Source: After preaching “traditional values” for years, a Mormon advice columnist was arrested. Guess why? Channel: Friendly Atheist Published: September 6, 2025 | Archived: May 5, 2026

Video: After preaching “traditional values” for years, a Mormon advice columnist was arrested. Guess why?
Channel: Friendly Atheist
Published: September 6, 2025
Duration: 20:10
Views: 115,893
Category: News & Politics
Video ID: 52N-V08hOcc

Description

For roughly 25 years, Joseph Brent Walker wrote an independent column called ValueSpeak, syndicated in over two dozen newspapers, in which he talked about the importance of “traditional values.”

You’ll never guess why he just got arrested. Or how many Mormons are still vouching for him.

This is a clip from my recent livestream: https://youtube.com/live/UyPqSGGG93I

The article this is based on is here:

https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/mormon-columnist-who-preached-traditional

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Church State Atheist Atheism Humanist Humanism Religion Politics Christian Christianity

Transcript — YouTube panel (human-authored)

0:00 For about 25 years, there was a man named Joseph Brent Walker who wrote a column called value speak. One word, v capitalized, s capitalized, value speak. And basically was syndicated in like 30 newspapers and he talked about the importance of traditional values. Let me show you an example of this. This is something he wrote. Value speak faith is not for wimps. And if you scroll down here, look at this. Um, and he writes basically saying, “My kids are safe and healthy and like I know I’m lucky, but I know other families are not lucky. Why is that?” And he says, “So if guardian angels are in any way responsible for the safety and well-being of my family, I’m thankful. Truly, I am. But I don’t understand the seeming capriciousness of the system. Why is it that my children seem to have been so conscientiously protected while other children face the same situations they faced, including the simple daily act of going to school

1:01 with disastrous consequences? What happened to those guardian angels? What they busy, distracted, not paying attention, or just not very good at their jobs? God only knows. And then he writes, “But faith is not for wimps because blah blah blah. Uh, faith gives us courage to cope with life’s vicissitudes and apparent inequities. So, faith is good. Guardian angels are real. He’s been very lucky with his life. Isn’t that a sweet, sweet column?

1:29 Let me show you another column this guy wrote. Um, this is an interesting one that will absolutely not be relevant later on in this segment. The anonymous intimacy of the internet published in 2013. This is interesting. My experience has been that people are basically good and if given half a chance they will usually do the right thing in most situations except when they get online and then I don’t know something happens to some people. They start doing things and going places and saying stuff that they would never do go or say in the real world. One of my friends blames it on what he calls the anonymous intimacy of the internet. If no one can see you and no one knows your real name, his reasoning goes, then you could say or do anything you want and not really be accountable for it. And without accountability, he says, things can get ugly. Which, to be fair, all of that is true. We all know what anonymous trolls look like on the internet and how they

2:26 ruin everything and they also now run everything on Twitter. Um, there’s one more article I wanted to show you that is I don’t know, it just made me cringe the way he wrote it, but whatever. like he’s an older guy, so I don’t know. Do you let this slide or not? Let me read it. We’ll see. Way more than just a pretty face. I’ll admit it. I was first attracted to his wife, Anita. I was first attracted to Anita because she was, well, hot. But let’s be real here. Her, you know, hotness, especially those big, beautiful, bewitching eyes, played a significant role in the process that led me to ask for her hand in marriage. Come on, I was 22 years old at the time. It’s not like I was going to fall in love with someone simply because I thought she’d probably be a good mother to our children. And yet, nine months almost to the day after we were married, which is Mormon speak for we banged on our wedding night, that’s exactly what Anita was. The mother of our first child,

3:29 confidently cradling in her arms a beautiful little girl who, everyone said had her mother’s hot hot eyes. I don’t know. I don’t love it. I don’t love it. But, okay, if you want to say that’s romantic, so be it. But this is the sort of column this guy wrote for for decades. And you could see why maybe that gets syndicated in a lot of newspapers when you have an audience full of people who might like that sort of thing. And this guy isn’t just a random columnist who wrote these sorts of things. He is a guy who knew right from wrong. He has his faith in his family to keep him on the right track.

4:07 And in 2011, as he’s writing this column, he gets hired by a Utah based news outlet, Desireette News, as the editor of their faith section. Because not only is this a guy who’s been thinking about religion in all of his columns, he’s also a guy with ties to the Mormon church. He is a Mormon. Uh he knows a lot about religion. And uh I mean, if you want to cover the Mormon church, the Desert News is is the place to go. So again, this guy became the head of their faith section. All right, fine. Not only was he running the faith section of their newspaper, this is a guy who whose previous job was working in the public affairs department of the Mormon church. So like he had connections to the actual inner workings of the church, which is a valuable thing to have if this is your beat and this is the job you have. He knew a lot about the LDS community. He did that for two years. And more recently, because

5:03 newspapers have shrunk, they let go of a lot of people. Faith sections you almost never see in newspapers. He more recently worked as a communications director for the Utah Department of Transportation. So that’s been this guy’s career trajectory. A lot of religion, a lot of faith, a lot of writing, and so naturally, he works in communications. Now, have you guessed where this story is going yet?

5:29 Okay, let me tell you where this story is going because this is the headline I saw very recently. Um, that was that was disturbing for many reasons that I will share with you as soon as this thing decides to pop up. And uh here we go. Should I just show you the headline first? Let me show you the headline. You can experience what I experienced. Um, why? Of course, now is when the website chooses not to load properly.

6:00 I don’t know. We’ll cut this out later. But this website’s being evil right now. Um, while I’m waiting for it to to fix up. Oh, is it working now? Let’s see. Let’s see. Here’s the headline. 70-year-old Washington City man, former traditional values columnist arrested for alleged enticement. And that headline does not do justice to what we are talking about here. Um, but let’s read through the relevant section of this. During the operation, and you know things are bad when they start the article about how you got arrested by saying during the operation.

6:41 This is very Chris Hansen stuff happening here. During the operation, the decoy was contacted by an individual with the screen name of William Wallace, later identified by police as Joseph Walker, who reportedly started engaging in sexually explicit online conversations with the purported juvenile. So, they the detectives pretended to be a 14-year-old girl, and this dude starts talking to her, thinking she is a 14-year-old girl, and then Chris Hansen appears. I assume out of nowhere, guess what? Maybe if you weren’t anonymous on the internet, maybe you would not have done this. The suspect’s intent, the detective noted, was to seduce, lure, and entice the minor into engaging in various sexual acts. Yikes. That’s disturbing. The detective posing as a decoy made it abundantly clear she was claiming to be a 14-year-old girl. Yikes. Throughout the message threads, Walker allegedly stated he did not care if she was a minor. Rather, it was her age that made him aroused.

7:52 Walker then sends her inappropriate images on at least two occasions. Yikes. So, that’s what this dude’s been up to. I’m not done with the story yet. I just wanted you to experience that like I experienced that. Side note, why is he using the online screen name William Wallace, the dude from Braveheart? You know who else used the screen name William Wallace as his online username?

8:22 It was Mark Driscoll, the pure alpha male patriarchal pastor who has a history of emotional abuse. Um, he used to go on like religious forums under the name William Wallace and say awful things about women and gay people. Police still says as himself, mind you, but he did it under a pseudonym. I don’t know. It seems to be a thing that religious people use as their screen name when they do horrible things. Anyway, um Walker supposedly told this decoy 14-year-old that they need to keep their chats secret. And he also, according to investigators, laid out elaborate fantasies about what he would do if given the opportunity.

9:15 Yikes. Um when they filed the police report in this situation, this was another thing they pointed out. defendant presents a substantial danger to the community, specifically to children. Yeah, sure seems that way. I agree. Here’s my favorite part about this otherwise horrific story. Um, when this was all happening, a reporter from a news outlet saw that the police, like the police report had apparently been filed and the it was in the courtroom, but they had not arrested uh this guy yet. So, what happens? Uh, again, same website’s acting up again.

10:00 What happens is the reporter calls up this guy. They call up the reporter. Uh, I’m sorry. The reporter calls up Joseph Walker and says, “Uh, hey man. Uh, I heard you’re about to get arrested for or I heard you’re in trouble for luring some 14-year-old girl. Do you got any comment about that?” And check this out. Apparently, Walker is like, “Huh, I don’t know anything about that. That’s very interesting that you would tell me that.” And then he tries to run away. He actually said to the reporter, “I am not aware of these charges, so I don’t have anything to say.” And then he tried to flee. Look at this. Look at this. Oh my god. In addition, there was evidence to suggest Walker attempted to flee the court’s jurisdiction before turning himself in, the prosecutor alleged. Gyos told the judge when the warrant was first issued. And before any charges were filed, prosecutors learned that a news outlet reportedly reached out to

11:03 Walker and disclosed information on the case. At that point, GGO said Walker left work early cuz he works for the Department of uh what was it? Transportation. I forgot, but he works for the government. He left work early and was essentially on the run to some degree. officers were unable to locate the dude for several days until he hired a defense attorney who essentially told him to turn himself in. He hires a lawyer and the lawyer’s like, “You need to make sure you show up because it’s really hard to defend you right now and you are not making my job any easier.”

11:38 So that’s when he turned himself in. Oh my god, what is he doing? And so, uh, here’s this guy now showing up to court. He’s going for his Zoom meetings. Yikes. Here’s another thing I want to share with you about this. So, he now faces uh three felony charges, five years in jail for each of them. He could be spending up to 15 years in jail. He’s 70 years old. That would take him through pretty much the end of his life. I don’t know if the judge is going to do that or not.

12:10 Again, he’s accused of this. He has not been convicted of this yet. Keep that in mind. There is another element of this that I find really interesting and uh unpleasant. There is a website called floodlit.org f l o o dlit t.org and basically it is a website that tracks abuse by members of the Mormon church. And they have a whole page on this guy now now that he’s he’s been arrested, Joseph Brent Walker. And look what they point out. He was not just a Mormon. He’s a former Mormon bishop, like a leader in his congregation.

12:52 He’s also the stake presidency counselor. Like he was basically promoted to oversee a number of Mormon churches. There’s the dude in his better days. And here’s what I found really disturbing. After this guy got arrested um yesterday, you could see this right here. Yesterday, the court received 10 letters from supporters asking for Walker to be released after he was initially held without bail.

13:24 Basically, Walker is such a fixture in the Mormon church and among his readership and now he’s been arrested. And all these people, I don’t know how many of the details of this story they know, but they wrote to the judge saying, “Listen, he’s a good dude. You can let him go at least until the trial happens, right?” and Floodlit managed to get a hold of several of these letters.

13:46 And look at what they say. Here’s one person. The supporter said Walker is a flawed man, but he is not a predator nor a threat to any community he is involved in. I mean, according to the chats he had, he kind of is or wanted to be. So, what are what is that person saying? His son said, “Let him go.” Okay, here’s another one. Grant Jensen, a BYU college dean, um called I don’t know why I’d say Malard there. Uh was that something else? I’ll skip that one. Here’s one. The final letter we obtained was from a department chair at Utah Valley University. And this person wrote, “As I’ve processed this knowledge over the past few days, it’s been nearly impossible to reconcile the man I know and the person described in that article, you know, the one who chats with 14year-olds under the name William Wallace. I don’t wish to downplay these charges in any way, only to offer mine as another voice asking

14:47 that he be released on bail pending trial.“ All these people want this dude to just like, “Let him have his good life. He’s a good dude. So what if he said creepy things to a 14-year-old or who he thought was a 14-year-old and sent her very inappropriate pictures? Why should that matter? He didn’t actually do it. I mean, he wanted to, but he didn’t. So, in any case, he was in jail without bail, but he has since been released to home confinement with an electronic ankle monitor. He’s also forbidden from accessing the internet or having any contact with minors. That’s where we’re at right now. We will see what happens.

15:28 So, just to summarize this entire story, if you’re keeping score here, Walker, Joseph Walker, he spent decades lecturing the public about morality and faith, using his columns to to lament a world where anonymous intimacy could lead people astray. And yet the second he was thought he was anonymous online, he prayed upon the sort of victim he once claimed to protect. The same guy who was like, “Where are the guardian angels at for everyone else?” has become the sort of person that the guardian angels should have been protecting kids from.

16:08 Like his writings preached accountability. His actual behavior mocked accountability because he thought he could get away with it. I mean, this is the sort of hypocrisy we see from religious leaders or people who kind of shout their religion from the rooftops and wear it on their sleeves. The louder they preach, the more you should default assume it’s all an act. So, Walker, he’s like, I’m a man of faith. I’m a guy who knows morality and right from wrong. I am a former Mormon bishop and I can shape communities with my words and behind the curtain, it’s a different story altogether. That’s not just a personal failure. It tells you something really awful about a culture where men can be elevated for what they say while we ignore the actual stuff they do. So, his columns were not a guide to a better life. They were basically a way to keep people off the scent for a long time.

17:05 And I I do wonder, and I don’t know this, is this the first time he’s done this or the first time he got caught? I don’t know. Okay, I’ll pause there. What questions we got for this story? Exactly what I expected. Yeah, it’s it’s always the ones you absolutely expect, right? Hashtag not a drag queen. He’s not gay. He’s also not trans. I mean, right? Uh, thanks for that donation. So, Trump was just terminally online in his youth. I mean, that would explain so much.

17:44 But no, he’s just a bad person for all the other reasons. You give a child a lot of money and no guidance as a child. Look what happens. Walker turned into runner. I am deeply angry. I did not think of that first. Thanks, Donna. Deeply religious does not equal good. I think this is the big takeaway. It’s not that religious people can’t be good. Obviously, we all know religious people who are good, but religion should not be synonymous with virtue. If someone tells you they’re religious, your first instinct should not be, “Well, this person’s got to be good.” And yeah, this is every like Republican campaign ad. Like, I’m a Christian first, conservative second, Republican third. Why do they say they’re Christian first? Because it’s a way to signal I’m a good guy. You can trust me. And really, if you say you’re religious first, that makes me absolutely not want to trust you. And you you all know what I think about

18:46 religion in general. But it’s like, this has nothing to do with that. It’s that if you’re leading by telling me your religious label, then I have questions. Many think religiosity is a cloak of invisibility. That’s very true. Like, if you tell people you’re religious, again, you’re throwing them off the scent. Maybe under that guise you can do a lot of horrible things because they grant you um respect that you haven’t earned.

19:15 They grant you trust you haven’t earned. That’s why there are so many stories of priests behaving badly. I people send me I I always appreciate when people send me story tips and so many times they’re like look this priest got arrested. This priest got arrested for committing fraud, doing something awful with a victim, etc. And in my head I’m like, there’s nothing for me to write about because these stories are a dime a dozen. There are so many of them that happen all the time. I can’t cover it.

19:44 But occasionally, you hear those stories and you look into the details like this guy. It’s like, no, this is a bigger story than just priest behaving badly, bishop behaving badly, something like that. So, uh, yeah, you you do wonder how he if he thought he could get away with it, not because he was anonymous, but because people would never suspect him because he had such a good religious reputation, as you could see from the letters people sent in his defense.