s "growing
understanding of his homosexuality, Shean never mentions pedophilia in
the letters. Nor does Bramwell." Jayne Shean wrote to the First
Presidency: "You need to know, Brethren, that I have forgiven my
husband completely for his transgression. It was, of course, very
difficult for me to understand, at first, how he could have been
involved in the kind of activity which led to his excommunication. But,
as we worked together, in counseling and in private, I came to
understand the reasons why those influences entered his life, and I feel
confident that this experience [excommunication] has been exactly what
he needed to be able to start over so that he can reach the great
potential I know he has, both within the church and in other
areas."
Shean was rebaptized in November 1981 with no
restrictions on his association with youth. In May 1983, he and his wife
wrote to the First Presidency seeking a restoration of priesthood and
temple blessings. "Having experienced the depths of solitude and
remorse," Shean’s letter states, "I fervently seek to be
once again counted among those who stand in holy places." The
restoration of blessings was granted in June 1983, twenty-nine months
after his excommunication. Before the year’s end, according to
"sworn affidavits included in criminal court records," he was
sexually molesting a sixteen-year-old boy in the ward whom he had
invited to his house for haircuts and whose parents he considered
"friends."
For the next eleven years, Shean coached baseball at
Righetti High School and for Little League teams, taught seminary and
Sunday School, and represented juvenile clients who could not afford
private attorneys. His coaching services included a dip in the hot tub
and a personal massage. One of these teenage clients filed a claim of
sexual misconduct against him in August 1994. The investigation among
his young clients and the youth he had coached "eventually included
nine alleged victims." In September, sheriffs deputies armed with
search warrants served on him at home and his law office confiscated
instruments of the alleged crimes: a hand-held vibrator, creams and
lotions, child pornography, notes and appointment books, and the letters
written by Shean, his supportive wife, his therapist, and his
ecclesiastical leaders between August 1981 and May 1983.
"Multimillion dollar lawsuits" have been
civilly filed by "at least four of Shean’s alleged young
victims" against him. Both Bramwell and Shean’s wife have been
named in four and the Mormon Church in two "for failing to warn
law-enforcement officials about Shean’s acts." The letters were
not made public during the criminal trial, but "will be important
evidence in the civil cases." An attorney representing one of the
four plaintiffs provided them to News-Press. "Several
victims" are also suing two of the baseball leagues where Shean
coached as a volunteer. The Babe Ruth League of Orcutt, California, near
Santa Maria, had settled one case for $25,000 at press time. The paper
provided no details about the civil suits except for the mention of two
brothers who claim that Shean, then coaching their baseball team,
sexually molested them beginning in the spring of 1989 when both were
under age fourteen.
The News-Press identified two ethical issues
as providing the heart of the legal conflict. First, how absolute is the
principle of confidential communication in a religious confession if
public safety is an issue? For instance, in one California case, the
courts did not exonerate a minister for not going to the police when a
man told him he planned to kill his girlfriend, then carried out his
threat. Wayne Dewsnup, current president of Santa Maria Stake, provided
a written statement about the case:
"‘There are procedures in the church to deal
with such matters in an appropriate way and we are following those
procedures.... While we recognize this tragic situation and many people
have been hurt, there are still many details that are being
investigated."’ The paper identifies the Church position as
absolute when confession is involved: "In choosing not to tell law
enforcement about Shean’s private admission to them, church officials
followed internal guidelines requiring confessions to remain
confidential," the writers say.
The second issue is the nature of homosexuality. The News-Press
writers point out that "church officials apparently made little
distinction between homosexuality and pedophilia. … The idea that
homosexuality is a treatable disorder is not accepted by the nation’s
three largest psychiatric professional associations" (the American
Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the
American Psychological Association). Consequently, because it is
not a "disease," it cannot be "cured," even though
such a belief is a tenet of the Mormon Church. In contrast, pedophilia
"is considered Iby experts] a disease, though one highly resistant
to therapy." The Church must defend itself against the charge that
it conflated homosexuality with pedophilia as a psychological disorder
that could be cured." According to "lawyers for Shean’s
alleged victims, … his therapy was medically unproven and did nothing
to stop a public threat. Attorney Steve Hamilton stated: "‘The
church failed to report prior incidents of child molestation in order to
protect its image and reputation in the community. … They
essentially committed a cover-up. In doing this, they exposed the entire
community to potential future sexual misconduct."’
According to David Magnusson, a partner in the Santa
Barbara firm of Haws, Record, Williford & Magnusson, who is
representing Bramwell, "State law in 1980 did not require doctors
to report child abusers, only their victims. ‘His [Bramwell’s]
position was that there were no reporting requirements, if there even
was something to report." Deputy District Attorney Eugene Martinez,
who headed the criminal case against Shean, "argues that Bramwell
committed a misdemeanor by failing to report his patient. He [Shean] was
cautious, he courted his victims, he sorted out those least likely to
tell on him... He was very predatory. … Bramwell did have an
obligation to report him."’ The statute of limitations has
expired for prosecuting Bramwell criminally. His license in both
California and now Utah were in good standing.
The Church’s attorney, John McNicolas of Westwood,
refused to comment on the lawsuits.
The article quoted Don LeFevre, director of Church
Public Relations: "‘Forgiveness is a matter between the
individual and the Lord. He will forgive who [sic] he will forgive. But
a banishment is not meant to be forever. In fact, we are encouraged to
rally around a person who has been excommunicated to help bring them
back into the church. But forgiveness must be preceded by penance. And
there is a lot of penance involved."’
The article also quoted Joseph Nicolosi, a clinical
psychologist in Encino, California, who had spoken to an enthusiastic
audience at BYU and a skeptical one at the University of Utah in
February. Nicolosi claims that homosexuality is a "‘gender
disorder"’ resulting from inadequate "‘attention,
affection [and] approval … from their fathers."’ According to
the News-Press, "Nicolosi, like the Mormon Church, makes
little distinction between the roots of homosexuality and homosexual
pedophilia, saying that both are psychological disorders stemming from
father-son dysfunction."
According to Dario Bejarano, Shean’s attorney and
former law partner, "The Mormon faith once helped his client
assuage private agony. In refusing to contest the criminal accusations
against him. - . - Shean is embarking on his next search for spiritual
forgiveness. ‘His religion is very important to him. That’s part of
the reason for entering these pleas. He not only feels he needs to be
right with himself, but with his God and his church. Seeking repentance
is very important to him."’
At the court hearing on 6 July, the case was
continued pending psychiatric evaluation. Shean appeared impeccably
suited and surrounded by his entire family. In August he was sentenced
to a maximum of fourteen years in prison with parole eligibility before
that time. It is not known whether any action has been taken on his
Church membership.
Ralph E. Neeley found his victim in his Mormon ward
in West Beaumont, Texas.
In October 1992, he befriended Natalie (a pseudonym),’
aneight-year-old. Over the next six months, he would "fondle
the child under his coat as she sat on his lap in a church pew. Neely
also admitted to performing sexual acts with the girl in unoccupied
rooms of the church, at the Jefferson County Airport, and at his
apartment." On one occasion, he "went to her bedroom window
and shone a flashlight in on her." He also admitted that he would
follow Natalie’s parents when they took her to school, take Natalie
from the school, "drive her to another location, and perform sexual
acts on her, then return her to class before the tardy bell rang."
The abuse apparently ended in May 1993. Neeley called a police officer
on 21 July and reported that he had "sexually assaulted a
child." The next day, he told the officer he had been "‘having
an affair"’ with a child at church.
Neeley pleaded guilty on 10 January 1994 to a charge
of aggravated sexual assault on a child. He was later excommunicated.
He admitted "having sexual contact with a child
in Arkansas 20 years ago. Court records show that a charge of indecent
exposure filed against Neeley was dismissed in February 1990."
Criminal district Court Judge Larry Gist said
"Neeley had a virtually uninterrupted pattern of deviant sexual
behavior for 20 years, and only stopped when he got caught." He
said this was "‘the worst case of child molestation’ he had
seen. ‘You are what every parent fears.... You are the guy that takes
advantage of people’s trust—especially at church."
Gist sentenced him to life imprisonment. The
forty-four-year-old Neeley, whose attorney had recommended "ten
years deferred probation and attending a sex offender program,"
collapsed and had to be taken out of the room to recover.
The police officer, Sergeant Bill Davis, to whom
Neeley had confessed, described Neeley "as the worst pedophile he
has investigated in his twenty-two years as a police office. … ‘This
is something [Natalie] will have to deal with [for] the rest of her
life. … It’s most appropriate that he be incarcerated the rest of
his life, not for one child’s sake, but for all the children he might
have come in contact with were he a free man.
Natalie’s mother filed a civil suit against both
Neeley and the Church, claiming that "church leaders did not report
the incident to police or to the girls’ parents. Church leaders say
they encouraged Neeley to go to police or the Church would report him.
They also say they cooperated with police during their investigation
The civil suit was originally scheduled for trial
August 8. Only days before it actually went to court, the Church
settled out of court. As part of the settlement Natalie, her parents,
and other parties agreed not to talk about the terms or the amount.
In August 1992 when Heather (a pseudonym) was
thirteen and a Beehive in Azusa Third Ward, California, she went with
the ward’s Aaronic Priesthood and Young Women on a camping trip to
Prado Regional Park in Chino, California. Christopher Bearnson, age
twenty-seven, married and the father of three, drove his van up
separately to provide priesthood presence during the three or four days
of the camp. According to a newspaper report, at the time of this
incident he was "accorded the honor of praying at temple"
(apparently the reporter’s attempt to explain what holding a temple
recommend meant). The girls slept in tents. Bearnson slept in his van.
On the last night of the camping trip, he "invited four of the
girls, including [Heather] into his van for a private party, offering to
give them massages. He began rubbing Heather’s back, then the sides of
her breasts, then her buttocks. When he put his hand on her thigh and
began moving it up, she "jumped." After he had touched
her, he asked her "‘if I liked him,"’ said Heather, who
broke into sobs while giving her testimony. "‘1 just looked at
him and he said he was going to take that for a yes."’ The judge
called a recess after Heather broke down on the stand.
Heather’s mother, Patsy Miller, named him and the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as defendants in a $1
million lawsuit. Heather’s mother said that the bishop, Bradley Cuder,
called her on August 6,1992, which would have been immediately after the
camping trip, and asked her to bring Heather to see him. "He said
he was trying to get acquainted with all the youngsters in the
church." During the private interview, Heather told the bishop
about the molestation; afterwards, in tears, she told her mother what
Bearnson had done. Patsy, furious, phoned Cuder and "yelled"
at him "for not telling her sooner that her daughter had been
molested. [She] also was furious with Cuder’s response: He said he had
wanted to talk to [Heather] first. He also said he told [Heather] it was
up to her to tell her parents." In a deposition and in court
testimony, Cuder claimed that he did not hear about the abuse until
"several weeks" after the campout.
One of the newspaper accounts said: "There is no
limit on the amount of the award that the plaintiffs could receive if
they win." The two points at issue were Heather’s violated trust
in an authority figure from church and also the Church’s negligence.
The Church settled for an undisclosed amount.
Heather wasn’t the only one who alleged that
Bearnson fondled her. Marni (a pseudonym) had been on these camping
trips before and testified reluctantly that two years earlier, in 1990
when she was fourteen, she and another girl, Jennie (a pseudonym), had
gone to Bearnson’s tent, lain down, and pretended to be asleep.
Bearnson slipped his hand under her shirt and rubbed her breasts, she
testified. According to another version, he "had grabbed and
fondled [her] breasts and rubbed his genitals against her."
Marni’s reluctance to testify is manifest by the
fact that she had been served with a subpoena but did not appear. Her
mother said she had run away from home; but when the judge issued a
warrant for her arrest, Marni’s mother "located her."
Her testimony both confirmed and contradicted
testimony by two earlier witnesses. Jennie, who had testified earlier,
said that Bearnson had also exposed his genitals. Marni said he did not.
Marni’s older sister, Peggy (a pseudonym), although still a teenager,
was a chaperon on the camping trip. She noticed that Marni and Jennie
were missing, began looking for the girls, found them in Bearnson’ s
tent but testified that Bearnson was asleep. To the contrary, Marni
says, he was "awake the entire time."
Peggy said she had told other chaperons about finding
Marni and Jennie in Bearnson’s tent, then told "other adult
church members," and finally went to talk to the man who was then
bishop, Robert Wise. As she remembers, "‘he told us nothing had
happened that night[;] and if anything happened, it was the girls’
fault."’ According to another report of Peggy’s testimony, Wise
told her: "‘Chris Bearnson is part of the priesthood.., and
nothing like that happens in our church.’ The bishop suggested that
she had made up the story to get attention. Wise denied ever talking to
the girl about the incident. Both he and Cutler denied they knew of
allegations against Bearnson before the 1992 campout."
Peggy also apparently told the court (the report does
not make the source of this statement clear) that Wise "allegedly
ignored the fact that, according to Mormon doctrine, a lone adult male
is forbidden from ever being alone with females other than his
wife."
Peggy’s and Marni’s mother, Susan-Lyn Gasparrelli
(not a pseudonym) also testified that she "went to Wise to voice
her concerns. When he told her he was not taking any action, she became
angered and got into a ‘heated argument’ with him," The
"issue of notice" was "the crux of the case against the
church: … did Church members in authority know of [this] alleged 1990
molestation?"
John P. McNicholas, the Church’s attorney, read to
the jury a letter Peggy had written (its date and her reason for writing
it were not reported) describing Bearnson as a canng individual whom she
fully trusted and could ‘never see Chris as doing such a thing."’
Susan-Lyn had written a similar letter, describing Bearnson as a
respectable and trustworthy man." Peggy said she had written the
letter before learning that he had molested Marni and that she would
"not write that letter now." The news account does not say
when Susan-Lyn was supposed to have written her letter nor why. However,
both Marni and her mother "claim they repeatedly told Bishop Robert
Wise of improper activities."
A fourth teenage girl was also "involved
in" the same 1992 incident with Heather and also sued Bearnson and
the Church but settled out of court the day before jury selection began.
Part of the settlement was agreeing not to discuss the details.
Bearnson’s guilt was not in question. As part of
the police prosecution before the civil suit, Bearnson had pleaded
guilty in 1992 to one count of committing lewd acts with a child and was
placed on five years’ probation; and "the church stripped him of
his status," which presumably means he was excommunicated. He was
placed on five years’ probation.
Testifying in the civil suit, which was heard in late
October and early November 1993, Bearnson, weeping, admitted giving
Heather "a backrub" and touching "the sides of her
breasts, . . . her buttocks," and also one of her thighs.
Heather said she "is now afraid of boys, scared
to go to church and has bad dreams. ‘I thought Church was like the
most wonderfulest place on earth. And people who go to church, they had
to be good, and I found out that wasn’t true."’
Stephen Garcia, Bearnson's attorney, and McNicholas
worked to discredit Marni’s and Peggy’s accounts, which formed the
basis of accusations of negligence against Church officers. Garcia
called their account "a ‘smoke job’ and a ‘fictional
work."’ However, the judge found Bearnson liable on all three
complaints against him: sexual molestation, battery, and infliction of
emotional distress.
The jury was instructed to decide if the Church was
guilty of the same three complaints, plus a fourth—that it was
negligent in "hiring and supervision." A fifth charge,
"negligent discharge," was dismissed "on the basis that
no evidence showed the church should have excommunicated him." (The
report does not clarify whether this means Patsy Miller charged that the
Church should have excommunicated him after the 1990 incident or whether
that he had not been excommunicated after the 1992 incident with Heather—although
in the latter case, it is not clear what being "stripped of
his status" might mean.)
According to the Los Angeles Times:
The Mormon Church has been found liable for the
molestation of a 13-year-old girl by a church elder.
A Pomona Superior Court jury Wednesday said leaders
in the Azusa third ward of the church acted with "conscious
disregard" for the girl’s rights and safety.
"1 thank God for this," said the girl’s
mother, Patsy Miller.
"Now it won’t happen to other
kids," said her daughter, now 15.
The jury "slapped the LDS Church with actual and
punitive damages." Even though a second phase of the trial would
determine damages, the Church settled before a trial. "The
settlement reportedly involved the payment of millions of dollars. Court
records on the case have been sealed, at the church’s request."
Lisa Davis summarized:
Church members rallied around Bearnson. One
chaperone even said that she would still be comfortable with Bearnson
as a chaperone for her own daughters.
(Heather’s] family moved and changed their
telephone number to get away from the barrage of angry calls from
church members. … [Later in the article, Davis says the family has
moved twice and still has an unlisted number.]
(Marni’s] mother, who also settled with the
Church … [said]: "It hurt me to think that he had his hands on
her. … The church knew he had molested those girls before. I’m
angry that they let him be there with the girls. If you can’t trust
the Church, who can you trust?"
Ellen (a pseudonym) had been molested twice by the
time she was fourteen. … Confused and distraught, she and her family
turned to bishops Arlo Atkinson and James Stapley, who also is a Mesa
city council member, Atkinson took her into his home in Mesa. She would
live with his family, and he would help shepherd her through the court
proceedings that followed.
Two months later, he began "a sexual
relationship" with her. It did not stop, even after she tried to
commit suicide. When ward members became "suspicious" about
the amount of time Ellen was spending with Atkinson, she moved back home
but the sexual relationship continued. When she became pregnant, she
"concocted a story" about date rape and was placed in a state
foster home. The foster mother intercepted "sexually explicit"
letters from Atkinson to Ellen and contacted the police. Atkinson was
excommunicated from the Church, served 132 days in jail for "sexual
misconduct with a minor, and was sentenced to three years’ probation.
When he was out of jail, he moved to California but continued to
telephone and visit Ellen. During the visits, he continued to have
sexual relations with her. Ellen placed her child for adoption. She
filed a civil suit against Atkinson, Stapley (his role is not
explained), and the Church, but continues to "suffer excruciating
mental anguish." Some ward members blame Ellen. They say she was
"promiscuous. "
On 16 January 1996, a civil suit asking for $150
million in damages and $600 million in punitive damages was filed in
Raleigh County Circuit Court, West Virginia, on behalf of an
eleven-year-old girl, Jane Adams and her mother, Rebecca Adams, acting
for her and also acting as an individual.
Two main groups were named as defendants. The first
group consisted of Raleigh General Hospital, a wholly owned subsidiary
of HCA, Inc., which is in, turn, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hospital
Corporation of America, headquartered in Delaware. The medical
facilities are named as defendants since (1) Adams, an employee of
Raleigh General Hospital, confessed his incest to his employer, a
Mormon, and (2) Jane was treated for vaginal injuries characteristic of
sexual abuse. Neither the employer nor the emergency room personnel
reported the abuse as they were required to by law.
The second group consisted of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Corporation of the President of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Corporation of the
Presiding Bishop, Gordon B. Hinckley, Thomas S. Monson, James E. Faust,
Boyd K. Packer, and Merrill J. Bateman. These individuals were named in
their official capacities as members of the First Presidency, as
president of the Quorum of the Twelve, and as Presiding Bishop
respectively. The suit alleges negligence on the part of
these individuals and groups that resulted in harm to Jane; no local
leaders were named in the lawsuit. Jane and Rebecca’s attorney,
Michael Sullivan of Columbia, South Carolina, explained, "Their
acts were probably more representative of instructions they received
from Salt Lake City on how to handle this problem."
The convicted perpetrator, James F. Adams, Jr., pled
guilty to thirty-seven counts of child sexual abuse in a criminal action
in 1994 and is currently serving "a sentence of 75 to 185
years in a West Virginia prison." He was also fined $30,000. The
sequence of events, as alleged by the complaint and as reported by press
accounts, is as follows:
James F. Adams, Jr., married Rebecca in the late
1970s or in 1980. Frederic was born in 1981 and Jane was born three
years later. In September 1988, James, age thirty-two, and Rebecca
agreed to a formal separation that gave physical custody of the
children, then ages seven and four, to James. The documents give no
details about the marriage, why Rebecca agreed to give James custody of
the children, where they were living at the time of the separation, and
whether Rebecca ever visited the children or had any contact with them.
James’s father, James F. Adams, Sr., a bishop in
Beckley, West Virginia, asked a fellow Latter-day Saint, Kenneth Holt,
if he could help James find a job. At the time, Holt was the president
and chief executive officer of Raleigh General Hospital. Holt agreed;
and in October, James moved into his father’s house and began working
as a licensed and certified radiological technician at the hospital.
"Within weeks" he began to sexually abuse Frederic and, at
some point, Jane as well. The divorce became final in late 1988.
In April 1989, James purchased a house in Crab
Orchard, West Virginia, and moved there with the children. The complaint
mentions James’s mother but describes no interactions between her and
the children. From late fall 1988 until February 1994, James
"sexually and physically abuse[d] both children despite the fact
that high officials of both … [the] LDS Church and Raleigh General
Hospital had actual knowledge of the sexual abuse of [Jane] and her
brother and had reason to believe it would continue without [their]
immediate intervention" (Complaint 11).
During the summer of 1989, James "became
romantically involved" with Margaret Sutton (named in the
complaint), whom he had met at Church. Margaret had at least one son by
a previous marriage, although the documents do not state whether she had
been divorced or widowed. They became engaged "within weeks of
their first meeting." Adams and his "family regularly attended
the LDS Church services and tithed to it" during the five
years covered by the abuse.
On 28 July 1989, Dena Dodson, who had been tending
Frederic and Jane for six months, learned "from the children that
their father was physically and sexually abusing them both." She
made an audiotape. About six weeks later on 8 September 1989, Dodson had
a candy-striper at the hospital deliver a note to James containing a
copy of the tape and a demand for $20,000. If he did not comply, she
threatened to expose his abuse. James got the note at work, went home,
and beat Frederic for exposing the abuse. He then told Margaret that he
had sexually abused both children and was being blackmailed for it. He
also telephoned to his father, who drove immediately to James’s house.
Margaret was present when James told his father the same facts: that he
had sexually abused both children and was being blackmailed.
James, Sr., told James, Jr., to (1) hire an attorney,
(2) tell Holt at the hospital about the abuse and blackmail, and (3)
tell Blair Meldrum, the stake president. According to the complaint,
James, Sr., gave James, Jr., this advice because he "perceiv[ed]
the threat posed to [James, Jr.] and the Church by the blackmail
attempt" and felt that Meldrum could help him "in containing
potential damage to the Church’s reputation." James, Jr., obeyed
his father. The complaint continues: "Both Meldrum and Holt were
well known to the Grandfather. The Father barely knew either of them. In
making these arrangements, the Grandfather was secure in the knowledge
that his friends, Holt and Meldrum, would remain silent about the sexual
abuse of [Jane] and her brother. And true to the Grandfather’s belief,
neither Holt nor Meldrum ever reported their knowledge of the abuse of
[Jane] and her brother" (12).
Dena Dodson next telephoned Holt and told him that
she had an audiotape of the children describing their sexual abuse. Holt’s
response to Dodson is not reported, but he told James, Jr., that if she
came to the hospital, he would "have security remove her."
Dodson also told "a Nurse Maynard" at the hospital about the
audiotape. Neither Holt nor Maynard reported the alleged abuse, as they
were required to do by law.
James, Sr., asked Meldrum to meet with his son
because James was sexually abusing his children. Meldrum came to West
Virginia to meet with James, Jr., who "fully disclosed to Meldrum
that he has sexually abused both children" and also reported on the
blackmail attempt. According to the complaint,
the purpose of the meeting was to contain evidence
of the sexual abuse … and to begin the healing of the Father. …
Meldrum, deviating from church policy and procedures, instituted no
church discipline against the Father, made no inquiry into the health
or safety of the children, made no attempted protect the children from
further abuse, made no attempt to persuade the Father to confess to
police or to seek professional counseling, made no attempt to persuade
the Father to either leave the family residence or allow the children
to leave, and made no report of his knowledge of the sexual abuse of
[Jane] and her brother to proper state authorities. Instead the Father
and Meldrum discussed how they might suppress disclosure of the
evidence the babysitter had obtained. Later, Meldrum would assure the
Father and his fiancé [sic] that "the blackmail problem had been
dealt with."
Incredibly, this same high church official would
elevate the Father to the position of an Elder of the Church only
months after receiving the admission of sexual abuse. In 1991, this
same cleric would grant the Father a "Temple Recommend" so
he could be married in the Mormon Temple in Washington, D.C., this too
in violation of church policy and procedures. (13-14)
"Within days" of this meeting, Adams
"attempted to tell" the principal at Jane’s school that he
was sexually abusing Jane and Frederic, because he was "concerned
that the blackmailer might approach school authorities." The
complaint does not say whether Dodson in fact attempted to tell the
principal, whether she dropped her blackmail attempts, whether she was
prosecuted for attempted blackmail, whether she made any effort to
inform the proper authorities about the abuse of the two children, or
what happened to the audiotape. The complaint also does not say why
Adams apparently failed in his attempt to tell the principal that he was
abusing the children.
After the meeting, President Meldrum assigned
"two LDS Church counselors" to work with James. It is not
clear whether these men (both held the Melchizedek Priesthood) were home
teachers, high councilors, therapists, counselors in the bishopric, or
someone else. The complaint says only that they "were held out to
be able to diagnose and treat the secular problem of pedophilia and
incest with a mixture of secular and religious treatment." The
religious portion of the treatment apparently consisted of their
priesthood authority to "heal the sick and afflicted by the power
of God" (14). Meldrum assured Margaret Sutton that "these
counselors would treat and cure the father," and she continued her
engagement with him based on that assurance. They met regularly at the
Adams house "for months" with James. Jane, Frederic and
Margaret were not present at these sessions. The counselors did not
report the abuse.
While these counseling sessions were going on,
"the sexual and physical abuse of [Jane] and her brother continued
without interruption" (15). At some unspecified point, James also
began abusing drugs.
These events occurred during the fall of 1989. In
1990 (month not specified), Child Protective Services (CPS) went to the
Adams house and "found severe problems but not enough to remove the
children from the home." The complaint does not specify why the
agency acted at all or what they were looking for. Based on Meldrum’s
assurances that James would be cured, Margaret was willing to marry him;
and their temple wedding was performed in April 1990 in the Washington
D.C. Temple.
At some point during the next year, 1991, Adams
"began stealing drugs from … Raleigh General Hospital on a
regular basis. Once again CPS visited the home and reported [that] the
children were at times left alone without food." Again, it is
not clear who complained to the agency, why the caseworkers took no
action, where Margaret was, and why there was no food in the house. Also
in 1991 (month not specified), Frederic was admitted to the hospital;
James had knocked him unconscious "for failing to properly measure
soap powder." James admitted that he had hit Frederic to the
attending physician, who failed to report it.
Also during 1991, Margaret telephoned Sister Holt,
wife of James’s employer, to tell her that James "was stealing
drugs and drug paraphernalia from the hospital and was physically and
sexually abusing both children." He also hither son "with a
baseball bat in front of [Frederic]" and was either violent or
threatened violence toward Margaret herself. Sister Holt may have been
the source of the earlier reports to CPS, since the complaint specifies
that "while on the telephone with [Margaret], she had heard the
Father violently striking [Frederic]" and that she "report[ed]
physical abuse of [Jane and Frederic] on numerous occasions to CPS"
(16). On all of these occasions, however, she reported only physical
abuse and never disclosed the sexual abuse or drug abuse. The Church
paid for Margaret to receive counseling, although it is not clear
when the counseling occurred or what it was about.
Margaret and James were divorced over his "drug
abuse and violence directed towards the wife and children." The
complaint is not clear whether these factors were specifically named as
causes in the divorce proceedings or when, exactly, the divorce
occurred. It says "after approximately one and a half years of
marriage," which would date the divorce during the fall of 1991.
However, Margaret apparently retained contact with the children; for in
1992 (month not specified), she brought Jane to the hospital "with
a ‘bruise of the genitals and tear in the vagina’; a most unusual
injury for a seven year old girl. This injury was not reported to state
authorities as required by law" (16).
In 1993, James began drinking and continued to abuse
drugs. According to the complaint, he was active in the Church during
this time. During the summer, Frederic told Margaret that James was
sexually abusing him and Jane, which should presumably have come as no
surprise to Margaret, but she "was too frightened of [James] to
reveal the abuse. That Thanksgiving, Margaret was present when James,
Sr., and James’s mother "admonished [James] about his abuse of
[Jane and Frederic]." Again Margaret did not report the abuse.
In early February 1994, a heavy snowstorm delayed the
opening of school. James videotaped himself performing "sexual
(anal) intercourse" with Frederic, sexually
"exploit[ing]" both children, masturbating both children,
sodomizing Frederic, performing oral sex with both children, forcing
Jane and Frederic to perform cunnilingus, forcing Jane to have oral sex
with James and Frederic, forcing Jane "to use sexual devices, such
as stun guns, dildos and related devices" on herself and Frederic,
forcing Jane "to engage in sado masochistic acts and exhibition of
the genitals in a sexual context," and "intentionally touching
the sexual organs" of both Jane and Frederic. According to press
accounts, the videotape lasted fifty-five minutes.
A few days later, Frederic showed the tape to
Margaret. Margaret telephoned Rebecca in Alaska and told her the
children were being sexually abused. Rebecca immediately telephoned the
West Virginia State Police, and two troopers confronted James at work.
"He readily confessed to sexually and physically abusing his
children" and was promptly arrested. Rebecca also called Holt and
told him that James had been sexually abusing the children. Holt, who
did not know that James had been arrested, once again failed to report
the abuse.
The police seized the videotape as they searched the
house for evidence. Before the trial, James
was repeatedly visited by Church officials,
including but not limited to Stake President Meldrum. These officials
urged [James] to plead guilty to all thirty-seven charges against him
to protect Defendants LDS Church, COP [Corporation of the President],
and CPB [Corporation of the Presiding Bishop] from embarrassment and
possible civil liability and also as not to interfere with the flow of
tithes the LDS Church received each year.
Church officials agreed to appear and testify at
[James’s] trial. Stake President Meldrum disclosed to authorities
the substance of [James’s] admission.
After a fifteen minute meeting with his lawyer,
[James] entered a plea of guilty to all charges. He is presently
serving what is effectively a life sentence. (19)
James pled guilty in June 1994 and was sentenced in
August. In 1994 (date not given, presumably after sentencing), Meldrum
wrote a supportive letter on Church letterhead to the State Parole Board
which "alludes to [James’s] ‘problems’ with his children, his
efforts to overcome these problems, his confiding in and counseling with
Church leaders and his relapse into pedophilia." The complaint
suggests that there was no period during which James abstained from
sexually abusing his children and from which, therefore, he could
relapse.
Approximately a year later, Adams petitioned for a
new trial "on the grounds that he was influenced by agents of the
… LDS Church to plead guilty so as not to embarrass the Church and to
further suppress evidence of the sexual abuse of [Jane] and her
brother." This request was granted (19). According to an Associated
Press account, the prosecutor’s office granted the trial request
"so they could seek more jail time." A new trial was scheduled
to begin 29 April 1996.
The last page and a half of the statement of facts
deals directly with the alleged conduct of the Church when faced with
sexual abuse. Jane’s and Rebecca’s attorneys claim that the Church,
the Corporation of the President, and the Presiding Bishopric, "by
deviating from their own guidelines for dealing with sex offenders and
by suppressing evidence of sexual abuse of and by LDS Church members,
ratified [Adams’s] conduct and granted him tacit approval of his
continuing sexual abuse."
Furthermore, the "numerous lawsuits throughout
the country" complaining of "failure to report the sexual
abuse of children" constitute notice that sexual abuse is a serious
problem and that the church’s policies are either not being followed
or are ineffective. The complaint accuses:
In these cases, Defendants have raised
constitutional defenses they know to be without merit, have engaged in
protracted litigation solely for the purpose of inflicting the maximum
emotional trauma on the Plaintiff victims of sexual abuse, have
routinely entered into secret settlements totaling millions of dollars
to silence these victims and further suppress evidence of the nature
and extent of the problem among its members. These settlements
are routinely reached "on the courthouse steps." Defendants’
General Authorities are the architects of these legal strategies
designed to inflict the maximum emotional trauma on the children
Plaintiffs in order to extract a favorable settlement
Further, LDS Church, [Corporation of the President
and Corporation of the Presiding Bishop] have been advised by their
own attorneys and clerics that they must address the widespread
problem of sexual abuse of and by church members. Defendants have
vigorously resisted this advice....
West Virginia counsel has advised Defendants that
they are mandatory reporters of child sexual abuse under state law.
This advice too was rebuffed. Even in the face of this advice from
local West Virginia counsel, the LDS Church’s General Authorities
persisted on advising local clerics, including Stake President
Meldrum, [that] they need not report evidence they received of the
sexual abuse of children.
[They] have commissioned and received written
reports on the problem of child sexual abuse among LDS Church
membership. The reports indicate [that] the problem is widespread.
These too have gone unheeded, their authors dishonored and
disbelieved.
[They] have, at the highest levels of the LDS
Church, engaged in a calculated strategy to hinder or obstruct
vigorous investigation of complaints of child sexual abuse of and by
its members; have attempted, by entering into secret
settlements with victims, to suppress evidence of the nature and
extent of child sexual abuse among its members; have ignored
repeated warnings by its clergy and legal counsel that this problem
needed to be addressed candidly and vigorously, all to preserve the
image and wealth of [the Church].
The next eighteen pages of the complaint specifies
fourteen counts: three counts of negligence on the Church’s part,
breach of contract, "outrage as to all defendants,"
"negligent training and supervision," "voluntary
assumption of duty," "civil conspiracy," "gross
negligence," and parallel counts relative to the hospital.
The specifics of the counts against the Church are
that the Church’s agents "had reasonable cause to suspect"
that the children were being abused and neglected and "therefore
had a duty to report as "mandated by state law" (21). The
existence of the "Helps for Ecclesiastical Leaders" handbook
and "the common law duty of a master to control the acts of his
servants, established a duty of reasonable care owed by Defendants to
[Jane]" (22). The complaint also argues that the Church had
"sufficient control over both [Jane] and [Adams] to effectively
protect [Jane] from [his] sexual abuse. [The Church was] able to compel
[Adams] as a member of its church to, among other things,
regularly attend services and donate one tenth of his income to [it] and
to subscribe to its teachings, policies and procedures. This special
relationship gave rise to a duty in [the Church] to protect [Jane] from
the intentional misconduct of [Adams], … said intentional misconduct
being known to and its continuation foreseeable by
Defendants" (24-25). The complaint also argues that the
Church "had a duty to train and supervise its hierarchal clergy in
matters both secular and religious as they relate to the organization’s
worldwide operations, including but not limited to:
assisting victims of child abuse, reporting incidents
of child abuse to proper authorities, making church leaders familiar
with state child abuse reporting statutes, and intervening in families
plagued by sexual abuse of children" (27-28). The adoption of
guidelines in 1985 "for handling victims of child sexual abuse and
sex offenders" constitutes recognition by the Church that it has a
responsibility to protect children.
The breach of contract count argues that the Church
had "unilaterally contracted with [Adams], a member in good
standing of the LDS Church, to take certain steps to protect [Jane], a
third party beneficiary to the unilateral contract, from the harm of
sexual abuse and neglect The consideration for [the Church’s] promise
was the continued membership in the LDS Church by [Adams] and his
obligation to pay one-tenth of his income to [the Church]."
The "voluntary assumption of duty" argues
that the Church defined its protective duty in its own manuals,
speeches of General Authorities, and practices and voluntarily assumed
that duty but breached it, "without excuse or
justification."
The count of civil conspiracy, though applied to all
of the defendants, singles out the Church to allege that it "conspired,
at the highest levels, to develop legal strategies to 1) thwart
comprehensive investigations of sexual abuse of and by members of the
LDS Church, 2) engage in legal tactics Defendants know to be without
merit for the sole purpose of extracting favorable settlements from
victims of sexual abuse and 3) suppress evidence of the failure of
Defendants’ policies for dealing with the problem of sexual abuse.
This was done so as not to interfere with [its] recruitment efforts or
to interfere with the enormous flow of monies received.., in the form of
tithing or corporate profits from secular business entities owned and
operated by [the Church] worldwide, said monies totaling billions of
dollars annually" (31). The complaint had earlier asserted, without
citing a source, that the Church "owns businesses generating
approximately four hundred million dollars a year" with tithing
adding $4.3 billion to that sum (6).
The "outrage" count, which applies to all
defendants is that they "while acting within the scope of their
employment, intentionally and without cause or justification,
intentionally suppressed evidence that [Jane] was the victim of sexual
abuse or failed to report said abuse and did so with reckless abandon
for the consequences to [Jane.] … Defendants’ conduct was outrageous
and intolerable in a civilized society" (26).
One phrase occurs frequently, with variations:
"injuries . . . were inflicted by the Defendants in an intentional
matter, with malice, willfulness and in wanton disregard of [Jane’s]
rights to be free from physical and sexual abuse" (31). The
plaintiffs demand a jury trial.
When the Associated Press filed its story on
Wednesday, 17 January 1996, it included a statement from the plaintiffs’
attorney: "This is a prime example of an organization hijacked by
its own success," lawyer Michael Sullivan said. "When
confronted with evidence of sexual abuse, the church closed ranks in a
conspiracy of silence to protect its own reputation at the expense of
these children."
Don LeFevre, spokesman for the Salt Lake City-based
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said the church had not
seen the lawsuit and could not comment specifically on the case.
"The church is not in the business of covering
up," LeFevre said, "We teach our members to obey the
law." On Wednesday, 17 January, Bruce L. Olsen, managing director
of Church Public Affairs issued a statement:
We express our sorrow and deep concern for the
innocent children apparently terribly abused by their own father. Such
heinous treatment is beyond comprehension and the father has been
excommunicated from the Church.. The Church teaches that children
should be lovingly nurtured and protected. We join with decent people
everywhere in condemning abuse of any type.
We are also appalled at the allegations by the
plaintiffs’ attorney that the Church or any of its leaders is in any
way responsible for these shocking acts. We vigorously deny all such
allegations and are confident that we will be fully vindicated.
Actually, the Church is in the forefront in
combating abuse. Over the past few years as abuse has become more
prevalent in society in general, the Church has established a number
of programs to assist its local leaders in dealing with abuse cases
that may arise. And we have distributed nationwide radio and
television public information programs on the overall issue of abuse.
The statement, as reported, did not describe these
programs, nor did the statement claim any programs to help members (as
opposed to leaders) deal with abuse.
In the Reuters’ wire story, Sullivan also
commented, "At the very least, someone should have stepped in to
get the children out of that house. To leave them there at the mercy of
their father is unconscionable."
Sullivan also stated that a separate suit would be
filed on behalf of Frederic Adams, now fifteen, that "he does not
expect to settle with the church because his clients want to publicize
and expose alleged problems, and that the purpose of the suit was to
change the way the Church does business. We want them to recognize that
the present system isn’t working." He added, "This case is
about making huge institutions and the people who work for them aware of
their responsibilities to the victims of sexual abuse."
The accusation in the brief of exhausting, harassing,
and intimidating action on the part of the Church’s attorneys has yet
to be proved. However, it is clear, even from the incomplete records
cited in this chapter, that the Church has settled at least some legal
claims against it in actions that are closed thereafter to public
scrutiny while other cases are pending. Marion Burrows Smith’s
investigative article included a report that President Hinckley,
addressing a regional priesthood leadership meeting in Calgary, Alberta,
in September 1994, while he was first counselor to the ailing Howard W.
Hunter, responded to questions from the floor. One concerned child
sexual abuse. President Hinckley reportedly warned leaders that if they
had "the least inkling that people have a problem with this ...
then they should be left out of Church positions. … [These cases are]
costing the Church millions of dollars in lawyers’ fees and
settlements. … The Church is being sued for millions. … We have more
lawyers than we know what to do with."
Smith also reported that, in December 1995, the
Church joined eight other churches in filling an amicus curiae (friend
of the court) brief with the Texas Supreme Court to support the petition
of the Catholic Church that it be held immune from any civil suit
involving the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, "even
if the abuse has been reported to church hierarchy and continues to
occur," The Catholic church and the eight supporting petitioners
"claim that the First Amendment right to religious freedom exempts
them from liability even though case law holds them and their agents
responsible for criminal acts." Summarized Smith:
"Churches which preach family values send a highly contradictory
message when they spend long hours and big bucks to hide a danger that
destroys children. Many victims of abuse have pleaded with their church
leaders to use church resources for therapy of victims instead of using
the money to fight legal baffles against the victims."
She related the experience of a California lawyer:
I had a stake president who wanted to testify in a
sexual abuse case that had gone on for many years and involved many
victims. He had been very careful not to talk to the perpetrator alone
and not in a priest-penitent relationship and felt that privilege did
not apply.
The day he was going to sign the affidavit we had
prepared together, he called and said that a ‘church attorney’
told him he couldn’t testify. He gave me the phone number and asked
me to call the attorney.
When I did, [the Church’s attorney] said he
believed the privilege [of confidentiality] belonged to the priest and
the penitent I disagreed and said that even if the privilege did apply
in this case, the stake president/priest had waived the privilege. The
Church attorney said, "No, I’ve instructed him not to do
so." I asked, "You mean you have veto power over a stake
president’s inspiration and calling?" He said he didn’t think
of it quite that way. I replied, "I don’t doubt that one
bit"
At least eleven more cases since 1990 have been
indexed in a national database (photocopies of screen print-outs in my
possession).
• In 1989, thirty-six-year-old David James
Borg, a Mormon Scoutmaster in Sierra Vista, Arizona, pled guilty to
a charge of molesting two boys, ages thirteen and fifteen years old,
at his home and on scouting trips for five months in 1988 and
admitted that there were at least twelve more victims. He was
convicted and sentenced to thirty-four years in prison.
• In 1990, fifty-year-old Larry Gilbert of
South San Jose, California, pled innocent to molesting four girls
(the ages of three are given as eight, eleven, and twelve). A high
priest group leader, he was accused of molesting the girls while he
babysat overnight at their homes, One parent said, "I never
would have left him alone with my children if he weren’t a high
priest We considered him our family."
• In Charlotte, Tennessee, Robert D. Campbell,
whose title is given as "Mormon president of missionary in
Idaho" [sic] was charged in 1988 with sexually assaulting two
girls ages seven and nine "at prayer meeting." Campbell
told the girls not to call the police. After he was arrested, the
"church asked girls to take a lie detector test" The plea
entered was "drop-pretrail [sic] diversion." It is not
clear what action, if any, was taken.
• Robert Eric Longman, a Mormon missionary in
Corpus Christi, Texas, from Longandale (state name not given),
molested a three-year old in a bedroom while two other missionaries
talked with the mother. He entered a plea of "no contest"
to the charges, filed in May 1989, of indecency with a child. He was
sentenced to eight years probation, a $1,000 fine, and required to
pay $400 in court costs.
• Eric Patric Avant, age twenty-nine, of the
state of Washington, was sentenced to twenty-six years in prison for
molesting eight boys as Cub Scout leader in his Norfolk, Virginia,
ward. He had "accosted" more than thirty others, according
to parents. He had been convicted of "sodomizing an
eleven-year-old boy in 1979, but Church members didn’t check his
background, nor did they register him with the Boy Scouts of
America." The BSA requires that Scout-masters complete a
registration form and keeps a file of Scouting officials convicted
of sexual crimes. The families of three of the boys sued the Church
and the Boy Scouts of America for $35 million in 1989, for
negligence. The amount of the settlement, in 1992, was
"unknown." The Church sponsors more troops than any other
organization in America. Don LeFevre, commenting on how Scoutmasters
and assistants are called, observed, "‘Sometimes you win
some. Sometimes you might lose some. If an individual is not upfront
about his or her past, it’s a matter of the honor system."
• Two teenage boys in Oregon sued the
Corporation of the President in 1989 for $3 million on charges of
negligence. They charge that the Church hired James Francis Hogan as
a janitor, knowing that he had been observed hugging and kissing
young boys between 1977 and 1985, a span of twelve years. The
amount of the settlement is unknown.
• Richard Lloyd Dilley, thirty-one, of
Washington State, a Scout leader in a Mormon ward, pled guilty in
1990 to one count of third degree child rape and five counts of
child molestation for "repeated" offenses over a two year
period of the five foster children in his care. He had previously
been dishonorably discharged from the Navy for abuse.
• [Date missing] John Allen Midgett, a
thirty-year-old Navy petty officer, was sentenced to thirty years in
state prison for sexually abusing eight girls between the ages of
five and ten in his Mormon Sunday School class, beginning in 1986.
Sobbing and trembling during his ten-minute statement to the court
before sentencing, he said he had been powerless to control his
behavior because he had permitted the "disease" of sexual
addiction to overcome him, "‘I rationalized that if the
children did not realize it was wrong then it was not wrong,’ he
said. ‘I know you don’t understand how I could do that and as I
look back now I honestly don’t either. … I can’t look in the
mirror without hating myself … I, as you, will always hate the man
I was."’ He thanked the parents who turned him in because he
"lacked the courage to do so himself. … ‘Being turned in
was the answer to my prayers,’ he said. ‘I am so thankful to you
for doing that You saved me when you saved your children from
me."’ The prosecutor sought a sentence of fifty years, while
Midgett’s attorney requested a sentence of eighteen years; thirty
years was a compromise that reflected the judge’s appreciation of
Midgett’s confession, which spared the children the trauma of
testifying in court, but the continuing danger he would present to
girls "mandated a lengthy prison term." Midgett has been
excommunicated.
Only one parent addressed the court, a mother who
said her daughter had been a cheery, trusting six-year-old before
the molestation scarred her for life. ‘Now she’s afraid of
everything. - . . She can’t take dancing lessons because she’s
afraid. She can’t leave the house because she’s afraid. She can’t
leave me because she’s afraid. We’ve been through hell, and my
little daughter will be going through this for the rest of her life
because of you. If she can’t trust you, her Sunday school teacher,
who in the hell can she trust?"
• Jimmy Earl Brooks, 52, who was living
on a boat docked in the Galveston area and is described as
"associated with the Mormon Church in Galveston," was
charged on 22 July 1994 with molesting four children. He had earlier
been arrested in Georgia, California, New Mexico, Florida, and
Tennessee, on charges ranging from exposing himself to aggravated
sexual assault, usually involving children under age ten. Police
from Morristown, Tennessee, had been looking for him since March 7,
when he was charged with the aggravated sexual assault of eight
children. His modus operandi was to "teach Sunday School at …
churches around the country, which is where he came in contact with
most of his victims.... Brooks was able to make friends with
families and talk them into going sailing with him, usually at
night," according to investigator Connie Guelfi of the
Galveston Police Department. "While parents sat on the stern of
the boat, Brooks would go into the bow of the boat with some of the
children.".
• Richard Peterson of Mesa, Arizona, was
preparing to serve a mission when he was arrested for fondling a
five-year-old. According to a court-ordered psychological
evaluation, Peterson had spent the previous year counseling with his
bishop, Steven Smith, over his sexuality, about which he felt
extremely guilty but about which he was simultaneously obsessed. He
watched an erotic movie, then, "frustrated and curious,
chastised by his bishop and church because of [anl indiscretion with
his girlfriend, forbidden to masturbate, he unfortunately turned to
an innocent five-year-old girl." The girl’s family received
such "a barrage of abuse" that they have moved twice and
still use an unlisted telephone number.
• Larry Judd, a Mesa, Arizona, school teacher,
was constantly involved with his ward’s Boy Scout troop and Young
Women’s camping program. He admitted molesting twelve girls over a
period of about twenty years at girls’ camps, where he volunteered
as the priesthood chaperone. He "would make excuses to go into
the girls’ cabins at night or to be alone with one, even for a
moment." He would slip his hand into their bathing suits to
fondle their genitals or fondle them over their clothes. Once he
"attacked a sixteen-year-old in the church Scout room."
The court received forty-five letters testifying to his good
character. The family of one victim had to move from the
neighborhood. One mother told the police: "‘People just kind
of keep insinuating, don’t, don’t rock the boat here; he’s a
good man, you know.’
Although these cases, documented from public sources,
are fragmentary, they establish that Mormon men are not invulnerable to
pedophilia, that even carefully brought-up Mormon children are not safe
from pedophiles who use the Church to approach them, and that the
American legal system, while it may not be the first resort for
distraught and angry parents of abused children, is being employed more
frequently. In none of these circumstances is the Mormon Church unique.
Rather, it shares these characteristics with many other American
denominations.
The first lawsuit filed against an American clergyman
for sexual abuse of a child occurred in 1984. Now, at least one such
suit is filed each day.
Law suits against churches seem like very cumbersome
and unsatisfactory ways of dealing with clergy abuse. But some observers
see them as inevitable when angry and frustrated parents hear the
message that their church is not really interested in helping their
child as much as it is interested in damage management and image
manipulation. A law suit, some feel, is the only way to get the
attention of an unresponsive organization.
What lies in store for Mormonism? Observers of
Mormonism point out the extraordinary amount of trust most members have
for leaders, the high level of loyalty that makes injured members
hesitate to seek legal redress, and the generally sympathetic and
supportive response of local leaders. All of these reasons suggest that
candor and helpfulness in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse can
defuse and diffuse potentially explosive situations. Almost certainly,
nonresponsiveness or dismissiveness from bishops and stake presidents to
whom allegations are brought will lead LDS parents who feel betrayed to
seek other avenues for justice and help. As some of the victims in this
chapter have already done, others will almost certainly lead to the
courts.
