The Mormon Sex Abuse AP Article and The Church's Response | Ep. 1638

When the Church Knew: The AP's Mormon Sex Abuse Investigation and What It Reveals

A five-year-old girl was being raped by her father. Her father had confessed this to his bishop. The abuse continued for seven more years. This is not a hypothetical constructed to make a legal argument. It is the opening case in the Associated Press's 2022 investigation into how Mormon officials handled child sex abuse disclosures, and it is difficult to read without a sense of controlled fury.

The AP investigation landed like a stone through a window, and for good reason. The question it forces into plain sight is not merely whether individual bishops failed. It is whether the institutional system surrounding those bishops was designed, consciously or not, to protect the church from liability more than to protect children from predators.

Background: The Helpline, the Attorneys, and the Clergy-Penitent Privilege

For decades, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has operated a confidential legal helpline that bishops can call when confronted with abuse disclosures. The firm connected to that helpline, Kirton McConkie, is the church's primary outside counsel. Critics, including legal analyst Brenton Erickson who discussed the AP story on Mormon Stories Podcast Episode 1638, have pointed out a core problem with that arrangement: the entity paying the attorneys is the church, not the victim and not the bishop as an individual.

When a bishop calls that line after learning a child is being abused, he is not calling a child welfare hotline. He is calling a legal defense operation.