Mormon Church in sex abuse case

SALT LAKE CITY: A woman who says a former Mormon missionary leader raped her in the 1980s and that the Church failed to take her allegations seriously has filed a lawsuit, saying she wants the Church to change the way it handles sexual abuse reports.

McKenna Denson, 55, said she had opted to take legal action after becoming fed-up that local church leaders failed to take disciplinary action despite reporting the allegations several times over three decades.

Eric Hawkins, a spokesman for The Church of Jesus of Christ of Latter-Day Saints, said the institution had faith in the judicial system.

The Church had said previously that it was investigating Denson’s allegations. Last week it updated guidelines for how local leaders should deal with sexual abuse claims.

The Church should encourage members to report abuse first to police, not local leaders, and require local leaders to call police when they hear of abuse, not a church hotline, Denson’s attorney, Craig Vernon, said.

“Nothing happened. McKenna wasn’t believed,” Vernon said. “McKenna was blamed, McKenna was shamed.”

In the federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday, Denson repeated her allegation that Joseph Bishop had singled her out and sexually assaulted her in 1984 when he was the president of the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah.

Bishop, now 85, has denied raping Denson but acknowledged to police who investigated this year that he had asked her to expose herself, which he said she did. Denson, of Pueblo, Colorado, denied it.

The case became public last month when a conversation Denson secretly recorded with Bishop in December came to light. In it, he is heard apologising to Denson, but he doesn’t say what happened. In the same conversation, Bishop acknowledged molesting an unidentified second woman.

The Mormon Church has said it is investigating both incidents and has vowed to “bring accountability”.

It’s not the first lawsuit filed against the Church alleging sexual abuse by religious leaders, but Bishop held a more prominent position than others.

Denson said the #MeToo movement had given her the courage to think she might be finally believed. She posed as a journalist and secretly recorded the conversation with Bishop.

She said she was not fazed by a dossier prepared by church officials of her criminal record. It includes a shoplifting conviction in 2010 and a police investigation of a death threat she made against Bishop. She wasn’t charged. – AP/African News Agency (ANA)

‘McKenna was

was shamed’