The Mormon Church Abuse Hot Line with Attorney Tim Kosnoff | Ep. 1639

The Mormon Church Abuse Hotline: A Critical Examination of Institutional Response and Legal Accountability

When a child discloses sexual abuse to a bishop, what happens next? For decades, the answer depended less on law enforcement protocols than on internal church procedures designed to manage the problem quietly. The Mormon Church Abuse Hotline, established in the mid-1990s, represents a pivotal moment in how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) has publicly addressed sexual abuse allegations, yet its creation also reveals deeper institutional patterns that legal experts say continue to prioritize church interests over survivor protection and mandatory reporting obligations.

According to the Mormon Stories Podcast series featuring attorney Tim Kosnoff, who has represented hundreds of abuse survivors across multiple denominations, the hotline's establishment coincided with a critical legal settlement that exposed the church's historical approach to abuse cases. Understanding how this institution has handled, and mishandled, sexual abuse claims requires examining both the documented record and the cultural factors that shaped those responses.

Background: Pre-Hotline Handling and the Jeremiah Scott Case

Before 1995, the LDS Church possessed no centralized reporting mechanism for abuse allegations. Church leaders at the local level, bishops and stake presidents, wielded broad discretionary authority over how to respond to disclosures of child sexual abuse. The Handbook of Instructions, reviewed across decades, outlined a disciplinary framework but left enforcement to individual leaders' judgment and their claimed spiritual power of "discernment."

The turning point came in 1995 with the Jeremiah Scott case in Portland, Oregon. Scott, a child abuse survivor, pursued legal action against the church. On the eve of jury trial in August 2001, the LDS Church settled for $3 million, at that time, the largest reported settlement of a child sexual abuse case in the United States. This settlement, combined with mounting pressure from the Boston Catholic abuse scandal (which erupted publicly in 2002), prompted the church to establish its abuse hotline as a response to legal and reputational risk.