Paul Rytting listened as a woman, voice quavering, told him her story.
When she was a child, her father, a former bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had routinely slipped into bed with her while he was aroused, she said.
It was March 2017 and Rytting offered his sympathies as 31-year-old Chelsea Goodrich spoke. A Utah attorney and head of the church’s Risk Management Division, Rytting had spent about 15 years protecting the organization, widely known as the Mormon church, from costly claims, including sexual abuse lawsuits.
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Audio recordings of the meetings over the next four months, obtained by The Associated Press, show how Rytting, despite expressing concern for what he called John’s “significant sexual transgression,” would employ the risk management playbook that has helped the church keep child sexual abuse cases secret. In particular, the church would discourage Miller from testifying, citing a law that exempts clergy from having to divulge information about child sex abuse that is gleaned in a confession. Without Miller’s testimony, prosecutors dropped the charges, telling Lorraine that her impending divorce and the years that had passed since Chelsea’s alleged abuse might prejudice jurors.
And the same is likely true with virtually every other large denomination and probably a lot of small ones too, because those who preach morality the loudest are often the most hypocritical.
The point of any church is to centralize wealth and power. Otherwise why bother with the bureaucracy, the buildings, and the mandatory meetings?
The problem with centralizing wealth and power is that it attracts people who prioritize wealth and power. The problem compounds itself by making it ridiculously easy for basically any man (men, usually and specifically) to become leaders with basically no qualifications necessary other than claims of faith and a little bit of charisma.
People who wish to abuse power (e.g. for personal sexual satisfaction) will seek institutions that already have power that readily and easily allow it to be abused. Churches have always been their perfect home, always ready and willing to accept new abusers into their flock.
Religion and piety are the easiest things to lie about. No qualifications necessary! In fact, you can work your way all the way to the top of any religion and count on it to protect your abuse at every step of the way because publicly acknowledging that abuse happens is really bad for any religion or religious institution.
Once you get higher into the organization you’ll learn about other bad things the church and its people have done and be able to use that knowledge to blackmail others and maybe even hold the entire institution hostage! It’s how big, rich church leaders are made!
I don’t know what the solution is but I can say that so far the best defense against sexual abuse in general is to avoid church and religious institutions.
Do you really think that church and religion is the primary source of child abuse? You sweet summer child.
Although framed as if religion (and a certain one in particular) were a central part of this case, the perpetrator abused his own daughter. Being at one point a bishop in the Church offered no additional power or opportunities that being a parent didn’t already afford him. The problem is the state of Idaho has a clergy-penitent privilege law. If that law didn’t exist, there would have been no problem with a Latter-day Saint bishop testifying against the abuser.
Go ride supply side Jesus a little harder, and evaporate your critical thinking skills in favor of authoritarian fairtales. Talk about being an idiot, as if those same religious institutions did not lobby for the privilege to not disclose, but sure this isn’t because of religions being able to lobby for laws and buy politicians, sure bud.
Reason failed you, and so you resorted to more bigotry and ad hominem attacks?
Sure, bud.
The problem is the state of Idaho has a clergy-penitent privilege law.
…Which Mormon leadership strongly pushes to keep. Mormons represent a significant bloc of power in Utah (duh), Idaho, and Arizona. State lawmakers haven’t exempted sexual abuse from priest-penitent privilege in part because the Mormon pro
fphiet has such a strong interest in keep it. They know that the church as a whole would be liable if the privilege didn’t exist, because the policy is to generally cover up sexual crimes because knowledge of those crimes hurts the reputation of the Mormon church. It’s all a PR move; they want to keep the image clean, and that means covering up all the dirty, nasty bits instead of exposing them.These laws exist in nearly every state. Even California has a similar law, and you could hardly say that the Church has a significant influence on politics there.
Most states have religious interests that have lobbied hard to prevent their clergy from having to report sexual abuse to cops, yes. Most state legislatures bow to those interests, rather than really trying to protect people from sexual abuse.
These laws are mostly from the early 19th century. It wasn’t necessary for religious interests to lobby back then because religion was ubiquitous at the time. And even if the laws were more recent, there is nothing inherently immoral or unethical about lobbying for legislation.
There everything immoral and unethical in lobbying for legislation that protects abusers or shields them from consequences. Churches should stay the fuck out of lawmaking.
You gotta be pretty evil to need a law that protects you from having to divulge child sexual abuse (or any serious crime).
Re-read the report. Bishop Miller would have testified if the law permitted him to do so. The problem is the abuser had to give permission first, which he obviously wasn’t willing to do.
I stand by my statement. If your institution has such a law to protect it, it is gotta be pretty evil.
In my country and in my profession (teacher), it is stated in law that I am required to report (and testify if needed) any suspicion of child abuse. It is absolutely abhorrent to me that someone wouldn’t be required to. Never mind be protected from it.
Regardless of Bishop Miller’s opinion, that law is exists and is evil. And it taints all those who it protects.Your view is extremist and bigoted, but you’re entitled to it. Assuming you’re a United States citizen, your logic makes everyone evil because there are laws that have the effect of protecting people who commit heinous acts, including about half the Bill of Rights. Labeling religious people evil because there are laws that protect them is bigotry.
Those laws exist because they were lobbied for. It is not bigoted to hate laws that exist to protect abusers or those who are happy to use them. And I am not American, fortunately no such evil protections have been allowed in my country.
Also thinking it is extremist and bigoted to be against laws that exist to protect abusers and those that support them is certainly a take…
I also assume you have taken it as bigoted because you are American and assume that this applies to all clergy. But there are in fact clergy in the world that don’t support such thing. And shockingly many other countries where such disgusting laws don’t exist.
You realize that ALL criminals are protected, right? That’s what “innocent until proven guilty” means.
It’s worth pointing out that the only person actually protected here is the accused. The clergy-penitent privilege law doesn’t actually protect the Church at all in this case.
It is also worth pointing out that, that changes nothing about what I said. It all still applies.
It’s worth pointing our again to you that it’s a granted exemption from reporting, it does not bar that clergy from reporting it mearly gives them a legal excuse not to report. But go on about how it’s not protecting the clergy or church from disclosure.
Wrong. The Bishop cannot divulge the contents of the confession without permission from the penitent.
What are you on about? Duty to report laws make perfect sense to people who are dealing with the vulnerable. I want teachers, doctors, daycare staff to report child abuse. I don’t care if the abuser is the biggest atheist whoever atheisted or the fucking Pope.
@Jonny stated that all religious people are evil because clergy-penitent privilege laws exist. I’m not arguing against mandatory reporting laws here (although I have reservations because of the First Amendment implications). Making a blanket statement that religious people are evil is bigotry.
I don’t see where they said that. Show me the exact quote that says “all religious people are evil”.
For the record I would never say that. I don’t think religion makes you a bad person, I think it makes it harder to be a good one.
I did not state that. Your country is not the only country in the world. Not every religious person is part of the clergy.
I stated, and will state again. Those laws are evil and it taints all those who they protect.The law protects penitents. That is its purpose. It protects them from having their private confessions revealed by trusted clergy members.
It’s the same sort of law as client-attorney privilege or doctor-patient privilege. You’re barking up the wrong tree (and your veiled claim of Americentrism is hilariously off-base here).
Do you find it bigoted because you’re christian or because you’re a paedophile?
You’re getting dragged but you’re right. Clergy is legally allowed to report whatever they want unless the confession is considered by the state to be “protected religious conversation owned by the confessor”. That’s what is happening here. The first article links a second that covers it in greater detail. It’s super fucked up.
If clergy shared their confessions regardless, they’d likely lose their position with the church and could be sued by the confessor, having violated clergy-penitent privilege, but I’d willingly sacrifice my job to keep someone from raping children. These assholes, though, are indoctrinated from the beginning to believe that the confession process is a magical “get out of jail free” card that just puts people on the path of recovery because they showed penitence. How? Native American Jesus, Joseph Smith, and magical hats. Fucking magic.
The last half of your response is bigoted, but I appreciate the words of logic about the issue at hand. I’m not aware of any situations where a bishop has been censured for reporting crimes that they became aware of through a confession, and from my own service in the Church I find such a thing unlikely.
So really, the risk to Bishop Miller in this case has very little, if anything to do with the Church and everything to do with the fact that it would be illegal for him to testify against John Goodrich, and even if he did, his testimony would be inadmissible.
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Making blanket statements about an entire group being brainwashed certainly qualifies as a form of bigotry.
How about you re-read the law, it gives him an exemption from reporting it does not bar him from reporting, its mearly a lobbied excuse from religious institutions. That POS decided not to report instead using his exemption and blaming it on the abuser for his lack of action. Relgions constantly demonstrate they enable abuse in multiple forms, stop apologizing about institutions eroding basic human rights by decrie of myths and fairytales.
Incorrect. The law protects the penitent by requiring their consent before the clergy member can divulge the contents of a private confession.
The Mormon church is not setup into separate regional entities like that catholics have done. Their billions are all vulnerable to lawsuits. Instead they have a pet lawfirm that often recommends illegal and unethical practices to squash lawsuits. If the case looks to be going badly they toss higher and higher settlement numbers to get out of it. They do not want to go through discovery and have to disclose exactly how much money they have (est. several hundred billion)It’s been an extremely effective solution so far.
For example: At one point they made up more than 50% of the boyscouts. They had less checks and protocols for keeping pedophile’s out. They completely dodged all the large lawsuits because they were much better at hiding the horrendous amount of abuse.
The Mormon owned universities have rampant sexual assault issues. You rarely see them reported because the victims are punished for coming forward. The university police force is used to suppress these reports as well.
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Well the founder of the religion raped a 14 year old. Subsequent leaders raped 14-15 year olds routinely. They didn’t stop officially until the early 1900’s when the federal government stepped in. Splinter groups continue to rape teens and children today (Warren Jeff’s is in jail for it today.)
No, dude, but she wasn’t 14, she was a few months shy of her 15th birthday. It’s totally okay, that was normal at the time, c’mon, give Brother Joe a break!
Churches need to start paying taxes. They regularly commit crimes, influence politics, and make absurd amounts of money.
Every structure that is based on authority will have abuse on various levels of it’s structure. Be it church, police, politicians, secret societies, etc. This is because some people trust others, some people have power over others. This relationship will always be abused.
Yes, all of those things need to be either demolished or significantly overhauled. Especially, organized religions, and mostly in the former category.
Mormons abusing children just like every other religion? Wow, shocker, I’m so surprised that an organization specifically created to dupe and control people would abuse their authority to hurt children.
So shocking.
