Mormon Stories: How the Mormon Church handles sexual abuse claims

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host for today, John Dehlin. I am here with Gerardo Simano. Hey, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:12] Hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:13] We are right in the smack dab in the middle of a series on how the Mormon Church historically and even today, handles abuse and specifically sexual abuse claims. We have done a couple episodes now already dealing with that topic. We, we featured an interview between Gina Colvin, Dr. Gina Colvin, and Tim Kosnoff that aired a few years ago to provide just a little bit of background and context. And then yesterday, Gerardo and I, along with a really awesome guest, kind of did a deep dive on a recent Associated Press article that talked about a recent case in Arizona and a less recent but still timely case in West Virginia that talked about the Mormon Church's history with a abuse helpline or hotline that was put in place a few decades ago by the church and its law firm Curtin McConkey and others to, to try and as, as maybe has been said, get ahead of all these sexual abuse lawsuit cases that it's been dealing with over the past several decades. As promised today, we are so super excited to have Tim Kosnoff here in studio from Seattle. Hey, Tim.

Lawyer on Sexual Abuse Cases in the Mormon Church

Tim Kosnoff [00:01:39] Hey, good morning.

John Dehlin [00:01:40] Thanks so much for making the trip.

Tim Kosnoff [00:01:42] Thank you for the invitation.

John Dehlin [00:01:43] As far as I'm concerned, and I think Gerardo would agree, you're kind of a legend in, in the fact that I, I doubt there's anyone in the world that's spent more hours, more time and been involved in as many cases litigating against the Mormon Church and maybe the Boy Scouts or other churches as it relates to abuse or sexual abuse. Now that's just kind of my, my quick impression or reaction. If you don't mind. Why don't you just give us a quick overview of introduction to who you are and what your history has been in these matters.

Tim Kosnoff [00:02:22] Well, I'm, I may be a legend elsewhere, but I'm not in my own home and I'm not even sure I can fully embrace that. But it's true, and there may be another word for it. I, I've been at this a long time and I'm 68. I took on my first LDS sex abuse case when I was 40. So I guess that qualifies me

Gerardo Sumano [00:02:51] be

Tim Kosnoff [00:02:52] something, you know, maybe the most stubborn, persistent lawyer. And it's been both a blessing and a burden. I've represented hundreds of survivors of sexual abuse in the LDS Church as well as in other denominations, and it's hard to listen to these stories. After all these years, I probably need therapy myself, because you absorb the pain of your clients. And many of the people that I've spoken to, I couldn't represent because their cases were not legally viable because of the statute of limitations in the state where they were abused or some other legal obstacle. Plus, I'm just one person, and although I have had partners in the past, I've mostly just been a solo when it comes to handling these cases. So it's exacted a toll emotionally and psychologically on me to the point where about eight years ago, I needed to break from it, and I did for a period of time. I'm now back into it somewhat. But it all began for me in 1995, when I was a sole practitioner in Seattle handling sort of routine criminal defense cases, When a young man named Jeremiah Scott came into my office, and he was 17 years old. And he told me the story of how he had been abused by an elder in the Mormon church named Frank Curtis, and how when he eventually disclosed to his mother, his mother confronted the bishop in Portland, Oregon, where this happened. And he acknowledged that he had known about Frank Curtis. He was aware because she had told him that she was going to be inviting him into their home. And he never warned her and never told her the risk that Frank Curtis posed to her son, who was then subjected to horrific abuse from the age of roughly 7 to 9 in their home by this man, who was a career criminal who had spent most of his life in prison, was a mobster. The story was documented in a book called the Sins of Brother Curtis. I didn't write it, but I helped Lisa Davis, the author, uncover and to have much of the information that I had obtained through investigation and discovery over the five years that the lawsuit went on. And it just instilled in me a desire to lawyer, which by that point, I'd been a lawyer for 15 years. And I was burnt out, and it sort of invigorated me. And in 2001, August of 2001, on the eve of the beginning of a jury trial in Portland, the church paid Jeremiah $3 million, which at that time was the largest reported settlement of a child sexual abuse case in the United States. Subsequent to that, there were some other reported settlements and verdicts that were larger. But through the course of that journey, that five years, which the church, through its efforts to obstruct my efforts and to drag the thing out, caused me to travel to five different states where I uncovered a trail of Curtis's victims. And we were able to piece together the, the story close to the whole story about how this man had been allowed to abuse kids in ward after ward after ward. Excommunicated, rebaptized, more abuse, excommunicated, rebaptized. And it was a story that when Jeremiah first came into my office, I just couldn't believe that a church would endanger their children that way. And I thought this must be a one in a million case. Well, over the course of the next five years, studying the church, its history, obtaining documents from the public library, I traveled to Salt Lake and was able to get access to other documents that weren't readily available, and came to see that this wasn't an isolated instance, but in fact was part of a pattern and practice within the LDS church. Now, when that settled in August, I was disheartened because I really wanted to try the case because what year was this? It was August of 2001.

Gerardo Sumano [00:08:29] Okay.

Tim Kosnoff [00:08:30] And I wanted to, I wanted to put the evidence into the public domain. And the only way we could do that was through a, a public trial. But after five years of treatment by the church's lawyers, Jeremiah had had really been emotionally and psychologically beaten down to the point where he just finally had a breakdown and had to have it over. And the client is the boss, and when he says, that's it, we're done, I want to accept that offer, then he's the decider. And so we did. And I was a little bit discouraged during that period. Just after that, a few more victims of Frank Curtis came forward and hired me. And then the Following February, in 2002, Constance Sweeney, the judge of Sussex County Superior Court in Boston, ordered the release of the Boston Archdiocese priest files and the diocese. The archdiocese had argued that there were just a few rogue priests. But what that revealed and was later documented or portrayed in the movie spotlight was that it was a wide scale problem. And there were, I don't remember, hundreds of priest pedophiles that the Archdiocese of Boston had known about. The Boston Globe put those files up on the Internet and they went worldwide. And we all know sort of what happened after that. Survivors of abuse in the Catholic Church began coming forward in droves after the Jeremiah Scott case. I had created my own little webpage and I held myself out as representing adult survivors of child sexual abuse. And there were no lawyers that did that. There were personal injury lawyers that handled a variety of plaintiffs personal injury cases, but nobody that held themselves out explicitly or exclusively doing this work. Except I did. And so almost overnight, I was inundated with dozens of cases, many more than I could possibly handle. So I associated with some larger law firms that had the ground troops that we needed to be able to go toe to toe with the Archdiocese of Seattle and the Diocese of Spokane and Yakima and on and on. And so that sort of diverted me a little bit from the Mormon Church. And we went on to handle hundreds of cases that eventually found their way in bankruptcy and were resolved in bankruptcy, some of which settled outside. But my practice was devoted primarily to cases in the jurisdiction which I was licensed, which was Washington and Oregon. And we were fortunate because particularly Washington was about the only court or the only state in the country where these cases could be brought, where they wouldn't be barred by the statute of limitations, because a decade before, the legislature had passed what's called a discovery statute that tied the statute of limitations not to a fixed period of time from when the abuse occurred, but rather when tied to when the individual remembered the abuse or learned of the emotional and psychological injuries related to the abuse, which usually requires an expert opinion by a psychologist or psychiatrist. And so I had this niche practice that kept me very, very busy in Seattle. I did bring some cases in Utah which were unsuccessful. We litigated some of those to the Supreme Court, but it was to the

John Dehlin [00:12:51] Utah Supreme Court or the US Supreme Court.

Tim Kosnoff [00:12:53] The Utah Supreme Court. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:12:54] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [00:12:55] And it was, it was clear that this was a very hostile judge jurisdiction and that lawyers like me bringing cases like these against the LDS Church would, would not be embraced by the judiciary. In fact, the first case we filed, we were assigned randomly here in Salt Lake county to a judge, an African American judge who was Buddhist. I thought, wow, what are the chances? But he said at the hearing on the Church's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, he said, Mr. Koznoff, I understand your, your arguments and understand your points and I believe they have merit, but I'm going to rule for the church and dismiss this case. But he said, I'm going to, you know, I pledge you this, you appeal me and you reverse me and you come back to this courtroom and I will give you a fair trial. This was somebody who was telling me that he was not going to risk his position on the court here in Salt Lake county for some out of state lawyer in some case wanting to take on the Mormon Church in their own backyard. So I got the message and we did appeal. And I don't remember the basis for the affirmance of the opinion, but it was affirmed and I concluded that it was, you know, it was worth a try. But I learned that there's a part of the country that if you're going to sue the LDS Church, Mormon power is just too great. And it's really a fool's errand to try. Which is unfortunate for all of the victims and survivors of abuse within the Mormon Church because most of them were abused in the Land of Zion, Utah, Southern Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and so forth. And even if we were to have succeeded and gotten past their motions to dismiss, we would have seated a largely LDS jury. And it's just not that LDS can't be fair minded, but when I think it comes to the church, it's just a bridge too far to ask them to make a finding, a verdict against the church, particularly in a case like this. So that was my experience. And they say that wisdom is the product of experience and negative experience is the greatest teacher. So I've had my negative experiences with the LDS Church Church, and I've learned a lot about the way they operate and think and how challenging it is to successfully litigate against them even under the most ideal of circumstances.

John Dehlin [00:16:05] Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for that intro. And I'll, I just have to say on behalf of, I've told you this before we started, but on behalf of our people, I don't know, you know, really anyone else that's worked so hard to try and solve this problem of abuse than you. And so I would say this at the end, but I'll say at the beginning, I, on behalf of our people, thank you so much for all your efforts. We're honored to have you on the show today.

Tim Kosnoff [00:16:35] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:16:36] Yeah. Okay, so tell me if it's okay if we start this way. I didn't know you were involved so much in the Catholic kind of spotlight era kind of cases. That's fun. That's fun to know. I think I had a sense for that, but I wasn't quite sure. One of the things we wanted to do is kind of today, for this first part, talk about the history of, of the helpline, because that has obviously come up and is a central part of this AP article that came out last week relating to Arizona and it ties into West Virginia where you were involved in the West Virginia was my case. Yeah, that was your case.

The History of the Catholic Helpline

Tim Kosnoff [00:17:17] I eventually associated in consol for Washington, D.C. and we tried the case together. But yeah, they, they reached out to me from West Virginia.

John Dehlin [00:17:26] Yeah. Okay, so tell me if it's okay just really quickly if we start, we start with this, with this, with we start this way. You know, we, we've covered in the past couple episodes that the. The Church established its helpline around what year? Approximately?

The History of the LDS Child Abuse Helpline

Tim Kosnoff [00:17:46] Early 90s.

John Dehlin [00:17:47] Okay, early 90s. So what if we went back since, you know, the history of the church and abuse probably better than anyone in terms of the abuse in the 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s, knowing that we're going to be talking about Boy Scouts next episode. So we don't want to go too heavy into the Boy Scouts, but could we start by painting a picture of how the Church handled abuse, generally speaking, before the helpline was implemented? And then we'll get to the implementation of the helpline and then talk about the evolution of the helpline over time. Can we start there? Just give us a sense for like, sure how the Church had a history of handling abuse.

Tim Kosnoff [00:18:28] Well, the answer is I don't know because I first became involved in the Jeremiah Scott case in 1995, at which point in time the helpline was up and running. So I hadn't handled any cases really of any kind like that before then. And I'm not sure there were very many cases. One of the things I did during the Jeremiah Scott case is I had access to this database on LexisNexis of newspaper articles from publications large and small all over the country dating back 150 years. So I could do Boolean word searches and I could pick up, you know, Mormon LDS abuse and so forth. And I would start flagging these newspaper articles around the country. And that was really how I gained insight into the fact that there have been other lawyers around the country that have handled these cases or have had these cases, or there have been prosecutions. And sometimes from the articles you could, you know, the information wasn't, It wasn't substantial, but you could tell that there was something there in which the LDS Church either knew or should have known and failed to act. There's some sort of indication. So I would flag those. And I had a collection of clippings of a couple of hundred of these cases. So I knew they were out there.

John Dehlin [00:20:09] You knew that there was a decent volume of. There was a decent history of some level of systemic abuse.

Tim Kosnoff [00:20:15] Right.

John Dehlin [00:20:16] In Mormonism.

Tim Kosnoff [00:20:17] But again, it's, you know, there has to be some official thing that has happened, an arrest, an indictment, a civil lawsuit which caused a reporter somewhere to write an article about this, and there's a reference of Mormon and sex abuse and so forth. How many cases never got reported? Most of them probably never got reported. But you know, there was clearly a pattern here. There was clearly a Trend. So I was curious to know what the Church's policy and practice was during this period of time. So until they removed them, it was possible to go into a library here in Salt Lake City and you could get access to the Handbook of Instructions, every one dating back to, you know, for 100 years, and pour through it and see when they first started talking about it, what the Handbook of Instructions, going back at least 50 years, they have a chapter you may know is dedicated to church discipline and it talks about what the bishop is supposed to do and discusses the seriousness of different kinds of offenses. I thought it was interesting that

Gerardo Sumano [00:21:49] the

Tim Kosnoff [00:21:50] most egregious offense was embezzlement of church funds.

John Dehlin [00:21:55] According to the handbook.

Tim Kosnoff [00:21:56] According to the handbook. Murder, apostasy, they were right up there too. And then, you know, other things, including, you know, sexual abuse or abuse.

John Dehlin [00:22:08] And so you're saying rape and incest.

Tim Kosnoff [00:22:10] Rape and incest.

John Dehlin [00:22:11] Less egregious, according to early versions of the handbook, than

Tim Kosnoff [00:22:17] church funds. Which tells you a lot.

John Dehlin [00:22:19] I think Gerardo and I were musing on the fact that for decades the church has had this policy where the financial clerk of a ward, whenever he reviews the tithing, you know, contributed in any given week, that for decades there's always needed to be two people reviewing the, you know, the tithing deposits or the tithing counting the. For any, any given week, tithing, fast offerings and tithing. In other words, they've, they've wanted too deep oversight of the handling of contributions for decades, but they haven't had that same level of concern or vigilance when it, when it came to like one on one interviews with children or even activities with children that would, that, that would be more of a more modern implementation probably based on Sam Young and some of his efforts. But the church's day to day practices of handling money also reflects that same.

Tim Kosnoff [00:23:25] Well, it's set apart. It's a very good point and it's true. And, and as an aside, I also recall in there very strict instructions on, you know, the tithing and fast offerings. The money that comes in on a Sunday that better be on a wire transfer to the Zion bank in Salt Lake City by 9:00 the next morning. Yeah, I mean, it's just crystal clear how it's to be handled. And all those funds come in, they collected on Sunday and they are wired to the church's bank the very next day. So the money is something that has always been watched very closely. But going back to these earlier Handbook of Instructions, you have the framework of the Church disciplinary court system, the stake High Council and then the bishop's court which is for women and non priesthood holders and so forth. But for all priesthood holders, you know, it's discretionary with the bishop or the stake president whether to bring formal discipline or not. It's up to the bishop or the stake president to do informal, which is nobody knows anything and it's all handled in the bishop's office or the stake's president's office. And in my experience in these cases that's where a lot of these sexual abusers were able to just get passed through without any consequences. And if there was a stake High Council, you know, it was likely because this was a repetitive problem and they were looking for a more severe sanction. I did have access in the Scott case to approximately 70 documents which are called reports of church court action involving child sexual abuse. And this was just during a 20 year slice which was between 1975 and 1995 in the Portland and East Portland stake. And I don't know if you've ever seen one of these. They were, they were produced under seal and I was required to return them at the conclusion of the case. They're kept, I'm told, in a, in a vault in a mountain somewhere out here in Utah, super secret reports of church court action and other sort of highly sensitive disciplinary matters. And these documents all involved the sexual abuse of children. And this is just in two stakes over a 20 year period of time. That was another suggestion that this problem was much more serious. I mean we had requested reports of church card action for every ward in the United States but the judge wouldn't go that far. So we got them just for the Portland and East Portland stake. Anyways, back to the handbook of instructions. There's no mention in there of a helpline or anything of that sort. Back in the 80s, 70s and 60s, just internal church court discipline. Now there is, there are paragraphs in there that basically say, you know, we obey the secular laws and we encourage our members to follow the law and, and so on and so forth. That's what they say. And you know, for the most part the church, you know, wants it that way. They want their members to be law abiding citizens. And for the most part these laws, all the laws produce very little friction for the church. They're tax exempt, so they're not dealing with the federal or state or local taxing authorities. About the only time you get any friction between the secular legal system and, and the Mormon Church is number one land use where they've been involved in litigation where they want to build a temple in an area where that type of structure is deemed not appropriate by the residents in that neighborhood. And there'll be resistance by cities and counties. And the church will mount a very aggressive legal campaign. And they have the resources to do it. I mean, they have the resources to defeat just about anybody. Now, imagine you're an administrator or a mayor of a town of 25,000. You don't have a line item in your budget for $15 million to litigate a land use issue with the Mormon Church. So you tend to cave. So the church generally gets its way on those things just because of how powerful it is. And then the second one, and maybe the only one, is child sexual abuse and mandatory reporting laws. And that's the friction we're talking about here today. Other than that the church is just fine with having its members follow the law, except when it comes to child sexual abuse reporting. Then it's, it's a, it's a different story. So in the early 90s, and I think I sent you a document called Helps for Ecclesiastical Leaders. And this was a document, I think the first one was produced around 1989 or maybe 1993, I think I saw.

Mormon Church court action involving child sexual abuse

Gerardo Sumano [00:29:12] 99. 89.

Tim Kosnoff [00:29:13] 89 was the first one, and that is the first one. And we got this in discovery in the Scott case, as I recall. And we received some other documents regarding the, the Church's policy and practice regarding sexual abuse. And as that document, you know, makes clear, the Church understood completely how, how damaging sexual abuse is to children. It obviously had received expert advice. It talked about the telltale signs of childhood sexual abuse and, you know, all the appropriate ways to respond to, to a victim. And this was, you know, this was, this was their, this was what, this was their paper. This is what they were supposed to do. But along around this time, they began to change. And I believe in the next edition of the Handbook of Instructions, which I also sent, I believe it was 96, I can't recall. There's still the same chapter on church discipline and the need to deal with abusers and so forth. But then there's a new section at the back which is referenced in the disciplinary section. Go to page 173 or whatever it is, and you go to 173, and it says, we've instituted a helpline for, for victims. And if you become aware of an abuse situation, do not contact the police. Call this helpline. Now, that was different. That was a huge change.

John Dehlin [00:31:13] And if I may really quickly, so this is great because we're setting up the discussion of the helpline in the introduction. There's one, there's one clarification or explanation I'd love to try and tease out if we can. I can give my sense if you don't have a sense. But like if I were to ask you, let's just say it's the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s or 80s. Right. If we were to try and characterize the average experience, the average abuse experience in the Mormon Church for a victim, let's just say, you know, the average bishop finds out somehow that a child in the ward, in a ward is being abused by their dad or by the elders quorum president or someone in the ward. Is there a way for you to characterize kind of what the average experience would be and how the average ward or stake might handle that on a local level prior to the helpline? I know that's a hard thing to do, but do you have a sense for that?

The Average Abuse Experience in the Mormon Church

Tim Kosnoff [00:32:17] Well, I do and I don't think it's really changed from before the helpline or after the helpline.

John Dehlin [00:32:24] But just walk us through in a couple minutes what that experience is.

Tim Kosnoff [00:32:27] Sure. These are the, I would say the four or five categories scenarios, abuse scenarios in the Mormon Church and I'll rank them based upon my experience talking to survivors of abuse in the church. Number one in terms of volume, intra familial incest, sibling, parent, child, a lot of that. Number two, Boy Scouts. Number three, member of ward on child, most often through the scouting program, but sometimes through other church sponsored activity not related to scouting. And then a subset of that is where it's member on child and it's not related to church activity. It may be happening in the abuser's home, maybe he's a neighbor, but he's also a member of the ward. And the child discloses to mother, mother goes to bishop, bishop doesn't report. Now I've handled cases where that was my theory, which is it may not have happened at the church or during church sponsored activities, but you were on notice and you were a mandated reporter in and you didn't do anything. You had a duty to warn or protect because of your special relationship with this person who was a child in your ward. And there could also be a special relationship establishing liability because the abuser was in your ward and, and you had some degree of power to control that person's behavior. Or alternatively you could disclose to the police, you could warn the parent that something is going on and to keep the child away from this man, you could warn other members of the ward that this individual posed a threat to children in the ward. So those are four scenarios. In the fifth scenario is missionary. Missionary is out on a mission and abuses a child in the context of his missionary activity. Missionaries, as you know, go into people's homes. They have access to children and access to people who have no reason to be concerned or suspect that these clean, fresh young men would pose a threat to their child. And so we see cases like that.

John Dehlin [00:35:33] I know that on my mission in Guatemala there was an elder sent home for molesting a kid while he was either interviewing them for their baptism or like getting them dressed for their baptism. And that's just one that, so that's just my mission. What I knew about that happened in my mission. So I mean if that's, that's anecdotal, but if it's at all representative, you know, that definitely happened.

Tim Kosnoff [00:35:58] Well, and I, and I have, you know, we have received cases like that. The, my understanding is that the missionary system is almost a sort of parallel system within the church. It has a leadership that's responsible for handling these kinds of matters that happen within the mission. And so I can't say to what degree it's a problem, but I know it exists. And even that one anecdote tells you that, well, just obviously, I mean, people who work with sex offenders will tell you that a sex offender can molest a child in under a minute if they have access to a child alone. They can abuse that child in the blink of an eye. So missionary has to use the bathroom. There's a four year old, pulls the four year old into the bathroom, can molest that child, open the door and be back into the meeting in five minutes and nobody will know. So there's opportunity and access. And so those are the five categories and those persist today. And while I don't want to get into the weeds on it and you. I'm not Mormon. I've studied a lot. I feel like I know more about Mormonism and Mormon history than most Mormons. And it's, and frankly I, you know, I've, I didn't have people that I could even talk to about this. They thought I was just sort of gone off, you know, and because all I could do was ever talk about the Mormon Church and you know, it's just absolutely fascinating. I read all the books, the histories, and I said this is the greatest, least understood chapter in American history is, is the story of the Mormons, the Mormon Church and so forth. Because Other than in the Rocky Mountain west and the west people on the east coast, they have absolutely no idea about Mormonism. And so when I start telling them about the church and its size and its influence and power and so forth, and this is true of journalists or reporters from the east coast who have contacted me, and I said, you know, read this, read that, study up, and then call me back and I'll talk to you, because I'm not going to start at kindergarten level with you. You need to get, you know, you need to understand this institution at some rudimentary level before we have a conversation.

John Dehlin [00:38:35] So

Tim Kosnoff [00:38:38] the, the problem that I have, and it comes from really just relying on what experts have testified in my cases and what I've read from sociologists like Martha Beck. I sent you a report. She served as an expert in one of our cases against the Church that was in New Jersey. And very, very sophisticated analysis. But she said it's a complex dynamic and it also includes the cultural and sociological history of the Mormon Church, which is different, and that she maintains that the high percentage of intra familial sexual abuse in the church is a legacy of polygamy. And I can see that on one level, it kind of makes sense since you have a culture of people that have a long history of keeping and maintaining sexual secrets. And so if you're keeping a secret about the fact that you're living in a polygamous household or your neighbors are living in a polygamous household, and you just don't talk about that. And everybody knows it, but it's one of those unspoken things of within the church. I mean, everybody knows on a block in Salt Lake whether, you know, that house on the second on the left has multiple mommies. So it's, it's just been one of these, you know, acknowledged secrets that the church just doesn't want to talk about.

John Dehlin [00:40:29] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [00:40:30] Because if it talks about it, it might have to take action, and it doesn't really want to take action. And I think fundamentally, because many of the leaders are direct descendants of polygamy, they, they view it as relatively harmless, bad for public relations, but probably a

John Dehlin [00:40:49] virtue, maybe a virtue, a shining thing to be proud of in our history.

Tim Kosnoff [00:40:53] Not well and understanding too, that they haven't renounced polygamy. They just say that it cannot be practiced in the temporal plane, but only in the celestial kingdom. All right, so you say you've stopped practicing it, but you still believe in plural marriage in the hereafter. Well, it's still part of your belief system. So we'll just set that aside. But it's a dynamic that I think has to be acknowledged to understand the Church's policy and practice. And again, this is a person from the outside looking in who's had a lot of direct experience. And while my remarks have been harsh and have presented the problem as a problem, that's coming from these evil men at the top of the pyramid in the church that, you know, like child sexual abuse. And I don't believe they do. I think they're probably horrified by it, but at the same time they are conflicted because this church is about saving souls and that's its primary purpose. And it has taken the Christian doctrine of repentance, of sin and forgiveness and mutated it to the point where

John Dehlin [00:42:32] their

Tim Kosnoff [00:42:32] lawyers will stand up in court and say that the Church has a belief. They call it the clean slate doctrine. I heard this for the first time from the Church's lawyer in the Scott case. And I. Well, I mean, I've read everything I can about. I've never read about the clean slate doctrine. But he goes on to say that they believe that a man who has sinned and repented, no matter how horrible the sin, and if the bishop, through his powers of discernment, believes that this person has truly repented, then the sinner must be forgiven and cleansed of his sin. And that means that he must be restored to the position he was in before he sinned and repented and was forgiven. And within the thinking, I think, of many, many LDS bishops, at least of a prior generation, I don't know how true this is of modern day younger bishops, that they have to respect the fact that, yeah, he's a serial child molester. We've known that. But he's gone through the repentance process and he wants to go back into boy scouting. We have to let him do that. We have to restore him to his prior positions. He wants to work in primary fine, because he's been cleansed. Because when he said, I repent of my sin, those were God's words speaking through his mouth. And God wouldn't have used those words. So we have to believe in his words because those are the words of God. I mean, that is sort of what they're saying here. And so that becomes the religious rationale for, you know, what I call recycling child molesters. And this is an important distinction between this and every other religion that has problems with child molesters is they don't try and justify it through their theology. No, it's abhorrent. It's wrong, it's sinful, it's criminal. Child sexual abuse has been a crime under church law for millennia. And before that, you know, it was treated as a felony in the Middle Ages. So humankind has understood the horrible damage and not just sinfulness, but has recognized how ruinous this is to a community when you have children who are being devoured in this way by these, by these monsters, by these beasts. Christ even spoke to it when he talked about hang a millstone across their neck. So this is something that has been in Christian theology since and before. Since before. So, so that feeds into this.

Mormon sex abuse: The Atonement

John Dehlin [00:45:30] And if I can just jump in, like, sure. I'm thinking about the seminary mastery scripture that I memorized as a high schooler, which was in the Old Testament. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. It's this idea that Jesus suffered for our sins, bled from every pore. That was the atonement. This is just for our non Mormon listeners that because Jesus suffered for all our sins and completed what is called the atonement, then if a Mormon confesses his sins, his or her sins to the bishop and goes through the repentance process, at the completion of that, it's as if the sins never happened and that the person is now healed from whatever transgressions or proclivities or tendencies that they engaged in before the sin. And that's just giving. Well, that.

Tim Kosnoff [00:46:23] And that, that sounds, I didn't know that. That's, that sounds like the origins of the clean slate doctrine.

John Dehlin [00:46:28] Yeah, I think so. Those are the scriptural origins for.

Tim Kosnoff [00:46:31] Yeah, the, the, the, the more modern version of it is in Spencer Kimball's the miracle of forgiveness, which, you know, is, is not part of the scripture of the Mormon Church. I'm not sure what it is, but it's almost been elevated to that level. And you know, it goes beyond that in talking about how abuse victims have a duty to forgive their abuser. And then this gets amplified by bishops who say, you have to do it now, not when you're ready. You know, we command you to forgive him. You know, we can't re. Baptize him back into the church he wants back in, but you need to forgive him first. And then, you know, re victimize victims by pressuring them into forgiving the man who raped them when they were six years old.

John Dehlin [00:47:28] Who's still in their ward.

Tim Kosnoff [00:47:30] Who's still in their ward.

John Dehlin [00:47:31] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [00:47:32] So when you, when you, when you put all these things together, I mean, it's, it's, it's horrific. And you know, it's random. And if you are raised in this church, you are indoctrinated at an early age to some facts that you are expected to believe. One is, is that the bishop has supernatural powers, the power of discernment. He can see and hear and sense things that by virtue of the fact that he's been ordained bishop or stake president, that you don't. And so what the bishop says goes, that's one. And number two is, it's almost like

John Dehlin [00:48:26] what the bishop says is what God and Jesus themselves want and that he can sense evil. So a bishop, if a bishop gives a call to a boy scout leader or a primary teacher or a youth leader, God, God literally told the bishop to put those people in those positions. That's the expectation we have as members. So that of course, of course we can trust that leader, that person put in that calling because God told the bishop to put them there. And so the, if, or if the bishop sits in a one on one interview and you know, does a worthiness interview, if he doesn't detect with the supernatural powers that the person has sins, then the person's trustworthy. And so the members give other members of the ward who are in callings give them a lot more trust than maybe they otherwise would because they were called by a bishop who's been called by God and who has the gift of discernment. And it creates a level of trust in a congregation of parents trusting their kids to other adults that maybe other religious traditions would never offer.

Tim Kosnoff [00:49:36] I think that's absolutely correct. Makes them so vulnerable because of the power of this belief system and the trust that they are expected to, to place in the bishop. And it's more than just trust. It. It's central to the entire religious belief system. You can't be Mormon if you don't accept that. And so it's powerful. And as you say, it extends out to other members of the ward who've been called to positions because. That person has the imprimatur of the legitimacy and authority and the discernment that comes down from God through the bishop. I mean that's, that's pretty powerful. I mean it doesn't get more powerful than that. And, and so it, the, the system creates this, this, this vulnerability. And

The Bishop's Discernment Defense in the West Virginia Abuse Case

Gerardo Sumano [00:50:48] I have a question for you, Tim. So someone in the comments, just our friend Colby Reddish, he's asking if you could talk about, if you know about the bishop's discernment's defense to not reporting in the West Virginia abuse case.

John Dehlin [00:51:06] I mean, let's Jump into the specifics while we're. We're kind of trying.

Gerardo Sumano [00:51:09] I don't know if you know.

Tim Kosnoff [00:51:11] Yeah, I'm gonna need to dig down on that question because I'm not quite sure I'm understanding what he's asking or.

Gerardo Sumano [00:51:18] So basically that the bishop has a supernatural power to know that he's not supposed to report. And, you know, religious freedom allows him to believe that, and therefore he should be exempted from reporting.

Tim Kosnoff [00:51:31] Well, it's true that we heard that testimony from bishops and other ecclesiastical leaders in the. In the West Virginia case, that they had interviewed Michael Jensen and asked him whether he had been abusing these kids. And he said no. And we believed him through our powers of discernment. So that's not unusual. That did happen there. But it's not a legal defense because. And this brings us back to the First Amendment and the First Amendment, people know about free speech, but the other part of it is freedom of religion. And it has two parts, the establishment clause, which says that government cannot establish an official religion like they have in England, the Anglican Church, nor can it prevent the free exercise of one's religious beliefs. But that means that you can believe whatever you want. You can believe in Aztec human sacrifice, but if you practice it, the government can prosecute you for murder, because that's a violation of the secular laws. And that's been repeated in many Supreme Court decisions, most famously with respect to the Mormon Church in the Reynolds decision, polygamy, United States versus Reynolds, which is back in the 1870s, 1880s, on polygamy. And these were individuals who'd been prosecuted by the federal government for the federal. For the crime of polygamy. There were federal anti polygamy laws. And they made that argument to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said, you're fine to believe in polygamy, but if you practice it, it's illegal and you can be prosecuted. And they affirm their convictions. I don't know that the church ever really accepted that it is the law, but I'm starting to wander a little bit here, but we'll come back to whether the leaders of the Mormon Church actually believe and ascribe to the rule of law, which is nobody's above the law, and the laws apply equally and fairly to everyone, including church leaders, members of the church, and so forth. But back to the components of the. Of the issue. We've talked about cultural issues, we've talked about secrecy, discernment, secrecy, discernment, and so forth.

Privileged vs. Confidential in the Mormon Church

John Dehlin [00:54:15] Repentance, atonement, forgiveness, repentance, Atonement.

Tim Kosnoff [00:54:18] And there was a movie a few years ago with Steve Martin. It was a comedy. I barely remember it. The man with Two Brains. The church is a little bit like the man with Seven Brains. While they say that they operate at the highest levels by consensus, that can't be true. Because what comes out of this consensus are policies which are so contradictory and confusing that it's hard to know what the policy of the church is. Maybe it's deliberate, maybe it's just incompetence or maybe it's just they can't resolve conflicts at the highest level. I'd like to think that we all know that the church operates at a glacial pace, maybe a little bit faster than the Roman Catholic Church, but not much faster. But it has changed and evolved over time. But they can't ignore the fact that when cases that I've brought and other cases and like this article that appeared, which isn't really news except it's now, people are interested in reading about it, but it's really old news. What happened in Arizona in the AP article, it causes terrible reputational damage to the church. And the church has been trying for a long time to recast itself as a mainstream church, a mainstream religion. They've been labeled a cult and you know, they resist that label. I mean in my. I was driving in Seattle as a few years ago and there's this big billboard on this street that I would travel on to go play tennis and it was a picture of a handsome fireman, a beautiful blonde wife and this blonde child, blue eyed. And. And the caption was I'm a fireman and I'm a Mormon. And I had to pull over because I didn't quite understand what they were saying there, why they were saying this. But it was obviously an effort to try and portray them as just like everybody else. And they are for the most part. I raised my family in a neighborhood, we had Mormon neighbors and my kid played with Mormon kids and so forth and good neighbors and so forth.

Gerardo Sumano [00:56:50] But

Tim Kosnoff [00:56:54] they've got this problem and it's

Gerardo Sumano [00:56:59] that

Tim Kosnoff [00:57:04] they allow things to happen within their church that they are unwilling or unable to remedy. And I think there are people probably in the hierarchy that are vocal that this is a major problem, that the church has to evolve, it has to modernize. And there are others who are resistant and saying no. This is our core belief system. We're not going to change. We believe in the importance of confession of sin. And if people believe that they can be reported to the authorities for what they disclose, then you know, it will cut out a central tenet of our belief system. And that's, I think, an overstatement. I think that's an exaggeration. We're not talking about your entire belief system. And I think it's important to note that the case in Arizona where the perpetrator confessed to the bishop, that is fairly unusual. Most of the time, the bishop becomes aware of the abuse situation not in the confessional context, but through a report from a parent or maybe during a worthiness interview with a child, or it comes out, you know, some other way. So it can't be maintained by the Church, at least with a straight face, that this took place in a priest penitent context. Yet the Church will argue that every communication, no matter how innocuous, between a member and a bishop, is confidential. But the way the Church uses confidential is they equate it with privileged, and there's a difference. I may say something to you, John. Please keep this confidential. But hey, if you get called before a grand jury, and what did Tim tell you, absent some privilege, you've got to testify, you've got to say what happened. But I mean, I had a bishop in a deposition and it just got so absurd. So, Bishop, so what you're saying is, if I'm a member and I see you in the parking lot and I say, hey, Bishop, that's a beautiful new car you've got, you regard that as privileged and you couldn't be called to testify about what I said, you know, to you? And he said, that's right. So anything a member says, no matter how innocuous, is confidential and therefore privileged under the doctrine of the Church. And that's basically what the Church says. Now, coming back to the. The helpline.

The Mormon Church's Handling of Child Abuse

John Dehlin [00:59:58] Oh, oh, really quickly, one. One thing I'd like to do just to kind of summarize before we get to the helpline, talking about. And this is going to kind of attempt to bring everything you just shared, which was brilliant, together. Let me. Let me characterize to you how I understand how the Church has kind of handled abuse with victims on average, maybe over the entire history, but definitely prior to the helpline. Is that okay? And then you can tell me, you can fill in the holes or correct me.

Gerardo Sumano [01:00:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:26] So it's kind of like somehow a bishop finds out there's abuse. Maybe it's a child, maybe it's a teenager, maybe it's an adult. Maybe the Bishop would tend to not believe. He would just tend to say, yeah, that didn't happen. That might be the first line of defense is just non belief. And so a lot of potential cases or resolutions would be filtered out just by non belief or dismissal or downplay. Brother Jones wouldn't do that. Sister Jones. Sister Jones wouldn't do that. Non belief. If it, and this is kind of like a funnel if it, if it happens to make it through just the basic belief filter, then the bishop would say, okay, let me look into the abuse and see if it happened. But at that point there would be a, there would be sort of a default disposition or a perspective by the bishop that this needs to be handled internally. So don't tell anyone that this abuse has happened. Let me look into it, but keep it quiet, keep it secret. And this is following the secrecy kind of disposition that is a legacy from polygamy. So the bishop might talk to the parents, might talk to the accused perpetrator, but would try and handle it all internally. Probably prefer not to have a disciplinary council than have one. And if the bishop determines that there is abuse, because then that spills over into the broader ward and people start asking questions, well, why was this person ever called if they're an abuser? And so again, this disposition of handling it internally and telling everyone to keep it secret, and so not a disciplinary council, and definitely let's not involve social workers or police officers because involving the law makes it spill over into something that could potentially embarrass the church or even open the church up to litigation. And so a tendency, again, probably a legacy from the, from the polygamy times. Let's not involve federal officials, let's not. Not involve local law officials. Let's just handle it as a ward family. And, and probably no church discipline, but maybe church discipline, but certainly not mandatory church discipline. And then let's just pressure the victim to forgive the abuser as, as fast as possible. And let's, let's handle it with the, with the perpetrator, such that within a very short amount of time, they get forgiven, they feel forgiven, and they can be reinstated as a regular ward member with callings. And if it happens to be really egregious and, and the abuser ends up going to different wards or traveling to another state. In theory, the church is supposed to annotate their records and this history of abuse follows them. But in reality, there may have not even been a disciplinary council, let alone an annotation. And so like with the repetitive Catholic priest pedophilia kind of scandals, oftentimes these perpetrators got forgiven quickly or, or moved on to other areas without a disciplinary Council or without annotation. And so then they're allowed to repeat their offenses. And in all of this time, local, you know, law enforcement officials or social workers kind of never got involved. And so if we think about this funnel, the vast, My, my instinct, my sense is the vast majority of abuse cases that have handled within the Mormon Church have never seen any involvement with law enforcement or with the legal process. They got filtered out way before that or handled internally in a way that it would have never spilled over and potentially hurt the reputation of the local or national church or ever had, ever, ever risked litigation because it was filtered out long before that. Now tell me if that's an unfair character.

Tim Kosnoff [01:04:31] No, I think, I think it is. And I want to make a couple of comments on it, but I think it's a very good synopsis. But I would suggest to you that it's a pre helpline scenario and I'll explain why what you just described was problematic for the Church. But I agree that by and large what you've described is how it happens and how it's mishandled. Number one, it points up the, the essential aspect of the mandatory reporting law, which in almost all states applies to clergy. He shouldn't be investigating, he shouldn't be doing anything except calling 911. He doesn't have the experience. The bishop.

John Dehlin [01:05:23] You're saying the bishop or stake president.

Tim Kosnoff [01:05:25] The bishop or stake president. He doesn't have the authority. He, he doesn't have the experience, the judgment, the sensitivity to deal with a very serious felony, the sexual abuse of a child. And yet I guess you would call the power of discernment. And if you get to be a bishop, you know, maybe you're so conceited that you actually believe that you have this power of discernment and that you know better than the civil authorities about how to deal with an incest situation or a sexual abuse investigation, which you don't. Yeah, because you, but the Church has reinforced that you do. You're endowed with these supernatural powers. And I don't know about modern day bishops, but my experience has been they're probably still out there who still believe it. And it's an enormous amount of power that these ecclesiastical leaders have. So the first fail safe is the mandatory report. You don't have to think, you don't have to judge, you don't have to evaluate. All you have to do is call 911. How hard is that? They come in and they take over. No, not so fast. Why not so fast? What is the number one reason to Exercise church discipline. There's three reasons. You know what the number one reason is?

John Dehlin [01:06:50] Tell us.

Tim Kosnoff [01:06:51] Protection of the good name of the Church is the first and foremost important thing. So it's part of the handbook of instructions. If you haven't read it, you just know it intuitively. You don't say or do anything that could bring embarrassment or scandal to the Church. Now this kind of reaction is not unique to the Mormon Church. It's the same kind of reaction I see in the Catholic Church, the Jehovah's Witnesses, Salvation army, you know, school districts,

John Dehlin [01:07:23] yada, yada, yada, the business world and you know, just any, any organization wants to protect its reputation. Cover up. Yeah, cover up.

Tim Kosnoff [01:07:30] Yeah, you know, not appreciating until it's too late that it's, it's not the failure, it's the COVID up that gets you in the end.

John Dehlin [01:07:41] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [01:07:41] And that seems to be, that seems to be a lesson that nobody seems to understand. You know, come in, this happened, we feel terrible about it. You know, we're supporting the family, the child, you know, it's been turned over to the authorities. Nobody's going to fault the Church for that. That's the way you're supposed to do it. This happens. We know it happens, but we're going to handle it internally and we're going to pray with the abuser and the abuser is going to continue to live in the home with the child or, or whatever. You know, this is, you know, bishops come from all walks of life and you don't have to have had a college degree or training in any of the, the sciences related to, to abuse or pedophilia. But this is a complex, sophisticated area that nobody in the Church is qualified to deal with. And that is the reason that's the genesis of mandatory reporting. But the Church resists it. And they will argue that when they can, that even though they learned about it not through the confession of the abuser but through some other authority, that it was still a confidential communication and therefore they didn't have to report it or they'll come up with any number of reasons why they shouldn't report instead of. So their default is don't report. But the scenario that you described was problematic for the Church in some important ways. And I'm going to try and lay this out for your listeners, most of whom are probably not attorneys. So in that scenario where the bishop takes it upon himself, investigates, talks to people, doesn't talk to people, and then somebody goes to the cops, now the police are involved, the Bishop is called in for questioning. He gives a statement to the police. The church lawyers have now lost complete control over this case. They failed to control information. So the helpline and that document pretends. And in the beginning it did go through a social worker at LDS Social Services, now known as LDS Family Services.

Mandatory reporting in the LDS Church

John Dehlin [01:10:19] And, and sorry just to jump in, prior to the implementation of the hotline, even though most cases never reached civil authorities or law enforcement, because again, the bishop handled it, kept it secret. What I understand from your conversation with Gina is that at some point in the early, what, 90s, the church realized, oh my gosh, even though we've been successful at, at making most of these cases disappear, there are still enough getting through to law enforcement where a random bishop or a random ward member will report that. And by the way, before, this is a really important point I want to ask you about before the helpline was implemented is I think I heard you say the church did default to mandatory reporting. The law. Right.

Mormon Church's Sexual Abuse Lawsuit

Tim Kosnoff [01:11:10] Follow the law in your jurisdiction.

John Dehlin [01:11:12] And that's something that we talked about yesterday that's kind of mind boggling is it's almost an instance where the church, even though it was hiding and covering up a lot, it had some sort of a default policy to, to, to follow the mandatory reporting laws by default before the helpline. Can you tell us about that?

Tim Kosnoff [01:11:30] Sure. So that's Right. So that was the policy. So if.

John Dehlin [01:11:33] What was the policy?

Tim Kosnoff [01:11:34] So if to report, you know, it just says there, you know, follow the law. But so some bishop tries to deal with it internally because he thinks based upon his training and other parts of the Handbook of Instructions, that that's what he's supposed to do, is to protect the good name of the Church. So when it blows up, they point the finger at the stupid bishop. Right. Who mishandled this and then they come in and deal with it the best they can. But, but these get expensive, these lawsuits. These are catastrophic injury cases, multimillion dollar cases. And if they get tagged in a jurisdiction with punitive damages, the sky's the limit. I mean, so a few states like California, they don't have a cap on punitive damages. And one of the factors that a jury can consider is the net worth of the defendant.

Gerardo Sumano [01:12:26] Well,

Tim Kosnoff [01:12:28] the president of the Church doesn't even know how rich the church is. It's so massive, we're talking probably a

John Dehlin [01:12:35] trillion dollars at this point.

Tim Kosnoff [01:12:36] At least.

John Dehlin [01:12:37] At least you would say that the current worth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is at least a trillion dollars.

Tim Kosnoff [01:12:43] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:12:43] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [01:12:45] Conservatively and we can talk about that later. But in any event, so they have tremendous exposure, unlike in the Catholic Church, which in this country is 202 separate diocesan corporations. So the Catholic Church in Rome is not liable for abuse. That happens in Wichita, Kansas. That's the Diocese of Wichita, Kansas. So you sue that diocese and maybe they have insurance and maybe they have assets or maybe they don't, but you don't get to take down the whole structure. But the Mormon Church is a single unified corporate entity called a corporate soul, headquartered in Salt Lake City. And it, together with the presiding bishop, own title to all of the assets of the LDS Church, which is vast.

John Dehlin [01:13:35] But anyway, it's historically been called the corporation of the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And it may be one of the top five, if not the wealthiest church single churches in the United States. Is that, well, oh, by far, yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [01:13:48] And, and certainly on a per capita basis.

John Dehlin [01:13:50] Right. So the biggest fish in the U.S. yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [01:13:54] I mean, tip your hat to the Mormon Church. They are excellent bean counters. And, you know, they have taken corporate religion and, you know, perfected it. Perfected it, yeah. But anyways, getting back to this scenario, so in that situation, it was problematic. They still had, you know, a bishop who screwed up, didn't, you know, report. You know, there's this fiasco. The church has to come in and clean up, very expensive. So along comes this helpline. Now, why do they change? Why do they need helpline?

John Dehlin [01:14:30] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [01:14:30] And here's the kicker, okay? In that prior scenario with that bishop, I get ahold of that case. The, the first person I'm going to note for deposition is that bishop. Now, they may come in and they may object and say, you know, he doesn't have to answer that question because he learned about this information in a confidential context. I said what? The mother came to him and said, you know, my daughter told me she's been abused. That's, you know, she came to you for help as she's been trained to do. That's not confidential. That's not. Well, it may be confidential amongst you, but it's not legally privileged, so you got to give it up. No, I won't. Well, we go to court, get a motion to compel, he's got to give it up and tell. And then we get the whole story. Better yet, he's already given this story to the police, and we've got his statement in the police reports, and we've got those. So we pretty much know what he knows. He's number One on our witness list. That case, you know, absent other defenses like statute of limitations or, you know, other things, that's a. That's a very good case. Prior notice, negligence, probably recklessness. If he was conferring with the stake president and others to keep this suppressed, now it's conspiracy. You know, some pretty ugly legal theories coming at the church. They don't like that. So instead, you set up this helpline, and the instruction is, you call here. And remember, this is not for members. It's not meant to help members who need help because their children have been sexually abused. It's for the lawyers at Curtin McConkey to have an early warning system, incoming ICBMs, so that they can get on top of it early. What's more is it comes in. It used to come through Family Services, but that doesn't even happen anymore. The phone rings directly into the offices of Curtin McConkey. So they don't even make the pretense of, oh, call in. And you're going to get advice from social workers. You're going to get hooked up with somebody who's on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week at Curtin McConkie. So let's say a call does go through Family Services. They're instructed. This comes from deposition testimony. They're instructed not to ask a single question, not to take any information, don't ask the person for their name. Immediately transfer the call to Curtin McConkey. And then you get off the phone. That's if it ever initially went through Family Services. But most of the time it goes directly to Curtin McConkie. We know this from the deposition of one of their attorneys in the West Virginia case. And we asked him about this. He says, I didn't know they were sent to the Family Services. That's the first I've heard of that. Here's a lawyer who didn't even know that the program was supposed to at least go through, but they didn't even want that. Okay, now, so you've got the bishop who's now speaking directly to a lawyer for the Church. Why is that important? A more powerful privilege, the attorney client privilege. Now, whatever that bishop has to say to that lawyer, Curt McConkey is absolutely privileged. He's an agent of the Church. The church lawyers represent him. And they get the story. If it's DEFCON 1. They got on an airplane the next day and they fly out to West Virginia, Boston, wherever they need to go. And they start talking to bishops and people, you know, and you get a version of what happened. And it's not the version that you hear from your client and your client's family. It's a different version.

Kurt McConkey on the Sexual Abuse Scandal

John Dehlin [01:18:29] What is the version?

Tim Kosnoff [01:18:31] It's a version that's much more favorable to the church.

John Dehlin [01:18:33] It's been curated. It's kind of been carefully curated by pre conversations between the church attorneys and the potential witnesses.

Tim Kosnoff [01:18:41] That's a nice word. You know, there's, there's, there's, there's.

John Dehlin [01:18:45] You mentioned another word.

Tim Kosnoff [01:18:46] Yeah, I'm not going to use that word. Okay. Because that's potentially scandalous or libelous. But I could tell you, based on experience, why is it necessary for a lawyer from Kurt McConkey to get on the next airplane out to Hawaii, Boston, Orlando, Florida, wherever to deal with a situation? And so the game that I've been playing with the Church for the last 25 years is, damn, Kostov got there first. You know, it's like, oh, now we're screwed. You know, so the first thing I do is I get on that airplane and I get out there. And so we've got some friendly, we've got some, you know, a member of the Stake High Council who knows about the past history, and he doesn't know enough to say, I'm not talking to you. And oh, by the way, is it okay if I record our conversation, which I always do, because they forget or the, or that, or their testimony changes later on when you get in deposition. So it's loads of fun when they get in there and they frankly purged themselves 175 times. And then the questioner, me or My co counsel, Mr. Jones, do you remember speaking with Mr. Koznoff at your dining room table there in, you know, Everyville, USA, back on April 17, 2014? Yeah. And you remember, you know, he, he asked you some questions. Yeah. And you wanted to be honest with him, didn't you? Oh, yeah. And you were honest with him, weren't you? Oh, absolutely. And remember he asked you if it was okay to record your conversation? Yeah, I believe so. I didn't have a problem with it. And then you can start going through. And now you've got the transcript of that interview at his kitchen table where

John Dehlin [01:20:51] he would have said that.

Tim Kosnoff [01:20:52] And it's called impeachment in the law, where you confront somebody with a prior inconsistent statement. And it just, it just looks terrible. He looks like he's lying for the church, which of course he is. So that's, that's, that's, you know, this is how, this is how nasty it is. And, you know, so what I'm, what

John Dehlin [01:21:13] I'm hearing you say is that when, when a abuse scandal is made aware of in a local ward or stake, that prior to the helpline, if it didn't get silenced and made disappear by the local bishop, by the, by the local bishop or stake president, and if it did get out to law enforcement and the curtain, McConkey lawyers weren't able to get involved, then they would do something horrible. And I'm being a little bit sarcastic, would just tell the truth to the investigators, and then there'd be evidence that then could be used in a court of law that maybe wouldn't be favorable into the church. And so what instead happened is Curtin McConkey in the church put together this helpline so that as soon as possible the church attorneys could be made aware that a potential embarrassment was about to break out. They could send the lawyers to the local wards or stakes prior to you being made aware of it. They could maybe instruct everybody. Don't talk to the police. Don't even report this to the police. Certainly don't speak with Tim Koff. And then by having an agreement of silence or an agreement of what the story is going to be, if there is any involvement with Tim Kosnoff or the law enforcement, we'll all be on the same page. The minimum amount will ever be said so that there's no evidence that then can be used in a court of law. Is that the game?

Tim Kosnoff [01:22:38] Well, that's, well, that, that's, that's, that's, that's it. I mean, consider in any case, you know, who is the horse's mouth? Who is the person in the central position to know what happened? The abuser. But he's in custody and his lawyer is saying, take the Fifth. So you're not going to get anything out of him except 200. You know, I refuse to answer on the grounds that I may incriminate myself under the Fifth Amendment. So you don't get the story from him.

The Church's Sexual Abuse Helpline

John Dehlin [01:23:11] What about his wife or his kids? If he abused his kids, let's just

Tim Kosnoff [01:23:14] say, well, that's slightly different. But the wife has a, you know, he can assert the spousal privilege. So.

John Dehlin [01:23:21] And also, the wife doesn't want, she may love the guy, so she doesn't want to see him. And she probably depends on his income.

Tim Kosnoff [01:23:27] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:23:28] So she doesn't want to see the family embarrassed, the family blown up, their income taken away.

Tim Kosnoff [01:23:31] Which brings us back to the reason for the mandated reporting and the reason why this encouraged somebody else to report is so disingenuous and absurd.

John Dehlin [01:23:42] We'll talk about that.

Tim Kosnoff [01:23:43] Yeah, we can talk about that later. But that's the same idea, is that you've got people who are compromised because they have relationship with the abuser, that you can't rely on them to protect their child and do the right thing because they could end up bankrupt, homeless, out on the street without the breadwinner. Because he's in prison, because you helped the investigation put him in prison. And that's the problem. With the spouse oftentimes. And a lot of times they're complicit. They know what's going on, but they're either afraid to, or they have somehow normalized in their brain that what's happening to their child by their husband or their. By her husband or by the child's stepfather is, Is not so bad. Again, coming back to the cultural or

John Dehlin [01:24:34] has been handled by the atonement and

Tim Kosnoff [01:24:36] been handled by the system, and so

John Dehlin [01:24:38] it doesn't need to get out to the law.

Tim Kosnoff [01:24:39] Exactly. But coming back to. To the helpline, I think probably the most central reason the Church does it this way is they lock the lips of the bishop because once he has communicated with a lawyer from Curtin McConkie, that's attorney client privilege. And he cannot be questioned about anything that he told that lawyer. Well, I want to see the lawyer's notes of that interview. Nope, that's protected. That's attorney client. That's work product privilege. You don't get that. And so it's. It's really a way of. Of cutting off and sealing off, you know, avenues of attack to establish the Church's liability.

John Dehlin [01:25:30] Not even attack, just fact finding.

Tim Kosnoff [01:25:32] Just fact finding.

John Dehlin [01:25:33] Right. Just what happened? Oh, sorry. Attorney client privilege or priest penitent privilege. Can't touch it. Right, Right.

Tim Kosnoff [01:25:40] Well, I use the word attack because, you know, it feels like war when you're in it.

John Dehlin [01:25:44] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [01:25:44] And we're trying to get evidence, they're trying to prevent us from getting evidence. It's sort of like. It's sort of like a battle.

John Dehlin [01:25:50] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [01:25:51] And. And so their ability to utilize the helpline to prevent lawyers from getting at the truth or to find witnesses to corroborate what your client, your client's mother and so forth have to say. These are all things that in the context of litigation, could make the difference in millions of dollars in a verdict or settlement down the road.

John Dehlin [01:26:20] Right.

Tim Kosnoff [01:26:20] So these cases are made or not made within days of the first phone call.

John Dehlin [01:26:30] Right?

Gerardo Sumano [01:26:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:31] That's crucial.

Tim Kosnoff [01:26:32] It's crucial. And if I'm in trial or I'm busy with something else. So I think, you know, it's. But they've got a whole team of lawyers and they're, you know, they're good. And so can I, So can I

The Church Hid the Helpline

John Dehlin [01:26:44] make one sort of summary point about the helpline? Because when, first of all, I think we could agree that the Church hid the existence of this helpline for decades, that it wasn't known to the membership, let alone the general public, that this helpline probably even existed. And then I have a follow up. But is that relatively fair, that the Church wasn't let, Wasn't advertising publicly the existence of this helpline?

Tim Kosnoff [01:27:09] Well, that's, that's correct.

John Dehlin [01:27:10] Let alone ever giving transparency into what this helpline was about, why it was implemented and what the protocol was. The, the, the protocol itself, like literally yesterday was the first time I'd ever seen this document. Now, that may be because I wasn't.

Tim Kosnoff [01:27:25] Well, this is a fun story and I'd love to tell you about that, but. No, you're right. You're not going to see the helpline on the bulletin board, you know, at the ward building. You know, it's never going to happen. But it's in Handbook Book 1, which is only distributed to bishops and state presidents, and I think book two goes to members of the bishopric. Not exactly sure about that.

John Dehlin [01:27:49] But prior to the Internet, this all was top secret. It wasn't until, like you said, this was leaked on WikiLeaks or whatever, that the handbooks were even sort of public material.

Tim Kosnoff [01:27:59] Well, that's right. Even though, you know, before they became evidence in these cases, you know, the Church wasn't concerned about it. And like I said, they were available. I found them in the public library here in Salt Lake.

John Dehlin [01:28:12] Right.

Tim Kosnoff [01:28:13] They've since been removed. And, you know, which is why I copied all of them way back when. So I've got digitized copies. But I mean, you know, the Church has sued people for copyright infringement, for publishing. I don't know what happened to those cases, but, you know, it just shows you the lengths to which. Well, just how paranoid they are. You know, they don't want their members to know the basic rules that govern the operation of their local ward, let

John Dehlin [01:28:47] alone the general public.

Tim Kosnoff [01:28:48] Let alone the general public. And, and they especially don't want lawyers to be able to use these documents to impeach witnesses and to demonstrate

John Dehlin [01:28:59] what

Tim Kosnoff [01:28:59] we're talking about here today, which is they. The fact that they don't report isn't an Accident. It's policy.

John Dehlin [01:29:07] Right? Yeah. And so with the helpline, when it's now brought up miraculously just in the past, let's just say three to five years, when it is brought up in news articles or in stories, the church, whenever it responds, is always really wanting to say, hey, you all misunderstand this helpline. It. From the beginning, the number one reason it was always implemented was to protect the victims. Like this is all about providing aid and comfort to victims. That's always been the primary purpose of the helpline. And then secondarily, the purpose of the helpline was just to make sure that on the local level, all the laws were followed. So that. Am I, am I characterizing what the church wants to believe about the helpline,

Tim Kosnoff [01:29:55] but this document puts the lie to that.

John Dehlin [01:29:57] Yeah. And so I'm going to show that now on the screen to the viewers. We talked about this yesterday, but I want to go ahead and let anyone who didn't see the episode yesterday, I want to show now on the screen what the protocol for abuse helpline calls is. Now this has the date of 1999. So we know that at least, at leave as of 1999, this was the protocol that Curtin McConkie and the helpline would use whenever a bishop or a stake president called in. And I want to give you a chance to provide whatever commentary you want to make, whatever observations you want to make about the helpline for as long as you want to talk about it. You're the one that made this available to me. This. You may be the reason why this is even available.

Leaked Out: The Protocol for Abuse Helpline Calls

Tim Kosnoff [01:30:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:41] In the public domain.

Tim Kosnoff [01:30:42] Yeah. I unearthed this, so I'm.

John Dehlin [01:30:43] Okay, that's important. So. So I'm showing you on the screen now either talk about the protocol for as long as you want and talk about whatever stories you want to tell about this protocol for as long as you want.

Tim Kosnoff [01:30:55] Okay. Well, this is a. It's a single page document and it's got at the top, protocol for abuse helpline calls. And this was basically a checklist instruction to the social worker at LDS Social Services, which is what it was called back during this period of time about the steps they're supposed to take as they communicate with the bishop or stake president who calls in. Now, ostensibly these social workers are trained in handling sexual abuse, their mandatory reporters and so forth. So I think that later became problematic, which is why I think they got cut out of the loop because they're mandated reporters in Utah, and if they're not reporting, they're going to lose their license and they're going to maybe go to jail. But the questions that are asked on here are not questions that signal concern about the welfare of the child who's being abused.

John Dehlin [01:32:06] And just to put a fine point on it, so like a bishop calls the help line on the other end. There's either a paralegal or a social worker or whatever who would receive the call on this hotline. And then this handout would be the protocol they follow when you know for questions, how they instruct the bishop or the stake president to even talk to them and then what information they gather.

Tim Kosnoff [01:32:31] Well, this is, this is, this is guidance. And, and this was used for a period of time and I don't know when they stopped using it. But this process isn't transparent. This leaked out. And it's sort of an interesting story, but it's clearly about protecting the church and not about the victims. Okay, one, does your call concern child sexual abuse which may have occurred on church property? What does that have to do about protecting a child? Nothing.

Does Your Call Concern Child Sexual Abuse?

John Dehlin [01:33:01] Well, what does it have to do with, well, what does church poverty have?

Tim Kosnoff [01:33:04] It has, it has to do with potential liability of the church because this happened on your property. You have a duty to, to, to maintain your property in a way that's safe, particularly for children.

John Dehlin [01:33:16] So that's not about the victim.

Tim Kosnoff [01:33:17] That's not about the victim at all.

John Dehlin [01:33:18] It's about liability.

Tim Kosnoff [01:33:19] Okay, it's about liability. These are all liability questions. Next question number two. Does your call concern child sexual abuse which may have occurred at a church sponsored activity? Again, another basis for civil liability.

John Dehlin [01:33:32] As if it's in a church.

Tim Kosnoff [01:33:33] He's an adult leader in scouting or an adult leader in, you know, young men's or young women's or whatever it is, or he's in primary, you know, all church sponsored activities. Okay, liability. You know, you, you, you conduct these activities, you have a duty to exercise reasonable care to protect children from reasonable, reasonably foreseeable harm. That's the legal standard, right? Three, does your call concern child sexual abuse by a church leader or youth leader who used their church position to accomplish the abuse? Nursery leader abusing children and nursery, a seminary teacher. Well, we all get the drift there. And yes, we have cases just like that. Seminary teachers, people in primary, nurses, we have bishops, missionaries who are abusing in their office. That happens. So again, another basis for church liability. Number four. Does your call concern an alleged perpetrator employed by the church? Well, church, I don't know, doesn't have many employees, mostly volunteers, but it does have some employees. So again, they can be potentially responsible for the criminal acts of their employee if they knew and basically approved of what was happening. Are you aware of previous child sexual abuse or tendency towards sexual abuse by the alleged perpetrator? This goes to the question of notice. Now, you don't have to have notice to bring a case, but if you do, the value of that case is much greater because you can show that the institutional defendant, it's not a matter of should have known they knew they had prior experiences. And when a jury hears that kind of evidence that they knew about this, just as in the Catholic Church cases, they knew about the predator priest and they moved him from parish to parish to parish. Very aggravating set of facts, the kind that give rise to punitive damages. Lastly, does your call concern an alleged perpetrator who is currently a missionary? And if so, you're supposed to call these two other men, Bob Blattner and Richard Black, who I assume are associated with the mission and they're supposed to deal with it. Everybody else at the bottom are Lawyers for Curtin McConkey with their cell phones, home phones after hours and so forth. Now, we'll talk about the bottom third of the, of the, of the page in a minute. I'll read it. But it tends to make somebody's eyes glass over because it's internally inconsistent, makes no sense, and isn't guidance really at all.

Report Child Abuse Under Mandatory Reporting

John Dehlin [01:36:47] Before you do that, can you tell us about the phrase at the top of the top of those section? Tell priesthood leader that no identifying information should be given. Use first names only. You know, what's, what's going on there and what does that do with protecting the victim?

Tim Kosnoff [01:37:08] Well, I can surmise if you don't know the person's last name, how can you report,

John Dehlin [01:37:16] right.

Tim Kosnoff [01:37:17] His name was Bill. You know, you don't even want to know who the bishop was. Don't tell me who your last name. Don't even tell me the word you're calling from. Okay? Because I might have to, you know, I might have to do something. I may be a mandated reporter based on this call in your state.

John Dehlin [01:37:35] So this is to protect the person fielding the call, to give them as little as information possible so that they don't get dragged into the lawsuit.

Tim Kosnoff [01:37:43] To protect the church.

John Dehlin [01:37:45] Right.

Tim Kosnoff [01:37:45] Because these, you know, I mean, these social workers, they are employees of the church, right? And you know, they're also licensed by the state of Utah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:37:57] And, and yesterday we were talking about that. It has come out that some of these records are destroyed by the end of every day or routinely destroyed. So if they had last names and identifying information, it would be. Would it be considered destroying of evidence?

Tim Kosnoff [01:38:17] It's a good question. But importantly, whether it's legally destruction of evidence. It is destruction of evidence because those contemporaneous notes are important and relevant. Generally there has to be an investigation or a case pending before you can have destruction of evidence. Now, the law may differ, I'm not that sophisticated on obstruction of justice and that kind of thing, but. But yeah, it could well be destruction of evidence. But they are instructed. And I got this from the director of family services in a deposition who said, well, we don't take notes. It used to be if we took notes, we were supposed to destroy them at the end of every day. So don't retain anything. Now, if you're trying to do something to help the child by developing evidence that can cause the authorities to remove the perpetrator from the home and presumably put him in prison where he can no longer abuse that child or potentially other children, why would you want to prevent that information from seeing the light of day? Because here you are, you're in a sense the first responder. You're getting it raw for the first time from the bishop. And typically this is the most important valuable information in any case is what did the person say the first time you heard it? And this intake worker is hearing it for the first time. And he could be called to testify because he's got no attorney client privilege. Or clergy. Or clergy. He's an employee of the church. So they don't want him being test, being subpoenaed to testify in a deposition, to have to respond to a document subpoena for his notes. So those are all reasons why they want to shit can this information at the outset.

John Dehlin [01:40:25] So it's not to protect the victims.

Tim Kosnoff [01:40:27] It's not to protect the victims at all. Now this, this bottom part, the reporting issues.

John Dehlin [01:40:36] So that's the bottom section of the form.

Tim Kosnoff [01:40:38] Yeah. After the abuse, helpline workers obtained all the facts and background information, he or should he or she should be. Should determine whether or not the incident of child abuse has already been reported to child protection or law enforcement authorities. If not, abuse helpline workers should instruct priesthood leaders. Here we go. Does it say encourage priesthood leaders to report. It says no. It says instruct priesthood leaders to encourage an interested person to report the abuse. That is not compliance with mandatory reporting. Mandated reporters are sort of frontline people who come into contact and are the ones we know from experience who, who receive these initial disclosures.

John Dehlin [01:41:30] Like a school teacher, school therapist, doctors,

Tim Kosnoff [01:41:33] psychologists, social workers, policemen, firemen. The different states have longer or shorter lists, but most of them include clergy because people in many religions disclose these things to their clergy person.

John Dehlin [01:41:53] Yeah. And the idea is that family generally can't be relied upon to report. So other, other officials who get the information need to become mandatory reporters because you can't rely on family or friends necessarily to report. Is that right?

Tim Kosnoff [01:42:08] Well, that's right. And you know, to, to say, encourage a family member, which is what this form does, right? Yeah, it's. Well, then how do you know that that family member has actually reported? And it doesn't excuse your legal responsibility under the criminal law and the civil law to report it. You're a mandated reporter. You need to report it. You can't slough this off on to somebody. And who. And this is ironic as well, John, because they make so much of confidentiality. Okay, so you learn of abuse, say, from the perpetrator and. Oh, no, that's secret. That's secret. You can't disclose. That's privileged. Oh, but you can tell a family member or interested person this information and get them to report. Well, what happens to the doctrine of confidentiality within the church? You won't provide that information in a court proceeding, but you'll let the priesthood holder disclose it to just anybody, a member of the family. How is that not a violation of your doctrine? So it's just another example of the contradictory nature of these instructions. Individuals who may report include the victim, the perpetrator, or other third parties who, who know about the abuse, neighbors, parents of victim, spouse or family of the perpetrator, etc.

Desert News: Church should encourage clergy to report abuse

John Dehlin [01:43:50] And Tim, if I, if I can, when I read this second part of the form, I texted you, because as I read the form and it said workers should instruct priesthood leaders to encourage an interested person to report the abuse, in my mind immediately was like, oh, my gosh. Well, the church has been doing good. Then they, they're basically, it's part of the protocol that the, that the helpline person in Salt Lake City, when the bishop calls, says, hey, Bishop, make sure you tell a family member or friend of the abuser to go report to the police. And so I thought, well, good on the church because they have as a part of their protocol process to get law enforcement involved. But then your response was, no, no, no, that's not necessarily the thing that you think it is.

Tim Kosnoff [01:44:37] No, it's not. That's not compliance with, with it. You know, it says if you have cause to believe a Child may be at risk of abuse. You.

John Dehlin [01:44:47] Right.

Tim Kosnoff [01:44:48] Designated mandated reporter. Now, in some states, as a lawyer, I'm a mandated reporter. I'm a permissive reporter in most states. So whenever I'm in that situation, I report when I'm dealing with a minor. And that's our. That's our policy and practice. It's not hard to do. But this importantly is the bishop is not speaking to the police.

John Dehlin [01:45:19] Right.

Tim Kosnoff [01:45:20] The bishop's words are not being taken down in a police report or a statement because what the family member says cannot bind the church, is not evidence of anything against the church, necessarily. But when the bishop starts talking and, you know, these bishops, you know, they start talking and, you know, they've been told they need to tell the truth, and they know it's serious. They're talking to a police officer, and so they tell the truth. And. Yeah, well, this is a guy, and we had him in counseling last year because there was a problem at a camp out with somebody else. He's spilling the beans. He doesn't realize it. And the church lawyers can't get those beans back in the can once he's spilled them. So that's why I think it's. Don't follow the mandated reporter law. Get somebody else to do it, because then it won't come back on us.

John Dehlin [01:46:15] But also, chances are those people won't do it. Right, right. Because wives would have already reported the guy to the police if they were going to report.

Tim Kosnoff [01:46:23] Well, this, I mean, this is the whole reason why legislatures passed mandated reporting statutes, because they knew from experience, from decades of experience, that when a child is being abused, you can't rely upon the caregivers to protect the child, because they haven't.

John Dehlin [01:46:42] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [01:46:42] And they're conflicted.

John Dehlin [01:46:43] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [01:46:44] And, you know, so you need to bring the power, the resources, the experience, the understanding, the power of the civil authorities to bear immediately.

John Dehlin [01:46:56] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [01:46:57] So, you know, in the time that you're messing around trying to figure out who the interested persons are, and some of these are people who are aware of the abuse. Well, how do you know whether. This person, a neighbor, is aware of the abuse? You encourage the neighbor. So how do you know the neighbor knows? What about the parents of the victim? You know, do you know or do you not know any of these people? You don't, as a bishop, you don't even know what these people know, and yet you're being directed to have them do your job for you.

John Dehlin [01:47:33] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [01:47:33] It's not your job. It's your. It's your legal duty to Report it.

Gerardo Sumano [01:47:38] How about Tim? So I don't know. The Church. The Church's response on Desert News has been that there are complications within the laws in different states, and then maybe a. The clergy penitence privilege may not allow a bishop to report the abuse. Or that's kind of like the impression they're giving that there are some states where the bishop may not be allowed to report the abuse because he learned.

John Dehlin [01:48:04] Yeah, they're trying. The Church is trying to make it sound like, yeah, there are states where a priest or a bishop is forbidden to ever disclose under all circumstances. And if. And if they do disclose the rape of a child, that they'll be punished. And so the Church has to make sure that that doesn't happen.

Tim Kosnoff [01:48:23] That is. That's a very convenient and misleading statement of the law. First of all, you're talking about a very small subset, and this is where the bishop learns of the abuse directly from the abuser in the penitential context. Okay, so it's not every communication. You know, it's not, hey, Bishop, that's a nice car. And, oh, by the way, I've been abusing my kids. So they don't. In some states, there is no priest penitent privilege associated with a mandated reporter. In West Virginia, it's no, it's. If you learn from the perpetrator, you don't have the privilege under those circumstances. So these privileges do vary from state to state, and they've been interpreted differently in different states. Most of the time, if it's clear that it was a communication from the abuser to the clergy person, and the religion of that person holds that these things are privileged under the sanctity of the confessional, and this mostly derives from the practices in the Catholic Church, then the bishop can be, you know, can honor that and decline, because under the law, the privilege belongs to the penitent, and the clergy person is obliged to respect and hold that. But if the abuser waives it by giving a statement to the police and says, yeah, I did it, or confesses, then there's no longer a privilege because he's waived it. He's already communicated about the subject matter, and so you can't withhold it on that basis. So we're getting down into the weeds a little bit on this. But again, even if you're in a situation where you learn that directly in the penitential context from the abuser, that just means you can't disclose it. It doesn't mean you can't do things to protect the victim. You go to the mother. You go to whomever and say, billy should not be around this man. Why, Bishop, I can't say. I'm just warning you, do not allow your child to be around this individual. He hasn't disclosed anything. He's just, He's. He's done something.

John Dehlin [01:51:19] Yeah, I guess the bishop could even encourage the abuser to turn themselves in. I mean, if the church, if the Church believes in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law, which is one of their articles of faith, the church could. In the church. And if the Church realized it had no business investigating these sorts of cases, if the church and Curtin McConkie were truly most caring and concerned about the safety of the victim, they could say, the bishop could say to the person confessing, listen, you know, you're here because you believe that I have authority from God. You're here because you believe in the teachings of the Church. I, the Bishop, am telling you that we believe in honoring, sustaining the law. You should waive your privilege. You should let me report this to the, to the authorities, and let's let the legal process carry itself out, because that's, you know, that's the way we as Mormons believe things should be handled. That like Kurt McConkie, if they were truly concerned about the victim, they could absolutely have this be part of the protocol where the bishops ask the confessors to give permission and to waive their priest penitent privilege. Right, Right.

Jon Favreau on reporting sexual abuse in the Church

Tim Kosnoff [01:52:34] And that's true, they could do that. They don't. But again, they don't want the perpetrator going down and spilling the beans to

John Dehlin [01:52:43] the police because it makes the church liable and opens up the church to,

Tim Kosnoff [01:52:48] to civil liability and to damage to a church. And to damage is correct. But, you know, this is. The next line is, is rich. And that's why I was chuckling. If a priesthood leader recommends that a perpetrator report the abuse to civil authorities, he should also recommend to the perpetrator that he or she should consider obtaining legal counsel.

Leviathan 13: Should Sexual Abuse Be Reported to Civil Authorities

John Dehlin [01:53:07] Why is that funny or interesting?

Tim Kosnoff [01:53:09] Well, it's like, yeah, you can go talk to the police, but first lawyer up, okay? Now, I don't know if you've ever had to consult a lawyer about a criminal matter. Maybe some of your listeners have. But that lawyer, I don't care whether he graduated first or last as law school class, he's going to say, you're not talking to the police. Keep your mouth shut. You're not giving any statements, okay? Because to say otherwise is malpractice. That's what a lawyer Advises a client, you know, do not talk. So this is another way that the church ensures that they're going to seal the lips of the. If the person is like, oh, I want to purge my soul, I want to go down and tell it to the police, okay, but go talk to. And actually here's, I've got a card in my desk here. The bishop says, and it's, it's a member of the ward. He turns out to be a criminal defense lawyer. Call him good guy. So he hooks him up with a criminal defense lawyer. It's not going to go any further. Okay, so that source of information from the abuser, who knows the who, what, when, how many times, how he got away with it, what the church leaders knew, when they knew it, so forth, all that's completely unavailable. And what's more is that individual is probably not even going to be criminally prosecuted because prosecutor looks at the case, it's a he said, she said or he said, he said. Perpetrator denies it or, you know, isn't talking. You know, the victim is, you know, 14 years old. And you know, any defense lawyer with, you know, any cross examination capability can get the jury to, you know, side with the perpetrator because the child's confused or was manipulated by the mother or you know, all the tricks that defense lawyers use to try and discredit child victims. Plus the whole thing is so traumatic, there's a good chance the child is just going to fall apart. Because to confront your stepfather, your abuser in a public courtroom and you're in the church and now you've been shunned and your family's been shunned by all

John Dehlin [01:55:23] the other members and your bishop is saying, use the atonement, but forgive, because forgive.

Tim Kosnoff [01:55:27] And you're getting hammered over the head with forgive, forgive, forgive me. So just, you know, lawyer up, go lawyer up. I mean, I mean, I wonder if there's another church where the, where the, you know, the priest, the rabbi, the, you know, you know, the religious leader, you know, is, you know, is advising sinners to lawyer up. And this last paragraph is so, I mean, I have to read it over and over again because it doesn't make any sense to me. If the sexual abuse has been or will be reported immediately to civil authorities by a person other than the priesthood leader and does not fall within the above guidelines, no transfer to legal counsel is necessary.

John Dehlin [01:56:22] So don't call Curt McConkey, don't call Kurt McConkey.

Tim Kosnoff [01:56:25] A call should be transferred to legal counsel when it appears that the abuse will not be reported to civil authorities unless it is reported by the priesthood leader or it falls within the above guidelines for the high risk cases. Somebody could explain to me that. I still don't understand that.

Gerardo Sumano [01:56:44] So I think basically they're saying transfer to Curtin McConkey. If the bishop is the only one that knows or follows this, it falls

Tim Kosnoff [01:56:54] into one of those potential liability here.

Gerardo Sumano [01:56:56] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [01:56:58] Anyways, they stopped using this.

John Dehlin [01:57:00] But this was what can you read? Can you read just the last in bold that goes right below it? Because I think that's pretty important.

Tim Kosnoff [01:57:08] Abuse helpline personnel, all CAPS personnel should never advise a priesthood leader to report abuse. Counsel of this nature should come only from legal counsel.

John Dehlin [01:57:19] What's that about? That's the most important part. Right.

Tim Kosnoff [01:57:29] Well, they're telling the first line responders at Family Services to never advise a caller to report to the police. Civil authorities.

John Dehlin [01:57:45] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [01:57:46] So they're instructing them to instruct the Bishop. That he can advise them other to report or not. So the question is then kicked upstairs to Curtin McConkie. Counsel of this nature should come only from legal counsel. Now where this gets interesting and where this became an issue in Arizona is these lawyers at Curtin McConkey are licensed in the state of Utah and yet they are advising people of the law in states where they're not licensed to practice law. Because these calls come in from all 50 states. Now I believe the Attorney General of the state of Arizona made an issue about this. I don't know what happened with it, but in this case in Arizona that we've been talking about, that's exactly what happened. A lawyer from Curtin McConkey told the Bishop not to report.

Gerardo Sumano [01:58:54] Now he told him he couldn't report.

Tim Kosnoff [01:58:58] He couldn't report.

Gerardo Sumano [01:58:59] Yeah. That the law prohibited. Prohibited him from reporting.

John Dehlin [01:59:04] So

Tim Kosnoff [01:59:06] from the allegations of the Attorney General of the State of Arizona, he's asserting that this is the illegal practice of law in the state of Arizona. If you're not licensed in the state of Arizona and you're giving legal advice, you're committing a criminal offense and you're also subject to other sanctions, I believe. I don't know what came of that, but this is routine. This is going on all the time. You've got Curtin McConkey lawyers giving advice to clergy in states where they're not licensed to practice law. But if the attorney generals of those state don't make an issue out of it, then I guess it's no harm, no foul. And so they keep doing it. And so that's how they're able to. To run this thing nationally, internationally, and prevent the reporting of abuse to the local civil authorities and thus perpetuating the cycle of abuse, in my opinion.

John Dehlin [02:00:07] Yeah, so. So to summarize, you know, again, whenever this stuff spills out into the public domain, the Church wants to say, no, no, no, no, no. This helpline, this protocol, from the very beginning was established, first and foremost, second and second most, to aid and provide comfort and support to the victim. We just reviewed the entire protocol. Your response to that is that's unequivocally false?

Tim Kosnoff [02:00:36] Yeah, I. I've. I've taken the depositions. I mean, I'm. I'm not making this, pulling this out of thin air. I've gotten this directly from church witnesses about how it actually works. Their communications department, Eric what's his name, puts out the same sort of standard boilerplate thing every time. And they just continue to put out this falsehood that this is to help victims. It's not about to help victims. It's about helping the Church evade liability. And in the lawyer's defense, right, Curt McConkie.

John Dehlin [02:01:14] Right.

Tim Kosnoff [02:01:14] Yeah. They're doing exactly what good lawyers do. They're protecting their client. They're protecting the Church who is their client. And I don't fault them for that. They do, as we've been talking about for the last 45 minutes, a pretty effective job of it. Is it moral? Well, that's not the question. Is it legal? Yes, for the most part. The only problem I have is then they go out and they make statements that, you know, are sort of extralegal, like this is to help the victims when that's not true. And lawyers can be sanctioned for making false representations, and I believe those are false representations that they should not be making. But the fact that they have devised this system to choke off cases, kill them in the cradle, you know, Mormons may not rank and file, Mormons may not be comfortable with that, but the Curt McConkie lawyers are serving their clients church well. And so I would hope this changes. I think that this is that these stories that come out about what happens, the consequences of this practice, I think that resonates with at least some members of the hierarchy. I would hope. This is not good for proselytizing or conversion or what have you, and it sort of reinforces a lot of ideas that non Mormons have about Mormons. And, you know, the Church spends, I don't know, but tens of billions of dollars a year, you know, promoting a positive image of the Church. And so These kinds of things are not helpful.

Curt McConkie Lawsuit

The Discovery of Evidence in a Domestic Violence Case

John Dehlin [02:03:10] Now, you said you had a story that was interesting or amusing about the discovery.

Tim Kosnoff [02:03:15] Yeah. So I should say at the outset, I received this document about 20 years ago through my. An investigator who obtained it from a woman who didn't want to be identified. And eventually, years later, I was able to locate this woman in the West Virginia case. She had changed her name and she agreed to talk with me and eventually she agreed to give a declaration and then she sat for a deposition. And, and what she, she did was she explained how she got this document and that deposition was necessary to authenticate this document. It appears to be self authenticating, but a judge has to decide beforehand before a jury can see it whether or not it has enough indicia of authenticity to admit it as evidence. But we wanted to be especially careful. So we wanted to establish the line of evidence, if you will, the chain of evidence that got from the church to her, to my investigator, to me, and eventually into the court record. So the story was this woman was in an abusive relationship with her ex husband. He was violent, he was abusing their children. She needed help. She somehow got a hold of the helpline number. She was very active member of her ward, and I think a bishop felt for her and gave her the number he shouldn't have, but it was right there in the handbook of instructions and in the helps document. So she got the number and she called and she spoke to this social worker and he said, well, send me all of the documents and I'll review them and we'll see what we can do for you. So she did. She wrapped up all these documents in a big manila envelope and mailed them to his office at LDS Social Services in or about this time period, 1999. And there was other information on here that I redacted because it was identifying information related to her.

John Dehlin [02:05:38] Oh, so this original form actually had

Tim Kosnoff [02:05:41] some of those other, Some other writing on it? Yeah, but it wasn't really necessary and I didn't need to identify her. It was just, you know, it was the other things on here.

John Dehlin [02:05:51] Got it.

Tim Kosnoff [02:05:52] So sometime later, she gets her the envelope back in the mail of all these materials she had sent him. And there's a letter that says, we looked into it. Sorry we can't help you, Goodbye, good luck. But in there was this strange piece of paper. They accidentally included it accidentally got included when he was wrapping up the documents and stuffing them in the envelope, or whoever his assistant was accidentally put this thing in there.

John Dehlin [02:06:24] Oops.

Tim Kosnoff [02:06:25] And so initially we served a Request to admit, which is discovery

John Dehlin [02:06:39] rule that

Tim Kosnoff [02:06:40] allows you to require your adversary and the litigation to admit that something is true or false or that this is a true and correct copy of, you know, whatever, you know, admit this, admit this, admit this. Sometimes they admit, sometimes they deny. If they admit, then you don't have to prove that because they've admitted it. And it's sort of shortened the trial a bit because you don't have to go through these additional proofs because they've admitted it. And in most litigation, lawyers are cooperative about that. They don't give you a hard time about it If. If it's true, they admit it.

John Dehlin [02:07:13] If.

Tim Kosnoff [02:07:13] Yeah, that's what it is. We admit it.

Gerardo Sumano [02:07:14] Especially if it's not incriminating.

Tim Kosnoff [02:07:16] Right, Particularly if it's not incriminating. Exactly. So we sent this to the church's lawyers in the West Virginia case, and they denied. They denied knowing anything about it. We cannot authenticate this. We don't know what the document is. We've never seen this document before. So. Okay, so I knew who the social worker was because his name was on here, and he was retired and living in Idaho, and I'll be darned, you know, they got to him before I could.

Gerardo Sumano [02:07:54] Oh, wow.

Tim Kosnoff [02:07:55] And he's. I. I'm not Speaking to you, Mr. Kosdoff.

Gerardo Sumano [02:07:58] Wow.

Tim Kosnoff [02:07:59] And I'm going on a mission to Africa. Oh, really?

Gerardo Sumano [02:08:03] When?

Tim Kosnoff [02:08:04] Well, I'm supposed to leave tomorrow. Are you gonna be back? Oh, I don't know, 20, 27. So that's another trick of the trade that they use, is you get a key, a key witness, critical witness, and before you can preserve their testimony in a preservation deposition, they're off to Argentina or, you know, Botswana on a mission. So this is. This is the. This is the power and reach of this church.

John Dehlin [02:08:33] Is.

Tim Kosnoff [02:08:34] Is that effective lawyering? Yeah, it's effective,

Gerardo Sumano [02:08:41] but.

Tim Kosnoff [02:08:42] So it's all about, you know, denying and depriving the. The plaintiff of the truth so that they can prove their case. You did this. You're at fault. It's aggravated, because you knew and covered up for this guy. You recycled him. You excommunicated him for abusing kids, and then you re baptized him back in. Six months later, he did it again. You excommunicated him again, you know, rebaptized him back in. So, yeah. So when I go and stand in front of the cameras in front of the Joseph F. Smith Memorial Building and hold a press event and call you the largest pedophile heaven on earth and that you recycle child abusers yeah, that's strident language from an aggressive plaintiff's lawyer. But is there truth in it? Yeah. Is it the whole truth? No, because one side's truth is never the whole truth. And I have good things to say about the Church. And as opposed to the first case I handled, we're now 20 years on, 25 years on, and, you know, I'm seeing hopeful signs. But since they control all the information, you know, they claim that they report thousands of times. I've seen no evidence of that, and frankly, I'm skeptical of that. If that's true, they should make that information available.

John Dehlin [02:10:08] That's something we, that's something we speculated on yesterday, because this form itself up in the top, right, you know, it, it basically asks if reporting has already happened. And the Church can take credit for local leaders reporting to police. Even if they reported without any support of the helpline, the Church can still know about that and take credit for it. Even if they did, the helpline did everything they could to ever discourage any reporting.

Tim Kosnoff [02:10:43] And, and, and even if their preference

Gerardo Sumano [02:10:46] would have been right not to have them report.

John Dehlin [02:10:48] Exactly. And, and you know something, I saw a bunch of bishops on Reddit, former bishops, kind of sharing their experiences with the helpline. And there was one bishop that said, yeah, I, I went ahead and reported, but then I called the helpline, I told the helpline that I reported, and they got super mad at me and told me that I should have never done that. But in, in that case, if they had been using this protocol, they still would have checked the box and said, you know, that, that the bishop's notified. And then if they added up a few dozen or a few hundred of those, then they could say to the public media, well, yeah, see, there's hundreds of instances where bishops have reported, but again, maybe it would have been against the advisement or preference of Church headquarters and of the abuse line. Right.

Honorary bishops and the right to speak out

Tim Kosnoff [02:11:33] Well, you know, I believe that there are honorable, well attentioned bishops who do the right thing. Curtin McConkey be damned.

John Dehlin [02:11:43] Right.

Tim Kosnoff [02:11:44] Protocol be damned. They're part of the modern world. They're not part of the ancient world which much of the Church is still mired in. And, you know, so, you know, I sometimes get emails or phone calls from bishops saying, you know, they read something about me or heard this. I just want you to know that I had such a situation and I picked up the phone and I reported it. And I just wanted you to know that, that we're not all covering this up. And I, you know, I think again, that's an example of a. A younger generation, a more modern, progressive thinking generation that understands that the ways of the past are wrong and they don't want to be tainted by it. And if it means, you know, they're removed as bishop, so be it. They're going to do the right thing. And I wish I knew more about those people because I'd like to, you know, donate to a fund that, you

John Dehlin [02:12:47] know,

Tim Kosnoff [02:12:50] awards a scholarship in their name or honor. But there need to be more people like that who stand up to this. But the power, the pressure, I mean, this is the other thing I counter a lot, which is the power of the phone call. Brother so and so. This is Brother so and so from Curtin McConkey. How are you doing today? You know, you get a call like that, brother to brother, from the church's lawyer, you know, you're listening and it's cordial at first, and then comes the ask. And, you know, I just think it's really too much for most of these men who've been born in the church and grown up and lived under it and wouldn't know what it's like to be cast out of the church because it didn't follow the rules from above. It's just too much to ask them. And it's particularly sad or pathetic when you see otherwise honest people, you know, not telling the truth, you know, under oath. I don't remember. I forget. Oh, I can't say. No, I. I don't know. You know, and no, I think. No, she. Yeah, she says that she came and told me, but I have no memory of that. No. So, no, she never told me. You know, it's like, wow. So it's. It's the power of the church to get people to bend. Can't be underestimated.

The power of the priesthood call

John Dehlin [02:14:36] So. But I. But I do think it's fair and I do think it's helpful to acknowledge improvement or to give credit where credit is due. And we talked about this a little bit yesterday because maybe what hasn't been fair about the past two hours is that we're talking about a protocol that was pre Sam Young. Right. There was pre West Virginia case. And the truth is, my sense is, is that, you know, maybe a favorable spin would be that. That over time the church has improved the helpline process such that today they're probably. This protocol has been changed to include mental health services, support, you know, other types of things that are more victim favorable. Having said that, maybe a more cynical read. If there have been improvements, which we don't know, because there's no transparency. But if there has been improvements to the protocol, it's probably not modern day revelation or, you know, the goodwill of the church, you know, just making improvements. It's probably you and a lot of the lawsuits that have caused the church pain, plus bad press with the courageous, you know, reporters who have embarrassed the church about the Helpline, plus Sam Young and the protect child movement and all of the bad, you know, publicity, plus all the members that have complained such that if the church actually has improved the non transparent, you know, process or protocol for, for the Helpline, it's been because the church has been forced to do that, not because that was ever the original intent or the intent for multiple decades of the Helpline itself. Now that's not really a question.

Tim Kosnoff [02:16:27] We know from historical precedent that the church has at times responded to pressure when in the 1870s the church was to be put in the hands of a receivership and liquidated suddenly, the revelation from President Woodruff that polygamy was to be practiced in the celestial kingdom, not on the temporal plane, basically saved the church's bacon and also earned them statehood. So that was the deal.

John Dehlin [02:17:08] And then there's 1978.

Tim Kosnoff [02:17:09] With 1878.

John Dehlin [02:17:11] No, no, no, you were right. I'm saying another example that would be in the 1970s when the church was being embarrassed around its, its priesthood and temple ban for black members of the church. All of a sudden a revelation comes in. 78. Right.

Tim Kosnoff [02:17:25] Which had financial implications because the church couldn't participate in certain federal programs and so on and so forth. Whatever it was, there was financial leverage that got them to suddenly see that people with dark skin actually were people worthy of holding the priesthood. So it does happen. I think that those were almost easier gives than this. And you know, this helpline and the periodic embarrassing news article that appears because, you know, this AP article, you know, I read it and I thought, this is not news. This is old news. I've been talking about this for 25 years.

John Dehlin [02:18:15] Right.

Tim Kosnoff [02:18:16] You know, and he basically went and somehow got documents out of the West Virginia file and you know, wrote this, you know, this article and you know, as if it's like new and it's absolutely not new. But you know, there's a buzz around it, but it'll die down. But you know, the church, I don't know what they pay out, but I bet it's not. It's under $25 million a year.

John Dehlin [02:18:43] So they could pay out 25 settlement abuse. Settlement cases.

Tim Kosnoff [02:18:46] Yeah, yeah. And that may be high so by that measure, it's working. They could pay out 25 million next year, 200 million the following year, 300 million the following year. And in about 4,000 years, they might run out of money. So that's.

John Dehlin [02:19:04] That's a rounding error to a. To a church that's bringing in probably $10 billion a year.

Tim Kosnoff [02:19:08] Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, they estimated, one analyst estimated that back in 1987, tithing receipts were $6 billion a year. And in terms of their asset at that time, he estimated that they had assets of around 120 to 150 billion. But look at the appreciation of all assets.

John Dehlin [02:19:37] And this kind of makes you a prophet, because the Ensign Peak revelations came out after you interviewed with Gina. And again, you're basing your data on other people's analysis. Right. But the Ensign Peak Revelations from a few years back show that the church has at least 120 billion in cash, bonds, stocks, you know, investments just at Ensign Peak. That doesn't even touch, you know, real estate or other investments they have, plus their core assets as a corporation.

Tim Kosnoff [02:20:07] Oh, that.

John Dehlin [02:20:07] That's.

Tim Kosnoff [02:20:08] That's absolutely right. I. I was fortunate enough to find a man who had been comptroller for the church in the 70s and 80s in Oregon.

John Dehlin [02:20:21] I know this guy.

Tim Kosnoff [02:20:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was excommunicated for gay. Being gay.

John Dehlin [02:20:27] Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [02:20:28] And did you know about this Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [02:20:31] No.

John Dehlin [02:20:31] In the 70s, one of the main financial controllers of the church was gay. And then he was excommunicated. And then some people found him. Yeah.

Tim Kosnoff [02:20:41] So the book I was talking about, which came out in the 80s, was by Professor Anton Shoup and John Heileman. And they. And these were basically an effort to try and get their arms around the asset wealth of the church. And they had limited data, but they did have data, and they could do reasonable projections and so forth. And you can research real estate records. You can get SEC records that show who the major shareholders are of, you know, Disney or IBM or whatever. And so you could begin to piece together. So when I talked to this man from. From Oregon, he was very cooperative. He said. He said it's vast. He said the church's wealth. You have to picture something like the Teamsters pension plan. It was spread across three or four Wall street brokerage firms, but they eventually consolidated. No, it was eventually. It was in one brokerage firm. And then they spread it out to several brokerage firms and said, the church has private equity. They have, you know, shares of public corporations. They're the largest landholder in Florida and Nebraska. I believe maybe the largest landholder in the country. And he said, I read Shoup and Heileman's book and he said they did a pretty good job. They were pretty close. And that was 1986. So I don't know what a portfolio of 120, 150 billion in 1986 would be given the inflation of asset values, but it has to be over a trillion dollars. So to think that you're going to change the course of this massive cargo ship, you know, in a little dinghy, you know, racing around in front of it, you know, you're kidding yourselves. I mean, these are lawyers that are congratulating themselves or oh, you know, I did my blow for justice. So this is why I come back to the church won't change until the members demand change. And they do care what the members think. And I think that's been demonstrated by the reaction of the rank and file to the treatment of gays in the church. And then the change, you know, a few years later, you know, Heavenly Father says this, then he changed his mind five years later. And you know, this treatment of gays and children of gays, and it was just so harsh and ugly and also just sort of, you know, was oblivious to the fact that, you know, as they say, every family has one or two. I mean, so you're basically telling these lifelong loyal Mormons that they can't love their children anymore just simply because they, you know, have, because they're, they're homosexual. And I mean, I just think that was terribly foolish and hurtful. And I think they changed course because of the reaction of rank and file Mormons. And I think that can happen again here. Mormons. I mean, such an irony to me with Mormons. And I've represented so many, and I've gotten close to many and ex Mormons and so forth, that there's this internal contradiction where the church, you know, emphasizes the importance of education and self improvement. And the problem with educating somebody is their minds open up and they start to question. And that's a good thing, but not when it comes to the church's policies and doctrines and so forth. So in history we're going to, we're going to open, you know, encourage you to open your mind, but we're going to fence off this area and you can't inquire in this area. And I, and I think that's, that's an internal contradiction of a church that's transitioning from one of a, an ancient era to one of a modern era. It happened with the Catholic Church, it was a medieval institution, you know, in many respects it still is. But Catholics, at least in this country, to the extent there are any anymore, you know, they, they don't feel like they are. They feel modern and they feel like they can make decisions for themselves and that they don't have to adhere to strict obedience to, to the decrees of the Vatican. So anyways, I'm drifting a little bit.

On the Wealth of the Mormon Church

John Dehlin [02:25:56] No, you're actually summarizing, I think in a really effective way. And we want to be humane and get a quick break in and give you a little lunch before we start our Boy Scouts episode, which is set in less than an hour.

Mormon Stories: A Little Lunch

Tim Kosnoff [02:26:08] So we've been doing two and a half hours. Yeah, but I wondered why your shows were so long. But this, this, you get going and

John Dehlin [02:26:13] it, I mean, this is, we, we do long form because these matters are intricate and complex and they're deep and they deserve that treatment. So I'm super grateful. I've loved this, this time together. I guess I just wanted to summarize by only saying, you know, I think about like the work we do at Mormon Stories where, you know, we do have tens or hundreds of thousands of viewers or listeners. I think about the work Sam Young did with Protect LDS Children and I think about the work you do. We try and call out Kurt McConkey from time to time and kind of alert whoever we can about some of these injustices. And I often do, I often wonder, like, number one, do they even pay attention to us? And I know they do at some level, but there's a part of me that thinks we're nothing. And then there's a part of me that thinks that we're like a fly on the rear end of a horse where the worst they really care about us is just a tail that occasionally kind of swoops the fly off.

Tim Kosnoff [02:27:07] I, I've heard it's hard to know

John Dehlin [02:27:09] how important this work is or how relevant or irrelevant this work actually is to church headquarters. In the curtain. McCon.

Tim Kosnoff [02:27:18] Oh, I think they're afraid of you. I mean, I've heard that.

John Dehlin [02:27:20] I'm not saying me, I'm saying all of us collectively, just to be clear.

Tim Kosnoff [02:27:23] Well, but I'm told that they have paid spies whose full time job is to like, watch your episodes and to monitor this stuff. So I mean, they've got a 250 person communications department, so they've got, you know, I don't know what else they do. So, yeah, they're concerned about, you know, you're, you're, you're threatening to them. This is threatening to them because they can't silence us. But let me finish a little bit on Curtin, McConkie and the church and throw them a little credit. We've been resolving cases with them

McConkie on the Sancho Panza Case

John Dehlin [02:28:06] over

Tim Kosnoff [02:28:07] the last 18 months. We have several hundred. We've resolved 77, I think.

Gerardo Sumano [02:28:18] Wow.

Tim Kosnoff [02:28:19] With them, no lawsuit, no litigation, no scorched earth in some cases. And legally, our cases were not very strong. In fact, legally meritless. But they wanted to express regret, and so they paid a nominal sum to the individual, even though they knew that we wouldn't file a lawsuit because the economics of it wouldn't make sense. But they said, bring us your cases, and we'll evaluate them and we'll decide what we want to do. In other cases where they had significant legal exposure, they did the smart thing, and they paid, I think, fair value for a case that doesn't have to be filed, litigated over three or four or five years. And that's been a lesson for me, too, which is I don't have enough years in my life to take on these Sancho Panza lawsuits where I'm tilting at windmills for three, four, five years. And the church has the ability to stretch that out. And they know that and I know that. And so we get together, and we, with the help of a very good mediator, were able to resolve these cases. And a lot of times, you know, our clients, even though we didn't get the greatest amount for them, we're just so grateful that we tried and that the church at least did something. And so, you know, I credit particularly this younger generation of lawyers at Curtin McConkie. Of course, you know, they. They can't do anything without approval of general counsel and something, you know, a big case, they probably has to go up to the president. But they are trying to do right by many of these victims. And that's new. And whether that's policy or that's just good business by the church, you know, that needs to be recognized. So I guess my days of throwing bricks at the church are over. What I've said today is based on my experience, and it is what it is. But I believe there are people of goodwill over there that want to. That want to do right, not because they're legally obligated to, but because they feel it's the right thing to do. And in my experience, that's new.

John Dehlin [02:31:20] Those are some words of hope and of progress to end this episode with.

Tim Kosnoff [02:31:26] That's not bad. All right. Yeah, it's Been fun.

A Live Stream Audience!

John Dehlin [02:31:31] All right, well, we've had a great live stream audience, man. We're almost at 900 still throughout a two and a half hour episode. And that's a. That's a large number for a live stream. These are people who are at their jobs or, you know, doing work at home, and they're. They're tuning in. So pretty much almost a thousand people have been consistently watching throughout this entire episode. So we want to thank everyone on Facebook and YouTube. We've loved your comments. We haven't been able to incorporate the comments quite as much because we're just trying to make the most of Tim's time. But if any of you want to join either of the Facebook or the YouTube live streams and watch, you can watch the live comments as they came in because, Gerardo, am I right? There's been some great comments.

Gerardo Sumano [02:32:13] Yes. Yeah, people have been great. Yeah, it's been great.

John Dehlin [02:32:18] Yeah. Gerardo, any final thing or summary you want to add because.

Gerardo Sumano [02:32:22] Well, okay, this episode has been great. Thanks, Tim, for being with us. I found out early on the episode that an opinion article that I wrote with my friend Brenton got published in the trip, in the trip today about the church's response to the AP article. So I'll drop a link on the comments. You can go and look it up

John Dehlin [02:32:44] and in the show notes. We put that in the show notes as well.

Gerardo Sumano [02:32:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:32:47] Congrats.

Gerardo Sumano [02:32:48] Thanks.

John Dehlin [02:32:48] That's super. Great. That's Britain. Who was on yesterday on Mormon Stories.

Mormon Stories: If the Mormon Church Settles the Boy Scout

Gerardo Sumano [02:32:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:32:52] Congrats.

Gerardo Sumano [02:32:53] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:32:53] That's great. And we want to thank everyone who's donated to this episode through the Super Chat feature on Facebook or through the Stars feature on. Sorry, super chat feature on YouTube or the stars feature on Facebook. We do depend on your donations to kind of keep the lights on. So thanks for your financial support. If you're already a supporter or if you use the Super Chat feature today, and if you value this type of programming, if you want there to be a few Davids to kind of go against the Goliaths out there, we would love you to become a monthly supporter@mormonstories.org really quickly, Tim, if people want to follow you or support you or support any, you know, cases or actions. I don't even know if you're allowed to kind of talk about that, but I do want to give you a chance to let listeners or viewers know how to at least follow what you're doing, if not support what you're doing. Sure.

Tim Kosnoff [02:33:45] Well, I've been mostly consumed by the Boy Scout case. The attorneys That I work with the two other firms. We jointly represent 17,000 out of 82,500 Boy Scout survivors. We represent approximately 700, 800 LDS Boy Scout cases. So I've got my eye on that. There's a new plan that is going to be filed today that will, I guess, determine whether or not the Boy Scouts250. $250 million settlement by the Mormon Church. By the Mormon Church, I meant to say is. Is still there, whether they're going to pull that. And that has, you know, implications. But, you know, I. I'm hopeful that we could move forward if the church pulls out and resolve those cases directly with the church through the process we've already set up. I think we can. And so we've got. I think we've got some goodwill going between us and the lawyers at Curtin McConkie, and I'd like to build on that.

John Dehlin [02:34:57] So.

Tim Kosnoff [02:34:58] So that's the Boy Scout cases. The, the other cases. I can be found on Twitter. I tweet, I'm at Sexabuse Attorneys. S E X a B U S E a T T Y S Or just type in Kosnoff and you'll find me and you can send me a message there. If you think you have a case that you'd like to bring, contact us. We'll evaluate it and let you know. And maybe we will undertake representation. But in terms of filing lawsuits, It's just, I'm 68, I'm losing my hearing, and I just don't have the juice left to actually litigate anymore. That's for a younger generation of lawyers.

John Dehlin [02:35:55] So we'll. We'll have to say, hey, attorneys out there that care about these types of cases. I don't really know who to refer to these days when. Because people come to me monthly and say I've been sexually abused. Do you have an attorney? You know, within a church context, do you have an attorney? And I almost never know who to send them to. So I guess this is a call for any attorneys out there who are, have been or want to represent these types of clients. I need to know so I can have a digital Rolodex of who to refer people to.

Tim Kosnoff [02:36:26] Well, this is the sad story, which is, other than me and my little band, I can't think of anybody. There's lots of lawyers out there that'll represent that. They have experience in this area, and maybe they do in the Catholic Church area and so forth, but the Mormon Church in these cases, it's a completely different kettle of fish. And if you come in and, you know, with a flamethrower, and we're going to, you know, and you threaten them and, you know, we want $150 million a little bit like this attorney down in Arizona in this case. I mean, you're not going to get any traction. And I don't think you're serving your client very well. That case is eventually going to settle. The church is probably ready to settle it now, and the plaintiffs ought to think about it, because that clergy penitent privilege issue in that statute down there, I understand there's a motion to dismiss right now. They could lose on. The plaintiffs could lose on that. I mean, the church has a legitimate shot on that. And if they win, there's not going to be any settlement. So I think those lawyers ought to think long and hard about. I mean, what happened was horrible. But your goal as a lawyer is to get the best recovery you can for your gravely injured client. And it may not be what you think it's worth, but you have to be realistic. And the church, you know, and their lawyers, they evaluate these cases all day long. And, you know, the. They know in their mind what they think a case is worth. And sometimes we're pretty close and we agree, and other times we disagree. But then we negotiate and mediate and the parties come closer together and there's a compromise. That's the way these cases ought to be handled. To drag your client, particularly a minor client, through the juggernaut of litigation, I mean, it's revictimizing. It's terrible. You know, I mean, it's hard on the lawyers and on the clients. It's just having to relive this pain and keep this open wound open for years. You know, as a lawyer, you have to sit back and really ask yourself, what is in the best interest of your client? Is it $5 million five years from now, or is it $2 million or $1.5 million today? Ultimately, it's the client's decision. But a lot of times the lawyers kind of manhandle the client into going the way the lawyer wants instead of the way the client wants. So I learned early on that the smartest person in your case is your client, and you ought to listen to them, because they may not be saying it very articulately, but you need to hear them and listen to what they want and what they think and what they feel, because otherwise, you're not serving your client. So with that said, I don't have any names for you. You know, I'm hoping that there'll be some lawyers that'll get into this line of work for the right reasons and prepare themselves. And because there's a need. There's a tremendous need. And so I don't have a good answer.

John Dehlin [02:39:57] Okay, well, that is a good answer. It shows us where the need is and a vacuum that needs to be filled. So, so listeners and viewers don't go away, we're gonna take a short potty break and maybe grab a quick bite of lunch and we're going to come right back for the next part with Tim Koznoff and we're going to talk about the Boy Scouts of America, maybe a little bit about the history of the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts of America, a history of, of abuse or cover ups or litigation. And then talk about maybe the most recent bankruptcy of the Boy Scouts and the, the, you know, 250 million dollar offering of a settlement by the Mormon Church. What, what was it, what that was about and then kind of where things are today. And then maybe we have to have a future episode if things change. But anyway, we're going to have at least an overview of the Mormon Church, the Boy Scouts, sexual abuse and litigation coming, coming next. So please join us right back. We may start right at 1pm for those of you who are joining the live stream or we may start a little bit later than that to give us a chance for a break. But we love your live support. So please don't go away. Please join us. Thanks for your support today. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Gerardo. And thanks, Maven, if you've been involved at all. And we'll see you all again right on the flip side for another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.