Docs: Utah lawmaker told Mormon bishop not to report abuse

A Utah lawmaker and prominent attorney for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints advised a church bishop not to report a confession of child sex abuse to authorities, a decision that allowed the abuse to continue for years, according to records filed in a lawsuit.

The records — two pages from a log of calls fielded by a law firm representing the church and the deposition of a church official — show that Utah Republican State Rep. Merrill F. Nelson took the initial call from a bishop reporting that church member Paul Adams had sexually abused his daughters. Nelson also had multiple conversations over a two-year span with two bishops who knew of the abuse, the records show.

Nelson is a conservative lawmaker who was elected to the Utah House of Representatives in 2013 and announced his retirement earlier this year. He was also a lawyer with the Salt Lake City firm Kiron McConkie, which represents the church. He earned his undergraduate and law degree from church-owned Brigham Young University.

A transcript of the deposition and excerpts of the call log were attached to a legal filing in the Arizona Court of Appeals made by lawyers for the plaintiffs. Three of Adams's children are battling the church, widely known as the Mormon church, for access to records the church insists are confidential. The church took the case to the Court of Appeals after a Cochise County judge ruled in favor of the victims.

According to the plaintiff's legal filing, Nelson advised Bishop John Herrod not to report the abuse and told him "that he could be sued if he reported, and the instruction by counsel not to report Paul to the authorities was the law in Arizona and had nothing to do with Church doctrine." But Arizona's child sex abuse reporting law grants blanket legal immunity to anyone reporting child sex abuse or neglect.

The AP reported in August that Adams confessed to Herrod in 2010 that he sexually abused his daughter, identified as MJ.

The church's lawyers have said Herrod, and later bishop Robert "Kim" Mauzy, legally withheld information about MJ's abuse under the state's clergy-penitent privilege. Arizona law generally requires clergy members to report child neglect and sexual abuse but allows them to withhold information obtained during a spiritual confession.