Mormon abuse cases are cases of confirmed and alleged abuse, including child sexual abuse, by churches in the Latter Day Saint movement and its agents.
In March 2018, MormonLeaks, a watchdog website, released a December 2, 2017 recording, taken in a Chandler, Arizona hotel conference room, of an interview of Joseph Bishop, a former LDS Church mission president, then 85, by McKenna Denson, a 55-year-old woman from Pueblo, Colorado. In the recording, Denson, who first poses as a Latter-day Saint sectarian faith reporter, accuses Bishop of having abused her in January 1984, while he was her mission president at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, taking her to his private study with a day bed, tearing open her blouse pulling up her skirt, and successfully penetrated her against her will,[18] her being spared continuation of the rape due to his erectile dysfunction.[19][20]
In December 2020, the case was dismissed at the request of both the church and Denson.[21]
Denson may have reported the abuse to her subsequent Washington, D.C., mission-field leader in 1984 or 1985.[22] In 1987, she reported it to her local congregation's bishop, Ron Leavitt, a microbiology professor at Brigham Young University (BYU).[23] (Leavitt told the Salt Lake Tribune in 2018, "I felt the allegations were groundless" because, among other factors, his assumption potential MTC presidents receive extensive vettings.[24]) Per some reports, what Leavitt was told was that Denson and another missionary were taken by the MTC president to the basement of the MTC and shown pornography.[25] Denson says that in 1988 she told at least one LDS Church general authority, Carlos Asay. Asay has since passed away and the LDS Church states it has no record of Denson's meeting with Asay.
In 2010, Denson told her local Pleasant Grove, Utah, ecclesiastical leaders, who referred the matter to local police. Pleasant Grove police made a routine call to the Denson's home verifying she did not need emergency assistance and did not open an investigation of her accusations[26][27][28] because they had occurred outside of Pleasant Grove's jurisdiction.[29]
Within the recording, Joseph Bishop says he does not remember his interactions with Denson transpiring in the manner she describes. Bishop says that while president over the MTC he engaged in inappropriate behaviors of which he regrets, involving more than one young woman serving at the MTC, including having given a back rub that became "too frisky" to a young-woman once-missionary trainee who served as his and his wife's assistant at his family's home.[30] (This then-assistant to Bishop's family later reported the 1985 abuse by him to her bishop in 2010.[29])
Bishop said that some young women missionary trainees at the MTC would have flashbacks to previous experiences of sexual trauma and would counsel with MTC leaders (in worthiness interviews) for spiritual guidance; he said he was "the last person who should have been" providing pastoral counseling to these young women.[31]
Joseph Bishop's son and attorney, Greg Bishop of Park City, Utah,[32] told reporters that at the time of the interview, his father and client was on medications and recovering from surgery, and lacked mental acuity, and that many of his statements in the recording reflect this confusion.
Furthermore, Greg Bishop said that sometime after Denson returned to Provo, Utah, from Washington D.C., she showed her breasts to Joseph Bishop without solicitation.[29][33][34] Denson has denied this, stating that the last time she met with Bishop was at the time of the assault: "I did not speak to that man again until Dec. 2, 2017."[35] BYU police stated that, during their 2017 investigation, Bishop told them that at the MTC, he asked Denson to show him her breasts.[36] (Bishop's son and attorney says his father and client does not remember making that statement to police.[22]) The Utah County attorney's office said that it likely would have prosecuted Bishop if Utah's statute of limitations for rape (which up until the 1990s had been four years) had not expired. The case was closed December 23, 2017.[37]
Greg Bishop distributed to the news media excerpts from a dossier compiled by attorney David Jordan of Stoel Rives, who had been hired by the LDS Church, which contained Denson's LDS Church membership record, and which detailed the history of investigations of Denson's accusations within various jurisdictions, as well as for alleged crimes such as criminal fraud. Denson had reported over a half-dozen times that she was assaulted by numerous men on numerous separate occasions. Jordan's dossier says that Denson later retracted her initial accusations on certain occasions as having been false. None of these accusations have been prosecuted.[38][39][40][41]
The accuser's legal counsel, Craig Vernon, made the LDS Church aware of the recording in January 2018.[42] Settlement negotiations between Denson and church were in progress when the recording was publicly released in March 2018 by MormonLeaks, which she had not initially authorized.[36][43] but came to do so, after the fact.[44] After the recording became public, the negotiations stalled. On April 4, 2018, Denson filed civil suit in the U.S. District Court for Utah against the church and Joseph Bishop for redress with respect to her mental, physical, and economic hardships caused by the alleged sexual assault and battery, negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud, fraudulent nondisclosure and fraudulent concealment.[45][46][18][27][47]
On May 15, 2018, attorneys representing both Joseph Bishop and the LDS Church filed motions to dismiss Denson's suit, arguing that the statute of limitations for Denson to file these claims had expired long before.[48] On August 13, 2018, U.S. District Judge Dale A. Kimball dismissed most of the lawsuit, except for its fraud allegations against the LDS Church.[49]
In May 2019, Denson's lawyers asked to be removed from the case with the judge approving the request on the same day.[50]
The LDS Church has not concluded its investigation into Joseph Bishop. The church hired an outside law firm to interview him, his accusers, and others. The church had been made aware of a second accuser in 2010. No action was taken at the time because of Bishop's adamant denial of the accusations.[51] Ron Leavitt stated that in the 1980s, while he was serving as Denson's bishop, she told him that Joseph Bishop had taken her and her missionary companion to the basement of the MTC, and showed them pornography. Leavitt stated that he did not share this information with anyone at the time. "I didn't think it had much credence. I wasn't going to risk sullying the reputation of someone based on that kind of a report," Leavitt told the news media in 2018.[25]
In March 2018, the LDS Church publicized its abuse resource hotline for use by local church leaders, and released a resource document that says, in part, "Church leaders should never disregard a report of abuse or counsel a member not to report criminal activity to law enforcement personnel."[52][53]
The LDS Church states that abusive behavior, whether physical, sexual, verbal, or emotional, is a sin and is condemned unreservedly by the church.[54] The church teaches that victims of abuse should report it to their bishop or other trusted leadership, and should be assured that they are not to blame for the abuse. Bishops and other trusted leaders are told by the church to contact the church's Help Line before any further reporting takes place.[54] Abuse of any form should be reported not only by the bishop but also by the victim to local law enforcement.[54]
Newsletter author Meg Conley said she had heard from many women who reported abuse to their LDS bishop, and that bishops tended to have keeping the family together as a higher priority than physical safety. In some cases, she said they recommended marriage counseling so the family members being abused could avoid provoking their abuser.[14]
Donna Kelly, an attorney at the Utah Crime Victims Legal Clinic, said that in approximately 3,000 cases over three decades, bishops would sometimes show up to defend the abuser, but never the abused. She said church lawyers were more concerned about saving souls than protecting victims, and did not offer sufficient training to volunteer bishops to deal with abuse cases. Women were described by abusers and church leaders as "mouthy", and some were reportedly asked to leave their ward because they were being "too disruptive" by filing abuse allegations.[14]
All church members who work with children or youth in their callings are expected to complete an online training module titled “Protecting Children and Youth.” The basic training takes about half an hour to complete.[55]
In July 2023, a number of policies were put in place by the LDS Church in the United Kingdom to safeguard children and prevent abuse. Most notably, all British church members working with children, as well as members of bishoprics and stake presidencies, must now undergo a background check before beginning their callings. The changes came after several church members heavily lobbied both church and secular leaders for additional protections.[56]
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See also: Warren Jeffs § Sex crime allegations and FBI's Most Wanted |
A 2017 lawsuit alleges that polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, his brothers Lyle Jeffs and Seth Jeffs, and Wendell LeRoy Nielsen, along with 20 unnamed defendants, ritualistically sexually assaulted underaged female members of their religious denomination in the presence of other members and kept records about the abuse. Although sometimes confusion exists, the Fundamentalists and the LDS Church are entirely separate religions from one another.
In September 2022, Colorado City, Arizona-based FLDS leader Samuel Bateman was arrested on charges of destroying evidence related to a federal investigation which alleged he sexually abused 10 underage girls who he took as his wives in "atonement" ceremonies.[57] Three reported accomplices of Bateman, Naomi Bistline, Donnae Barlow and Moretta Rose Johnson, were also arrested and charged with one count of obstructing a federal prosecution and on a second count of abducting eight girls.[57] He was later found to have 20 wives, which included underage girls, and, according to his family, also sought to marry his teenage daughter.[58][59]
