Source: The Mormon Church refused to help an abuse survivor, then paid her to destroy evidence (Livestream) Channel: Friendly Atheist Published: December 13, 2023 | Archived: May 5, 2026

Video: The Mormon Church refused to help an abuse survivor, then paid her to destroy evidence (Livestream)
Channel: Friendly Atheist
Published: December 13, 2023
Duration: 21:16
Views: 9,224
Category: News & Politics
Video ID: FSm7jLLl-jg

Description

After telling a woman they wouldn’t help her prosecute her assailant, a Mormon bishop who also happened to be her father, a lawyer for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints offered her $300,000 to destroy recordings of their meetings.

But someone else also recorded those meetings… and he shared them with reporters.

This is a clip from my recent livestream: https://www.youtube.com/live/uRLAK9TzcyE

The article this is based on is here: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/the-mormon-church-refused-to-help

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Thank you to Yanely Del Rosario for providing captioning help!

Tags

Church State Atheist Atheism Humanist Humanism Religion Politics Christian Christianity

Transcript — YouTube panel (human-authored)

0:00 very serious story this one involves the Mormon church and it is very messed up let me give you some backstory here because you have to understand what the story this week is all about but to make sense of it you have to understand what happened in 2017 and in 2017 a woman named Chelsea Goodrich uh she had she was 31 at the time she had come to terms with the fact that when she was a child her own father sexually abused her horrible situation she had grown up with that I’m sure she had suppressed it for a while or didn’t really understand what was happening but obviously as she grew up as she was in her 20s she understood the seriousness of what had happened to her so now she’s 31 and she realizes like not only that that was a problem but it was a problem because her father one he was a Mormon Bishop Bishop which is a title that they can bestow upon regular people you don’t have to go to special school for that or anything so he was a Mormon bishop and yet he did this horrible thing to her

1:10 that’s messed up here’s what’s also messed up she knew that he had confessed what he did to another bishop and now she wanted to get Justice against her father she wanted to take him to court she wanted him to go to jail for what he had done so that meant getting the testimony from the bishop who heard that confession so she wanted to know with the Mormon church allow that Bishop who heard the confession to testify in court about what her father had told him because right there there’s some proof that he did these things he was being accused of so it’s no longer just a he said she said story it’s yeah she’s accusing him of this but also here’s a bishop who heard about it in real time so Chelsea when she’s 31 in 2017 she goes she through the Great Vine she finds out uh there’s a lawyer for the Mormon Church who might be able to help her his name is Paul ridding so she meets with rding she and her mom and a friend of theirs

2:19 like just a guy looking out on her behalf they meet with Paul ridding who is a lawyer for the Mormon church and the bishop who heard the confession the five of them get together and they talk about what has to happen here and the thing is one of the things the lawyer points out lawyer for the Mormon Church points out is that hey when you told us your father had did did this to you we responded by kicking him out of the Mormon church he was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of latterday saints that is true they did kick him out he obviously that meant he’s no longer a bishop which is fine but also who cares I don’t care if he’s not a part of your Club this guy did this guy did something heinous he committed a crime we want to see him behind bars um and that’s when the lawyer for the church said exactly what you think a lawyer for the Mormon Church would say he said well if your dad

3:19 confessed to this crime uh in a confession Booth to this other Bishop then it has to stay a secret it we certainly cannot allow this bishop to testify in court about anything he heard through the act of confession um that’s something that’s in law the church is protected by what is known as the clergy penitent privilege that means basically that confessions get to remain a secret no matter how damning those confessions might be if you tell a priest at a Catholic church or the Mormon church or whatever uh I just killed a man in Reno or something the Mormon Bishop cannot just blab about that to police he’s prohibited from doing it by law he doesn’t have to do it and the church reminds all these people yeah you have to keep it secret that’s the whole point a confession um one thing I haven’t mentioned is that this lawyer for the church that Chelsea thought this guy was on her side that he would help her out poor gullible Soul right here she didn’t realize that this lawyer was actually the head of the

4:30 Mormon Church’s riskmanagement division he didn’t just work for the church he worked for the part of the church whose entire job it is to make sure nothing bad happens to the church so her mistake was thinking this guy would look out for her safety that’s not his job his job is to protect the institution and that probably the whole fact that the Mormon church has this infrastructure in place to protect the church and not the people in the church that may be why her dad confessed to this crime to another Bishop like as a fellow Bishop he knew as well as anybody that his secret could never be used against him and by the way he also blames Satan for his actions as if that makes everything better um and here’s the sad thing about all this because the church would not make that other Bishop available to testify in court the prosecution that was trying to put together a case against Chelsea’s father they said we

5:32 don’t have enough evidence to work with here we can’t go after him in court now it is just like a he said she said thing so we have to drop the case against him so he didn’t go to jail because of what he did to his daughter he didn’t suffer in any meaningful way because of what he did to his daughter in fact as we speak he is right now working as a dentist in Idaho he’s he’s just moved on with his life he’s all well and good so here’s the other thing maybe this is the Silver Lining to all this Chelsea even though she couldn’t go after her father in court she did go public with what happened to her and when another woman heard about what Chelsea said about her father this other woman said wait a minute I know that guy he did the same thing to me he sexually abused me in fact he drugged me like knocked me out unconscious using a drug that he had access to cuz he’s a dentist and then he sexually assaulted her she said so she

6:39 went after him too and if there this is not good news because there’s nothing good about this story but they did end up getting a plea deal out of the dad and basically for the dad to avoid being charged with a sex crime which is super serious and would have put him away behind bars for a really long time he was instead his plea deal was that he would go to jail for 90 days 90 90 days and do three years of probation why because he illegally used that sedative that he had access to as a dentist so he decided I will plead guilty to a drug charge instead of a sex crime charge and they accepted that but he still faced no punishment for what he did to that poor woman and like I said he faced no punishment for what he did to his daughter um so the reason that’s your background why am I bringing all this up because this week the Associated Press published one hell of a story um let me share with you just the

7:46 headline recordings show how the Mormon Church protects itself from child abuse claims and this is written by Michael rendes and Jason Daren uh of the Associated Press Michael R zes of course is a longtime reporter when it comes to abuse in church he’s one of the spotlight guys who went after the Catholic church in Boston decades ago so you know these are solid reporters but here’s basically what this story is about one of the things that we did not know before this week about that whole story because everything I just told you that was public we knew that story already if you followed that story what we did not know is that the lawyer for the Mormon church Church actually went back to Chelsea and her mother uh later on they had multiple meetings about all of this and he said the Mormon church has told me I can give you $300,000 uh but there are a few things you have to do if you want the money number one the lawyer said I know you’ve

8:53 been recording these meetings that we’ve been having because they told him they were recording these meetings and he said that’s fine he said I want you to destroy all the tapes that was number one number two you have to promise never to sue the Mormon church about the fact that we’re not helping you prosecute your dad number three you have to pretend this conversation right here where we’re handing you a giant bag of money you have to just never tell anyone this happened and so here’s the thing if you’re in their position and the Church offers you 300,000 th000 to basically shut up about this thing where you may or may not even see Justice even if they cooperated I understand why the family said yeah we’ll take the money so they did and they they fulfilled their end of the bargain there but remember I said at the beginning that there was someone else in those meetings their friend who was

9:50 there kind of serving as Chelsea’s Advocate uh a you know just a friend figure because she’s going through something very emotional well guess what that friend made his own recordings of their meetings and he did not sign any sort of deal with the Mormon church and that dude gave his recordings to the Associated Press and so now we have uh these recordings and actually there’s one of them that I want to play for you here this is an example uh I wonder if you could hear this Den you can give me a thumbs up if you could hear this recording uh from the church here this is one of the recordings agree that we will not disclose that we’ve settled with you and you will not disclose that you’ve settled with the church other than uh your attorney or financial advisors and they must maintain confidentiality as well okay second paragraph I’ll be interested in your response but the recommendation is is that you acknowledge that there’s been some recordings made of all of our

10:57 Communications and uh that you agree to destroy those recordings within 10 days of signing this and I guess the reason why that is is I’ve had my deposition taken before I’ve had and um if if your attorney wants to listen to it and take the right piece that mischaracterized what we were talking about for 25 minutes and they would just want to take the the statement that is three or 30 seconds or 20 seconds take it out of context I don’t have any way to defend whether or not that’s going to be taken out of context or not so that’s why that’s in there so that’s just one example of the recording and we know he’s not taken out of context because the Associated Press has all those recordings they could hear it in context and that’s how they were able to write this update um in fact going into the meeting uh the friend’s name in that article his name is Eric alberty and he said to the Associated Press you know going into this meeting with ridding who’s the lawyer for the Mormon church I

12:05 felt like it would be very clear once everything’s laid out that look this is not something that we want to cover up this is something that we want to uncover for a number of reasons so that JN the dad doesn’t do this again so that Chelsea can move forward uh but in a statement and obviously that’s not what the church wanted to do in a statement to the Associated Press the church said the abuse of a child or any other individual is inexcusable and that the dad John following his excommunication has not been readmitted to church membership see everyone the Mormon Church did their job they won’t allow him to do religious Services anymore he’s not allowed back in the building he can just abuse people outside the building because the church doesn’t care if he goes after other victims you see so you could tell why Eric this buddy of Chelsea is like oh oh I have tapes I’ve kept the tapes and then he gives it said the Associated

13:08 Press reporters like this is the Mormon church for you they think kicking someone out of their Club is the worst kind of punishment but they won’t do something that is well within their power to prevent an alleged sexual predator from striking again like sexual abuse is inexcusable they say but they won’t do the bare minimum to prevent sexual abuse and here’s the thing the saddest thing about this is that the law is technically on the church’s side because like I said if you’re a religious leader and you do act and confession is a big deal in your religion as it is in Mormonism then you’re shielded you are not a mandatory reporter so you don’t have to tell the police about this stuff and the church says you better not tell the police about this stuff because it was an act of uh confession I think a few weeks ago I mentioned that there was a similar case in Arizona where a a woman now said

14:06 that when I was a child my dad abused me and my sisters um and this went to court they said the he confessed to these crimes so like we have evidence of it the judge said I’m sorry I can’t do anything about that because he said it during confession so I got to toss out your case um and because the church did not participate in that and because they didn’t you know rat him out that father abused even more kids in his own family in this case that’s not what happened but again the church knows they can get away with all this stuff and they’re not interested in stopping sexual abuse in fact they tell Mormon Bishops which again are just random people they tell Mormon Bishops hey if someone confesses something to you and you’re not sure what to do about it call our customer service hotline they have a hotline it’s called a helpline and basically it gets funneled to the church’s lawyers and they have like a one-page manual and it

15:09 says don’t do \[ \_\_ \] that’s what the manual says like oh you want help on what to do when the man confesses to murder or abuse the answer is shut up don’t bring the church into this don’t tell the victim anything just tell them to talk to us so we can tell them you can’t do anything um for what it’s worth the Associated Press did contact the uh Bishop who refused to who wasn’t allowed to testify about all this and this is fascinating they actually got that guy on record too and look at what he said reached by phone by the Associated Press the bishop who heard the confession last name Miller refused to discuss details it’s clergy privilege he said if I say anything John Goodrich the dad D can sue me for millions of dollars and the sad thing is he’s probably right if he does go to the police he could be sued for breaking that act of confession at the same time though if you’re the Mormon Church think about this they are sitting on top of a giant

16:18 Scrooge McDuck money bin full of what 1002 200 billion with a B dollars a few million that they could be sued for trying to stop sexual abuse that is Pocket Change to them the Morman Church could have said you know what we’re going to break the seal of confession to make sure the abuse stops and if you sue our guy over it and you want millions of dollars from him and we lose the case we’ll pay that because it’s worth the cost of protecting our members but that’s not what the Mormon Church did it’s definitely not what the Mormon church would do they love their money more than they love their members that’s the sad thing about all this they would rather let this woman suffer on her own than do anything to help her out the Associated Press also mentioned 33 states have exemptions for clergy members to laws that require other professionals like teachers doctors therapists they all have to report allegations of sexual abuse if they know about them clergy

17:27 members are exempt from all that and the thing is maybe you say because I did hear this criticism why are you mad at the Mormon Church they were just following the law they literally could not go to the police or testify about something someone said in confession and maybe that’s true but why is that law in place it’s because the Catholic church and the Mormon church and Jehovah’s Witnesses their people Lobby politicians to make sure that law does not change if all of those groups banded together and said said you know what this law that protects us it’s not actually protecting our members so we cannot stand behind it we want you to change the law and say priests should be mandatory reporters as well if we hear about some crime taking place in an act of confession uh if they did it those laws would change but they will never do that because they don’t care about helping people their secrecy matters a lot more I’ll show you one last thing here the Mormon Church did Issue a public

18:31 statement uh after this Associated Press article came out and some of this is was quoted in the piece but this is on uh Twitter Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints you know the abuse of a child anyone else is inexcusable yada y yada you know they don’t actually believe this our heart hearts break for the Survivor and survivors of abuse listen you guys we terminated the perpetrator’s membership 8 years ago so come on we did our job here he has not been readmitted to church membership ever since claims that he confessed to a bishop prior to 2015 which no one is arguing are false his Communications are protected by the law yeah yeah only the perpetrator could release the Bishop from his obligation under the clergy penitent privilege and he refused to do so let me say that again only the sexual abuser the alleged abuser the dad could have said you know what I did confess to this crime bishop and I confessed it to you and I’m saying to you even though I said that in a

19:36 confession you are allowed to go public with it to make sure I get punished for that uh and the guy who might go to jail because of that he’s like yeah no I’m good no you you keep that a secret Mormon church and they’re acting like see we if he said we could punish him we would do it but he said we can’t so we got to keep it a secret you guys just the dumbest public statement uh how does the church have 200 million dollars and they can’t figure out how to do public relations at all like that glaring loophole that you can confess and we can’t tell anyone about it it is a loophole for abusers everywhere because obviously they don’t have to confess to any of this stuff they’re doing it because it makes them feel better it takes a burden off their own abusive chests you know what I mean so they get the benefit of going to confession saying I did this horrible horrible thing it’s so horrible it’s criminal and then the priest or the

20:40 bishop says yeah it’s pretty bad well here’s the magic words you could say to make it all go away and guess what God loves you again and the alleged abuser is like thanks God for being on my side then they leave the confessional booth and find their next victim the only person who benefits from this are the potential abusers and the church doesn’t want to do what it has the power to do to help the victims they’re not going to they’re not going to argue that the law needs to be changed because that would mean more accountability on their end and they are not responsible people