Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I am one of your co hosts for today. Today we have a very important kickoff to a series that we're doing. We are joined today in studio by the wonderful Jen Camp. Hey, Jen.

Jen Camp [00:00:19] Hey, everybody.

John Dehlin [00:00:20] Thanks for joining us, Jen.

Jen Camp [00:00:22] You're welcome.

John Dehlin [00:00:22] And we have Gerardo Simano in studio. Hey, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:25] Hey, John. Hey, everybody.

John Dehlin [00:00:27] And Gerardo's been doing such a great job kind of producing new episodes, and this is kind of an episode that Gerardo has been helping to produce. It's kind of been a team effort. Jen's been helping out. But we have been spending lots of time preparing for what we think is a really important series on Mormon Stories podcast. So we want to welcome everyone who's joining us on the live stream, on YouTube and on Facebook. We welcome and appreciate your comments there. We want to begin by talking about this new article that came out on August 4, 2022. This is an article by the Associated Press. It's entitled seven Years of Sex Abuse, How Mormon Officials Let It Happen by Michael Rezes. I don't know how to pronounce that. Do you know how to pronounce that? GERARDO Resendes RESENDEZ okay, so this is an important article for many reasons. It's not necessarily an important article because it's talking about new stuff. Abuse in the Mormon Church has been talked about for decades, and we're about to talk about that. And even, you know, this abuse hotline that the church set up that this article talks about is something that's been talked about for years and years and years. What's new about this article is that a lot of people are caring about it right now. And also it's talking about a case that's going on in Arizona and a former case that happened several years back in West Virginia that really shines a spotlight on several major problems within the Mormon Church. And I'll just try and give an overview really quick. It's how prevalent abuse is within the Mormon Church, sexual abuse and other types of abuse. It's how the Mormon Church, through its law firm curtain of McConkey, set up a hotline that that was not set up with the first priority of protecting and helping abuse victims and making sure that they get helped and taken care of. Instead, it was a hotline that was set up to help protect the church from bad pr, from lawsuits, et cetera, often at the expense of the victims. And then other other things that this article discusses is how the Mormon Church has worked to make sure that There are laws in states like Utah, Idaho and Arizona, but the truth is these laws are all throughout the United which invoke what's called clergy privilege, which is basically laws that keep Mormon bishops and stake presidents and mission presidents and Catholic priests, etc, that give them an exemption from being mandatory reporters when they are notified about sexual abuse. We're going to be getting into that in this series and then taking it a step further, how the Mormon Church over the years, through Curtin McConkey, through this hotline time and time again, have advised, not only made sure that bishops and stake presidents never report abuse, to almost never report instances of abuse to law enforcement and to police officers, but also in countless instances, have advised abuse victims and their families to not report sexual abuse to law enforcement agents. And so that's kind of an overview. This article goes into just one or two shocking examples. In the case of the Arizona case that that's covered in this article. You know, the Mormon Church knew about abuse in a particular family and then chose not to report it to police officers, which allowed seven more years of abuse to the children in this family. So we are going to be doing an entire series on sexual abuse in the Mormon Church, and it's going to include multiple parts. So let me just set up the series now. Part one is right now. And what we're going to be doing is we're going to be providing an overview of the history of sexual abuse within the church, as illustrated through an amazing episode that Gina Colvin, Dr. Gina Colvin, recorded in a thoughtful faith podcast a few years ago with attorney Tim Koznoff, who is one of the world's foremost experts and most experienced humans as an attorney, suing both the Mormon Church and the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America for sexual abuse. So that's what we're about to do is we're gonna do a reaction video to Gina Colvin's a thoughtful faith interview of Tim Kosanoff that was recorded several years ago because there's no YouTube instance of Gina's interview. So out of respect for Gina, out of love for Gina, and out of just the amazingness of that interview, we're going to be sharing it now and doing a reaction video with me, Gerardo and Jen. That's going to be part one of our series. Part two of our series is going to be tomorrow where Gerardo and I, because Jen, unfortunately is out of town, we're going to be reading the AP article from start to finish. We're going to be reacting to that, providing some initial analysis of it with our amazing audience. We welcome you to join us for that. And, and we're going to be reading the Mormon Church's response to that article which in and of itself we feel is kind of egregious and outrageous and deceptive. That's going to be part two of this series. Part three of this series. We're having Tim Kosnoff, attorney Tim Kosnoff in studio this Friday for a two part interview, which is part three of the series. So the first interview with Tim Kosnoff will be Tim talking about the hotline and providing additional information about the hotline, sort of giving us an update on the status of the church and its hotline between his interview with Gina Colvin that we're going to air today and the present. You know, we're going to give him a chance to also just add any additional information that he wants to about the Mormon Church and abuse since Gina's interview. That's going to be part three of the series. Part one of our interview with Tim on Friday, then part two of our interview with Tim on Friday. Part four of our series will be Tim talking about the Boy Scouts of America case where the Mormon Church agreed to pay $250 million in a settlement along with some insurance companies in the Boy Scouts of America, which was recently overturned by a judge because it was found to be unacceptable in terms of like an attempt, as I understand it is an attempt to get off easy. That the church is trying to get off easy when it likely should be accountable for much more than 250 million which is saying a lot.

Gerardo Sumano [00:07:04] They wanted too broad of a.

John Dehlin [00:07:06] Protection.

Gerardo Sumano [00:07:07] Yeah. Protection and non Accountability.

John Dehlin [00:07:09] Yeah.

Jen Camp [00:07:09] Right. Wasn't it with the. They wanted it with the Scouts and the young men. They like tried to include the young men part of church with the Scouts and the judge is like I don't think so.

John Dehlin [00:07:19] Yeah. So we're going to be talking about all of that with Tim on Friday and then we are probably going to follow up. We have received, we did an Instagram post recently on our Mormon Stories podcast Instagram account where we invited viewers and listeners and followers to share with us instances where they or a family member or a loved one experienced abuse within a Mormon context and were explicitly told by Mormon church leadership or the hotline or the or Mormon Church attorneys to not report to the police. So we're going to just do like a sort of a name the victims kind of thing where we share instances of abuse victims being told not to report to police. We'll figure out the right way and the right place to share that. But we really want to share that. And then we may end this series by having at least one, if not a few actual victims come on to talk about their experiences with the church, hiding up or hiding or covering abuse. And to be honest, we've covered this many, many, many times on Mormon Stories podcast over the past several years, but we want to continue covering it. So, Gerardo, anything you want to add to the series?

Gerardo Sumano [00:08:30] No, I think that sounds great.

John Dehlin [00:08:32] Does that sound. Are you excited? You ready for this?

Gerardo Sumano [00:08:34] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:08:34] Okay. And Jen, anything you want to add?

Jen Camp [00:08:37] No, I'm just excited that we're talking about it and hopefully it will bring some change.

John Dehlin [00:08:43] Yeah. And Jen, we know that, you know, this is personal to all of us, but we know that for you, this is a very personal issue as well.

Jen Camp [00:08:52] Yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm sad that this is the weekend I'm out of town, so I can't participate in this. But maybe next week if we have a. Another. Another one, I can be there for that.

John Dehlin [00:09:01] But when we do your story, we'll be talking about the fact that you have personal experiences of abuse within a Mormon context.

Jen Camp [00:09:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:09] Okay. So thanks for joining us. I know this is hard stuff to kind of relive. In some ways, it can be re traumatizing, but also hopefully healing. That's what we hope.

Jen Camp [00:09:20] Yeah.

Context and Disclaimer Before the Interview

John Dehlin [00:09:21] Okay, so I want to just give a little bit of some context and a disclaimer before we jump into Gina's amazing episode. And what I want to do is I want to start with the September 6th. When I was at Brigham Young University from 1987 to 1993, I learned about the September 6th. And the September 6th was a group of six Mormon historians slash activists who were either excommunicated or disfellowshipped for various reasons. So at the top left, you've got Michael Quinn, who is excommunicated for doing work on both post manifesto polygamy and on folk magic, peep stones, treasure digging kind of stuff. His book Magic and the Mormonism and

Gerardo Sumano [00:10:07] the Magic and the Mormonism, Early Mormonism and the Magic worldview.

John Dehlin [00:10:09] Thank you, Gerardo, for that book. He was excommunicated. You know, we've got Paul Toscano in the bottom left. We was just a critic of the church and is an attorney. We've got Maxine Hanks, bottom middle, who had released a book with a bunch of feminists talking about just feminism and how the church has taken away power and authority from women. She's a dear friend. Bottom right, we've got Avram Gileadi who was on the other side, kind of on the Denver snuffer side of the spectrum. He was talking too much about revelations and the end of times as kind of an orthodox fundamentalist believer. He was excommunicated. And the person that I have not yet mentioned is Lavina Fieldy Anderson in the top right. And the reason why I'm starting with Lavina Fielding Anderson is because no conversation about abuse in the Mormon Church should happen without acknowledging the role of Lavina Fielding Anderson. So Lavina Fielding Anderson, basically, and I should know the history better, she basically, as I understand it, published an article in Dialogue where she listed by name and I think there may have even been a website involved. But she began listing instances of ecclesiastical abuse by bishops, by stake presidents, and this included either ones that were guilty of abuse themselves or covering up abuse. She was a faithful active member at the time she published, I think this research or the dialogue article. And you know, if we can, I would love to cover Lavina Fielding Anderson in a subsequent episode, but she was excommunicated for that. And I found an article out of the University of Illinois Press. Maybe it's a book. It's called Saints for All Seasons, Lavina Fieldy Anderson and Bernard Shaw's Joan of Arc. But it, I think that article kind of tells the story. We should also in the show notes include a dialogue article. Any of any of Lavina Fieldy Anderson's dialogue articles that, that attempted to chronicle the abuse. But long story short is she was excommunicated literally for trying to get the church to stop and end abuse and for holding leaders accountable. And, and to add insult to injury, to my knowledge, Lavina Anderson went another three decades never stopping her attending church. So imagine in 1993, in September, you're excommunicated from the Mormon Church for calling the church out on abuse. And then every week from then until the present, you continue attending your local ward as an excommunicated member. That's my understanding of Lavina Fielding Anderson. I know she's also had a loose relationship with communication Community of Christ. But recently, a few years ago, while she was still attending her ward, her bishop said, hey Lavina, why don't we get you re baptized? Because it's been 30 plus years, you should just get re baptized. So she's like, well, I'm open to it, but I don't think the state pro, you know, I don't think the church is going to let it happen. So Then they go to the stake president. The bishop and Levina go to the state president. Stake president's like, yeah, Lavina, let's get you unexcommunicated. Let's get you re baptized. Because, hey, you know, Maxine Hanks somehow got re baptized and so did. And so did Avram Gileadi. So at least two of the September Six had been re baptized. So why not you, Lavina? You've never. You still believe. You've never stopped attending and all you were trying to do was get the church to be good on sexual abuse. Well, guess what? The bishop of the stake president wrote a letter to the church headquarters to the First Presidency saying, we endorse Lavina Fielding Anderson's re baptism into the Mormon Church. And guess what? They were denied. Lavina Field Anderson was denied. And there's an article in the Salt Lake Tribune. Writer excommunicated during September 6th purge loses her bid to rejoin the LDS church cruelly and unexplainedly. Even though Lavina. Even though Maxine Hanks was re baptized, Avram Gileadi was re baptized, Lavina Fieldy Anderson was denied re baptism. And you know, so gotta. Gotta give a shout out to Lavina Feeling Anderson. She's a legend. I. I want to just stop and say, Jen, I want to just notice that maybe something about that introduction was probably emotional triggering for you. And I don't want to ignore that. So are you comfortable sharing kind of what you're feeling right now? I don't mean to put you on the spot, but it's okay.

Jen Camp [00:15:00] Sorry. Yeah, no, it's just the first. It's just the first time I've publicly ever said anything about it, so I'm just having a moment. Sorry, everybody, But it's okay. I'll be okay. I just need. I just need a minute.

John Dehlin [00:15:24] I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And thank you, Jen, for being willing to do this. This is super hard and sensitive stuff, so thank you.

Jen Camp [00:15:36] Yeah, I'm okay. I really am okay. It's just kind of hit me.

Guest [00:15:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:39] Yeah. Thank you, Jen.

Guest 2 [00:15:45] Something was going on and.

John Dehlin [00:15:47] And you know, our hearts go out to all victims because there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of victims that we'll be talking about over the next few days and weeks. And so hearts go out to all victims. I guess we should do a trigger warning because we will be talking about rape, pedophilia, child abuse. And so please take care yourselves and anyone who might be listening within the earshot or eyeshot of this Episode. Please take care. Okay, so with that, it is time to jump into the episode. So as. As I was preparing to interview Tim Kosnoff, you know, I knew that Gina Colvin, Dr. Gina Colvin, had interviewed him years ago. And in addition to that, several people reached out to me and said, john, now that this AP article's come out, you ought to shine a spotlight on Gita's interview with Tim because it's pretty legendary. And so in preparation, I started listening to this episode to kind of get up to speed. And it was so amazing, it was so hard hitting that I just felt, number one, people needed to hear it. Number two, Gina deserved tons of credit for it.

Jen Camp [00:17:06] And.

John Dehlin [00:17:07] And number three, I felt like it didn't make sense to have Tim to spend our time with Tim recovering the tracks of what he had already shared with Gina years ago. Instead, we could focus on what's happened since he gave this interview and the boy Scout stuff. And so for all those reasons, I called Jen and Gerardo literally this morning, and I said, jen and Gerardo, should we just play Gina's episode and do a reaction video to it? And Haruto and Jen, you both felt like that might be a good idea. And so this puts it. This, this acknowledges Gina and Tim. It puts their interview on YouTube, and it allows us to do kind of a real time reaction. I've only listened to about half this episode, and then I stopped. Haro, you've listened to the whole thing?

Gerardo Sumano [00:17:51] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:53] And Jen, you have not listened to this episode yet.

Jen Camp [00:17:55] No.

John Dehlin [00:17:55] Yeah. And many of our viewers and listeners won't either. So what we'll be doing is we'll have Jen and Gerardo share comments as they come in. Because for many, we want. We want this to be a collaborative episode with our viewers and listeners so they can share stuff as well. So how does that sound? Anything else, Gerardo, before we jump in?

Gerardo Sumano [00:18:16] Nope.

John Dehlin [00:18:16] You ready?

Gerardo Sumano [00:18:17] I'm ready.

John Dehlin [00:18:17] Jen, you're you ready?

Jen Camp [00:18:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:19] Okay. Thanks again, Jen and Gerardo and everyone. So without any further ado, we are going to be playing episode 258 of a thoughtful faith podcast, which is a production of the Mormon Stories Open Stories Foundation. Gina's been doing amazing work. Her article, her. Gina is one of the most brilliant, articulate, thoughtful voices in the history of Mormon discourse. I'm just going to say that flat out. She started blogging at Kiwi Mormon way back in the day. And then when a thoughtful faith podcast needed a new host, I tapped Gina to become the host of a thoughtful faith podcast. And she's done something between 250 and 300 episodes on a Thoughtful Faith. She's talked about winding down her hosting of A Thoughtful Faith. She still occasionally does episodes. I should also say that Gina, for many, many years was trying to be a model or an example of thoughtful, faithful engagement as an active member. And then the church called her to a disciplinary council to excommunicate her after they did with me. Let's include in our shownotes my interviews with Gina, because we chronicled that on Mormon Stories podcast. Eventually, she had a disciplinary council and a ton of people reached out to the church to stop it. And it's one of the only times in the history of Mormonism that I'm aware of where there was a disciplinary council convened for apostasy and the decision was not to excommunicate. So somehow Gina escaped excommunication with her apostasy disciplinary council. And then in kind of a ironic twist of fate, a few months later, she resigned from the church. And so she's no longer a member of the church. She did resign. I would have, I would love or would have loved to interview about all that. I don't know that I've done an interview with Gina since she resigned. Maybe she covered that on her own podcast. But I told Gina I would love to have her back on Mormon Stories to tell that full story. And it may be that I did interview her after she resigned, but I. I've done like 1700 plus interviews. I. I forget.

Background on the Gina Colvin Interview

Jen Camp [00:20:27] And Gina just has a gorgeous voice too.

John Dehlin [00:20:30] Yeah, she's amazing.

Jen Camp [00:20:31] Her voice is just beautiful.

John Dehlin [00:20:33] But she's literally like the smartest, most articulate human I've probably ever met, in or out of Mormonism.

Gerardo Sumano [00:20:38] She's awesome.

Jen Camp [00:20:39] Yeah, she's awesome.

John Dehlin [00:20:40] So Gina, now, I think she's, she's beautiful. Done work to become a. Some sort of pastor for I think the Evangelical or Anglican Church, but she's also been working closely with Community of Christ. And I don't know her exact status with either the Anglican Church or Community of Christ, but we'd love to bring her back on to give us an update. But anyway, that's kind of my Gina update. Huge thanks to Alan La Pratt for the Super Chat donation. Any of you who want to give us donations, we will use those to pay for Gerardo, to pay for Jen, to pay for our staff and our facilities. We just always appreciate your financial support. Also to Clay Born for his Super Chat financial support. You can also click the Stars feature on Facebook to give us donations through Facebook. Those are always greatly appreciated. And if you want to donate to support Gina Colvin, she still gets like 80% of all donations that go to A Thoughtful Faith. So if you want to go to a thoughtfulfaith.com, click the Donate button. We'll pass on your donations to Gina because she deserves a ton of all the financial support you can offer. So with that, we are now going to go ahead and kick off this interview between Gina and Tim. And what we're going to do is we're just going to play it and we're going to pause it and react to it and we're also going to show, we're going to display your text comments during the playing in this video and we'll read some of them. But we're also going to try and not talk too much because this is an in depth interview. So without any further ado, I give you now episode 258 of A Thoughtful Faith. Gina Colvin, interviewing Tim Kosnoff taking the Mormons to court defending sexual abuse victims against the LDS Church. Roll the tape.

A Survivor Comes Forward

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:22:38] Something was going on that she needed to tell me.

Video Clip 1 [00:22:41] This is a Thoughtful Faith podcast. I'm Gina Colvin. In 2002, NPR covered a story about the way that sexual abuse cases are handled by the LDS Church. NPR were exposing a pattern of behaviour wherein the immediate reflex of the church is to protect the perpetrator and the supposed good name of the LDS Church at the expense of the victim. The interview is about eight minutes long, but it's worth listening to because it's telling.

Video Clip 1 [00:23:20] Another lawsuit was filed this past week involving priests and bishops and sexual abuse.

Video Clip 1 [00:23:26] But the suit does not target members

Video Clip 1 [00:23:28] of the Catholic Church. This suit and at least two dozen earlier cases name the 11 million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The suit's charged that Mormon leaders failed to protect children from abusers. From Salt Lake City, NPR's Howard Berkus reports.

Video Clip 1 [00:23:45] Seven summers ago, a woman will call Kathleen worked in her home office in a quiet neighborhood outside Salt Lake City.

Video Clip 1 [00:23:53] And it was just after school had let out. My daughter was 11, my son was 7.

Video Clip 1 [00:23:58] They were rollerblading and I just this

Video Clip 1 [00:24:01] feeling came over me that something wasn't right.

Video Clip 1 [00:24:04] Kathleen asks we not use her real name to protect her daughter's identity. The funny feeling that day grew out of something she was told when she moved into the area shortly before a 53 year old male neighbor had molested kids. She came home, I asked, just flat out asked her if something was going

Video Clip 1 [00:24:23] on that she needed to tell me about him.

Video Clip 1 [00:24:27] And she said.

Video Clip 1 [00:24:28] She just started crying and said, yeah,

Video Clip 1 [00:24:29] and told me what?

Video Clip 1 [00:24:30] What are you doing? The neighbor fondled Kathleen's daughter and tried to lure her into his hot tub. Kathleen called police. The neighbor called his Mormon bishop. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, bishops are lay leaders of local congregations called wards.

Video Clip 1 [00:24:47] And we wanted to go to the

Video Clip 1 [00:24:49] bishop because this evidently is how this man handled this in the past, was

Video Clip 1 [00:24:55] to go to the bishop, tell him that he was sorry, and then they

Video Clip 1 [00:25:01] just supposedly let it go. The neighbor was a high priest, a designation given to most adult Mormon men. It signifies readiness for leadership. But he was no ordinary high priest. He's accused in a lawsuit filed last month of hundreds of abusive acts over three decades with a dozen boys and girls, all members of the same Mormon ward, and all before the incident involving Kathleen's 11 year old daughter. Some of the abuse was reported to at least three local Mormon officials. None went to police. Kathleen was contacted by a regional leader known as a stake president. He told us that we needed to not press any lawsuits.

Video Clip 1 [00:25:44] We needed to keep harmony in the neighborhood.

Video Clip 1 [00:25:48] Basically, we needed to forgive and forget.

Video Clip 1 [00:25:50] And I had a really hard time

Video Clip 1 [00:25:52] with that one because when your daughter's been abused, you can't forgive and you can't forget. This went to court. It finally went to court, and the stake president showed up at the court to support the perpetrator, not my daughter. The neighbor pleaded guilty, was placed on probation and excommunicated from the Mormon Church, but he still attended services. Kathleen and her daughter chose not to sue, but their experience is familiar to the attorneys involved in two dozen lawsuits in the last decade. Dozens more are being prepared, says attorney Jeff Anderson, who filed hundreds of cases against the Catholic Church and says the Mormon Church is next. The Mormon Church seems to be in a place very similar to where the Catholics were two decades ago. That is, they have a practice of keeping secrets, denying responsibility for molestation when it happens, and doing everything they can to prevent it from becoming known. And as a result, the children are

Video Clip 1 [00:27:02] not very well protected in that church. There is absolutely, positively no pattern.

Video Clip 1 [00:27:07] Von Keach is an attorney for the Mormon Church.

Video Clip 1 [00:27:10] There is absolutely, positively not one instance that I have ever found where a

Video Clip 1 [00:27:15] priesthood leader has been told or has

Video Clip 1 [00:27:18] otherwise come to a conclusion that he should cover up or not fully report.

Video Clip 1 [00:27:23] And relatively few lawsuits, Keach says, accused the Mormon Church.

Video Clip 1 [00:27:28] I've been doing this for 12 years and there are fewer than two dozen cases. A far cry from what the other churches are seeing we're not a perfect people. There have been blips on the radar screen where local leaders have not handled a situation perfectly. There have probably been a dozen or

Video Clip 1 [00:27:45] so of those over the 10 years that I've been doing this.

Video Clip 1 [00:27:48] Certainly not a pattern.

Video Clip 1 [00:27:50] Keech says. The problem cases occurred before the church established training programs and a telephone helpline for its lay leadership. Bishops and stake presidents receive brochures, videotapes and opportunities for training every few years. They're instructed to call the helpline if they have any questions about handling abusive situations. There's also a system for tracking abusers from one ward to the next. Harold Brown heads the church department responsible for the program.

Video Clip 1 [00:28:20] It's a pretty good system. You train them, you have a telephone call. Are we perfect? No, we're not. But you show me an organization that does what this church does to prevent

Video Clip 1 [00:28:31] and deal with child abuse, I'd like to see it. Critics see the imperfect affections as significant. Training is voluntary, and there's no punishment for failure to train. There's no clear message on the moral or legal duty to report to police. Instead, there's advice to research and follow state laws, which aren't necessarily clear even to lawyers. And some clergy seem to view abuse as a religious problem, emphasizing salvation for the abuser rather than prosecution. All this overlooks something fundamental, says Tim Koznoff, another attorney targeting the Mormon church.

Video Clip 1 [00:29:07] Mormon bishops and stake presidents don't have

Video Clip 1 [00:29:10] the authority, the qualifications or the understanding

Video Clip 1 [00:29:16] to be investigating crimes, and child sexual abuse is a crime.

Video Clip 1 [00:29:20] It's also a complicated social and psychological phenomenon best handled by professionals and not volunteer clergy, says Dave Fowers, a Mormon and sexual abuse therapist. When I sit here in the office, I have to wonder and worry.

Video Clip 1 [00:29:37] When I see some of the decisions

Video Clip 1 [00:29:38] that are made, I'm heartbroken because I

Video Clip 1 [00:29:41] don't think that even with the desire

Video Clip 1 [00:29:44] to do right, that you can always do that, especially with victims and perpetrators.

Video Clip 1 [00:29:49] It's such a complex dynamic.

Video Clip 1 [00:29:51] How complex is it to dial 2401911, the helpline? Harold Brown of the Mormon Church, we

Video Clip 1 [00:29:58] understand what he's saying is how can a bishop in a year learn everything that I've known in 30 years?

Video Clip 1 [00:30:04] He can't.

Video Clip 1 [00:30:04] But he can memorize a number, and when he picks it up, he's got the expertise that this man has in 30 years right at his disposal.

Video Clip 1 [00:30:12] That didn't seem to be enough in a case filed last month in Washington state. It involves another high priest who sexually molested his daughter and stepdaughter the abuse was reported to a church social worker, bishop and stake president, but they didn't go to police. The church says they didn't have to under Washington law. The prosecutor in the case disputes that, noting too that the church officials were not protected by the First Amendment privilege that keeps confessions to clergy private. Still, Mormon church attorney von Keach sees mischief in this and other lawsuits. We do it the best way we

Video Clip 1 [00:30:50] know how with the best of intentions. And that's why allegations like these are so outrageous to us.

Video Clip 1 [00:30:57] There has been an environment created out

Video Clip 1 [00:31:00] there by these lawsuits around the country against other institutions. And I think there are attorneys who

Video Clip 1 [00:31:07] intend to profit from that environment by

Video Clip 1 [00:31:10] setting their sights upon organizations like the church. I would say where, where is the proof?

Video Clip 1 [00:31:16] It'll probably take depositions, discovery and sworn testimony to sort out the proof and the truth, but details will likely remain secret in lawsuits settled before trial. Settlements today typically include non disclosure agreements at the insistence of the Mormon Church. Howard Berkus, NPR News, Salt Lake City.

John Dehlin [00:31:38] Tim Kosnoff, so really quickly, I'm just going to pause it and just share a couple quick things. I guess the first thing I want to say is that that person, Von Keach, elder von Keach is a really critical figure in this entire discussion. Von Keach was an attorney for a long time. He got his bachelor's degree in political science from byu. He got his law degree from J. Reuben Clark Law School. And eventually, as I understand it, he worked for Curtin McConkey Law Firm before and this is where it is super relevant. Before he was called and sustained as a general set a general authority for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you think about it, you know, it, it speaks volumes about to me what the church really cares about that, you know, when they call a general authority, it's, it's so rarely a schoolteacher, almost never like a school teacher or a psychologist or a mental health professional. They call businessmen and lawyers as general authorities. And von Keach was called as a general authority as one of the chief lawyers defending the church against sexual abuse claims. And, and so he was sustained as a general authority in 2015, you know, rest his soul. He died in 2018 from cancer. So he was only three years a general authority. But the other thing I want to mention is he caused a huge stir because when a lot of this really disturbing news was starting to come out in the night in the 2010s about sexual abuse, he, he is quoted as so in 2010. So before he was made a general Authority. He was at the time the chief outside legal counsel for the church, this Von Keach guy. And he was quoted in 2010 as saying things like, no religious organization has done more to prevent and respond to abuse and that the Mormon Church's approach is the gold standard. And, and he also is quoted as saying, while clergy abuse cases continue to grab headlines, the Church has had almost no child abuse problems with its clergy. And that's one of the most shocking things I've ever seen because I've been notified personally of thousands and thousands of cases of abuse. And here Von Keach is on record as the church's chief legal counsel, eventually as a general authority, saying, quote, while clergy abuse cases continue to grab headlines, the Church has had almost no child abuse problems with its clergy. And then it goes on with the Boy Scout case to. To offer 250 million in a settlement. Well, like, it's.

Gerardo Sumano [00:34:45] I think what he mentions, the bishops and state presidents are not abusing children at the rates that Catholic priests are.

John Dehlin [00:34:52] Yeah, but. But we don't know.

Gerardo Sumano [00:34:53] But we don't know.

John Dehlin [00:34:54] The thing is, we don't know.

Gerardo Sumano [00:34:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:55] And. And why, why, why do we not know? Because of the tactics of Curtin McConkey and the church's law firm for decades and decades and decades of silencing abuse of victims, settling cases, hushing, you know, hushing up victims and their family members, and protecting abusers at the expense of victims. So I think, by all accounts, those statements by Van Keach are outrageous. And people just need to know. If you want to understand the gold standard of protecting victims, go to, like, the Unitarian Universalist Church. Go to even churches like the Episcopalian Church or the Presbyterians or Lutherans or, you know, just general Protestant churches that aren't evangelical. You'll find those types of churches are the best we have at a gold standard. But to ever mention the Mormon Church as the gold standard is outrageous, I think.

Gerardo Sumano [00:35:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:53] What were you going to say, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [00:35:55] Totally. Well, especially when the helpline was established to assess how much damage the case the abuse case can make can do to the church.

John Dehlin [00:36:05] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:36:06] And the reason why we don't hurry here about the clergy abuse cases is that we know that the protocol that this helpline uses is assessing if the abuse happened inside a church building by a church, someone that had a calling. So if that's the way they try to hide those type of abuses and assessing how damaging it could be and deciding to hide those the most. Or, of course, we're not going to know about instances of clergy Abuse in the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [00:36:40] In this interview with Tim, we're going to get into that right now.

Gerardo Sumano [00:36:43] Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:36:43] Okay. So let's go ahead and continue with this.

Tim Kosnoff's Introduction to LDS Abuse Cases

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 [00:36:48] With the interview is a US trial attorney at Kosnoff Law who's spent the last 20 years or more assisting survivors of sexual abuse. Kosnoff Law has represented survivors of child sexual abuse in cases involving child moles, devastation, parental child abuse, and cover ups by the Catholic Diocese, the Latter Day Saints Church, the Boy Scouts of America, the Jesuits, and other religious orders. They're particularly accomplished at taking cases against institutions that cover up sexual abuse. Now, I became aware of Tim's work when I read Lisa Davis's legal thriller, the Sins of Brother Curtis. And this, I believe, was Tim's first case involving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Sacrifice. Is that right, Tim?

Video Clip 2 [00:37:31] That's right.

Video Clip 2 [00:37:32] It involved a serial pedophile, Frank Curtis, and a plaintiff, Jeremiah Scott. And after the case was settled, LDS Church lawyers came after Tim with a formal complaint to the Oregon State Bar. Now, what I read was one action after another in the Jeremiah Scott case that showed a voracious interest on the part of the LDS Church lawyers in protecting the Church more than attending to the needs of the victims. And this is what we will discuss today. Welcome to a thoughtful faith, Tim Kosnoff.

Video Clip 2 [00:38:01] Well, thank you for having me. Yeah, it's been going on 17 years since the Jeremiah Scott case concluded in 2001. But that was a five year battle, five year saga. And it's what led me from being a lawyer. Not sure he wanted to be a lawyer much longer. It really rejuvenated me and gave me an enthusiasm for justice and pursuing justice that stuck with me to this day.

Video Clip 2 [00:38:31] The Jeremiah Scott case was your introduction to the LDS Church and institutional sex abuse cases. Could you explain what drew you into it? You say that it brought you and reinvigorated your interest in the law.

Video Clip 2 [00:38:44] One of the extraordinary things about the story is that I had no prior experience as a civil attorney. The last exposure I had to the civil rules procedure was in law school. I had been for 15 years a criminal prosecutor and then a criminal defense attorney. And I was burned out. And I was contemplating leaving the law and doing something else that, you know, was more satisfying. And when I got a phone call from Jeremiah, who was then, I think 16 or 17, and he came in and I asked him first why he contacted me and he said, well, I went through the Yellow Pages and I saw your ad in the yellow Pages and it said, that you were a criminal lawyer. And what happened to me was criminal, so I figured you could help me. I didn't fully realize it at the time, but what he did was throw me a personal and professional lifeline because I needed Jeremiah probably more than he needed me. And I threw myself into the case with totality of commitment that it went on for five years, and it was an education. And I came out on the other side transformed as a lawyer and as a person, and rededicated to a new practice of law, which is representing survivors of child sexual abuse. So that's what led me into it. And then his story itself was. It was just unbelievable to me that a church would knowingly shield a serial predator of children and attempt to cover it up. Because although I wasn't, you know, decidedly not religious now, at that time, I believed that churches were basically harmless until I encountered the Mormon Church. And then I realized that what I was dealing with was not an isolated incident of a couple of leaders or multiple leaders that had just lost their way, but what I had uncovered was a systemic program of protecting and shielding child molesters from. From the law and remarkably, serving up children to these pedophiles. And when I would talk about this with friends and colleagues, they thought I'd gone off the deep end. They just didn't believe what I was saying. And so I felt a little bit like the guy on a soapbox in the town square that everybody just kind of ridicules and looks at. But I persisted, and eventually we proved that it had gone on for 18 years, that he had been baptized into the church after being excommunicated, and he was shuffled around from one Mormon ward to the other multiple states. But uncovering all that and overcoming the resistance of the Mormon Church with their unlimited financial resources was another kind of education. So it provoked such a sense of anger in me, but I used that anger to motivate and to drive. And I would wake up, I would go to bed every night thinking about the case, and I would wake up every morning thinking about the case, and how could I move it forward? There were long periods where nothing was happening, and that was frustrating. But this is one of the tricks that the church knows, which is the American legal system is flexible, and then if you've got enough money to defend the case, you can stretch it out for a very long time. And that's really how they defend these cases. So what I learned in the Jeremiah Scott case was that what this church is about and how they approach these cases, and since that time I've probably represented another 150 victims of sexual abuse within the Mormon Church. And, and I finish my clients or prospective clients statements to me before they even finish. And they said, well, how did you know that? Because it's right out of their playbook. And then they did this. And then they said that, yes. How did you know that? Because I've heard this story now hundreds of times. This is how they do it.

Video Clip 2 [00:43:01] You made the observation that at one stage you thought that maybe sexual abuse in church was perhaps just isolated incident of some kind of pathology of an individual. But then after this case and the various other cases, obviously it's occurred to you that there is a pattern, this is an institutional thing. What was it in particular that caused you to move from a case of personal immorality to actually institutional immorality?

Video Clip 2 [00:43:33] Well, understand that while the case began with Jeremiah, by the time I was done with the case, there were another dozen victims of Frank Curtis who were abused in the Portland, Oregon area, principally. But he had victims all over the country. So I knew that this was a pattern in this particular case that had extended over a period of at least 18 years, which was the length of time that Frank Curtis was a member of the church. Remember, this guy was a hardened criminal. He'd spent most of his life in prison and he died in his late 80s, still a member in good standing of the church. But he'd left a trail of victims from Oregon, Washington, Michigan and so forth. So while it was one isolated case, the pattern was just too, was just too many matter, of course, for it to have been isolated to a single case. And then when I started surveying the newspaper articles at that time, you could gain access to databases of news articles from around the country. And there were dozens and dozens of cases that popped up, news reports, some of them too brief, but you could tell from the limited reporting that the same thing had happened there. And these were mostly just major and middle population circulations. And Mormons live in, at least in the United States, rural areas predominantly. So many of the reports were not picked up, but I created a database and when I, you know, I'd reached 100 and I would reach out to lawyers that had to, if I could contact them to try and find out what the facts and circumstances were. And that pretty much established, even though it was anecdotal, it was extensive anecdotal evidence that this was a pattern in practice within the church. And that was key in the Scott case and generally because of what we have in the United States, which is called punitive damages, where a jury can award damages not just to compensate victims, but to punish the defendant, to deter them, and to send a message to other defendants that engage in this kind of willful and wanton misconduct, covering up, conspiring to cover up, and so forth, that there would be a huge civil penalty imposed upon them. And my experience in judgment, which has been confirmed, is that jurors despise this kind of institutional behavior, and they will punish it. And what is unique with the Mormon Church is that it is a centralized church, unlike the Catholic Church, which on a civil basis is organized under corporate structures, depending on where they're located. I mean, in the United states, we have 202 different Catholic Church diocesan corporations, but the Mormon Church is a single unified corporate entity headquartered in Utah. So what that meant was that a jury, in assessing punitive damages, would be able to take into account, among other things, including the egregious facts that we could present, which would be the financial wherewithal of the church. And when the jurors hear that this is an institution which is very secretive about its. Its wealth. But the best estimates 25 years ago were that they took in 5 to 7 billion dollars a year in tithing and had assets of somewhere between 125 and $200 billion.

Video Clip 2 [00:47:16] This is a thoughtful faith podcast. I'm Gina Cole.

John Dehlin [00:47:20] I think it's super interesting that Tim kind of knew the general status of the church financially before the Ensign Peak reports even. Even came out. You had a comment. And I'm just going to say, I think I just lost our place, so I have enough to find it, but go ahead, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [00:47:38] Yeah, no, that's exactly what I was going to say. It's crazy how accurate those estimates are. Like almost two years before or a year and a half before the 100 billion asset articles started coming out. So. Yeah, and I think it's very interesting he mentions that the reason why the. The church decided to. Or one of the main reasons the church decided to establish the hotline was to prevent these cases from going to court, because then a jury could assess how much is the church worth and how much is the. The money that they should pay to victims. Like, how much that amount should be, depending on how much the church is worth. And that gets really. I mean, at that point, the sky is the limit once you start looking at that way.

John Dehlin [00:48:34] Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So I am going to have to be careful not to lose our place in the recording. So it may take me a second to find where we were. So Be patient with me, everybody.

How the Church Responds to Legal Pressure

Guest [00:48:49] Prosecutor and then a criminal defense attorney. And I was burned out and forward at least 18 years, which was the length of time that Frank Curtis was a member of the church. Remember, this guy was a hardened criminal. He'd spent most in corporations. But the Mormon Church is a single unified corporate entity headquartered in Utah. So what that meant was that a jury, in assessing punitive damages, would be able to take into account, among other things, including the egregious facts that we could present, which would be the financial wherewithal of the church. And when the jurors hear that this is an institution which is very secretive about its wealth. But the best estimates 25 years ago, where that they took in $5 to $7 billion a year in tithing and had assets of somewhere between 125 and $200 billion. And that was back in 1980. So if you extrapolate through inflation, I mean, this is an extraordinarily wealthy church that has unlimited resources, but also is extremely vulnerable. Because. Because if you can get a case to a jury and they can get to the point where they can assess punitive damages, the sky is virtually the limit in many states. Other states have limits on the amount of punitive damages that can be awarded. But the reason I digress and go into this is because the church is so wealthy that a 5 or 10 or $15 million hit or 25 or $30 million in defense costs is nothing to them. I mean, when you're taking in now probably on the order of $10 billion a year in tithing, why wouldn't you use a scorched earth strategy and send a message to any lawyer that's contemplating bringing a case like this that if you dare, we will bankrupt you. We will make this so expensive. We will hire the biggest law firms in the country or in the world to beat you into submission. And that's been an effective legal strategy. It's not a very moral strategy, but that's the strategy the Church takes in defending these cases. Sorry for the long winded answer, but are they successful? Yes.

Guest 2 [00:51:16] Okay.

Guest [00:51:16] The reason.

Ethics vs. Legality in Church Abuse Handling

John Dehlin [00:51:18] So really quickly, I just want to say, all throughout this interview, I was thinking about the difference between what's moral and ethical and what's legal. And then maybe even more importantly, what would Jesus do? What would an organization led by Jesus and led by prophets, seers and revelators, what would they do versus what would just be moral and ethical versus what's legal? And he's going to go on soon, and he's going to Talk about just the super aggressive, outrageous tactics of Curtin McConkey and the church's legal tactics. And I just want people to not only be thinking about what's common practice in the legal field. Right. Or what's legal in the legal field, but like knowing that this is Jesus, allegedly, Jesus is one true church on the, on the, on the face of the earth, led by special witnesses of Christ. How would Jesus's law firm. I know it's a crazy question, but how would Jesus's law firm treat of, you know, Vic, actual victims of sexual abuse? Does it, does that make sense?

Jen Camp [00:52:45] Yeah, yeah. What I would. I kind of want to address that just a little bit. So in the article, I hear most of people, Most of people. Most people. Hopefully I can speak today. Most people talking about the man and the church and you know, that they didn't turn him in and they didn't, you know, excommunicate him right away. They didn't, you know, all, all the things. And that's very much super important. What I don't see the church doing. And I think this is what John's talking about, you know, the church standing as the mouthpiece for God. Like they claim that they would be just kind of forgetting, like forgetting about the little girl that's being abused and just letting, you know, letting it go on so much to the point that there's, they have another baby and the second baby is then abused along with the first daughter. And so I don't, I don't see anything in the article and, or any kind of follow up on the victim during this time that they're worried about the dad. What, what were they doing for the victim? Like, did they pay for therapy? Did they pay for them to have a separate apartment away from their dad until he got better? Did they, You know, what exactly what would Jesus do since you're his priesthood and you're, you're his authority here and mouthpiece on, on, you know, in this world, you know, what did you do for them? That's what I want to know. I want to know what you did for the victim during those seven years. I want to know how you kept their father away until he was repented or well again. And what you did for these children as far as therapy, as far as paying for whatever they needed to be able to and not because you were legally told to. I want to know what you did before you were legally told to.

John Dehlin [00:55:22] Yeah. Thank you, Jen.

Jen Camp [00:55:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:27] And we'll go, we'll be going into detail on all this, but I just. I wanted to just at least tease out in people's minds to watch for the difference between what's legal, what's moral and ethical, and what Jesus would do. All right, let's keep rolling the tape.

Law Firm Economics and Taking on the Church

▶ Video Clip 3

Video Clip 3 [00:55:45] And has to do with law firm economics. Most personal injury law firms, those that have lawyers who are prepared to undertake a representation like this, they have to not only finance the law firm expense of paying lawyers and so forth, but they have to be able to do that for three, four, five years, however long the church stretches it out. There are not. There are. I mean, that would strain the budget of some of the largest personal injury law firms in the United States. And then you add on top of that, the advanced costs that are associated with litigation. And litigation in the United States is a very expensive proposition. It's Nothing to spend 10, 15, $20 million in advanced costs, and that's all at risk. Your clients don't have an ability to pay anything, generally speaking. So all of the risk is on the attorney or the law firm that takes on a case like this. And the clear message from the church, do you have $50 million to litigate this case? If not, you better think about settling it. Most of the cases never see the light of day, so they don't see

Video Clip 3 [00:57:04] a trial jury, but they're mostly settled.

Video Clip 3 [00:57:07] Yeah, because no matter how bad a case goes for them, they can always put up a sum of money, which is too much money for any victim to say no to, because it's like the uncertainty of trial. It's going to drag on for another two to five years. And do you want to give up the next five years of your life? Is your quest for justice so strong that you can see through the fact that your personal life, your family life, your work life can be interrupted and intruded upon to such a degree? I mean, at some point, no amount of money is worth that. And the church lawyers cynically understand that. So if they do run up against a lawyer at a law firm that is well funded and willing to go the distance if it gets to that point, no matter when in the process, whether it's pre trial, during trial, or post trial, they know that they can always come in and write a check and the case will go away, and it will avoid the one thing to church hates more than writing those checks, and that is adverse publicity. So they are so wealthy, they have the ability to make themselves invisible and to go out and to lie through their communications office about what leaders they are in child protection, which is preposterous and I can't say anything other than it's just a bald faced lie, it's a provable lie. And when you asked earlier in your written questions about why I made some of the bold statements that I did, it's because I'm not being bombastic. I've seen it up front. I know how they operate. And it's difficult for me even to refer to this organization as the Church because I'm not aware of any church in the world that operates like this. It operates more like a criminal organization.

Guest 2 [00:59:18] That's interesting because you.

John Dehlin [00:59:20] So I want to stop there. The first thing I just want to say is when we're talking about not just what's legal and not just what standard legal practice and not just what's moral and ethical, but like how would Jesus's corporate lawyers act? Would they, would they delay the attempt of a victim to get justice? Would they use hundreds of millions of dollars to bankrupt a law firm representing the victims? Would, would Jesus's, you know, lawyers, you know, do all they could to make it as hard as possible on the victim so that they want to quit and they want to give up? Or would, would Jesus's corporate lawyers say, oh my gosh, there's a credible accusation of abuse. Let's set up a hotline to figure out what happened and to help the victims get justice and get whatever reparations they deserve. And we're, we have hundreds of billions of dollars in our bank account, will be eager to pay them a fair amount for them to get justice instead of the opposite, which is to use their wealth to, to fight, prolong and bankrupt and just bankrupt the, the law firms and discourage victims from even coming forth to begin with. And he's basically saying that this, he, he's never seen anything like it. Like he's worked with the Catholic Church, he's worked with the Boy Scouts, he's worked with lots of churches. He's saying not only is the Mormon Church, in his experience in a class by itself of awfulness, but that it in his view, it's operating like a criminal organization. Right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:01:18] Yeah, it's, it's kind of crazy. Yeah. And just when he was saying that, you know, I mean, I think you and I, John, we have discussed how the church has, you know, through its members, tried to maintain the laws like they are kind of ambiguous and protective of the church when it comes to these cases. And I, I was actually recently talking to a legislature in Utah who was telling me that the attorney who is in charge of the helpline right now in Kirtnet McConkey. He's also a legislature in Utah and he has literally voted against most, if not all child abuse protections bills that legislature have tried to pass. When you read those bills that he has voted against, I mean it's outrageous. Like super simple bills that are just like teaching in public schools how to recognize, teach teachers how to recognize abuse, how they can know if a child has been abused, train them on what to do when they find that a child is being abused. And you know, like, so the church is trying to buy through its members or lawyers or whatever influence these laws to, to be like, like this and protected of this system.

John Dehlin [01:02:50] Yeah. And, and it just seems like the church through its attorneys, they try and keep a case from never going to court, never being reported to the police. We're going to cover this today. But it's like this seems to be the, the strategy. Make sure it never, make sure it never is known, make sure it's covered up, definitely make sure it is never reported to, to law enforcement. And then make sure a lawsuit never emerges. If a lawsuit emerges, try and destroy the lawsuit, try and prolong it until you bankrupt the attorneys and discourage the victims. And then if it gets to the point, if it ever, and how many have failed just at that precipice, I mean, how many hundreds or thousands of lawsuits did the church just kill in that opening strategy? And then if any well funded law firm with enough patience and tenacity, with a victim who's willing to endure all that abuse, if it ever gets to the point of discovery where the church has to provide documents and potentially it's going to be known that there's a case on the horizon. Then the church swoops in, offers a cash payment to pay off the victim with the promise that they'll be silent so that no one will ever end it with a, with a commitment that no one will ever know that this discussion ever happened, let alone the payment. So it remains invisible from start to finish in almost every scenario. And then you hear about the West Virginia case or the Arizona case, there are miracles because they weathered all of that, made it to discovery, what you're saying?

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:33] Well, actually the West Virginia case, it settled. It's settled and it happened exactly what he said.

John Dehlin [01:04:38] But it settled, didn't it settle after discovery and after some legal proceedings, the documents were sealed.

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:43] So, so the, so the documents that the AP obtained, where they're getting most of the information are the sealed documents from the, from West Virginia, you're saying

John Dehlin [01:04:54] even Arizona And West Virginia didn't make it all the way.

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:56] Yeah, was. Yeah, was. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:58] But the point I'm trying to make is like, is this how Jesus would instruct his attorneys to deal with victims who have been abused, likely, and who have credible cases against his 2, $300 billion organization to handle the cases? Jen, I want to give you a chance to jump in, but I think I know what you're going to say.

Jen Camp [01:05:21] Yeah. Well, just in that clip that we just listened to the lawyer, Tim. Right.

John Dehlin [01:05:29] Yeah.

Jen Camp [01:05:29] Tim said he, as a lawyer, can without any doubt say that the church lied and covered up abuse. Lied about abuse, Covered it up. And just right there and then they put on a good. Andy said they put it. Then they put on a good front for the public. So just write just in that simple couple sentences that he said. That's. That's what they're doing. That there's. There's no. No, they're not acting like Jesus in any way.

John Dehlin [01:06:08] Yeah.

Jen Camp [01:06:08] The Jesus that I know, that I. That I, you know, praised and adored and still do, really, as a member, would never do that.

John Dehlin [01:06:22] Yeah.

Jen Camp [01:06:22] Would never do that. So.

John Dehlin [01:06:25] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And again, it's fine if they just. If we're holding them to too high of a standard by invoking Jesus, then they just need to drop the doctrine that this is Jesus's restored church on the earth, take his name out of their name, stop claiming to be special witnesses of Christ, and then we won't hold them to such a high standard. But as long as they hold themselves, as long as they make those bold claims, isn't it fair to hold them to that level of scrutiny?

Jen Camp [01:06:56] I think it's fair to hold them to that level of scrutiny without Jesus's name even in there, which I don't think should be in their title, but even taking him out, they're still like. They're still mandated reporters.

John Dehlin [01:07:10] As adults in leadership, they should be mandated reports. Yeah, we'll get to that.

Jen Camp [01:07:14] Yeah, we'll get to that. But just. Yeah, there's no excuse for it.

John Dehlin [01:07:19] Yeah. Okay, let's continue with the recording.

The Church's Institutional Patterns and History

Guest 2 [01:07:25] Have represented a lot of other church organizations, but this knocks it out of the park is what you're saying.

Guest [01:07:31] It does. It does. I've litigated against the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America. Here's the difference in a nutshell. The Catholic Church doesn't defend, and on religious grounds, priest pedophilia, nor do the Boy Scouts. The Catholic Church doesn't say that somehow the sexual abuse of children is consistent with the teachings of Christ or their liturgy. And that's true of just about every other church on the planet. The Mormon Church will say, well, we don't believe in it either. But here's what the Church does believe. And any LDs who are listening to this and have been students of the church know what I'm talking about. The Mormons have a long history of defiance of the United States. People are acquainted with the history of polygamy in Mormonism. Fewer people may be aware that the Mormon Church refused to give up its practice of polygamy. And it wasn't until the latter part of the 19th century that following convictions of virtually the entire leadership of the church, where general authorities and the highest leaders of the church were convicted under federal anti polygamy laws and sent off to federal prison, even that was not enough for the Church to change its ways. It find a federal government placing all of the church's assets into the hands of a federal receiver for purposes of liquidating the church. And it was only at that point that the president, prophet and seer of the church, President Woodruff, had a message from Heavenly Father that polygamy should not be practiced on the temporal plane, but only in the celestial. What he was saying is we continue to believe in polygamy, but it can't be practiced here. It can only be practiced in the afterlife. But even then, leaders really at all levels continued to carry on their polygamous relationships in secret. And many leaders of the church today have grandparents, great grandparents who were raised or lived in polygamy. So it was a belief that they were reluctant to give up. Officially, they gave it up. It's technically grounds for excommunication from the church. What that means is that you have a church that's very die hard about its belief system. And I digress there because I think therein lies an answer to your question. The leaders of the Mormon Church believe what they believe. And they have argued all the way to the Supreme Court that these beliefs are central tenets of their religion. And it's a violation of their freedom of religion to be prohibited from engaging in these practices. And the freedom of religion in the United States prohibits injurious practices. But you're free to believe whatever you want. You can believe in human sacrifice, but you can't practice it because that's called murder and that's against the law. You can believe in polygamy, but that's against the law if you practice it. So this brings us around to.

John Dehlin [01:11:02] So I just thought, I thought that first of all, the fact that Tim knows our history is awesome. But I also think it's really interesting that Tim roots the current way the Mormon Church uses lawyers to defend itself. He roots that in the church's persecution in the 19th century around polygamy, the deception that the church engaged in as it was trying to escape the law and continue to practice polygamy and avoid prosecution, including the Post Manifesto Polygamy after 1890, where the church promised to stop practicing polygamy and then it kept practicing it for another 15 years or so. I think it's interesting that he roots current legal practices in that history of persecution. And in all fairness, like, okay, fine, that makes sense that we've been persecuted for a long time by the federal government and so we're going to just learn how to fight back by any means necessary. But again, this is Jesus's church and you forgive and you move on and you do what's right and you heal. You don't keep acting out of trauma. The only other thing I think is, is really interesting is he talks about the Mormon Church is the only. He distinguishes between belief and practice. And he. And he says the, the Mormon Church is the only church he knows of that defends itself legally by the justification that it's doctrine for whether it's the atonement. And we're going to get into this in the actual interview, so we don't want to talk too much about it, but whether it's the doctrine of the atonement that trumps the law, or the right of a bishop, the sacred right of a bishop to keep everything confidential with the members of the church, that trumps the need to actually report to the police child abuse. Child abuse. That, that comes out in the Arizona case and in the West Virginia case. And it's super important. Anything either of you want to say about that?

Gerardo Sumano [01:13:09] I think just what I want to say is that while that's the legal strategy that the Church employs, and I'm sure the First Presidency are aware that that that's the legal strategy that Curtin McConkey are using. You can tell, and I think Tim mentions it in their PR statements, they don't want members to know that that's the legal strategy that they're using. They don't want members to know that they are literally saying in court that as part of their doctrine and their sincerely held religious beliefs, a bishop should keep child sex abuse confidential.

John Dehlin [01:13:50] Yeah. Because where did Jesus say, For behold, I say unto you, verily, verily, that my pastors, my apostles, my elders, my ministers go Ye out unto the nations. And whenever there's a sexual abuse claim, behold, please do noteth. Shareth that with the local law enforcement agents. No. What did Jesus say? Jesus said that it'd be better that a millstone be wrapped around the neck of of a person who abuses a child and that they be dragged down into the depths of the sea. In other words, that's one of the worst things you could possibly do is hurt a child. So I have to think Jesus would be in support of mandatory clergy reporting. Jen, what's your take? Yes, Jesus. For mandatory reporting of clergy or against mandatory reporting?

Jen Camp [01:14:43] Four for.

John Dehlin [01:14:44] Okay, yeah. You feel good about that?

Jen Camp [01:14:46] I feel 100% good about that, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [01:14:49] Yeah, feel good about it. And just to the point I just made to just want to mention that. So I just made that connection in a couple sentences on the post that Dr. Julie Hanks made about the article. And I had a bunch of progressive Mormons come and say, that's not doctrine. That's not what the church says. But that's literally what the church is claiming in court, right, under penalty of perjury, that this is part of their doctrine that they have to keep this confidential.

John Dehlin [01:15:19] And we will be covering this tomorrow in our episode tomorrow. So much to cover. All right, let's go back to the interview.

Theology, Atonement, and Protecting Abusers

Guest [01:15:28] Child sexual abuse. What does all that have to do with child sexual abuse? Well, it's a pattern. The Mormons believe that the power of atonement, the forgiveness of sin, is complete. It's total that they believe that religion can forgive any sin, no matter how grievous, including child sexual abuse. It's okay to believe that. And there's nobody that can prohibit them from believing that. But they take it to the point where they contend that they have the right to atone the sins of child molesters and serial child molesters as horrid as people like Frank Curtis. And trust me, I've encountered even more horrendous abuse by abusers within the Mormon Church. And they think that they have a right to forgive and to cleanse the sins of those pedophiles, those child rapists. And once they have done that, and a bishop who has received through his powers of discernment, another term within the church that this person has repented, then he is entitled to be forgiven. Well, the Mormons take it seriously. If a sinner of a child molesting sinners sins have been wiped free, then he must be restored and put in a place that he was before he was excommunicated. And then rebaptized back in, so they can't hold it against him. So in the case of Frank Curtis, he was excommunicated for molesting kids. They made findings. There were documented records that we were able to obtain which showed that he was held to account at a Stake High Council. And then later he was rebaptized back into the church and then restored to callings like Boy Scout leader, primary teacher, and so on and so forth. So he could then circulate back into Mormon wards, come into contact with Mormon families who were completely in the dark about this man's history. Now, the Mormon bishop was aware because there was a red flag placed upon his membership record, but everybody else was kept in the dark and the bishop couldn't disclose that to anybody and thereby protect them. So to answer your question, I think the answer is if people think they're going to reform the LDS Church when it comes to child abuse and prevention and protection, I think that they are taking on a central tenet of the Church. I mean, this has been the question that I've been scratching my head over since 1996, when I first undertook the reparation representation of Jeremiah Scott. And the question is, why, why? Why do you protect individuals like Frank Curtis and don't protect your children? I mean, it just made no sense to me because I always sensed that as awful as human beings are to each other in the world, that there was some kind of common human agreement unspoken. The children were. They were non combatants, you know, that they. That from an evolutionary perspective, we had a human obligation to protect them from this kind of destruction in order that our species could continue. But the Mormon Church places a higher value on its belief in the power of atonement, the need to forgive and so on. So it is really just this whole idea of repentance and forgiveness, a Christian doctrine. Not that the Mormons don't own, but they've just taken it to such an extreme that their lower clergy believe that they have this religious obligation to work with, keep the secrets of, and protect child molesters. And I apologize for the long answer, but it's just. It's not a simple answer.

Guest 2 [01:20:04] It isn't a simple answer.

John Dehlin [01:20:06] And I've got a couple of questions just really quickly. As someone who spent six years getting a PhD in clinical and counseling psychology, you know, this particularly brings up a really problematic point, and that's that what we understand about pedophiles or child molesters is they don't get better that you don't heal them. And it's going to talk about this in the interview. But, but this is something that prophet seers and revelators shouldn't need me in 2022 or Tim Koznoff in 2018 or even some psychologist in 1980 to tell them this is something they should have known because they talk to Jesus and communicate with Jesus regularly. But this, this doctrine or theology that the atonement, number one, makes abuse right somehow that it can ever be made right, especially child abuse, and then number two, that it can cure a pedophile that's, you know, to the point where a bishop will, you know, that re. Baptize in an excommunicated pedophile and then put them in the Boy Scouts or put them in primary because the atonement makes it all better. The atonement doesn't heal pedophiles. It does not. And then if you add to that the fact that the church teaches that, that Mormons believe in the articles of Faith, that they should honor, obey and sustain the law, even if you do believe that the atonement can help a pedophile get forgiveness, and even if you believe that the atonement can heal a pedophile, which is false and egregious, you should still believe in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law, which would then mean involvement law officials, police officers, include them, include the justice system in the treatment of your repenting members. Because we believe in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law.

Gerardo Sumano [01:22:02] Yeah, well, and my. I think one of the arguments that the church has made is that if, that if bishops become mandatory reporters, then less people might likely come to the bishop. Like there's going to be less people inclined to come to the bishop and confess their sins and obtain the power of forgiveness through the atonement. My friend Brenton, who's a lawyer, he has an amazing TikTok. He made a point and said, well, if they're not, if the person coming and confessing to the bishop is not willing to go to law enforcement and also, you know, go through that process, he might not be that repentant after all, if he if his way. If he's just trying to get off easy by just going to the bishop, you know, and getting a slap in the back or just a few months that he can't take the sacrament. So that's one. And then I think it's important for us to acknowledge that the church does have an issue right there with their doctrine. Because if they teach that your sins will be washed from and you know, become from like red scarlet like, and become white like the snow or whatever. Like, how do you square that with, with this issue? And I don't know if you have an answer to that, John.

John Dehlin [01:23:25] It's just bad doctrine. It's just toxic doctrine. It doesn't. I mean, this is one of the problems of relying on scripture that in the case of the Book of Mormon is a couple hundred years old, or in the case of the Bible is like 2 or 3,000 years old. Why are we using Bronze Age awareness, Bronze Age research, Bronze Age worldviews to govern modern day situations? Like, what you do is you say, okay, thank you Holy Bible for the wisdom you gave us along the way. Okay, Book of Mormon, maybe you had a place in the 1800s, but we're in 2022. We've got the American Psychological association, we've got the American Psychiatric association, you know, we've got the American Medical Association. Let's have modern day scripture that like incorporates science and the wisdom of humans that then governs policy. Let's not try and apply something, some dude that may or may not have lived 2000 years ago trying to apply that to pedophiles without any understanding of the mental status of pedophiles. Jen, I know you were maybe feeling or thinking some things.

Jen Camp [01:24:32] Yeah, I just, I was, I was going to look up how many abusers abuse again, but it's like crazy. It's like almost everyone, almost all. So if the church is going to, you know, bring this, we'll just say a man, Bring this man in, do some like, counseling, which he doesn't even have a license for, do some counseling with the abuser and then, you know, send him back to his home where the victims are that he, he's abusing while he comes into counsel with the bishop every week. Like, to think that that, to think that that is going to cure him is ludicrous. It's like, I'm done. I, I just, I'm so done. I'm so done with discernment. Like you thinking that, you know, when he's done, you don't. Yeah, like obviously you don't. Obviously there's no effing discernment. Like, it's not there. Yeah, I'm glad you have intuition that you sometimes listen to and sometimes don't. Like, I'm glad. But you don't, you don't have discernment.

John Dehlin [01:25:56] And stop teaching that you do.

Jen Camp [01:25:58] Yeah, stop teaching that you do. And I'm, I don't know, I have a whole list here that maybe I'll go through at the end when I want to say my $0.02 piece.

John Dehlin [01:26:08] Keep a list.

Jen Camp [01:26:09] Yeah, I'm getting. I'm keeping a list. But yeah, there's no. I'm sorry, but no, no, he's not going to be cured. He's not. And you're just putting him right back into the family in the case of this article. Right back into the family to again have another victim later on and the community after your counsel and saying he's okay. No.

John Dehlin [01:26:36] Yeah. And if we think about Colby Reddish's interview, they don't just put them back in full fellowship and they don't just give them callings. They don't tell any of the membership that they're abusers.

Jen Camp [01:26:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:50] So they refuse to warn the membership that there's a predator amongst you and instead they call them to primary or young men's or young women's to allow them to, you know, to repeat their abuse. And we can include the Colby interview in the show notes because that'll be important for people to view.

Jen Camp [01:27:07] Yeah. And because if they did expose them, there might be more victims.

John Dehlin [01:27:11] Yeah.

Jen Camp [01:27:12] So we'd rather not expose them because there might be more victims. No, we'd rather not, you know, expose them so we can find the. Find the victims and stop it before they do it to someone else. Yeah, like, it seems like Jesus to me on that one, you know.

John Dehlin [01:27:32] Yeah. Like, I understand that they want to protect people's privacy and their confidentiality, but to do that at the expense of future victims seems super irresponsible.

Jen Camp [01:27:41] Yeah. And I just want to say something too. I believe, like, me personally, even, like having personal experience with this, I do believe that people can change and I do believe that they can do better. But they need to be exposed. They need to be taken away from children. Children. They need to be. Have the property things to help them. And there needs to be things put in place so they never do it again or never even have the opportunity to do it again. And that needs to be put in place. So I do think that people can change. Some people, not all people. Some people I think if caught early enough can change. So I just, I just want to say that. Just to say it, but.

John Dehlin [01:28:41] Yeah, thanks, Jen. Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [01:28:43] Yeah. I mean, I'm sure if a faithful member or progressive member is listening to this episode is going to say, well, but the church's policy right now is that, you know, there's a red flag on their membership, what's it called? Record. And bishops are not supposed to put them in those types of callings. Anymore, but that's not what's going on. Like, we know, we hear the case in Colby Reddish, we know that's what happened in, I mean, even the case in Argentina, it's the exact same thing. Like there was a pedophile that abused of children in one ward. He was, I think disfellowshipped and then moved to another ward who didn't know the details of what happened, then gave him his rights back. They made him the young man's president and abused again.

John Dehlin [01:29:36] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:29:37] And I mean, it's the same even Argentina. Like literally across the continent, the church did the exact same thing. They went to, to the mother of the victim, said, hey, here's this money. You can't talk about, you can't hold the church accountable. This is what we're going to do. You know, now the case has exploded, has been on the media for a while, but.

John Dehlin [01:29:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we'll talk about this more. But it seems like whether it's with the ability to flag records or even with the church's statement that members should report abusers to law enforcement, there's kind of like what the official policy is and then what's actually practiced happening.

Gerardo Sumano [01:30:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:16] And it's very clear that even though the church claims to have a annotating the records system and the church has it written policy that members should notify the police that what's happening in effect is, is not those things. And we'll talk about that more.

Gerardo Sumano [01:30:34] That's great.

The Church as a Corporate Organization

John Dehlin [01:30:34] All right, let's jump to the interview

Guest 2 [01:30:39] that came out of what you just said. I suppose there are a number of people who are going to say, look, how does a ward case of sexual abuse make the church writ large or the headquarters of the church, the church officers legally responsible. So you get a bishop in, the membership record is flagged. Surely it's his responsibility to do whatever is pastorally important at that point. It's not the church's responsibility.

Guest [01:31:13] All right, so now we're going to jump out of the world of the ecclesiastical into the corporate. Yeah, the church is a corporate entity. It is a corporate soul, which means that the soul that the church doesn't have a board of directors, it doesn't have a chairman of the board, it doesn't have shareholders. It's the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I'm sorry, it's the corporation, the Church of Latter Day Saints headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and it is.

John Dehlin [01:31:48] I just want to make a quick correction. It's the corporation of the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Now, I think just recently, in the past 12 months, they actually filed for a name change. But like up until 2022 or 2021 from like the 1900s, literally, Jesus's church legally was called the corporation of the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I remember feeling like, well, that's really cynical to call the Mormon Church a corporation. No, that's legally what it is. It is legally a corporation of the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. All right, sorry, I had to say that.

▶ Video Clip 4

Video Clip 4 [01:32:33] Responsible for the, of all of its agents. And that extends all the way down through the general authorities, regional presidents, stake presidents, bishops, relief society presidents, bishoprics and so on. If you're a church official, whether it's in Salt Lake City or at the ward level, the mother church is legally liable for your acts which were carried out on behalf of the church. And these lower clergy individuals are carrying out the church's. They're carrying out the Church's policies. And the church admits to that. They don't even attempt to defend on the grounds that, well, he was a local ward bishop but were not responsible for him. They concede that, that they're responsible for him. If he did something that was within the scope of his responsibility as a bishop, even if it was egregiously negligent, reckless, the corporate church is responsible.

Video Clip 4 [01:33:39] So what we're talking about, when you talk about this atonement theology, this idea that as agents of the corporation they are serially pardoning sexual abusers, that's theological ground that the Church stands on their right to do that. Because it seems to me that they could change the policy tomorrow, today they could change the policy, but they don't. They continue to excuse that. So your argument seems to be that this power and authority to forgive sin that is held within the responsibility, duty of care of a bishop to preserve that is much more important to actually follow the legal guidelines or the, the criminal guidelines for dealing with cases of sexual abuse.

Video Clip 4 [01:34:34] Right, right. And I think we've skipped an important point here, which is it's not as if the local bishop is acting willy nilly. Your listeners may be acquainted with a document that's called the Handbook of Instructions. And this is a document, it's 150 pages that every bishop, every stake president, every member of the bishopric of the local ward receives. And it is, it's an amazing document. It's available online. You can download it. The church tried to keep it secret. They claimed that they had a copyright to it and so forth, but it's leaked out onto the Internet and anybody can get access to it. Go to WikiLeaks and you can read it. But it's a really amazing document and it's a soup to nuts. Direction to local clergy on how to handle everything from who turns off the lights in the Word building at the end of the service on Sunday to how you deal with, with transsexuals and homosexuality. And then there's a whole chapter on how you're supposed to deal with various offenses like child sexual abuse and so forth. So this is a completely hierarchical, controlled, top down organization to an extent that people of any other religious organization would just find astonishing. The church leadership, through the handbook of instructions and other memos that are issued, control what goes on in local wards worldwide so that it's uniform, consistent and clear. So anybody that says, well, that's the Mormon bishop acting on his own. No, no, not true. That Mormon bishop is, he's following orders. He's following orders and if he doesn't follow orders, he's not going to be a bishop for long. And he may not even be a member of the church for long. So the power of this church is a whole other discussion how it's able to keep people under control. The bishop has to follow the protocol. And this leads us to a document that I sent you a few minutes ago, which was one that was we received by just happenstance. And it's a story in and of itself, but it really shows what the church's orientation is. And so they've got the special protocol form that's sent out and included in the materials that go out to local bishops that tells them that if you receive a report or complaint that an individual in the ward is molesting children, do not go to the police. Again, do not go to the police. There may be mandatory reporting statutes in your state that say you must go to the police. The church law firm has crafted an intake form and they have instructed local clergy that instead of following the civil law, which is when you have a reasonable suspicion that a child may be at risk of abuse, they directly contradict what the law is. They say Instead, call this 1-800-help-line number. They call it a helpline number. What it is. Yeah, it's a helpline number. It's a helpline for the church's lawyers to get an early warning on one of these cases. And if you look at the form, it says things like it asks a series of questions that the intake Worker who's receiving the 1-800-call from the local bishop. And again, this is not a 1,800number that's available to members. They're not even aware of it, but they certainly don't have access to it. And when the call comes in, the questions are, did the abuse occur on church property? Did it occur in connection with a church sponsored activity? Did it occur in relation to a church calling or position? These are not questions directed at helping children. These are questions directed at helping church lawyers identify high risk cases where the church could be held liable because something happened which would make them legally liable, sexual abuse happened by a church leader on church property, etc. Etc. So this is the orientation of the church. And that document, if you look at it, tells you everything you need to know about how the church thinks and feels about child sexual abuse. It thinks a corporation, it thinks about how can we kill this case? How can we get our lawyers out there tomorrow on an airplane anywhere in the United States or in the world for that matter, as far as I know, and kill this case. You browbeat victims against coming forward. You talk to church leaders so that their memories are consistent with the way you want their memories to be of what happened. There's another legal term for that, but that's what happens. It's all about preserving the church's assets. It has nothing to do about persistent, protecting children or families. And so that's another aspect of the pattern that we were talking about. But this leads us back to why would a church have an administrative system like that? And the only answer that I can come up with is what I told you before, which is that they believe that their belief in the power of atonement and the need to forgive child molesters trumps the protection, protection of children and trumps the obligation of the church to reach out and help and heal and compensate those children who were hurt because of the church's policies, practices.

Guest 2 [01:40:44] And it seems to me, so like,

John Dehlin [01:40:46] I want to say something. Yeah, yeah.

Predicting the Church's Response to Abuse Claims

Gerardo Sumano [01:40:48] So some people ask me, why do you think or have asked me, why do you think the article from Mike Resendi's focus mostly on the Arizona case, why didn't he do more investigative journalism and brought up more cases into his reporting? I'm not sure what the answer is for that. I mean, we know that the church tried to hide a lot of or most of these cases by settling them with undisclosed amounts of money. But I think the most powerful thing about the article is that it focuses on this one case that has all the Elements. It has the elements of trying to hide the abuse of the helpline, telling the bishops and the bishops declaring on recordings with the police that they were told not to report it. It has two bishops during a seven year period. It has other leaders because the guy was excommunicated. So that means that other leaders were also informed about the details of the abuse.

John Dehlin [01:41:53] Like stick leaders, probably like a whole high council.

Gerardo Sumano [01:41:56] Exactly.

Jen Camp [01:41:57] That would be like 12 men, right?

John Dehlin [01:41:58] Yeah, 15.

Jen Camp [01:41:59] Yeah, yeah, 15.

Gerardo Sumano [01:42:00] So you have that element of multiple leaders knowing about the abuse. You have the church, you know, trying to protect its assets, you know, by, you know, trying to hide it. So you have all the elements there. You. And then you have the church claiming in court that that's their right, that that's their right. Their right is to hide the abuse at all.

John Dehlin [01:42:21] It's cut it all. Yeah, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:42:22] And that's why I think this article is so, so powerful. It literally illustrates everything that Tim is telling us here way back into 2018.

John Dehlin [01:42:32] Totally. Quick shout out to Doug Vincent. Thanks for the super chat, Doug. Your donations are super appreciated. I just want to say this, you know, for the past 20 years, I've been looking at smoking guns regarding, you know, the veracity or the truthfulness of the Mormon Church. Is the Mormon Church what it claims to be? And you know, we look at a Book of Abraham is the smoking gun or Book of Mormon anachronisms, is the smoking gun or the racism in the Book of Mormon is the smoking gun or the Masonic influence in the temple ceremony and the changes to the temple ceremony, the smoking gun. I'll tell you a smoking gun. Here's a smoking gun. You ready? It's this, that when the Mormon church in the 60, 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, whenever it was when they found out that there was a sexual abuse problem where men, women and children and teenagers were being sexually abused in multiple locations. And then they said, hey, we need to set up a hotline because abuse is rampant. When they set up that hotline, it wasn't like, oh my gosh, how do we get mental health services to the victims? How do we get physical and psychological and financial assistance to the victims? How do we protect the wards? How do we make sure that all wards and stakes are protected from repeat offenders? How do we use our wealth to make all this right and to build the world's leading edge gold standard for handling abuse? Instead of doing that, they Bring on Curt McConkey, implement a 1-800- hotline call

Gerardo Sumano [01:44:16] system with the first presidency in meetings

John Dehlin [01:44:19] with the first presidency support.

Gerardo Sumano [01:44:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:44:22] And the entire hotline is engineered from top to bottom, start to finish, to protect the church's money, to protect the Church's interests, to protect the abusers. All at the expense of victims and of warden stake members that are going to suffer the repeat abuse, that is. How can that bot not be one of the biggest smoking guns the church will ever have to live up to? And if they've made changes, this is really important. Everyone pay attention. If the church has improved its hotline by 2022, it's not because Jesus was talking to the apostles and they did the right thing. It's because people like Lavina Fielding Anderson and Victims and Sam Young and other podcasts or activists or efforts spoke up. Media outlets shamed and embarrassed the Church into amending its hotline practices. But. But that's only been in the past few years. So do not mistake whatever the hotline is doing now with what it did five or 10 or 20 years ago. Because guess what? They claim to be special witnesses of Christ 10 and 20, 30 years ago. So they don't get the exemption of like. Of like staying up with the times. They should have known beforehand. Am I. Did I overspeak?

Gerardo Sumano [01:45:57] No, I agree.

John Dehlin [01:45:58] No, I got. That was a rant. That was caffeinated, John.

Jen Camp [01:46:04] That's good.

John Dehlin [01:46:04] Is that okay?

Jen Camp [01:46:05] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:46:05] Jen said that's okay. Anything else? Right? Or do we jump back in?

Gerardo Sumano [01:46:09] We can jump back in.

John Dehlin [01:46:10] All right, here we go.

▶ Video Clip 5

Video Clip 5 [01:46:14] They don't take it that seriously. There's really little care, as you keep saying, for the victim. I want to read something that this form and this is given to bishops. Now, I noticed the date ON that is 1999. Is this still current?

Video Clip 5 [01:46:28] We can't get a straight answer out of them. In the West Virginia case, they denied that they had even seen the form before and nobody there could identify or tell us what it was. And yet the names on there of the lawyers and their cell numbers.

Video Clip 5 [01:46:43] Yeah, yeah, because we've got Miro Nelson, Tom Walk, David McConkie and Von Keach. Von Keach was against you in the Frank Curtis case, is that correct? Or he was involved in some way?

Video Clip 5 [01:46:54] Yes. I mean, he was the head at Curtin McConkie of heading up there this whole area of the Church's legal exposure. Vaughn has passed on, but he was succeeded by a guy named Randy Austin, who's now sort of the head honcho over these cases. But yeah, I mean, that's. This is what you go up against when you sue the church, which is they don't really think the civil discovery rules apply to them.

Video Clip 5 [01:47:24] Right. And there's this little addendum or this asterisk that says personnel should never advise a priesthood leader to report abuse. Counsel of this nature should come only from the legal counsel. And again, if a priesthood leader recommends a perpetrator report the abuse to civil authorities, you should also recommend to the perpetrator that he or she should consider obtaining legal counsel, which is extraordinary. It's extraordinary.

Video Clip 5 [01:47:53] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell the perpetrator to turn himself in. But. But also tell him before he turns himself in, to talk to a criminal defense lawyer. I mean, get real.

Video Clip 5 [01:48:02] Yeah. And there's no protocols there for assisting or caring for the needs of the victim. Not one now.

Video Clip 5 [01:48:13] Yeah.

Video Clip 5 [01:48:13] And.

Video Clip 5 [01:48:13] Yeah.

Video Clip 5 [01:48:14] Can I ask in the general.

John Dehlin [01:48:15] So, I mean, I. I guess telling a victim to get a lawyer, I mean, it makes sense, but I didn't understand quite why Gina and Tim were both so outraged about that. But that's probably me being insensitive. But, like, I. I could almost see it. You better get a lawyer. Like that not being a terrible thing. Do either of you have. Were either of you as outraged as Gina and Tim by that?

Gerardo Sumano [01:48:41] Well, that the bishop should tell the. The perpetrator to get a lawyer.

John Dehlin [01:48:45] I mean, I thought it through, and I guess what's awful about that is it's basically saying we want to protect the church at all costs, so get a lawyer so that you can get off from these accusations. So it doesn't reflect badly on the church.

Gerardo Sumano [01:49:00] Yeah. And I. Child and I've talked about this with our fam. And I mean, my husband and I, we were licensed for foster care, and we learned a lot about how these cases work. But child sex abuse, unless there is definite proof, is really hard to litigate. Really, really hard to litigate to the point where, like, we were trained in foster care, that if we learned that a kid that we're fostering was abused by the kid, the kid comes and tells us. We are not supposed to tell them. Even the words like, I'm sorry that had that happen. That's awful. We're not supposed to say anything like that. The literally only words that we can say is, it's not your fault. That's literally the only. Like, we're trained in our license in order to get licensed.

Speaker F [01:49:54] That.

Gerardo Sumano [01:49:54] That's the only phrase that we can use, because any other phrase can temper with the testimony of the kid and then be dismissed in court. So that shows how, like, fragile the evidence on child sex abuse can be in litigation. So Telling a perpetrator, go, and instead of the victim, go and get yourself a lawyer. Like, you know, it's, it's kind of. Yeah, I, I see it as outrageous as to.

John Dehlin [01:50:26] Yeah, I just wanted to make sure I understood it. And by the way, I did misspeak. It's the perpetrator that the church advises to get a lawyer, but then they don't advise the victims to get a lawyer. Like that's outrageous, right?

Jen Camp [01:50:40] Yeah, yeah, that is outrageous. And I just want to say, in

John Dehlin [01:50:45] fact they discourage victims from getting lawyers.

Jen Camp [01:50:49] That's wrong.

John Dehlin [01:50:50] Yeah.

Jen Camp [01:50:51] But to. For Gerardo, that sentence is like life changing for a victim. So I still remember the first person that told that to me and the weight that that lifted. So just that sentence, if you want to have a sentence. That's a good sentence.

Speaker F [01:51:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:51:22] Thank you, Jen. Okay, let's continue

Church Handbook Policies on Abuse Victims

Guest 2 [01:51:30] our handbook of instructions. And I haven't looked at it recently. And the section on sexual abuse, what does it say about dealing with the victims of, of sexual abuse?

Guest [01:51:40] Well, I don't have it in front of me, but there's probably a little bit of pablum. But it's mostly focusing on the need for church court discipline of the perpetrator and things like. Well, if in your judgment, Bishop, it's not too bad, then you don't even have to convene a disciplinary council, refer it to the stake president for, for disciplinary council or if it involves somebody who is not an elder or above, then you can deal with it through probation or counseling, in which case there's really no record kept and it's all just done between the bishop and anybody involved in Mormonism knows bishops are individuals who have typically have full time jobs. They're farmers, they're ranchers, they're dentists, doctors, lawyers, whatever. But they don't have any training or experience in dealing with pedophiles, rarely have any understanding of the compulsive, obsessive nature of child molesters. So I mean, this points up the whole reason we have mandatory reporting stats statutes, which is for too long these matters were dealt with behind closed doors by people who meant well, perhaps, but were totally unqualified, inexperienced and unauthorized to deal with a very serious, violent, damaging crime, the molestation of children. So these mandatory reporting laws were passed to basically break this chain, to basically bring to bear the resources of the state police and all of the investigative skills and experience of the police or child protective services so that the farmer bishop is not in a position. The whole idea behind mandatory reporting is you don't have to think, all you have to do is do you suspect something bad happened here? End of inquiry, dial 911. That's it. But the church itself and says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Call this 1-800-number which incidentally rings into the offices of Curtin McConkey and is answered by Randy Austin or one of his underlings, in which case the questions off your form are the first ones asked. And there's nothing about concern or how, you know, is this an ongoing situation? How do we protect the kid? You know, let's get the cops there, let's protect the children so this doesn't continue. Let's try and minimize it. I mean, let's act like any responsible moral entity or person would in that circumstance. But that's not the Mormon Church.

Guest 2 [01:54:30] You have represented a number of people and you talked about the pattern, being able to predict the experiences of victims of sexual abuse in the church. Can we just, just maybe kind of summarise that at this point? What do you notice? What's the pattern here?

Guest [01:54:48] First of all, you have to understand that child sexual abuse is vastly under reported because it's been a well documented, scientifically studied known phenomenon that children don't disclose, they feel guilty, they feel shame and confusion and all of the things that children feel being sexually abused. And so that's the reason our statutes of limitation are so antiquated, because it's completely unrealistic and unscientific to require a child sexual abuse victim to come Forward before their 21st birthday, which unfortunately is the state of statute of limitations rule in most states. So when they do come forward, one of the first questions I ask, you know, is where did the abuse occur? And then I immediately go to my reference guide to see what the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse is in that state. Because then I know immediately whether or not they have an avenue to justice. And the best thing I can do for the them is to tell them, I'm sorry, but there's nothing that really you can do. Or it's an extreme long shot, but chances are you're going to not, you know, your case is going to be dismissed on statute of limitations. But to answer your question more directly, you know, the answers are typical. This happened. I told my mom, she went to the bishop, the bishop said she must be confused. Brother. So and so is, you know, he's a respected teacher in the community, he is a respected elder in the church, he's a high priest, he's an ex bishop, he was the Scoutmaster of the ward. I mean, this just can't be true. So there's this built in bias in favor of the male leaders in the church and completely opposed to identifying with the child. So you have this system in the Mormon Church that thumbs its nose at mandatory reporting laws in the various states which again state that if you have cause to believe a child may be abused or at risk of abuse, you under criminal penalty must call police or the child protection authorities. Instead, the Mormons have a system that circumvents that and has them, the local bishops, if they become aware of this, to call the 1-800-helpline, which is a helpline for the church, which rings into the offices of Merton Montcon in Salt Lake City. So that's their system. It's interesting because 20 years ago, if you look at earlier editions of the general handbook of Instructions, the instruction was to call, was to follow the mandatory reporting statutes and to call them. And then they changed it to this other system. And now why would they go from one to the other? And somebody asked me this question recently and the only answer I could think of was that they were having too many lawsuits being brought against them because they couldn't get in front of it. So, you know, they'd learn about it when the police had come knocking on the door. And by that time the cat was out of the bag. So they changed it to this, well, call our lawyers. And the ostensible reason for calling the law firm was, well, we just have to make sure that we need to have a lawyer review it so that there's no violation of the clergy penitent privilege which is reviewed ridiculous, because it's not the perpetrator's calling. And perpetrators overwhelmingly aren't the ones that report to the bishop their sexual abuse of children. It's coming in through a child, a victim, a parent, a friend. And there's no clergy penitent issue involved. But it becomes a pretext to justification occasion in the church lawyers minds to circumvent the mandatory reporting laws. And so that form you read, I think reflects their total befuddlement and confusion because the language is so confusing. But if you read it three times, you pretty much get the message, which is don't call the local authorities, call the, the church's law firm first and they'll take over.

Guest 2 [01:59:34] Okay, so something that you said was

John Dehlin [01:59:36] really, really quickly, like so much there that's like super shocking. And like, I have already given one smoking gun today. There's smoking gun number two, that 25 years ago, the Church's default policy in handling sexual abuse was to notify. And then they changed it to the, to the hotline and literally, intentionally, explicitly decided to stop having the default policy to be reporting to authorities.

Gerardo Sumano [02:00:12] That's on the Instagram post, by the way.

John Dehlin [02:00:14] Yeah. Like, that's just like, you know, it's like, you know, there's always this question, did the brethren know it's not true? Did the brethren know that the history and the problems. Like this is an instance where the brethren knew that there was an outbreak of abuse and they intentionally decided to harness lawyers and implement a hotline to do their best to hide and dismiss and intimidate and pressure these cases to not ever go to law enforcement, let alone to trial.

Jen Camp [02:00:52] Yeah. And there's another thing that I kind of want to point out with the hotline is that when this hotline was put in place, like the stake presidents and bishops call in to it, they have that form, at least they used to have the form that you. They would fill out. No one knows, I guess, if they still use it, but they had this paper form that they would fill out. And then after they decided, I guess no matter what, if they decided if it was abuse and they transferred it to the lawyers or if they decided to just give it back to the bishop to take care of that paper, you think that like church headquarters would keep track of who called in and what the victim's names were and who the abuser was so that they could have that, you know, to follow up with them or to have some kind of like, reach out to the victims, but they didn't. At the end of the day, they would collect all these papers of all these victims and they would shred them at the end of every day.

John Dehlin [02:01:58] Yeah.

Jen Camp [02:01:59] And they wouldn't keep track. They wouldn't, you know, reach back out and make sure things were taken care of. They wouldn't do anything like that. They would shred them. So there was no evidence that someone could come in and say, you knew about this. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:02:13] Yeah.

Jen Camp [02:02:14] So they're destroying.

John Dehlin [02:02:16] Yeah, destroying the evidence.

Jen Camp [02:02:17] There's that.

John Dehlin [02:02:18] Yeah. Like, like Watergate, Nixon level.

Jen Camp [02:02:21] Yeah. If you're worried about the victims, if you care about the victims, you would know their names.

John Dehlin [02:02:26] Yeah. And preserve the records.

Jen Camp [02:02:28] Yeah. You wouldn't. I don't. You know, even if they don't keep the abuser's name, whatever. But, you know, you knew, you know, and you knew, you knew at one time all the victims names, and you didn't reach out and you didn't Keep them. And you didn't follow up.

Speaker F [02:02:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:02:43] And reporting the law officials doesn't mean the person's going to be convicted. Maybe it's a false accusation. Who knows? It's just allowing police and the legal system to do its job. And if the person is convicted, then they're on the sex offender registry and then people can know. And then if he goes to a different state, people can look them up. And background checks, that stuff's going to come up in background checks. It's just, why would you want to prevent. You know, again, we believe in honoring Mormons believe in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law. Why wouldn't you leverage the judicial system and the justice system to help maximize both the fulfillment of justice and the protection of your members? Yeah, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:03:33] You know what else happened in 1995 when the helpline was established? The Ensign Peak investment fund started going up.

Speaker F [02:03:44] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:03:44] So they knew that the risk was. The risk was a lot higher. Was starting to be a lot higher.

John Dehlin [02:03:51] Yeah. Oh, man, I'm having to take deep breaths. This is hard stuff. All right, let's continue.

Clergy-Penitent Privilege and Mandatory Reporting

Guest 2 [02:04:01] The important there this clergy penitent privilege, and that is that if you go to clergy and you make a confession under normal circumstances that clergy is, is not required to mandatorily report except where the law says so. And that would be in many states. In some states it would be in cases of sexual abuse, correct?

Guest [02:04:25] That's correct. In many states they don't recognize clergy penitent privilege in the context of child sexual abuse.

Guest 2 [02:04:32] Okay, what about Utah, does it.

Guest [02:04:34] Well, here's the deal. I'm not licensed in Utah, so I don't want to give general legal advice about the law in Utah. And so what I always say is you should consult an attorney in the state of Utah. But my general understanding, not legal advice, is that clergy penitent, that is perpetrator to clergy communications are protected, do not have to be reported. But here's another issue, Gina. The church will come up with so many obfuscations, so many dodges, they'll say,

Speaker F [02:05:18] well,

Guest [02:05:21] it's not just clergy penitent communication. We believe that any confidential communication as we define it in the church, which is, and I've had, and I've got deposition transcripts I can send you where Mormon bishops, you know, I say, well, Bishop, are you saying that the communication that you had with my clients mother or with Mrs. So and so who came to you complaining about the abuse of her child, that that's a confidential communication and therefore privileged? Yes. So any Communication that any member has with you is privileged because you're a bishop and they said it to you. Yes. So if I was a member of your ward and I said, hey, Bishop, that's a nice car you got, you would consider that to be privileged? Yes. I mean, this is what you're dealing with. They will go to whatever extreme they need to, to shield the church from incriminating evidence.

Guest 2 [02:06:29] It's beside the point, though, in many respects, because as you said before, most people are coming to their bishop to. To report sexual abuse. So this clergy penitent privilege isn't even a thing, you know, in most cases isn't even a thing. But the church legally acts as though it is. How do we get the perpetrator off?

Guest [02:06:51] Exactly. And that's what we're talking. That's the point I'm trying to make, which is there's that which is the legal rule, and there's that which the church does. So it'll take these extreme positions. Totally unsupportable, legally, something that any lawyer in the world would be embarrassed to stand before a judge and make that argument. And yet the Mormon lawyers will do that and have done that, and they will advance the most preposterous arguments to justify their extreme positions.

Guest 2 [02:07:27] Can you give us an example of that, Tim?

Speaker F [02:07:33] Sure.

Guest [02:07:34] Well, just that where they will argue that. I mean, this was documented. I mean, was told in the book how every place we tried to take a deposition of a bishop, whether it be in Michigan or other states, they would hire local law firms that would come in and they would then obstruct the deposition, direct the bishop not to answer the questions. What did so and so say you, you know, this was not a perpetrator. This is in no way a clergy penitent communication. This was some other member who came to. To the bishop and told him about an abuse situation. And they would argue that the bishop should not be compelled to answer that question in deposition. Well, you know, $22,000 later in attorney's fees and an appeal to the appellate court of Michigan, and it happened again in Wisconsin, the state of Wisconsin. Every place I went, they would assert these bogus claims. And, you know, most law firms don't have $100,000 to burn up litigating a question. And you have to understand that this is stuff that's really foreign to most judges. They don't deal with this stuff every day. And they can be just sort of intimidated by the Church's argument because, you know, they hadn't studied the, you know, first Amendment or free exercise. Maybe they read the briefs, maybe they care, maybe they don't care. But, you know, it's. So you can be just right as rain and go into one of these jurisdictions. And the judge says, well, I don't know. He says it's confidential under the terms of their religious belief system. And I guess that's good enough. So, no, you don't get the answer. So that's the stuff you deal with. So it just encourages them to, you know, to throw up roadblocks and they're throwing up road.

John Dehlin [02:09:55] And I just want to say, like, this is something you have to think through because it's a little bit tricky. So the clergy exemption is, is created. So this is a law in a state. And I understand that like 40 states have clergy clergy exemptions.

Gerardo Sumano [02:10:10] I can read it.

John Dehlin [02:10:12] Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:10:13] So in Child for Child Welfare.gov he has a whole document called the clergymandate and he lists how it works on every state, basically. Yeah, on this states, there's privilege granted for from mandated mandated reporter, and it's limited to pastoral communications. And these states are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. In all these states, a clergy could say that any pastoral communication is privileged and therefore they don't have to report. And then we have a few states where clergy is not even enumerated as a mandated reporter, which is Utah, Idaho, Florida, Maryland, Kentucky, Delaware and Wyoming. So in those states, clergy is not even numerated as a mandated reporter.

John Dehlin [02:11:19] And, you know, I, I don't have to kind of state that. Like who, if you had to pick some states where the Mormon Church would have a disproportionate influence on the state legislatures. It's going to be places like Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. And the fact that the Church has used its power, money and influence to make the states where it, where it resides most disproportionately, most significantly, to use its power to protect the Church and to even strengthen these clergy privileges is kind of revolting to me. And you know, so when the lawyers say, well, the Church is just following the law, the bishops are just following the law. Yeah, they're following the law that the Church and its legislators implemented at the Church and its lawyer's recommendation.

Gerardo Sumano [02:12:13] But remember, it's following the law to choose to not report. It's not that they cannot report. My understanding is that there's not a state in the United States of America where a clergy cannot report the abuse to the police in every state they can report to the police. In this states that I just read, they can choose to not report.

John Dehlin [02:12:42] Right. So even if these laws were in place, the church could still recommend that their bishops report the abuse. And I also think it's just this point gets lost. But in the overwhelming cases of abuse within Mormonism, it's not the perpetrator that's going to the bishop saying, hey bishop, I have a sin to confess. I'm an abuser. Like, okay, if the church wants to make it so a sinner or perpetrator feels comfortable to talk to a bishop, fine. But in the overwhelming instances, it's the victims and their families or people in the know that are going to the bishop and saying this abuse is happening. So for the church to use the clergy exemption to apply to victims and their families to prevent notifying the police authorities, it's our. That's outrageous. Yeah, right.

Jen Camp [02:13:42] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:13:43] Like it, like it's, it's, it's outrageous. Yeah. It's revolting.

Guest [02:13:49] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:13:51] All right, let's continue

Guest 2 [02:13:54] blocks to bleed the case dry of resources. Right. Like anything that they can do, you know, even if it's mischievous and even unethical and not within the general purvey of the legal practice, the legal profession, they'll do anything to.

Guest [02:14:12] Absolutely. I mean, again, coming back to, you know, the entire leadership of this church would rather be packed off to a federal prison for knowingly violating the anti polygamy laws than to give in to the secular. I mean, what we're talking about here is the rule of law. The question is, does the Mormon Church believe in the rule of law? And that's a whole other discussion because I would maintain, no, they don't. Because the Mormon Church believes that it is the rule of law and that it takes precedent over the Constitution and the secular law. Now they'll deny that and pay lip service, but you know, that's what they do. They are not, you know, they believe that the law of the church is supreme.

Guest 2 [02:15:09] When I read your book, one of the things that came out to me that became really clear to me is that you're reasonably shocked by the activities of the church as legal team.

Guest [02:15:23] Well, that was a long time ago. No, I mean, I expect it. I mean, I factor it in, you know, when I take on a case and I don't have any more five year blocks of time that I can commit to a client anymore because I'd actually like to spend a little bit of my life thinking about other things. In the Mormon Church, believe it or

Guest 2 [02:15:46] not, you and everybody else.

Guest [02:15:51] Yeah, so, I mean, so that's my story. I've given a lot and I'm kind of spent. And I cheerlead other lawyers that want to dive into the breach, but I warn them in advance, which is be careful what you wish for, because this is going to alter your life if you take this on, because it is, you are definitely tilting at windmills, no doubt about it. And I mean, I wish I had good news, Gina, but when people say, well, why won't you bring cases in Utah or Idaho or Arizona or those places? And I tell them I would rather sue the Taliban in Afghanistan, I would have a better chance than suing the Mormon Church, any of those places. And even when you get to a place like West Virginia or Washington State, you have to understand this institution. It has representation, political clout. I could tell you stories, but they're overrepresented in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, in state houses across the Rocky Mountain West. The church strongly encourages its members to dive into secular politics. School board, legislature, mayor, dog catcher, whatever. They have a program. They have a program. And I think part of the reason they amass so much wealth is because they have a long term plan. And it's not a plan that's consistent with democratic ideals, in my opinion.

Guest 2 [02:17:32] And I can hear people as you.

John Dehlin [02:17:34] I'll just say I. I've made this argument before that some people like to make the argument. And this is rough, this is hard, this is probably going to be a little bit controversial. It's definitely a hot take. Some people like to say the Mormon Church is not even nearly as bad as Scientology or the Jehovah's Witnesses. And there are, there are domains where that's true. But. Well, you know, there are ways that Scientology and Joe's Witnesses are worse than the Mormon Church. But, but the fact that in many ways the Mormon Church is slightly less bad than Scientology and Jehovah's Witnesses allows them to have to be over represented in the House of Representatives. It allows them to be overrepresented in the US Senate, it allows them to be overrepresented in the judiciary, it allows them to have a presidential candidate for a major political party and, and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and hotel chains and professional athletes, et cetera. And by being slightly less culty or in some ways less culty than Scientology of the Job's Witnesses, it has so much money and power that it can do things that those other organizations would never be able to do it can shut down like their reports that like ABC was going to like do a massive expose on all this stuff and the church had its lawyers call Frontline or ABC or NBC or whatever and say if you, if you report too much on this stuff, we're going to sue you into oblivion. Or let's talk to our executives and let's shut down these stories before they come out. So that's, you know, I thought about having a book someday entitled Nice Culture because by being a little bit nicer than Scientology and Jehovah's Witnesses, the church has so much money and power it can literally do anything, almost anything at once. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hot take from John. Okay, let's keep going.

Guest 2 [02:19:41] You describe the kind of influence and the money that the LDS Church has and I can feel the rousing self applause that many LDS people will give to that. It's a matter of extraordinary pride that they can unleash a legal team who will drain a case of any resources to get justice. They will think that that is a wonderful feat which shows the strength and the hegemony of the institution. And I just want to say how appalling, how absolutely and utterly appalling that I find that system, that's just me on my soapbox.

Guest [02:20:23] So much is hidden from Mormons and it's an interesting, it's an interesting thing I observe and it's an internal conflict within Mormonism. And it's deeply ironic, which is the Mormon Church has placed an enormous value on education and higher education. In other words, it encourages people to go down this path which for most people who go on and increase their education, it opens their minds, it causes them to think, to ponder, and yet at the same time they're expected to buy into a belief system that really requires them at the same time to close their minds and to not question. If there's one thing that gives me optimism or hope that maybe morphs into something that more closely resembles what Christ taught. It produces a lot of educated people who think once that mind opens up, it starts to question. And the church does not encourage questioning. They say that the Church operates with a 50 year lag. So the policies and practices of the Church today are really a reflection of the thought and leadership of 50 years ago. So maybe 50 years from now it'll reflect a more progressive view, a more Christian view. It's, you know, it's like the Vatican. It moves at a glacial pace. But modern, modern people, modern Mormons can't abide it for 50 years. I mean, to Me, the Mormon Church is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of American history there is in large part because it's so unknown to most Americans on the east coast, the media. Every time I get a call from a reporter, it's like I have to start from score one because they don't know anything about the Mormon Church or Mormonism or its history. And it takes time and effort and research and study to get your hands around it. So if I talk to a reporter that wants to start from zero, I just tell him, go read Brody's book, no man knows my history or something. Come back and demonstrate to me that you know something and you have a demonstrated interest and commitment to telling this story story. Because I don't have the time to waste educating you. And I'm not interested in a kind of one off story about, well, how much did your case settle for or this, that or the other thing or one. We read your complaint and it's just egregious and that's horrible. And what do you think? I don't even know where to begin with a reporter like that because I'm not going to go back there and start at square one. This is an area of, of probing that requires a level of commitment that 99.9% of people are just not interested in doing and especially Mormons. I know more, and this will sound haughty, but I know more than 99% of Mormons I've ever met about their church and the history and so on and so forth. And I'll get into discussions with them and they'll say, well, that can't be true. And I said it's absolutely true. The church had admits it. Read this book. It's just amazing to me how ignorant people are and yet they are so devoted to this. And what can you say about somebody that defends the treatment of victims and says, oh, I'm so proud of my church for beating victims and lawyers into submission. What kind of Christian is that?

Guest 2 [02:24:03] But you know, I think one of the central orthodoxies of the elder really

John Dehlin [02:24:06] quickly Maven is asking me to address a commenter in the comments. There's a commenter named Mahonrai Smith who is representing a lot of believing Mormons by saying, you know, common types of responses to this, things like the church is not perfect. He writes, I've seen many abuse situations where they were handled correctly and in the best interest of the abused person. I'm sure you can find some one off situations. You know, the LDS Church has all the procedures in place to deal with abuse. But with mere humans, you, you can have issues. You know, I think each of us can react to that. But I'll, I'll start like Mahan, right? Number one, you have to. You, Mohan Rai and any believing Mormon that thinks we're being unfair, you have to start with the fact that they claim to be prophet seers and revelators and special witnesses of Christ. They should be ahead of the curve, decades ahead of the curve to, to Tim Kosnoff's point, not 20 to 30 to 50 years behind the curve. So number one, they, by definition, they need to stop claiming to be special witnesses of Christ and for this to be the one that one true church. But to go a little bit further, when people like Lavina Fielding Anderson, you know, decades ago, or Sam Young now, or others have spoken up to call the church on their abuse, the church has punished the whistleblowers and excommunicated them. And so, you know, Mahan, others believing Mormons. How do you account for that? That's awful behavior. And then let's just say that the church has improved over the past three or four or five years. Maybe they are handling things better now. But guess what? It's only because of the activists and the victims and the attorneys who have spoken out at their own peril. Hired attorneys, sued the church into oblivion. The courageous journalists and activists that have spoken up against the church, they're the reasons why the church has changed. And the church has only changed in the past few years. So you can't say, hey, the church is doing a lot better in 2022. Yes, you can thank the church for improving and I think to be healthy. We want to say, great job, Mormon Church. You're not as horrific as you were a few years ago. Yes, yes, you can kind of give the church credit or horrific Mormon Church, you don't mishandle every single abuse case. Good job. Yes, you can do that in theory. But if you don't acknowledge the decades of, of horrific treatment, of all the terrible cases, of the, of the commonality of the just raw frequency of the thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of abuse cases, in all the ways, the church has not only harmed the victims, but punished the victims, punished the whistleblowers and protected the perpetrators to allow future abuse, you can't just say, Mahan Rai, that the church is starting to do better without atoning. Do you not believe in the atonement? What did Jesus say about repentance? What did the church teach us about repentance? The church Said, you need to acknowledge the sin, confess the sin, forsake the sin, make it right, make restitution, and then promise you won't do it again. The Mormon Church has done none of

Gerardo Sumano [02:27:43] that with the Arizona case, period.

John Dehlin [02:27:47] Where's the church ever said, we apologize to the tens or hundreds of thousands of abuse victims that we have, that we have allowed to be abused, where we've silenced them, covered things up, not reported them to the police, allowed repeat offense. When is the church ever apologized and performed restitution instead? What the church does is down at jokes, makes a public statement saying we neither seek nor offer apologies. And then to make it even worse, they'll take a 12 or 13 year old boy or girl, rake them over the coals about, you know, masturbating, keep them from missions, keep them from getting married, make them postpone their marriages, shame them in front of their communities for touching themselves, which is a normal, healthy behavior. They expect exact obedience and contrition and repentance and apologies for the membership and exact full honesty when they don't even offer it themselves in these horrific abuse cases. Yeah, I'm ranting.

Gerardo Sumano [02:28:54] That would be my response.

Speaker F [02:28:56] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [02:28:57] I mean, I don't know if he's commenting in good faith. I mean, he just said that he doesn't know of any cases that have been handling, have been handled incorrectly.

John Dehlin [02:29:06] So, I mean, just in this, just in this episode, we've shown hundreds of instant messages of people chatting in YouTube and Facebook. I was abused. My family was abused. People in my ward were abused. The bishop silenced it. We were told to be quiet. Like, just in this chat, you can literally see hundreds of examples of mistreatment. Jen, how are you doing? Jen?

Jen Camp [02:29:34] Yeah, you know, I, I hope that what he's saying is true. I hope wherever he is in the world that his bishop is amazing and he's turning in the abusers and, you know, because that's what he's saying, what I would say to him is, what did you do for the victims? I like, if that's what's happening, if he's, if he's doing that, that part, then what's happening after that? Did you, did you follow up with the victims? Did you pay for therapy? Did you make sure the, the abuser was out of, you know, reach of them or any other child? Like, what were the steps taken after that? Like, just reporting it in my book is not even enough. When you're the leader and the mouthpiece for God, that's not enough. So I don't want to shame him in any way. Because I hope that that's true. I hope wherever you are that is true. I really do. And for you to be in the comments and telling everyone else that they're pretty much full of it and don't know, you know, what's happening today in the church because that's not their truth, is also not okay.

John Dehlin [02:30:55] Yeah. Thank you, Jen. Yeah, I mean we have, you know, one of the best movies I've ever seen. We should put this in the show notes is the movie Spotlight, which is how a bunch of courageous reporters in Boston ended up, including the author of this AP article. Right. Ended up uncovering systemic abuse within the Catholic Church. And, and we have no idea whether the Mormon Church is worse, better than the Catholic Church, as bad as the Catholic Church or worse than the Catholic Church. But what we do know is that as of today, like 80,000 abuse claims have been made against the Boy Scouts of America. And we know that the Mormon Church represented something like half of their total troops and that the church has already offered something like $250 million in a settlement, which is an acknowledgment of guilt. I heard Randy, my friend Randy say that he, you know, it's hard to get a couple million dollar settlement in today's judicial system. So a 250 million dollar settlement, that's a serious, serious admission of egregious abuse. And who knows how deep this is going to go. Maybe it's as bad as the Catholic Church or maybe it's worse. But, but orthodox believing Mormons like Jen said, please don't jump to the defense of the church. That's, this is not the time to do that. Jump to the defense of the victims. Jump to, I'm sorry, jump to let's fix this. Like one of the things that is going to come out on Friday is that the church in many ways is acting legally. It is, it's acting legally. It's just acting immorally and unethically and unchristlike. And at the end of the day, the only real change is probably going to happen when members force the church to change because otherwise they're just going to keep doing this because this isn't new. This is the decades old problem. There's nothing new about this. Like this stuff's been around. We've known about this for 20 plus years. Nothing new.

Jen Camp [02:33:12] Yeah, there needs to be background checks with anyone who's working with children. Yeah, there needs to be. Yeah, it needs to be steps you need to take in place where they don't Work with children at all. Ever.

John Dehlin [02:33:25] Yeah. Even now in 2022. Except. Except because the state of California made it a requirement in 2022, you can still work with children in the Mormon Church and never have a background check. The church has not implemented the most basic, basic level of care, which is to require background checks of anyone working with youth or children.

Jen Camp [02:33:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:33:47] They haven't even done that in 2022. They're going to start because California is making them. And sometimes, as goes California, so goes the nation. But the church in 2022 hasn't even begun to start the process of protecting victims.

Jen Camp [02:34:02] Yeah. And your. Your little kid's soccer coach has to have a background check.

John Dehlin [02:34:05] Right.

Jen Camp [02:34:06] That they see once a week.

John Dehlin [02:34:07] Even the Boy Scouts.

Jen Camp [02:34:08] Yeah. In a group of people. You know what I mean? There's. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:34:14] All right, let's keep going. We're almost done. Actually,

Guest 2 [02:34:19] LDS Church is that you give your loyalty above anything else to the president of the Church. That's absolutely. That is fundamental. So whether or not you've got lawyers or state senators, politicians or wherever it is, the more orthodox Mormon will throw in all of their energy to supporting the organization at every cost because they have been trained to offer that loyalty. And that's a historical thing. I mean, you can go back to polygamy. Right. Where women and men, against their better judgment, were entering into polygamous marriages because Brigham Young or Joseph Smith or whoever told them that this was a test of their faith. Extraordinary loyalty to the organization above anything else.

Guest [02:35:09] I understand that religions are not democracies, but at some point you have to understand that what they're asking you to do is sublimate your freedom as an autonomous human being to think and to judge instead of to just strictly follow unquestioning. And yeah, I know that. I mean, it's. The biggest apostasy in the church is that you do not pledge total obedience to the. The word of the church leaders and that it's ground for excommunication from the Church. The most painful thing I have witnessed in representing clients in cases against the church. And I mean, as a parent, it just. I can't understand it how these cases, a child, an adult saying, I was abused as a child. The church knew. They protected the abuser. They didn't warn the police. They should have protected me. They protected him instead. And I want to sue the church because they were negligent. They were responsible. And my parents have turned against me, my siblings have turned against me. I was fired from my job, my whole community, my whole Life has been turned against me.

Speaker F [02:36:33] Me.

Guest [02:36:33] What did I do wrong? I mean, I don't know how to answer those people, but what they do is they come out on the other end and they find other survivors of abuse of various kinds within the Mormon Church and they begin to put their lives back together and they begin to recover. And it's not just recovering from the sexual abuse, it's recovering from this life that they were born into, that they had no control over. And that goes back in many instances generations or hundreds of years.

Speaker F [02:37:07] And

Guest [02:37:10] it's just an extraordinary thing. I've never encountered it with any other religious sect that I've litigated against.

Guest 2 [02:37:19] Do you find that people who take these actions that sue the church, they don't last? Is this is what you're saying, they don't last in the church?

Guest [02:37:26] It's something I say in the first interview with them, the intake interview, I said, okay, first of all, you're going to hear that I'm, you know, I'm just a church basher, I'm just a church hater, I'm an anti Mormon zealot and so on and so forth. You're going to hear all those things, okay? Number two is if you go down this path, it's going to be hard, it's going to be painful. They're going to turn your family, your friends, your co workers, they're going to turn them against you. And you know what's going to happen? This experience is not going to be faith promoting. Okay? At the end of this, you're going to be asking me to help you get the church to remove your name from church records because you're ready to move on. And that's an inevitable consequence of taking on this institution. Because your eyes are going to be opened and you're going to see something that you haven't been allowed to see for a long period of time. And in my opinion, I guess that makes me Moses, because I'm doing more than obtaining a financial recovery for you. And I've had so many clients come to me afterwards and say, Tim, you know, you have, you know, I can't thank you. What you did was complete, was transformative, and I never could have done it without you because you stood with me and you helped me find my soul again.

Guest 2 [02:39:01] So you're not joining the church anytime soon, Tim?

Guest [02:39:06] No. And you know, and it's. My words sound harsh and shrill, but until you've walked in my shoes or until you've walked in the shoes of my client, it's Like, I represented many clients who were abused in the Boy Scouts, and I encounter people who just can't accept that this institution is what I say it is, that it's. It's a haven for child molesters because of their policies and practices. But we don't know how many child sexual abuse victims there are out there. For everyone that comes forward and identifies, there's probably 10 more that are still silenced by shame and humiliation. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that the scope of this thing could be as large as it is. And I'm not saying it's all in the Mormon Church. It's clearly not. And secular institutions are guilty. But I take heart that secular institutions at least have the ability to right the ship. And they aren't constrained by a religious belief system that rationalizes and justifies on religious grounds its policies and practices. So that's why I always come back to the Mormon Church, as I think it is the most pernicious form of the phenomenon that I've encountered.

Guest 2 [02:40:38] That's a huge call, right? The media at this point is filled with cases against the Pennsylvania Catholic Diocese. And you're suggesting that the LDS is much more pernicious than even the local diocese.

Guest [02:40:54] Well, it is. And maybe this is a difference between the modern Catholic Church and the current Mormon Church. The power of the Catholic Church. It was said that the Dark Ages were called the Dark Ages because the Catholic Church ruled the world. The Catholic Church was immune from any interference. There were the king's courts and there were the ecclesiastical courts. And in the Middle Ages, a priest could murder somebody and the King's court could not prosecute them. They could only be prosecuted within the Church's courts. And the Church dealt with all of that internally. And that was the tradition within the Church. The Church was all powerful, almighty, and priests were direct, directly connected to God, and they were untouchable. With the modern age, that was swept aside, but still the tradition held, which was that the Church was really sort of out of bounds and untouchable. Today you have educated modern Catholics who are ostensibly Catholic because public schools suck in many communities. And they want to. They're Catholic kids to go to Catholic school because it's a better school than the school in their neighborhood. But other than that, that's about as far as they go in the Mormon Church. Mormons are not modern, at least not until very recently. And so this Mormon me too moment is interesting. Will the Church be able to snuff it out for another 20 years? Probably, we'll see. But yeah, I think we are in a moment. But, you know, Mormon MeToo, people should go into this thing with eyes wide open. You push too far. Are you prepared to be excommunicated? If you are, then you're a warrior. If you're not, then you're just a sheep and you'll just be, you know, led off to slaughter. So we'll see.

Discipline for Speaking Out and Final Questions

Guest 2 [02:42:53] I have a couple of questions, just a final couple of questions. Have people been disciplined, in your knowledge, for speaking up against the Church in these cases?

Guest [02:43:04] Well, first of all, I don't know, because church court discipline is all secret.

Guest 2 [02:43:10] But your clients, Your clients haven't experienced church discipline.

Guest [02:43:14] No, but they. By the time these cases come to completion, they don't want to be a member of the church. And they say, fine, excommunicate me. I'd rather you just remove my records so they don't even bother. Church lawyers tell the church, don't institute church disciplinary action for filing a lawsuit against the church, because that would look really bad to a jury.

Guest 2 [02:43:37] Okay?

Guest [02:43:38] So I think that's the only reason they don't do it.

Guest 2 [02:43:40] Victims in Utah, where, of course, you've got the largest concentration of Mormons. You're suggesting that that is really, really difficult.

Guest [02:43:48] Fifteen years ago, I brought a number of cases there. I mean, I was. It was before I saw things as they really were. But I was in front of this judge in Salt Lake county, and he was an African American judge. He was a Buddhist. Can you imagine? An African American Buddhist judge in Salt Lake City? I thought it was. And I was in a county that has the largest concentration of non LDS members. Salt Lake County. I mean, you venture outside of Salt Lake county and it's more like 99% LDS. So I thought when we drew this judge, I had a pretty good chance. But he more or less said from the bench, Mr. Kosnoff, I understand your arguments and they have merit, but I'm not going to rule on your behalf. I'm going to rule on behalf of the church. But you go up to the Utah Appellate Court or Supreme Court and reverse me and come back here, I'll gladly give you a fair trial. What he was saying is, I'm not giving up my job for you. A Washington state lawyer coming into this state suing the LDS Church for child sexual abuse, and you've got all these issues. I'm not going to be the one that's going to rule. This is. I get it. I mean, I get it. So we went up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court Basically said no, you can't sue the LDS church in Utah for this kind of thing because a variety of reasons. So you have to bring these cases in counties where it occurred. So you're not just dealing with the law of the state, you have to bring it in the local venue. So you're going into counties in Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, Utah, where okay, let's say you can get the case to a jury. Chances are you're going to have half a dozen LDs on the jury and they may be open minded on just about any other case. But a case that is trying to hold God's true church responsible. No, we can't go that far. I mean as soon as it comes you can have conversations with LDs where they can be as progressive and liberal and open minded as can be. But when it comes to a lawsuit accusing the church of this kind of thing, forget about it.

Guest 2 [02:46:15] Is it hopeless? Because I know that the church settles a lot of cases. I know you know numerous lawyers in Utah county and Salt Lake county where they take on these cases but they usually end up settling. So there is hope in that respect that there'll be some recompense even if it doesn't go to trial.

Guest [02:46:33] Well, I'm telling you, as I came into Utah as an out of state lawyer, I needed a local lawyer, a local law firm to co counsel with me so that I could be admitted pro hac viche which means basically as a visiting lawyer under the supervision of a local lawyer because I'm not admitted to practice law. And you Utah, but I mean I spent six months just trying, just getting turned down by one law firm in Salt Lake City after the other saying it's a righteous case, we sympathize, blah blah blah, it's bad. But we know winners and we know losers and we can't win this case in Salt Lake City. So you're going to have to move on and find somebody else. That's the reality. Now will Curtin McConkey Law Firm pay some money, a fraction of the value of what the claim is worth just to keep the lawsuit from getting filed and there being a news article appearing in the Salt Lake trip. Yeah, they'll pay some money for that. But is it justice? Hell no. So I would just say I applaud any lawyer or law firm that's willing to take on the church. In Utah there were lawyers who brought cases involving civil rights in the 19, 30s, 40s and 50s. Thurgood Marshall. They lost. They lost, they lost, they lost and eventually they won. I believe in anything. I believe in the rule of law and the scales of justice and that the pendulum of justice eventually swings toward the righteous. Although mainly these days I'm pessimistic about that and this guy country, but that's the nature of the pendulum. But my point being that you got to keep trying, but it takes a new generation. I would hope that young lawyers would take up this. But it's such a daunting task, particularly since the church makes it so expensive and so impossible to beat them. Then you have to pick your cases carefully and you have to attack them in jurisdictions where you've got a fair chance. And that's definitely not Utah. It's going to be someplace on the east coast and even on the west coast. You got to be careful. Oregon, Washington, California. So lawyers have to be very careful. In the civil rights movement, the civil rights lawyers, they became very careful about where they brought the cases and they had to strategize. If you just willy nilly bring a case because you think it's a good case, and it may be a good case on its merits, but the merits don't mean anything when you're going up against the church in a place like Utah. It's all political.

Guest 2 [02:49:18] Well, it's been harrowing but enjoyable talking to you.

John Dehlin [02:49:21] I feel so really quickly like I've had this experience. There are several large law firms in Utah that maybe would have the money or the resources or the power or the influence to actually take on the Mormon Church in Utah. And I've talked to attorneys who work for those who represent those firms who are sympathetic to this problem. But then they almost inevitably say, well, our firm also does a lot of work with the church. And if we attack the church, if we go after the church, if we initiate or join a lawsuit against the church, we're going to lose all sorts of business or we're going to make it harder for us to make money in other areas. And I've had attorneys of reputable firms tell me that. And that's just. And the church is not dumb. The church is like, let's make sure we throw enough business to enough of the big law firms around Utah, even the secular ones, so that for their own, the sake of their own pocketbook, you know, they, they won't want to actually join in any meaningful lawsuits against us. And that's the state. It's not, I mean, that comment about Afghanistan being a better place to get justice than, than Utah or Idaho, I mean, it is probably an extreme because, you know, we're Talking about Sharia law in the case of Afghanistan. But first of all, it's weird that the church is being put in the same category as the Catholic Church or Afghanistan, you know, on the one hand, but also it's not super far off.

Gerardo Sumano [02:50:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:50:56] You know.

Gerardo Sumano [02:50:57] Well, when you actually look at your chances.

Speaker F [02:50:59] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [02:51:00] And what he's talking about.

Speaker F [02:51:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:51:01] Jury.

Gerardo Sumano [02:51:02] Where like an actual non Mormon judge will not rule in your favor just because he doesn't want to lose his job. He'll make you go to the Supreme Court. Well, most of the judges are Mormon and they'll tell you, no, you can't

John Dehlin [02:51:14] sue the Elias Church or it'll be eliminated on some technicality. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, maybe some attorneys can come on and tell us about suing the Mormon Church for abuse cases in Utah, because if we've got it wrong, if we're misrepresenting things, then I'm happy to hear it.

Gerardo Sumano [02:51:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:51:33] It sounds like this interview is about to wind up. And then I think maybe we all have some closing comments. I know Jen's got some closing comments, but let's go ahead and let the interview close out and then we'll make our final comments.

Guest 2 [02:51:50] Speaking with Tim kosnoff, who's a U.S. trial attorney at Koznoff Law, who has spent the last couple of decades assisting Mormon survivors of sexual abuse. Now, you seem to be wanting to step back from this work, and you've given great encouragement. I can imagine there'd be a number of people who'd want to talk to you or get some advice. Where is the best place is it to contact you or there are any other people who might be familiar with how to deal with the LDS Church and these sexual abuse cases?

Guest [02:52:24] Well, sadly, I'm not aware of anybody. I mean, I wish there was somebody I could recommend out there, but as I've described, the Church has been successful at deterring qualified law firms from taking them on. But, hell, when I took my first case on, I wasn't qualified. All I had was just I was stubborn and I wouldn't give up. So if there's anybody, usually it's somebody like me who was in the lower half of their law school class and just was just cantankerous enough and wouldn't quit. And, you know, I mean, it almost bankrupted me. The first case, the Scott case, it turned out okay, and then it so happened. It kind of led to other things. If there's some lawyer that is looking to find meaning in the law that wants to take on a mission not just a case. I mean, I can't think of anything more enriching and satisfying. And I think if you pick the case, the right case, you can win. And then you've got the financial wherewithal to take on the next case and then the next case and the next case. But it takes the person with the right mindset and the willingness to basically suffer through this until you get there. I have to say that I've never lost a case to the LDS Church. Never. I haven't always won to the extent that I wanted, but I have obtained some pretty miraculous recoveries on behalf of my clients. And I'm not permitted to talk about that, per the strict confidentiality agreements that I'm required to sign as a condition of settlement. But are these cases lucrative? If you pick the right one and you beat them, you bet. So, anyways, to answer your question, you've got my email address. Distribute it freely. I may not be practicing law for much longer, but I'll be responding to email inquiries and will help where I can. But I want to sail my boat and enjoy some of this beautiful world and not think about the ugliness of child sexual abuse and how the Mormon Church keeps covering it up.

Jen Camp [02:54:38] Oh, well.

Guest 2 [02:54:39] And I wish you all the best and thank you for being a servant on behalf of the victims of our very, very wounded church. And bless you for it. Thank you, Tim Kosnoff.

Guest [02:54:50] Thank you.

Closing Reflections and Calls for Reform

John Dehlin [02:54:51] All right, so that was several years ago. That was three or four years ago. Just so, people, we have some closing comments, but I just want to reiterate what I said at the very beginning. We are having Tim Koznoff in studio on Friday to talk both about the Arizona case, the West Virginia case, the recent AP article, the updates on the helpline since he and on the church's handling of sexual abuse since this amazing, groundbreaking interview with Gina Colvin, Dr. Gina Colvin of a thoughtful faith. But he's also going to talk about the Boy Scouts of America case. So we don't know if Tim's totally stepped back or if he's back in the fight again or if he's partnering with other attorneys. I believe that's the case. I also know that Craig Vernon in Idaho, he's an attorney. Him and his firm have done a lot with abuse cases. I think I've spoken with a few other attorneys. So, like, since, since Tim did this interview, I don't want to give people the impression there's no one doing this kind of work. And we're going to do Our best on Friday to be able to let people know if you are an attorney or you know an attorney who is engaged in this work and you want to send us an email@mormonstoriesmail.com we'll do our best to make that available but I just wanted to to kind of say that and then I think I want to go around and just give ev, you know, each of us. We're almost three hours in. Maybe we can get keep this short of three hours. We've had 900 plus people joined us for the sustained entire episode and we only announced it like an hour before we started. So it's been an amazing live stream audience. We've shared so many amazing comments made both on Facebook and YouTube. Check. Come back and watch this visually and you'll just see instance after instance after instance of abuse cover ups within the church. We're also super grateful for those who gave super chat donations through YouTube and also who donated through stars on Facebook. If you want to support us financially, you can always do that either on YouTube, Facebook or MormonStories.org let's before we thank everyone and end, I want to give each of our panelists a chance to summarize. And Jen, I know that you've been working on a list. So Jen, maybe we'll give you the first chance to give some summary statements. It's almost like you're an attorney giving your closing statement or argument.

Jen Camp [02:57:10] There you go. I did want to be an attorney when I was little. So I'm going to, I'm just going to read what I wrote just so I can kind of get through it. But what I decided what I want to say right now is how do we protect victims past and possible future abuses? So the first thing I would say to the LDS Church is do not advocate for abusers. Audaciously advocate for victims and get abusers help. The second thing I would say is do not cover up abuse. We understand that you are used to doing that with a disturbing church history. We are done with you hiding and covering up to make you look good, take money from us and hurt more people. You won't, you won't be allowed to do what you did to her, to history, to real abuse victims. Today you do not have discernment. I know that is going to hurt your ego, but you don't. If you focus first and most on the victim and how you can help them in Christ's name, men, and sometimes women won't want to do this because they know they will be exposed and prosecuted and we will see a huge dive in abuse within the church. Hiding things breeds lies and more victims. And you need to stop. All adults, bishops and stake presidents need to know that they should report abuse to the police. To the police. Hiding history and abuse will be the. This is my own personal opinion. Hiding history and abuse will be the downfall of the Mormon Church. Bringing those two things into light and rebuilding with truth and love is the only way the church can redeem itself. And more and more people will continue to know this truth and leave until you change. And that's what I would say today.

John Dehlin [02:59:36] Beautiful. Thank you so much, Jen. We're so glad. And we're getting lots of comments. We always do that. People love your input. So thank you, Jen.

Jen Camp [02:59:43] Thanks,

John Dehlin [02:59:45] Gerardo. What do you want to say, brother?

Gerardo Sumano [02:59:48] Not much. I think I've said a lot. But just that to me, this article was very impactful. I would encourage everyone to read it,

John Dehlin [03:00:03] include the article in the show notes.

Gerardo Sumano [03:00:04] Yeah, it's very, very important. I honestly postponed reading it for a little bit, for a few days because I thought, oh, this is just again, kind of like more of the same. But then I learned that Mike Resendi's was the one that wrote it. So I was like, okay, this must be interesting. And it was. It didn't disappoint. And to me, it really beats the article. Really beats this idea that, oh, the church does so well in other areas or the church doesn't do the same with. Not all abuse cases in the church are the same. I mean, just read the article. Like, when you read the article and then read the church's response, the church's response literally makes no sense. It's almost like they wrote it hoping for people not to read the article because they don't address any of the allegations. They don't address any of the issues that they're bringing up, which are the same ones that Tim Kosnov just brought up and confirmed as an attorney who has litigated for decades against the Mormon Church. So, yeah, go read the article.

John Dehlin [03:01:15] Yeah. Thank you, Gerardo. Thank you, Jen. And I'll just add before we share some closing things and share again what the rest of the week is going to look like, because this is just the beginning. Believe it or not, Mormon Church, it's not enough to say that you've made some changes. You only made changes because people like Lavina Fielding Anderson and Sam Young and a gazillion victims and lawyers like Tim Kosnoff and others and an activist like Gina Colvin and Others spoke up and embarrassed you and shamed you into making changes. So Mormon Church, stop saying that you've made changes. Stop saying that things are handled better now. You need to apologize for all the abuse and all the harm and all the COVID ups and you need to stop hiding behind the law because number one, you create the law. You use your power and your money and your influence and your legislators and your congressmen and senators and presidential candidates, you use them and your corporate, you know, billionaires and millionaires, you use them to create the law. So stop hiding behind the law and instead stop, stop implementing policies and hotlines and practices that protect the church's money, that protect the church's reputation, that protect the, the pedophiles and the perpetrators and that silence and marginalize the victims and the abused. Stop doing that and stop even hiding behind what's legal and what's moral. You know, go beyond that and implement policies that represent what Jesus would literally do. Use your hundreds of billions of dollars and all your power. Begin by apologizing that. Then use all your money and power to create systems that protect and support the victims. First, report everything possible to police. You know, do what you say in, in claiming in the article of Faith that you obey, honor and sustain the law. Act like you do and use the justice system and policemen to make sure that every abuser is, is tried and if found guilty, prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Use your money and power and resources to do that and then to protect the church and to implement policies like background checks for all members who work for youth and children, who work with youth and children, like, you know, like better, better protections, cameras in every room, you know, whatever you have to do. Become the, with your hundreds of billions of dollars, with your alleged pipeline to Jesus and God, truly implement the gold standard of protection and avoidance of abuse and protection of your, of your membership and be proactive about using your money to, to heal and help the victims and to implement systems and programs and policies that prevent future abuse. That's, that's what I think is just not just the moral and ethical and legal thing to do. That's the Christlike thing to do. And that should be your standard and nothing less. Yeah, nothing short of that.

Gerardo Sumano [03:04:50] Yeah, yeah.

Jen Camp [03:04:51] And we're, and in the article and, and what we're talking about now is the abuse victims, you know, 1 in 9 or 1 in 1 out of 10 even report it. And I don't even know the statistic about how many of those are actually ever prosecuted or, you know, let Alone successfully. Yeah, let alone successfully. So most child abuse victims never even report it, never say anything. And so we're talking about a lot of people. Yeah, a lot of people have been, oh. Abused and, and are hurting right now. And they need to see changes made that help them believe that something new is going to happen, that something, a change is going to happen within the church to protect victims and protect abuse from happening in the future. They might not be speaking about it because they're scared and they're fearful and they're shameful and we can, that's a whole other level of church stuff we can talk about another time. But seeing progress to people, even the ones that are, don't like, aren't saying anything is important. It's important to their healing and it's important to future victims that we can save right now if we make changes like John just said.

John Dehlin [03:06:37] Thanks, Jen. I'm also going to add something that you know is super important and that's that you who are in the viewing and listening audience can help make a difference. You can share the articles that we, you know, that you know about with all your Mormon friends and family. You can share this episode and Gina Colvin's episode in the Thoughtful Faith with everyone. You can subscribe, you can like this content. You can, you can put it post on social media and encourage, encourage others to watch this and learn about the history. And then most importantly, if you're still an active, believing, faithful member of the church, you can demand that the church improve. And in some sense, whether it's by resigning your membership if you feel like you need to do that, or voicing your concerns to local bishops or stake presidents, to writing church leaders, to using your relationships with leaders in the church, general authorities, apostles, first presidency members. If the Mormon Church, and particularly the women in the Mormon Church were to wake up and demand that the church change, the church would change a lot faster than if it's just the liberals and the critics and the, and the, you know, journalists and the activists and the attorneys on the outside are making the criticisms. And so to some real extent, it's the Mormon, it's, it's the Mormon rank and file that need to be made aware of this problem. Because let's face, the majority don't know that this is happening. So they need to be made known, made aware that this is happening. And then they need to demand that there are changes. Stop paying tithing, speak up in testimony meetings, get up and bear your testimony about how sick you are of this abuse. Let them turn off your mic, let members sing, sing and shout you down. Speak up in every relief society in every Sunday school and every church meeting. Every time they sustain leaders in general conference, speak up and voice your concerns. And that's going to be when the church really starts to make the changes. Yeah, now really quickly, what is if three hours isn't enough, this is just the beginning. So tomorrow Gerardo and I are going to be covering the actual AP article and the church's response to it. We hope it's only a couple hours. We would love you to join us for that. Do we already stream yard schedule that or not yet?

Gerardo Sumano [03:09:21] Not yet.

John Dehlin [03:09:21] Maybe not yet. We'll schedule that as soon as we can. We will be committing to the historical record in terms of YouTube and and the audio podcast that are that important article and the response. We're hoping to get some journalists on the podcast to talk about that article. We're not going to talk about that because sometimes good intentions can be scuttled with the powers that be. So we're gonna hold off on that. So that's going to be tomorrow and then Friday we're having Tim Kosnoff talk about sexual abuse generally, the hotline, specifically the progress that's been made. Please tune in with Tim Kosnoff on Friday. It'll be the first time with high quality cameras and high quality microphones. Tim's able to talk about all this stuff. So we're honored to have him fly to our studios in Salt Lake City to be interviewed. And then he's going to also talk about the Boy Scouts. And then next week we'll probably maybe do some follow up coverage including sharing the stories of of victims who were told by the Mormon Church not to report to police. We've got over a hundred accounts, probably hundreds of those accounts by now, and we hope to do at least an interview or two with victims who can testify that the church told them or their family members not to report to police or to law officials. And of course we've got past episodes that we'll link to in the show notes, including the one with Colby Reddish and his lovely partner. We'll try and include many of those episodes. So anyway, huge thanks to first and foremost Gina Colvin and a thoughtful faith. Please go to thoughtfulfaith.org donate and Gino will be paid for that amazing episode and for her work. Shout out to Gina. We love you. Hope to see more from you in the future. Gina. Shout out to Tim Kosnoff. What a, what a hero. What a legend. Thanks Tim, we're excited to see you on Friday. Shout out to Gerardo and Jen and to Maven, who's been helping behind the scenes. Couldn't have done this without all of you. Shout out to all the viewers on both YouTube and Facebook who made amazing comments, who are subscribing to YouTube, subscribing to Facebook, commenting, helping with the algorithms, sharing this everywhere. Huge thanks to those who donated through the Super Chat feature to finance our staff and the work that we do, and to all the Mormon Stories and Open Stories foundation donors that make all this possible. Of course, you can always become a donor and either through the Super Chat or the Stars feature on Facebook or just by going to Mormonstories that are clicking on the donate button and becoming a monthly donor. But thanks to everyone who supports us. We couldn't do it without you. And please, just spread the word and please be kind to each other. Be good to each other. Remember, it's systems, not people. And thanks, most importantly, let's end by saying thank you to all the victims. You know, our hearts go out to all the victims that have had to remain silent. Our hearts are with you. And for all the victims that have spoken up in whatever way you've been able to speak up over the years, locally or through other channels, through news media, through podcasts, the folks in the Arizona case, the folks in the West Virginia case, and all the thousands of others that have spoken up and been shown shouted down or shut down or your lawsuits have been shut down by the church and its money. You know, you are the true heroes. You are the true heroes of everyone we've mentioned. So our hearts go out to you. We love you and thank you for raising your voices. We've got a heart from Jen. Gerardo's given us the. The nod and thanks, everybody. Love you guys. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories. Take care of.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.