Ep 97 - Lawsuits, Politics, and Temples
Ep 97 – Lawsuits, Politics, and Temples
On this episode, we take a step back and try to view the recent headlines with a little bit of historical perspective. From the current rape scandal, to general conference, to the Protect LDS Children march, we try to put historical context on everything which happened this past week. We’ll resume our historical timeline of early Mormonism next week, this week it’s just journalism surrounding the modern SLC Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Links:
Stop Protecting Sexual Predators
http://fox13now.com/2018/03/31/stop-protecting-sexual-predators-outburst-interrupts-lds-general-conference/
Protect LDS Children YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUSUZZatSX4OuckwPx3p_3g
Jonathan Streeter Thinker of Thoughts
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVTCFh3uDMH0GZlwl1JOoHQ
Oaks Christofferson on Trib Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIJ6gL_xc-M&t=556s
General Conference Sunday Session
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENDfYD-4giE
Russel M. Nelson ‘Ministering’ Priesthood Session
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WByHuTYV1yQ
Quentin L. Cook ‘non-consensual immorality’ 8:00
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2018/04/prepare-to-meet-god?lang=eng
Mormon ‘non-consensual immorality’ reddit megathread
https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/89hy39/lds_nonconsensual_immorality_headlines_megathread/
McKenna Denson v. Joseph Bishop & LDS Inc.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4431649-Denson-v-Bishop-LDS-Church.html
$40 mil/year in humanitarian aid
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865657898/LDS-Church-welfare-humanitarian-efforts-average-40-million-per-year-apostle-says.html
Mormon Leaks ‘In which they discuss politics with Senator Gordon Smith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4FPVZH8fIg
History of MTCs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missionary_Training_Center#Provo_Campus_of_the_MTC
Dallin Oaks Small and Simple Things
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0fQ0ABgWKU
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2018/04/small-and-simple-things?lang=eng
Dan Coats Director of National Intelligence
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/who-we-are/leadership/director-of-national-intelligence
Dan Coats non-profit philanthropic organization
http://www.sipr.org/article/a-history-of-far/
Dan Coats Mending Fences
https://books.google.com/books/about/Mending_Fences.html?id=AeHkAAAAMAAJ
Church Statements on Separation of Church and State
https://www.culteducation.com/group/1057-the-mormon-church/13986-the-lds-church-and-politics.html
Ambassador John Huntsman Jr.
https://ru.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/our-ambassador/
Dallin Oaks Criticism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxyiHLg59ks
Show Links:
Website http://nakedmormonismpodcast.com
Twitter @NakedMormonism
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Patreon http://patreon.com/nakedmormonism
Music by Jason Comeau http://aloststateofmind.com/
Show Artwork http://weirdmormonshit.com/
Legal Counsel http://patorrez.com/
Quick preface, all the audio clips in today’s show are used under creative commons licensing and are used legally for commentary and critique purposes. Most are used with permission from the content owners. The clips from general conference are owned by Bonneville media corporation but they are being used here under creative commons. You’ll find a ton of links in the show notes to all the full video clips and all cited information.
It’s been an interesting time for reporters who cover the LDS Church. A lot has happened in the past couple weeks and we’re going to try our best to do these multiple recent headlines justice and put them into proper context. I’m going to recount my personal experience with the Protect LDS Children march and try to offer a unique perspective as best I can while examining this in a way which makes this episode timeless even though it’s centered around rather timely headlines that won’t seem relevant in a few weeks.
STOP PROTECTING SEXUAL PREDATORS clip
That was during the Saturday afternoon session of April 2018 General Conference. If you’ve been following along the Mormon headlines for the past few weeks or you’ve listened to the last couple episodes of this show, somebody shouting Stop protecting sexual predators 3 times in General Conference seems perfectly rational and justified. But what about the majority of the 26,000 Mormons sitting in the crowd who likely hadn’t heard of the Joseph Bishop scandal, the Protect LDS Children campaign or anything else which may have justified this outrage? How do they perceive this outburst from the congregation?
The woman who spoke out has since come forward. Crystal Legionaires cited the recent Joseph Bishop scandal when interviewed by Fox News and also claimed she was quickly escorted from Church property. She’s since posted a thread in the exmormon subreddit where she also claims that she was issued a 1-year ban for all Church property.
Disruptive, out of place, uncalled for. A number of accusations have been leveled against Crystal for her public opposition, but it’s understandable that those people are not working from the same understanding of the Church as Crystal was when she decided to speak up.
That’s a point we can’t lose in this discussion. People sympathetic to a critical perspective of the Church see a completely different Mormonism than the average General Conference-attending Mormon. The Church is such a good system of morals, but their truth claims are completely false. The Church creates an amazing culture to raise families, but they teach bigotry and hold to racist doctrines. The Church has a no-tolerance policy when it comes to sexual indiscretions, but they protect rapists and pay out millions of dollars to cover up sexual assault within their ranks. The Church spends millions of dollars on humanitarian aid in impoverished countries every year, but they spend billions per year on for-profit businesses and on great and spacious buildings used for nothing other than magic ceremonies.
We’re talking past each other. Two groups shouting about the same institution, but at some level, Mormonism does all of these things, it’s just a matter of what’s important to the two tribes. What’s worth focusing on? What’s the most important teaching or most egregious immoral action committed by the Church? How can we reconcile these models of the Church and have a conversation about the issues instead of our subjective interpretation of what the issues mean?
Let’s present some of these issues. I’ll attempt to present what seems to be the crux of these issues and allow you to interpret for yourself what the issues mean. You know my biases by this point.
Let’s begin by picking up where we left off last week. Amidst the sexual assault Joseph Bishop scandal arising right before conference, the Protect LDS Children march launched Friday March 30th at noon. The march happened the weekend of the semi-annual General Conference, where 26,000 Mormons all gather in a congregation at the conference center just North of Temple Square. It’s important to recognize that a lot of those Mormons in attendance flew in from out of town on Friday morning and were planning on spending the day touring temple square and the conference center, but unbeknownst to them, there were nearly 1,000 people with picket signs marching 5 blocks up state street. Traffic was at a standstill with the police sectioning off all the blocks we marched on the busiest street in Downtown SLC. Buses were parked, people couldn’t cross the street through the march, people were late for work or had to wait longer to get to their lunch destination. All the logistical challenges a democratic system with freedom to gather creates was exactly why this march was so noticeable and important.
STREETER INTERVIEW
And now, as a little treat for us all, we have somebody on the line who was at the March and who’s been covering the Protect LDS Children campaign and the Joseph Bishop scandal since the stories broke. You may know him by his public presence as Thinker of Thoughts posting under the YouTube and twitter handles of Thoughts on Things and Stuff, but we call him friend of the show, Jonathan Streeter. Jon, how are you this fine evening?
You were on the front lines actually handing a booklet to the ambassadors the COB sent down, tell us what happened there.
Did Evil Apostate have a good time at the rally and march as well?
Once again, thank you to Jonathan Streeter and Evil Apostate for their quick take on the march. The rally, march, and gathering at the Union Event center afterwards made for a powerful and incredible day for those in attendance. I would recommend you check the Protect LDS Children youtube channel to see the interviews which were conducted, they’ve posted 4 so far at the time of recording this episode and there are many more on the way.
The march itself attempted to get the Church to change its policies on how bishop’s interviews are conducted within the Church. Namely, no more one-on-one interviews and no more sexual questioning. Let’s review a couple clips. These are all posted on the Protect LDS Children youtube channel which you’ll find links to in the show notes, and I’d recommend watching the videos there or you can watch the 360 video I took and posted of the entire rally and march. These clips are used with permission from Sam Young and the Protect LDS Children organizers.
First, the opening speech by Sam Young himself, here’s a brief overview of what the petition and march calls for. The clip begins with acknowledging the Church making a slight policy change where they allow parents to be present during bishops interviews, but as Sam says, the changes fall woefully short of what’s needed. This clip is just under 3.5 minutes, bear with me.
- Sam Young
The next person to speak was, Joelle Casteix, the Wester Regional Leader of SNAP, the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests. Joelle is a bit of an authority figure with her position in SNAP. She’s been trained to recognize sexual abuse at any level inside faith traditions and she’s been a powerful advocate of this cause since the beginning. This clip is just over 2.5 minutes.
- Joelle Casteix
The next clip comes from the speech given by Katie Langston. Katie comes from a unique perspective. She grew up in the Church and has just finished her pastoral training in counselling and theology to become a Lutheran Minister. She really drives the point home at just how abnormal it is for the LDS Church to practice worthiness interviews. This clip is about 2.5 minutes, have a listen…
- Katie Langston
The next clip is from Dr. Mark Malan, a board certified sexologist. As Jonathan said in the interview, Malan offers some much needed scientific perspective as one of his primary fields of study is the effects and treatment of psychosexual shame. This is where he delineates the differences between overt and covert sexual abuse happening in the Church. He begins by telling the crowd that the Sacred Stories collected on the campaign website provide a plethora of data for psychologists to examine and goes on to tell us what he sees in the data as a scientist. This clip is a bit longer, but I think it’s imperative to understand the type of abuse that is happening and be able to apply scientific definitions to it.
- Mark Malan
After that, he tells of Elizabeth Smart’s story where she recounts how she was told that having premarital sex is like becoming a chewed piece of gum. Once a person’s ‘virtue’ is taken from them, nobody is going to chew a piece of gum that’s already been chewed. He goes on to tell the story of Kip Eliason who likely killed himself due to shame of sexual desires and masturbation spurred by bishop’s interviews. He concludes with saying that sexual desires need to be acknowledged as stages of healthy psychological development instead of shamed. I’ll play just a few seconds of his concluding remarks
- Mark Malan conclusion
Finally we get to the last speech of the rally, Natasha Helfer Parker. Parker is a practicing family therapist and licensed sex therapist working with Mormons and Exmormons for the past 20 years who works with the Open Stories Foundation. She is particularly poignant and helped to properly rile up the crowd for the march itself.
- Natasha Helfer Parker
You may be wondering to what Parker was referring when she invoked Oaks name and said that apologies help people to heal. Back in early 2015, before the November policy was released making the Church’s stance on LGBTQ relationships abundantly clear, Oaks was quoted by the Salt Lake Tribune saying “We don’t seek apologies, nor do we give them.” In a follow up interview between Jennifer Napier-Pearce of the Salt Lake Tribune and Dallin Oaks accompanied by D. Todd Christopherson, the question was put to Oaks seeking further clarification of what he meant. During the interview, Oaks was fighting a bit of a cold and his voice is a bit like gargling broken glass, so I’m sorry if this next 1:21 is hard to listen to. Here it is from the SL Tribune.
- Oaks apologies
This interview was taken at a particularly interesting time when the Church was sponsoring a bill to push for religious freedom as well as non-discrimination in early 2015. Should you choose to watch the entire interview, you’ll find it linked in the show notes or you can search YouTube for “Trib Talk: LDS Leaders Oaks, Christofferson will appear on Trib Talk to discuss religious freedom…” Jennifer Napier-Pearce tries her best to nail the two apostles down on exactly what they hope to get from the passage of the bill, but it was an exercise of catching an octopus with net made of chain-link fence.
What would the Church need to apologize for? What have the brethren done to the members of the Church which would merit or demand an apology from them? It was made abundantly clear at the rally and march that the abuse perpetrated through bishop’s interviews is a psychologically damaging practice and simply changing the current policies to conform with the demands of the Protect LDS Children campaign is only part of the solution. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to demand an apology for causing the self-loathing and resulting suicide of members of the Church, but that would be admitting fault at some level, which the leadership of the Church has absolutely no interest in doing.
General Conference following the rally and march was interesting to watch. Many of us sat with baited breath awaiting some acknowledgment of fault or a policy change at some level in direct response, but it was naïve to hope for such an immediate response without any true legal or monetary threats.
The speakers at General Conference have an impressive ability to address concerns with veiled language. You have to understand a lot of Mormon terminology to pick out the important pieces from 10 hours of talks and hymns. The new prophet, Russell M. Nelson, chose to address worthiness interviews during the Priesthood session. His entire talk is 14.5 minutes, but I’ve extracted the relevant pieces where he seems to be answering the Protect LDS Children campaign and worthiness interviews in general. When he admonishes stake presidents and bishops to ensure each priesthood holder goes through the necessary spiritual and worthiness preparation required to call upon the power of god, he’s talking about one-on-one interviews to make sure young men are ‘worthy’ which includes probing questions into their sexuality.
Nelson Worthiness
As I said, veiled language and 10 hours of it to sift through makes for a lot of men saying so much, while at the same time conveying so little information. It’s necessary to stay on the lookout and know the terminology to pick out these references to current events within the Church and understand what the Church plans on doing about them.
The veiled messaging didn’t stop with Nelson’s priesthood session talk referencing the Protect LDS Children campaign.
Apostle Quentin L. Cook’s talk referenced the recent scandal with McKenna Denson, who we know as Jane Doe, and Joseph Bishop when he raped her in the MTC as the MTC President. The phrasing Cook used caused incredible backlash in online communities and social media. Here’s the clip from his Conference talk starting around the 8-minute mark.
Quentin Cook Immorality
The question remains, is ‘non-consensual immorality’ the best term for describing rape? Beyond that, his phrasing of non-consensual immorality being exposed seems to distance the Church’s part in the exposure and seeming efforts to cover-up the Joseph L. Bishop rape scandal. Saying “It is commendable that non-consensual immorality has been exposed and denounced,” masks what truly happened. Joseph L. Bishop allegedly raped McKenna Denson while she was a vulnerable missionary at the MTC and Bishop was apparently never punished legally or ecclesiastically for his multiple offenses of sexual abuse, even though he admitted on tape to confessing these illegal offenses to members of the Quorum of the Seventy multiple times during his long and colorful Church career. This rape scandal was exposed in spite of what the Church had done to allegedly cover it up. It was exposed even though the Church seems to have been working for over 3 decades to cover it up that it ever happened.
Cook went on to assert that ‘non-consensual immorality’ has been denounced. The Church has repeatedly denounced any involvement in covering up alleged rape by Bishop as MTC President. The Church has a long-standing no-tolerance policy when it comes to sexual assault. If the allegations contained in the leaked audio and subsequent reporting, this represents a vast disparity between policy and practice.
People are justifiably angry about many details of this story. For starters, who knows what a tolerance-policy for sex abuse would look like, so of course they and most other organizations have similar policies in place. Secondly, a Church or any organization having a no-tolerance policy for sex abuse and then actively covering it up represents a massive betrayal of trust held by every chapel-attending Mormon. We’ll continue to talk about the current rape scandal plaguing headlines about the Church, but another couple interesting details are worth throwing in the mix concerning April 2018 General Conference. We’ll get to Joseph Bishop and McKenna Denson momentarily, so put a mental pin in that.
A few historic changes occurred in General Conference. Specifically, they decided to eliminate the High Priests quorum and consolidate it all into the Elders Quorum. There could be many motivations behind doing this, but should I hedge a speculative guess, I would assume that Church attendance in High Priests is relatively stable being the older generation. However, some indicators have shown that Elders quorums are on the decline. A lot of people in the age range of 21-45 are leaving the Church right now and taking their families. Consolidating the two quorums may mask the current hemorrhaging of membership.
In addition, a new detail could only be noticed if you’ve watched every conference since the 90s. It was standard practice for at least the previous 20 years for the Church to read Church statistics in General Conference. Historically they’ve read the number of stakes, missionaries, wards, and total membership numbers. April 2018 was the first year in more than 2 decades where they didn’t read Church statistics from the pulpit. The information is still available on LDS.org, and if we’re to believe the numbers it exhibits a sharp decline in growth over the past 3 years, which may help explain why they chose not to read the statistics in Conference this year.
If the Church is cognizant of a significant decline in active membership and all the available anecdotal information is truly indicative of a large trend shift, it would be understandable that they would take certain actions to mitigate the decline.
Another interesting detail, one of the most dreaded aspect of active membership is home and visiting teaching. This is the practice where once per month members meet with other members to see how their family is doing and deliver the first-presidency message from the monthly Church periodical, Ensign. The practice is dreaded by the majority of members and they’re required to report their home and visiting teaching statistics to the Church. This practice was discontinued in lieu of a new program known as ‘ministering’ which will be much more social media and smartphone focused.
The Church also provides a fancy app which taps into your phone’s call log and provides caller ID on who within the ward is calling to minister. While this is viewed as a blessing by some, it should be understood that smartphone apps with access to call logs, pictures, and messaging collect a lot of data which can be sold to advertising agencies or used for other purposes by whoever owns the app.
As stated in the previous episode about Jane Doe and Joseph L. Bishop, the story is constantly developing. On April 3rd, Jane Doe revealed her name, McKenna Denson, to the press and called for a press conference. Peggy Fletcher Stack with the Salt Lake Tribune reported that the adopted daughter of Denson, a 35-year-old woman, said she was surprised to see her name in a dossier compiled by an attorney working for the Church to apparently dig up all the information he could find on Denson. This dossier has been used to smear Denson’s character and attempt to falsify her rape allegations against Joseph Bishop.
Press conference McKenna Denson
There’s a lot to take from the press conference, but the most important issue worth briefly highlighting is that settlement negotiations between McKenna Denson and the Church have ceased since the audio was leaked. Denson responded to a question about how far they’re willing to go with litigation in the case with a resounding claim that they are ready to go into discovery and litigate this for years to come. This story has gotten completely out of the Church’s hands, they simply don’t have enough extinguishers to put out this fire. We’ll be keeping tabs on this as it continues to develop.
Denson’s suit demands that the Church call the police first and eradicate its use of the Church’s internal sex abuse hotline. Settlement will likely be further discussed, but if Denson doesn’t take a settlement offer from the Church now that the lawsuit is officially filed, she and her lawyers will go to court, where the Church’s amazing lawyers will summarily dismantle the entire case, call her character into question, and obliterate any presence of McKenna Denson in the Utah court system. Denson will owe the Church’s lawyers all their legal fees for years of litigation and she’ll go away as just another rape victim who lost her case and the Church will never change. I’m sorry to be so pessimistic, but there are good reasons to go to settlement, especially when it comes to Bishop’s words vs. Denson’s words in a court of law. The presiding judge is also a believing Mormon unless he chooses to act ethically and recuse himself from the case. The case may sound really good at the surface level especially with the leaked audio, but in a court of law, Denson and her lawyers will likely be utterly destroyed, no Church policies will change, and Denson will be financially wrecked for the rest of her life for speaking out against the Church.
There are problems, how do we address them. We can’t even begin to have a conversation about fixing issues with the Church and its policies if we can’t even agree on what those problems are. Both sides of this conflict are talking past each other. A lot of people don’t want to see fault within the Church, especially those responsible for how the Church operates. Representatives for the Church minimizing these issues through specific terminology and buzzwords is a survival mechanism.
There are a lot of people that simply want to see the Church burn, and if a rape scandal is the match, then so be it. These diametrically opposed sides in the conflict will never resolve their viewpoints or reconcile differences. Maybe we can look at this with a broader perspective.
Let’s step back and try to gain some perspective instead of just viewing the details of Denson’s case. We’ve been mired in the details of this single rape scandal between Joseph Bishop and McKenna Denson since it was released, but it’s worth taking stock of how frequent similar issues like this may or may not occur. In 2017, a woman named Deb Diener published her 316-page expose titled ‘Instances of child sexual abuse allegedly perpetrated by members of the LDS Church”. This is 316 pages, some with one entry, some with 6 entries where members of the Church, often in high-ranking offices like ward bishop, allegedly committed sexual assault on children from 1959-2017. Each of these cases are representative of a major issue as only a few cases of sex assault are ever prosecuted in comparison to how many actually occur.
A challenge when it comes to trying to understand the size and scope of this issue is the ever-looming presence of Non-disclosure agreements. The vast majority of sex abuse cases within the Church are settled out of court and the identities and details of the settlement are usually sealed behind non-disclosure agreements, barring any outside media from learning any details.
When a person is raped or otherwise sexually assaulted by a trusted member of the Church, what would motivate them to take a settlement? Settlements are powerful tools in the legal process. A settlement stops a major trial from going to court, being caught up for years in litigation, reduces the obscene amount owed to lawyers for suits which would otherwise drag out for years, and it gets the issue out of the survivor’s life once and for all. If a settlement can’t be reached, the survivor runs a major risk of not winning the case, which puts them on the hook to pay the Church’s lawyers hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for years of litigation at $150/hr. Settlements reduce the headache and hopefully after a single institution has paid out enough in settlements they change their policies of their own accord to stop having to continue to pay those settlements. That last part of the settlement equation has yet to happen in the Church with the exception of simply reiterating time and again their no-tolerance policy on sexual assault. There’s as disparity between policy and practice.
Settlements are almost never paid out the amount of initial damages filed in lawsuits. A sex assault survivor files a lawsuit for X dollars, lawyers talk about it for a few months, then a percentage of that X number is paid to the plaintiff and their lawyers by the institution or persons being sued. Settlement doesn’t admit fault. Settlement merely pays damages and lawyer fees and usually includes these NDAs to keep the information from going to press.
In addition to Deb Diener’s expose of allegations of sex abuse within the Church, a number of headlines can be easily accessed when searching for the LDS Church and sex abuse cases. I’ve compiled a quick list for us to work with. The dollar-amount figures here only include initial filing damages, with only one exception, the dollar amounts of the actual settlements are never included in the headlines.
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Headline from Sept 5, 2001, Church reportedly paid out $3 mil on this case only
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Here's $750 mil for what seems to be a massive cover-up in 2000.
Edit: 2000, not 200.
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Obligatory Joseph Bishop story although it has yet to be settled
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Church settles Scout troop leader sex abuse scandal, concluded 2013. Apparently this settlement for an undisclosed amount (initially sought $5 mil in damages) took over 4 years to close.
Edit: Added year of settlement.
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Noel Anderson was just arrested and is being held in county jail. Obviously no settlement as the story is so new, but a story worth keeping an eye out for as it develops.
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Here's an example of Bishops not reporting sex abuse when it was apparently confessed by the perpetrator in 1995.I'm not sure this story falls under the scope of the megathread as the Church doesn't seem to be involved in the legal proceedings, but it does seem to illustrate when a bishop could have spoken up but didn't.
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Victim of Indian Placement Program settled suit with Church in 2008 before hearing in South Dakota Supreme Court. Details of the settlement were not shared with the public.
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Maine lawsuit claims Church leaders tried to keep allegations within the Church and discouraged mother of victim from reporting to outside authorities. Accused likely completed 10-year sentence in 2016. No further information on the Church's affiliation with the suit or criminal conviction of rapist, however, he was in leadership positions over children while the Church supposedly knew of his past record.
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A total of 8 separate lawsuits for sex-abuse in the Indian Placement Program as of 2016. No further information is available on the outcome of these suits unless there's some followup headlines I missed.
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Scout troop leader and possible bishop abused plaintiff repeatedly for 4 years, suit filed in 2011. No further information on if BSA and Church settled suit, but both organizations were included as being negligent for allowing man in a leadership position over vulnerable groups.
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California case where counselor in bishopric abused plaintiff for 8 years settled in 2010. Settlement was reportedly for $100k.
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Young Mens leader accused of assaulting 3 young women in Farr West Utah. Suit filed in 2010. No further information on whether the Church paid out settlement.
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A respected Priesthood holder in the community allegedly raped 2 boys for years in UK. Suit filed in 2008. No further information on whether the Church was involved in the case or paid out settlement.
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$25 mil settlement talks in lawsuit against BSA and Church in 2008 No further information of whether or not this was the final settlement figure.
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2008 suit against BSA and Church for covering up Priesthood holder's sexual abuse for 6 years. The offender apparently absconded to Canada and has yet to face up to his multiple sexual assault allegations in U.S.
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$45 mil went to mediation in lawsuit against Church for covering up for multiple accounts of rape over 2 years by a home teacher in 2007. Makes one wonder if there may be some ancillary motivations behind canceling HT/VT programs...
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2007 article of Ogden-area bishop using his position to groom and molest 3 young girls. No further information on the whereabouts of the suit.
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Lawsuit claiming $5 mil in damages for covering up for sex abuse since 2001, article from 2006. No further information on the details of the resulting settlement.
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[–]nakedmormonism[S] 2 points 1 day ago
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Another case of Native American child being abused in the Indian Placement Program. Abuse apparently happened in the 60s but was revived when plaintiff had PTSD flashbacks of the abuse. The suit attempts to correct institutional issues which lead to the abuse happening.
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[–]nakedmormonism[S] 2 points 1 day ago
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Seattle area bishop convicted with Church on the hook for $2.5 mil which was appealed. Attorney for the Church, Von Keetch, stated the jury ruling was a "miscarriage of justice on the grandest terms" and said the church plans to appeal on several points of "clear legal error."
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[–]nakedmormonism[S] 2 points 1 day ago
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2004 Primary teacher arrested for assaulting 4 girls ages 5-6. No further information exists on whether or not the Church was aware of his history with sexual assault before he was called to Primary instructor.
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4-year-old girl contracted genital herpes and it was later discovered that her abuser had been reinstated in his leadership position after being excommunicated for non-consensual immorality. The man was registered on the Child Sex Offender Registry, but this detail must have slipped past the bishop who called him to his position.
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2002 lawsuit against the Church for allegedly harboring a pedophile. Apparently the offender was registered on the Sex Offender Registry but the detail slipped past his bishop. The abuser was never reported or barred from leadership positions in the Church while being on the registry.
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2002 lawsuit claiming Von Keetch and other Church officials were aware of abusive proclivities of defendant, but never removed him from leadership roles or Scout leader, allowing him to continue abuse No further information is available on the outcome of the lawsuit or if it was settled with help from Von Keetch and the Church.
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Lawsuit filed against the Church seeking $120 mil in damages for covering up sex abuse in the Church and BSA in Oregon in 2002. No further information is available on the outcome of the settlement.
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Von Keetch claimed the Church settled this case which "lacked merit" in order to stop it from dragging out too long. Settled in 2001 for $3 mil. The details of the settlement being published by the Church is highly unusual for unknown reasons.
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Church leader taken into plaintiff's home was known by the Church to be a pedophile, but didn't warn his hosts before he moved into victim's home. 2001 case seeking $1.5 bil in damages. This case sought to open the Church's financial situation concerning similar lawsuits and settlements. No further information is available on the outcome of the settlement or whether the $1.5 bil was given.
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[–]nakedmormonism[S] 2 points 1 day ago
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An entire list of sex abuse cases and settlements from 1980-2000. This is an interesting list as it only tells the details of 3 settlements which were disclosed. More than a dozen other cases were settled with effective NDAs so the specific amounts the Church paid out is forever sealed.
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This is 2 days of intermittent cursory searching and I’ve found a total of $2,415,500,000 worth of damages filed against the Church for sex abuse cases in the span of the most recent 17 years. The Church champions that it gives out $40mil/year to humanitarian aid, which is about $700,000,000 in the same timespan, or roughly 28% of the dollar amount people have sued the Church over in the same time period. Don’t forget this detail, very few of these headlines actually include damage amounts filed for in the lawsuit, and the damages filed in the initial suits aren’t the actual settlement numbers, but what do we possibly do with those numbers? The real numbers in all the sex assault lawsuits filed against the Church are much higher than the $2.415 bil number, and nobody knows what the actual settlement numbers are. But what do we make of a religion which has been sued for 4 times what they’ve paid out in humanitarian aid in the past 17 years alone? People will often say the Church helps so many people, maybe these numbers put the help vs. harm balance into a bit more perspective for us.
Don’t give your tithing money to the Church! The Church is actively covering up sex abuse within its ranks, take them to court! Resign your membership! These are all weaksauce nonsolutions. The people within the system will do whatever necessary to perpetuate and protect the system, it’s the system itself which needs to be put on trial. But we can’t lob criticisms at a system if we don’t understand its scope and power.
The LDS Church is massive. It pulls in billions of dollars tax-free every year from tithing and makes untold amounts of money every year from it’s for-profit business endeavors and stock holdings. It wields unchecked political power while at the same time claiming to be completely apolitical because it’s a religious organization and interfering in politics would threaten its tax-exempt status.
We’ve seen social pressure force the Church to change on a few doctrinal issues in its history. Polygamy was denounced and eradicated in public practice when Utah was trying to gain statehood and the federal government disincorporated the Church and the Church’s perpetual immigration fund, as well as seized all assets the Church owned over $50,000. The Church allowed African-Americans into heaven when they realized the Sao Paolo Brazil temple was surrounded by people who couldn’t enter its doors and Bob Jones University lost its tax-exempt status for refusing to integrate. When the Church is threatened monetarily, it moves. These were social movements which caused the Church to change, but the financial aspect was always the primary driving force.
I don’t know how to address these modern issues in the Church, I don’t have a solution. Marching in the streets and gaining massive public support behind a woman who was raped by the MTC President all makes for good headlines until the next big thing comes along, but those are only tiny tools used to incite change, they only add pressure to the more effective ways of inciting change. I don’t know what solutions need to take place to stop the Church from doing what it’s doing.
Regardless of negative publicity, the Church continues to march forward and disregard any criticism. It continues to expand its ever-growing pool of political and monetary power. The behemoth has grown far beyond being reasonably reigned in by any person or group of persons.
It’s worth taking a moment to try and parse out what it is we’re dealing with when it comes to the Church’s politics. During the Trib Talk interview we played a brief segment of, Oaks and Christofferson both made it abundantly clear that the Church has little to no political coercive power when it comes to laws and regulations in Utah. We’ve seen time and time again that this isn’t really the case.
From an abstinence-only sex ed bill passed in 2012, to Senator Scott McCoy, the only openly-gay Utah senator who resigned due to unknown circumstances, to Prop. 8 in California and all the backlash it suffered, to Orrin Hatch’s presidential campaign in 2000 where he said the democratic party’s political correctness will be the ruin of the country right before eluding to Joseph Smith’s White Horse prophecy, to all the nation-wide Mormon support behind Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and current Utah Senator campaign, the Mormon Church has been largely involved in Utah politics since Brigham Young brought the Mormons to the Great Basin in 1847 and was elected Governor over the territory in 1850.
Mormon Leaks first treasure trove of leaks was a number of videos. This dump was crucial, but there was hours of video and a lot of details slipped through the cracks. The video titled “In Which they discuss politics with Senator Gordon Smith” certainly garnered the attention of yours truly. Senator Gordon Smith was introduced in a private meeting with the Quorum of the Twelve apostles by M. Russell Ballard, which is as follows.
Ballard Smith introduction
Then this Ralph guy goes on to introduce the Senator giving his Mormon pedigree, including his mission, temple marriage, law practice, and Senatorial race. Ralph testifies as follows:
Ralph Smith Introduction
‘Church-broke’. What does one make of that term being thrown around in a room of the Quorum of Apostles when referencing a powerful U.S. Senator? What does a politician have to do to become ‘church-broke’? The detail of Gordon Smith calling the Church after 6 weeks of no contact and asking what Smith’s office is supposed to be doing seems to exhibit a level of constant contact that can’t help but influence Smith’s platform and agenda to a significant extent. Maybe, calling the Q12 to ask what they want exhibits what Ballard lovingly referred to as being ‘church-broke’. When you break a horse, you break its spirit of opposition through menial tasks and strict obedience. When you break a recruit in the military, they begrudgingly yield their autonomy to those in a commanding position over them. What does a ‘church-broke’ politician mean?
How about a brief overview of the Church’s public statements concerning politics?
In 1889 when Utah territory was desperately trying to gain state status with the federal Government, the First Presidency declared: “Church government and civil government are distinct and separate in our theory and practice”.
In 1907, the First Presidency issued this statement: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints holds to the doctrine of the separation of church and state; the non-interference of church authority in political matters; and the absolute freedom and independence of the individual in the performance of his political duties. . . . we favor: The absolute separation of church and state; No domination of the state by the church; No church interference with the functions of the state; No state interference with the functions of the church, or with the free exercise of religion; The absolute freedom of the individual from the domination of ecclesiastical authority in political affairs; [and] The equality of all churches before the law”
In 1942, the Presidency said: “The Church stands for the separation of church and state”.
In 1963, the First Presidency stated: “The Church does not interfere, and has no intention of trying to interfere, with the fullest and freest exercise of the political franchise of its members”.
In 1988, they stated: “We have no candidates for political office and we do not undertake to tell people how to vote”.
How do we reconcile those unequivocal and bold statements with the video taken in 2009 which seems to exhibit Senator Gordon Smith’s reliance on the Church to direct his agenda? How do we view all these listed political motives and campaigns forwarded by the Church when they’ve made statements in no uncertain terms that they do not interfere in politics?
Once again, there seems to exist a vast disparity between Church policy and practice.
A lot can be understood if we merely follow the money. The Church may move slowly, but that movement is frequently attributed to or accelerated by money. Whether it’s money the Church may lose, or money it wants to gain, always follow the money.
Let’s draw lines between all the floating dots so far in the episode.
Missionaries for the Church are colloquially referred to as the Church’s sales force. Wherever missionaries go, a little bit of success will eventually merit the installation of a branch, a ward, a stake, and eventually a temple. Often accompanying a temple is an MTC to train more missionaries to be a stronger sales force in the area around the temple. Currently 159 temples operate and 15 MTCs exist usually within eyeshot of a temple, further expanding the Church’s sales force.
The history of MTCs shows the expanding Church sales force. The first official MTC was put in Provo in 1978 which coincided with the completion of the Provo Temple, prior to that MTCs were merely Language Training Missions usually held in local wardhouses. This whole Joseph Bishop McKenna Denson sex scandal occurred a mere 6 years after the first MTC was created, it’s understandable that they had some kinks to work out of the system with it being so new and Joseph Bishop being part of the earliest initial management team over the Provo MTC.
The MTC constructed after the Provo MTC was first in Sao Paulo Brazil right next to the temple, put into use in 1977 before the temple itself was even dedicated and the priesthood ban was lifted. The England MTC was first established in London, but was moved to Preston adjacent to the Preston Temple in 1998. The Mexico City MTC was located in a reconfigured Church-run High School. Prior to that, the old Mexico MTC was adjacent to the Mexico City temple, but could only accommodate 125 missionaries, the new campus, which opened in 2013 can accommodate 1,000 missionaries.
What does it take to build a temple and an MTC? Obviously, a lot of politics and bureaucracy are necessary to get a temple and MTC built in any location. Any time a company wants to expand its sales force overseas, they have to get through a lot of red tape to do so. Putting temples in Utah is so easy they’ve done it nearly 19 times by this point. But putting in a temple and MTC in other countries poses a number of challenging issues politically speaking. The Church needs to have politicians and ambassadors on its side in order to expand its sales force to other countries to inevitably begin pulling in tithing from those locations, tithing which is all funneled back to SLC and is essentially untraceable by outside overwatch committees. Any income and dispersals to and from religious nonprofits in America are extremely hard to track and the information is never publicly available.
Let me play a couple more clips from General Conference. Apostle Dallin H. Oaks, current first counselor to the prophet, gave an interesting talk on the importance of taking joy and noticing the Small and Simple things in life, and how small and simple decisions can lead to important outcomes. He offered an interesting quote.
Oaks Small and Simple Things
Why did Dallin Oaks quote Dan Coats? If a person quotes another person who isn’t dead yet, it’s worth examining possible reasons why the specific person was chosen to be quoted. Daniel Coats is the current director of National Intelligence. From his profile page on DNI.gov:
“The Honorable Daniel Coats was sworn in as the fifth Director of National Intelligence on march 16, 2017. As DNI, Mr. Coats leads the United States Intelligence Community (IC) and serves as the principal intelligence advisor to the President…”
Coats has established a number of diplomatic relationships with European countries during his time from 2001 to 2005 as Ambassador to Germany. He returned to the Senate in 2011, didn’t run for reelection in 2016 and was appointed to the office of Director of National Intelligence by President Trump.
From the last paragraph of his biography page:
“Dan and Marsha Coats met in college and have three adult children. They have been active in charitable causes, including The Foundation for American Renewal, which they formed together. DNI Coats has served as President of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and on the boards of many civic and volunteer organizations.”
From the Mission statement of the non-profit Dan and his wife, Marsha, Coats run.
“As a United States Senator in the 1990s, Dan Coats led the Project for American Renewal which featured a legislative package aimed at supporting grassroots charities through tax credits and innovative policy solutions. This work is considered by many to be the forerunner to President Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and it continues to have influence in philanthropy policy (tax credits) and practice. His vision for American renewal through faith and community solutions is articulated in his book Mending Fences, and in the numerous speeches and essays contained on this website.
Mrs. Coats enjoys a long legacy of Christian philanthropy modeled by her parents and continued through her shared leadership of the Foundation for American Renewal.”
It seems that Dan Coats and his non-profit seek to funnel money into other non-profits through tax credits. One wonders whether or not the LDS Church has ever directly benefitted from Coats non-profit faith-based tax credit initiatives.
Look, maybe Dallin Oaks really likes Coats’ book, Mending Fences, that’s a perfectly rational explanation for why Oaks chose to quote Coats. It’s also understandable that religious non-profits in America enjoy a certain level of government oversight which is spectacularly lackadaisical, and religious non-profits may help each other out when their particular goals align.
Could Oaks not find any minimalist philosophers to quote instead? I’m just struggling with how to understand this quote in the broader context of Church interests. Maybe that’s the issue, maybe we shouldn’t look to connect dots if the available information can be otherwise explained, but like I said, it’s important to follow the money. This quote is merely one more fascinating detail to add into the mix of Church politics.
Another fascinating detail merits passing acknowledgment at very least. John Huntsman Jr., a well-known wealthy Mormon who began his political career as staff assistant to Ronald Reagan, has historically been rather favorable to the Church. One is forced to wonder whether or not Huntsman is ‘Church-broke’ viewing his political campaign. Huntsman has served 5 presidents as Ambassador to Singapore, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Asia, U.S. Trade Ambassador, and most recently, U.S. Ambassador to China, and he was twice elected governor of Utah.
In October 2017, Huntsman was appointed by President Trump to be Ambassador to Russia. This leads me to ponder the most striking feature about General Conference. This announcement by the new prophet received feedback from the reverent crowd which is a particularly rare occurrence in General Conference. Have a listen…
Nelson Temples
Why Russia? Why not literally anywhere else especially given so much controversy surrounding Russia and politics right now? The Church doesn’t want negative PR or to be caught in the middle of something which may tarnish its sacred name, why have they put themselves in this precarious political situation with John Huntsman as the current Ambassador to Russia? It may sound crazy to say this, but maybe some Russian oligarch tithing that’s nearly untraceable would be a welcome influx of cash to the Church amidst some possible indicators that membership growth and tithing in on the decline in America, the Church’s largest market. I mean, temples and adjacent MTCs are a great indicator of the expansion of the Church sales force, have you seen D.C. Temple?
Look, I presented a lot of information today and I’m trying to allow you as the listener to connect the dots among all this information. My presentation is obviously biased and it’s incredibly difficult to view all this information and not come to some tin-foil hat conclusions. Instead of entertaining thoughts that the Church is run by lizard aliens from the future, I’ll just conclude with the following.
I don’t know what it is we’re dealing with here. Watching the recent events unfold and seeing how much political power and wealth the Church throws around leads me to conclude that whatever we think might be happening with the Church, we’re definitely wrong. The fact of the matter is, the Church is a massive multi-national company with tens of billions in assets and billions coming in tax and regulation free from all over the world. No combination of words can properly describe how powerful Mormonism is. Whatever we on the outside think is going on, we truly have no idea. We can sit back and say there are problems and there may be some rational solutions to these individual problems, but nobody has a useful or even a possible solution to deal with the true problem creating all these other ancillary issues. The Church is a behemoth that no single entity controls. It’s a colossus of epic proportions seemingly with its own sentience which is only marginally swayed by the actions of those at the helm.
All this makes me glad I run the podcast the way I do. I’m happy to be a gnat to the Church, I’m not even on their radar. Kate Kelly, John Dehlin, Denver Snuffer, McKenna Denson, Sam Young, all these people stand among a tiny platoon of opposition directly in the shadow of this colossus, and it’s coming for them when they become too much a nuisance to ignore. I do not envy them. I’m glad these people do what they do and call out the Church for egregious immorality on multiple fronts, but the Church isn’t going to change because of these people… are you kidding me? The Church will change when the government or court systems threaten their pocket book in some way, but not a moment before. I don’t say this to concede defeat on some level, but merely to point out that screaming at the Church and marching to their doorstep is kindly asking a bear to not attack after we’ve woken it from its slumber. What do we expect to happen? Given the roots of Utah Mormonism and Bloody Brigham Young’s tyrannical theocratic reign, would we expect to see anything other than what lives on 140 years after his death as modern-day Mormonism?
Mormons are the nicest people I’ve ever met. Mormons are my friends, family, and loved ones, as much as I wish that weren’t the case. But, all things considered, MormonISM, and the power it wields, is utterly terrifying.
Hangout Mormon leaks team Sunday 4/8 for patrons.
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