Source: The Mormon Church got out of a child abuse lawsuit… because of confession (Livestream) Channel: Friendly Atheist Published: November 11, 2023 | Archived: May 4, 2026

Video: The Mormon Church got out of a child abuse lawsuit… because of confession (Livestream)
Channel: Friendly Atheist
Published: November 11, 2023
Duration: 14:49
Views: 7,764
Category: News & Politics
Video ID: QSG_s75kLu0

Description

Victims of child abuse sued the Mormon Church for knowing about their plight but doing nothing about it.

The Church argued that they became aware of the abuse through a confession… therefore they didn’t have to report it to authorities.

An Arizona judge just ruled in favor of the Church.

This is a clip from my recent livestream: https://youtube.com/live/L0jNvVPoFhA

The article this is based on is here: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/az-judge-tosses-out-child-abuse-lawsuit

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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 I’m going to start this story by telling you a really depressing story uh so there’s your warning this doesn’t begin well okay um the story is that in 2010 there was a man in Arizona named Paul Adams and he was a Mormon and he went to the temple and he confessed to his Bishop whose name is John Herrod and I only tell you that because the name is important Paul Adams confessed to John Herod that he is molesting his 5-year-old daughter Paul Adams says this to the bishop he’s molesting his daughter so what does John Herod the bishop do and mind you in the Mormon Temple uh Bishops are not like Catholic priests they don’t go through Seminary a Mormon Bishop can be like your plumber who just gets tapped to be a leader in the temple so this bishop is like oh no that sounds pretty bad what do I do about this so he calls Mormon C customer service um I’m only slightly exaggerating but they do have a customer service hotline just for Bishops so he calls the hotline and he’s like you guys what do I do because they just told this

1:11 guy Paul Adams just told me this horrific thing so what does the customer service line which by the way is staffed not by customer service reps but by the church’s lawyers because like any good HR department the customer service agency there not interested in helping the people they’re interested in protecting the church so what does the hotline say they do not say hey you should report that to the cops you should tell child welfare officers so that they could protect the kids nope they just said uh don’t tell anybody keep it inh house that’s what they told Bishop John Herod so what did John Herod do he did end up confiding in one other bishop and he also brought in Paul Adams and his wife for counseling and I’m going to share with you uh this horrible update to what happened this is again a few years ago an article came out about this but again the husband and wife have to go through Mormon counseling as if like maybe if the wife knows he’s molesting the

2:20 daughter she will put a stop to it well here’s what happened The Bishop’s counseling sessions apparently had little effect the man continued to molest his daughter and later after her birth in 2015 his infant daughter she was six weeks old six weeks old at that time he just continued doing it he made videos of the encounter and posted them on pornographic websites which were eventually discovered by interpole reported to his employer US Customs and Border Protection and led to criminal charges but let’s just recap here we already knew he was abusing his 5-year-old daughter the guy confesses the bishop does nothing the abuse continues not just with the 5-year-old girl but he gives birth to an the the couple gives birth to another kid and then he starts molesting her at six weeks old and it just kept happening that went on for years uh so as you saw in that article like there there were criminal

3:32 charges the two girls who were abused and their three other siblings were eventually adopted albeit by separate families I don’t know what’s going on with them it’s not my business I hope they are okay the wife was later indicted on 12 criminal counts Adams the dude who was doing all this stuff he was indicted on 11 counts of child sexual abuse but in 2017 when he was in prison and awaiting trial he hanged himself so he’s a non-factor now so that’s how that story ended at least in his case but just a tragic awful situation in every single way so the reason this came up again in 2020 is because two of the girls in that family and I don’t know if they were the two victims or other two or whatever um but two of those people decided to file a lawsuit not against uh the the guy but against the Mormon Church the daughters of that dude sued the church saying you knew this was happening and you allowed it to continue

4:46 so they filed this lawsuit and look at what the law their lawyer said because I think she puts it really well here her name is Lynn kigan kigan sums up the entire case in the first paragraph of the complaints in introduction this case involves horrible sexual physical and emotional abuse of children between the ages of six weeks and 12 years old that went on for seven years the biological father of these victims made videos of his rapes and now these videos are everywhere on the worldwide web the perpetrator admitted his abuse and crimes to his Mormon church and received counseling for his crimes the Mormon leaders uh oh I’m sorry can you bring that up again Den uh I did not know this detail those videos were among those found on Josh dugger’s computer by the way wow I didn’t know Josh Dugger was in involved in this story but there you go um 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

5:50 these children for seven years sat next to them in church and allowed these vicious crimes to continue so they sued they sued the church saying you knew it was happening you allowed it to continue what the hell and the reason I bring this up and I think many of you probably saw this headline somewhere this week because the headline I think alone a lot of people really upset this is from the Associated Press here’s the headline Court cites clergy penitent privilege in dismissing child sex abuse lawsuit against Mormon church and that’s a lot of words that I will a cipher for you right there but like basically that lawsuit against the Mormon church was thrown out by a judge and basically the reason that they said it was thrown out is because Paul Adams confessed to the molestation in an act of confession and the rules of confession say anything you say in confession remains a secret and so what the judge is saying the bishop was under

6:57 no obligation to report any of that to the cops to child welfare officials nobody he did not break the law so you cannot sue him or you cannot sue the Mormon church for not reporting it to the police when the law says they don’t have to so the entire case was tossed out that’s what clergy penitent privilege is and that is infuriating in every single way um one of the things that the lawyer Lynn cigan said uh I don’t know where it is I see if I can pull this up really quick um she was obviously frustrated by that turn of events right there um I don’t have this in front of me right now but anyway one of the things Lyn cattigan said in response to all this is how do you explain to Young victims that a rapist’s religious beliefs are more important than their right to be free of rape which is yeah fair question she said she is appealing the ruling um but also if you allow this to stand it completely eviscerates the state’s Child Protection Law in Arizona like how do

8:14 you protect children when confessions of the crime don’t count for anything if they’re done inside of a religious Center you know um what did the Mormon church say after this case was tossed out guess what they’re very happy uh I’m going to read to you from an article in a prepared statement the Mormon Church said we are pleased with the Arizona Superior Court’s decision yada y y 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 which is true it is consistent with Arizona law but it is messed up that they’re like celebrating a law that is clearly broken and of course it’s messed up that this law exists at all like leave it to the Mormon church to do a Victory lap after adding more suffering to the lives of sex abuse victims but like all of this was probably predictable because this has this story has become like exhibit a

9:21 when it comes to how the Mormon Church covers up this kind of abuse like if there’s any way for Mormons to deal with these sorts of problems internally before the outside world hears about it that is their preference and time and time again they have failed to take care of the problems and the abuse has thrived so here’s the deal with the law in Arizona that they’re so happy about Arizona does not require religious leaders to report abuse to law enforcement if they learned about it through an act of confession and that is not true in every case like if you’re a public school teacher and you find out a kid is being abused used you have a legal obligation to tell the kids counselor or some Authority at the school so they can report it and do what they need to do but not pastors not Bishops not priests if someone tells them a secret believing it will remain a secret the law allows that be to remain a secret even if people are getting hurt um I think in Australia like a few years ago there was

10:25 a priest who Catholic priest who confessed to another Cath priest that he had sexually assaulted raped like lots of people I forget the number it was too high one is too high but this was absolutely too high and of course because it was confession nothing happened and then that priest kept doing it and it stayed that way for years and his victim count just got higher and higher because no one could do anything about it because he only confessed during confession um I want to show you one thing when there were attempts to change the law in Arizona of course Republicans stopped it um this is uh let me share this with you here uh here we go there we go um to force a clergy member to report a confidential communication changes the whole nature of the confessional said Senator Eddie Farnsworth this is an Arizona state senator who’s 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 so this dude

11:37 is just like yeah we can’t change confessions so what if there are some kids who get molested along the way um there was another quote here by the same dude where did it go um I know it’s a long article here there we go uh the bill that would have said clergy members still have to report this stuff well-intentioned as it might have been would disrupt centuries of church Dogma said farnworth who as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee has the authority to decide which bills to consider yeah we wouldn’t want to disrupt centuries of religious Dogma even when kids are getting molested like what the hell wh why why and the reason religious institutions don’t want the exemption taken off the books is because they value secrecy over safety their religious Dogma is more important than a child’s getting sexually abused they think confessions are a Sacrament and anything less than complete confidentiality would be an obstacle to

12:39 their faith or to put it simply they just don’t give a \[ \_\_ \] about kids victims of abuse anything like that that rule about confession turns these religious leaders into moral monsters and it stops them from helping the people who need it most one of the things in the Associated Press article this week that I think you need to check out is this passage right here uh the Associated Press found that 33 States exempt clergy of any denomination from laws requiring professional 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 they are lobbying to make sure

13:44 they’re allowed to keep abuse secret that’s how messed up they are it is a glaring loophole that has been a blessing for abusers everywhere because think about what that means for guys like Paul Adams you can go to confession you can tell them the most heinous things that you are doing and still think you are getting right with God and then you can just continue your predatory ways I mean the lawsuit has argued the clergy penitent privilege should not apply to the people involved in these discussions but the judge said doesn’t matter everything we’re talking about here involves confession so the church and its leaders are not responsible for it again I don’t it’s infuriating and right now again Arizona is a state where Republicans have a very slim majority in the legislature maybe if that flips in the next election maybe that changes but until then there are plenty of states that would rather protect priests than protect kids who are victims of

14:46 abuse messed up