Trial Date Expected In Case Of Church Officials’ Failure To Report Ongoing Sex Abuse Of Children

justice
(Photo by Nathan O'Neal)

A Cochise County judge will announce next month when a jury will be empaneled to decide whether two former bishops with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other church members are civilly liable for years of sexual abuse suffered by children in a Bisbee family, including one molested by her father as an infant.

The three children filed the lawsuit in November 2020, seeking damages for abuse discovered by Interpol in February 2017 and traced back to Paul Douglas Adams, a U.S. Border Patrol agent. A federal investigator later interviewed two of Adams’ local LDS bishops, who acknowledged Adams admitted molestation to church officials as far back as 2011.

Adams killed himself in a federal pretrial detention facility in December 2017. Investigators would eventually find hundreds of photographs and videos of Adams abusing his children, including videos in which one of the children was forced to record her own sexual assault.

A joint report filed last month by the attorneys in the civil lawsuit informed Judge Jason Lindstrom that the case will be ready for a two to three week jury trial by mid-May 2022. The trial date will be set by the judge on April 7.

The parties also used the joint report to advise Lindstrom that a protective order is being negotiated for the judge’s signature. The order will govern public disclosure of various documents -especially medical and mental health records- shared among the parties.

The report also summarizes the case for Lindstrom, who was assigned to the case in January due to the retirement of former Presiding Judge James Conlogue.

“Plaintiffs allege that Defendants knew of the abuse, had a legal obligation to report the abuse to authorities, and failed to do so,” the report states. “As a result, Plaintiffs allege that Defendants were negligent, inflicted emotional distress on Plaintiffs, and breached fiduciary duties to Plaintiffs.”

The Defendants, according to the report, “have denied that they had any legal obligation or legal right to disclose any such abuse of which they may have been aware, have denied the validity of each of the claims set forth by Plaintiffs in the Complaint, and have asserted various affirmative defenses to the claims made by Plaintiffs.”

One issue will be whether Adams’ comments to church officials during counseling sessions were exempt from Arizona’s mandatory child abuse reporting law under a clergy-penitent privilege. Church attorneys argue the bishops would have opened themselves to legal action if they violated the privilege without Paul Adams’ permission.

Sam Penrod, a media relations manager for the LDS Church, issued a statement in January about the Adams case, noting the parents refused to give bishops consent to report the abuse to police. But he pointed out that church officials booted out Paul Adams.

“The bishop also convened a church disciplinary council and condemned the limited conduct he knew of in the strongest terms by excommunicating Mr. Adams from the church in 2013,” Penrod wrote. “It was not until law enforcement made an arrest of the father [in 2017] that the bishop learned of the scope and magnitude of the abuse that far exceeded anything he had heard or suspected.”

Paul Adams’ multiple counseling activities with LDS bishops was publicly revealed in an August 2018 mitigation hearing for the children’s mother Leizza Adams, who served 2.5 years in prison for child abuse and is now on supervised probation stemming from her failure to protect her children.

During the 2018 hearing, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations confirmed a separate ongoing criminal investigation related to the abuse of the Adams children. Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre was asked earlier this month about the status of that investigation.

“We are unable to provide any updates at this time,” McIntyre replied.

However, Arizona Daily Independent is aware that a Cochise County grand jury has addressed some aspect of the case in the last few months and that federal investigators are still involved.

In the meantime, an effort by Sen. Victoria Steele (D-LD9) to remove the clergy-penitent privilege in situations in which it is likely that child abuse is ongoing failed to even make it out of the Committee on Health and Humans Services due to opposition by Sen. Nancy Barto, the committee chair.

“I believe it would not actually solve the problem, as there is no evidence that forcing priests to disclose the contents of a confession would have prevented a case of child abuse,” Barto told a media outlet of her decision to kill the bill.

Steele revealed in 2019 on the senate floor that she was the victim of childhood sexual abuse. It is the second time she’s tried to change Arizona law to make the protection of children more important than the sanctity of an abuser’s confession.

Lynne Cadigan, an attorney representing the Adams children, supported Steele’s bill but believes it did not go far enough in requiring religious organizations and their officials to protect children.

“The church’s religious freedom to keep sex abuse a secret does not outweigh a baby’s right to be free from rape,” she said.

RELATED ARTICLE: Attorneys For Mormon Church Deny Responsibility For Bisbee Bishops’ Failure To Protect Children From Abuse