Arizona Appeals Court reopens case against Mormon Church involving child abuse cover-up

A unanimous ruling gives survivors another chance at justice—and exposes deep institutional rot in the LDS community

This newsletter is free and goes out to over 22,000 subscribers, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can use the button below to subscribe or use my usual Patreon page!

---

In 2011, an Arizona man named Paul Adams confessed to his Mormon Bishop John Herrod that he was molesting his five-year-old daughter.

Herrod called the Mormon Church’s “help line” and was basically directed to keep that information to himself. Don’t tell the police. Don’t tell local child welfare officials. Nothing.

So Herrod did as ordered. Another bishop was informed about the situation, as was Adams’ wife, but that was it.

You can guess what happened next:

… [Adams] continued to molest his daughter, and later, after her birth in 2015, his infant daughter. He made videos of the encounters and posted them on pornographic websites, which were eventually discovered by Interpol, reported to his employer, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and led to criminal charges.

Adams was arrested in February of 2017. His children—the two girls and their other siblings—were eventually adopted, albeit by (separate) families. The wife was later “indicted on 12 criminal counts,” pleaded guilty, and spent two years and six months in jail before being released in 2020. Adams himself was indicted on 11 counts of child sexual abuse but hanged himself in prison in December of 2017 while awaiting trial.

It was a tragic situation in every imaginable way.

A worshiper reads the Book of Mormon (via Shutterstock)

In 2021, three of the Adams children—two girls and one boy—sued the Mormon Church and its officials for allowing the abuse to continue despite having knowledge that could have stopped it. Their attorney Lynne Cadigan began her legal complaint summing up years of disturbing behavior:

“This case involves horrible sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children between the ages of six (6) weeks and twelve (12) years old that went on for seven (7) years. The biological father of these victims made videos of his rapes and now these videos are everywhere on the world wide web. The perpetrator admitted his abuse and crimes to his Mormon Church, and received counseling for his crimes. The Mormon Church leaders knew about the abuse and yet no one reported these crimes to the authorities. The Mormon Church leaders gave guidance and care to these children for seven (7) years, sat next to them in Church and allowed these vicious crimes to continue.”

But in 2023, in a depressing update to an already devastating story, that case was tossed out of court.

Cochise (pronounced koh-CHEES) County Superior Court Judge Timothy Dickerson ruled that the Church and its leaders were exempt from being sued over these matters because of what’s known as the “clergy-penitent privilege.” He said that because Adams’ crime was told to the bishop through the act of confession, the Mormon Church was under no obligation to report his actions to anybody. They were allowed to keep it a secret.

Lynne Cadigan, an attorney representing the Adams children who filed the 2021 lawsuit, said she will appeal the ruling. “How do you explain to young victims that a rapist’s religious beliefs are more important than their right to be free from rape?” she asked. Cadigan also said the ruling, if allowed to stand, would “completely eviscerate the state’s child protection law.”

In a prepared statement, the church said, “We are pleased with the Arizona Superior Court’s decision granting summary judgment for the Church and its clergy and dismissing the plaintiffs’ claims. Contrary to some news reports and exaggerated allegations, the court found that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its clergy handled this matter consistent with Arizona law.”

Leave it to the Mormon Church to do a victory lap after adding more suffering to the lives of child sex abuse victims…

As awful as this news was, it was largely predictable.

This whole story was Exhibit A when it came to how the Mormon Church covers up this sort of abuse. If there’s any way for the LDS Church to deal with a problem internally before it makes its way to the outside world, that’s their preference. But time and time again, they’ve failed to take care of the problems and abuse has thrived.

The reason this is allowed is because Arizona, like many other states, doesn’t require religious leaders to report instances of abuse to law enforcement if they learned about it through an act of confession.

That’s not true everywhere. If a public school teacher learned that a student was being abused at home, that teacher has a legal obligation to tell the student’s counselor (who can take appropriate action). But not pastors. Not bishops. Not priests. If someone tells them a secret, believing it will remain a secret, then the law allows those leaders to keep it a secret, even if people are getting hurt.

Even when legislation was proposed to remove that exemption from the law, the Mormon Church and its minions fought it.

To force a clergy member to report a confidential communication “changes the whole nature of the confessional,” said state Sen. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, and a member of the Mormon Church. Earlier this year, he declined to give a hearing to a bill that sought to further narrow the clergy exemption.

…

The bill, well-intentioned as it might have been, would disrupt centuries of church dogma, said Farnsworth, who as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee has the authority to decide which bills to consider.

Merrill Nelson, another lawyer for the Mormon Church, was the person who told Herrod not to report Adams’ crimes to law enforcement. He was also a Utah legislator for a decade before finally stepping down in 2023. Utah has a similar law protecting confessions.

The reason religious institutions don’t want the exemption taken off the books is because they value their secrecy more than others’ safety. Their religious dogma is more important than another child getting sexually abused. They believe confessions are a sacrament and anything less than complete confidentiality would be an obstacle to the practice of their faith.

More simply, they just don’t give a shit about abuse victims. The rule turns religious leaders into moral monsters, preventing them from helping those who need it.

(You may recall that in the state of Washington, lawmakers recently passed a law that would make priests mandated reporters even if they learn about abuse during Confession, but the Catholic Church and the Trump Administration sued to undo that law, and a federal judge has temporarily blocked the law from going into effect.)

When the judge booted the case from court, the Associated Press’ Michael Rezendes and Jason Dearen put the dismissal in context:

The AP found that 33 states exempt clergy of any denomination from laws requiring professionals such as teachers, physicians, and psychotherapists from reporting information about child sex abuse to police or child welfare officials if the abuse was divulged during a confession.

Although child welfare advocates in some states have backed legislation to eliminate the privilege, lobbying by the Catholic Church, the Mormon church, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses has successfully persuaded lawmakers to maintain the exemption.

That religious “glaring loophole” has been a blessing for abusers everywhere. They get to pretend they’re getting right with God, all while continuing their predatory ways. Even though the lawsuit here argued that the clergy-penitent privilege shouldn’t have applied to certain members who were involved in these discussions, the judge said the entire situation fell under the umbrella of confession, so the Church and its leaders couldn’t be held responsible for not disclosing the details.

But now there’s a ray of hope in this depressing case.

Last week, a three-judge panel with the Arizona Court of Appeals (Division 2) unanimously agreed to reverse the earlier decision.

Specifically, they said that there were a number of material facts in dispute, therefore it was premature for the Superior Court judge to rule in favor of the Mormon Church.

For example, after hearing Adams’ confession, Bishop Herrod asked his wife to join them so Adams could repeat what he did in front of her so that she could protect their kids. The children’s lawsuit said that “amounted to a waiver.” After all, if the confession was already being shared with a third party, then the bishop was merely an observer and no longer taking a confession, and so the Church was obligated to report the abuse to authorities. But the Church argued that the secrecy rules of confession still applied when speaking to couples. Furthermore, they added, who cares what the rules said. If the Bishop simply believed he “had a religious duty of confidentiality,” then that’s all that mattered.

The judges said “A reasonable fact finder could also conclude Paul’s confession to [his wife] Leizza amounted to a waiver of the clergy-penitent privilege."

The lawsuit also said that Adams confessed to his crimes during disciplinary meetings, and those shouldn’t count as a formal confession, therefore the Church should have reported him. (Those meetings included people who weren’t clergy members, so come on.) The Church responded to that by saying the purpose of disciplinary meetings was “to provide spiritual guidance,” therefore it still counted as a confession.

The judges said the presence of those non-clergy members could reasonably be considered a waiving of his confidentiality by a potential jury.

At the later proceeding addressing Paul’s appeal of his excommunication, however, Paul chose to confess his abuse of Jane Doe I before the council. A jury could reasonably infer that Paul’s actions in the later proceeding voluntarily waived the clergy-penitent privilege for the purpose of disclosing his abuse of Doe to all members in attendance, clergy and non-clergy alike… Given this record, and considering all inferences in the light most favorable to the Does, there exists a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Paul’s statements before the council invoked the Church Defendants’ duty to report…

Finally, the lawsuit said the Church’s own rulebook said confidentiality during confessions didn’t apply if there was “serious injury” at stake. The sexual abuse of children is obviously under that umbrella. The Handbook specifically says:

In only one situation should a bishop or stake president disclose confidential information without first seeking such guidance. That is when disclosure is necessary to prevent life-threatening harm or serious injury and there is not time to seek guidance. In such cases, the duty to protect others is more important than the duty of confidentiality. Leaders should contact civil authorities immediately.

The judges said this needed to be taken into account, but the Superior Court failed to consider this argument. They wrote that there was “a genuine issue whether it was ‘reasonable and necessary’ for Church Defendants to withhold reporting Jane Doe I’s abuse.”

So for those reasons, the Court of Appeals tossed out the earlier ruling in favor of the Mormon Church and told the Superior Court judge to try again keeping their concerns in mind. It’s not a victory for the children just yet, but it’s a step in the right direction. The children’s lawyer, Lynne Cadigan, told local reporters, “This renews my faith in the justice system.”

The Church says it plans to appeal this decision. Because of course it wants to prolong the children’s suffering. They’ve made it painfully clear that their thirst for secrecy and institutional self-preservation outweighs any moral obligation to protect children from abuse.

Faced with an unimaginable horror—years of abuse, filmed and distributed by a confessed predator—the Church responded not with humanity or accountability, but with stone-cold legalism and repeated efforts to bury the truth. They weaponized confession as a shield for monsters, then had the audacity to celebrate a legal loophole that let them off the hook. They’re propping up a system designed to protect predators and abandon victims.

This decision by the Arizona Court of Appeals doesn’t just reopen a legal case. It cracks open the fortress the Mormon Church and so many other religious institutions like it have built around themselves. These institutions aren’t entitled to immunity when they knowingly enable child rape. And yet, the Church’s vow to keep fighting this decision shows they’ve learned nothing.

They would rather sap the survivors’ time, energy, and hope than face any kind of moral and legal reckoning. The Mormon Church hasn’t just failed its most vulnerable members, it’s become complicit in their torment.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

---