How Mormon Officials Let It Happen

The father, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a porn addict, was consulting with his bishop when he disclosed the abuse. The bishop, who was also a family physician, followed church policy and called what church officials called a “helpline” for guidance. But the call offered little help for MJ. Attorneys for the church, widely known as the Mormon church, which staffs the 24-hour helpline, told Bishop John Herrod not to call the police or child welfare officials. Instead, she kept the abuse a secret. “They said, ‘There’s absolutely nothing you can do,’” Herod said in a taped interview with law enforcement. Herrod continued to counsel MJ’s father, Paul Douglas Adams, for another year, and brought in Adams’ wife, Leizza Adams, in hopes that she would do something to protect the children. He did not do it. Herrond later told a second bishop, who also kept the matter secret after consulting with church officials who maintain that the bishops were excused from reporting the abuse to police under the so-called state privilege of penitent clergy. Addams continued to rape MJ for another seven years, into her teenage years, and also molested her infant, who was born during that time. He often recorded the abuse on video and posted the video online. Adams was eventually arrested by Homeland Security agents in 2017 without help from the church after law enforcement in New Zealand discovered one of the videos. He died by suicide in custody before he could stand trial. Paul Douglas Adams was arrested in 2017 and died by suicide while in custody. AP The Associated Press has obtained nearly 12,000 pages of sealed records from an unrelated child sex abuse lawsuit against the Mormon church in West Virginia. The documents offer the most detailed and comprehensive look at the so-called helpline called Herrod. The families of the survivors who filed the suit said it shows they are part of a system that can be easily abused by church leaders to deflect accusations of abuse from law enforcement and instead to church lawyers who may bury the problem , leaving victims at risk. The helpline has been criticized by abuse victims and their lawyers for not doing enough to quickly stop abuse and protect victims. But the Utah-based faith has clung to the system despite criticism and growing scrutiny from lawyers and prosecutors, including those in the Adams case. “I just think the Mormon church is really crap. Serious shit,” MJ, who is now 16, said during an interview with the AP. “They’re just the worst kind of people, from what I’ve experienced and what other people have experienced.” MJ and her stepmother asked the AP to use only her initials in part because videos of her abuse posted by her father are still circulating online. The AP does not publish the names of sexual abuse survivors without their consent. William Maledon, an Arizona lawyer representing the bishops and the church in a lawsuit filed by three of Adams’ six children, told the AP last month that the bishops were not required to report the abuse. “These bishops did nothing wrong. They did not break the law and therefore cannot be held responsible,” he said. Maledon referred to the suit as a “money grab.” In his interview with the AP, Maledon also insisted that Herrod was unaware that Adams continued to sexually assault his daughter after learning about the abuse in a single counseling session. But in the taped interview with the agent obtained by the AP, Herrod said he asked Leizza Adams in several sessions if the abuse was continuing and asked her, “What are we going to do to stop it?” “At least for a time I assumed things had stopped, but – and then I never asked if they picked up again.” MJ hugs her stepmother, Nancy Salminen, in Sierra Vista, Ariz.AP “The Perfect Lifestyle” The Adams family lived on a lonely dirt road about 8 miles from downtown Bisbee, an old copper mining town in southeastern Arizona known today for its antique shops and laid-back attitude. Away from prying eyes, Adams’ home — an open, three-bedroom affair surrounded by desert — was often filled with piles of clothing and containers of lube Adams used to sexually abuse his children, according to legal documents reviewed from AP. Paul’s wife, Leizza, took on most of the parenting responsibilities, including taking their six children to school and driving them to church and religious instruction on Sundays. Paul, who worked for the US Border Patrol, spent much of his time online looking at porn, often with his children watching, or wandering around the house naked or in nothing but his underwear. He had a short fuse and often threw things, yelled at his wife and hit his children. “She just had this explosive personality,” said Shaunice Warr, a Border Patrol agent and a Mormon who worked with Paul and described herself as Leizza’s best friend. “He had a horrible temper.” Pavlos was more relaxed while forcing his older daughter to hold a smartphone camera and record him sexually abusing her. He also seemed to revel in the abuse in online chat rooms, once boasting that he had “the perfect lifestyle” because he could have sex with his daughters whenever he wanted, while his wife knew and “doesn’t care”. She would later tell investigators that the abuse was a compulsion that could not be stopped. “I got into something very deep that I couldn’t get out of,” he said. “I’m not trying to say the devil made me do it.” The Addams family was deeply involved in the Mormon community and attended services in Bisbee on Sundays. So Adams turned to his church and Bishop Herrond when he asked for help and exposed MJ’s abuse. Herod later told Homeland Security agent Robert Edwards that he knew from the beginning that Lisa Adams was unlikely to stop her husband after he invited her to the counseling sessions. The bishop, who was also Leizza’s personal doctor, said she seemed “quite emotionally dead” when her husband recounted the abuse of their daughter. The bishop also acknowledged the harm done to MJ. “I doubt (she) will ever do well,” he said in his taped interview with Homeland Security agents. Brian McIntyre, the Cochise County District Attorney, poses for a portrait outside the Cochise County Superior Court in Bisbee, Ariz., Oct. 29, 2021.AP Herrod also told Edwards that when he called the help line, church officials told him that his clergy-state penance privilege required him to keep Adams’ abuse confidential. But the law did not require such a thing. Arizona’s child sexual abuse reporting law, and similar laws in more than 20 states that require clergy to report child sexual abuse and neglect, say that clergy, doctors, nurses or anyone caring for a child who “reasonably believes” that a child has been abused or neglected has a legal obligation to report the information to the police or State Department of Child Safety. But it also says that clergy who receive information about child neglect or sexual abuse during spiritual confessions “may withhold” that information from authorities if the clergy deem it “reasonable and necessary” according to church doctrine. In 2012, when Herod stepped down as bishop of the Bisbee Ward — a Mormon jurisdiction similar to a Catholic parish — he told incoming bishop Robert “Kim” Mauzy about the abuse at the Adams home. Instead of saving MJ by reporting the abuse to the authorities, Mauzy also kept the information inside the church. In a separate taped interview with federal agents obtained by the AP, Mauzy said church officials told him he should convene a confidential disciplinary hearing for Adams, after which Adams was released in 2013. Mauzy and other church leaders did not they still reported Adams to the police. Two years later, in 2015, Leizza Adams gave birth to a second daughter. It took her husband just six weeks to start sexually assaulting her, recording the abuse and uploading the videos online. MJ and her stepmother sit down for an interview in Sierra Vista, Ariz.AP The revelation that Mormon officials may have directed an effort to cover up years of abuse at the Adams home sparked a criminal investigation of the church by Cochise County District Attorney Brian McIntyre and a civil lawsuit by three of Adams’ children. “Who is really responsible for Herrod’s failure to disclose?” McIntyre asked in an AP interview. “Is it Herrod,” who says he followed the church’s lawyers’ instruction not to report the abuse to authorities? “Or the people who gave him that advice?” “The call is coming to my mobile” Regarding child sexual abuse, the Mormon church says “the church’s first responsibility in cases of abuse is to help those who have been abused and to protect those who may be vulnerable to future abuse,” according to a 2010 handbook for church leaders leaders. . The handbook also says, “Abuse cannot be tolerated in any form.” But church officials, from bishops in the Bisbee Ward to officials in Salt Lake City, tolerated abuse in the Adams family for years. “They just let it keep happening,” MJ said in her interview with the AP. “They just said, ‘Hey, let’s exonerate her father.’ It didn’t stop. “Let’s let them heal.” It didn’t stop. ‘Hey, let’s forgive and forget and all this will go away.’ He didn’t leave.” A similar dynamic occurred in West Virginia, where church leaders were accused of covering up the crimes…