The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that bishops in the LDS Church don't have to report child sex abuse if they learn of the crime during a confessional setting.
MJ and her adoptive mother sit for an interview in Sierra Vista, Ariz., Oct. 27, 2021. State authorities placed MJ in foster care after learning that her father, the late Paul Adams, sexually assaulted her and posted video of the assaults on the internet.| Updated: 11:30 p.m.
as early as 2010. This negligence, the lawsuit argues, allowed Adams to continue abusing the girl for as many as seven years, a time in which he also abused the girl’s infant sister. Adams had also posted videos of himself sexually abusing his daughters on the internet, boasted of the abuse on social media, and confessed to federal law enforcement agents, who arrested him in 2017 with no help from the church.Those actions prompted Cochise County Superior Court Judge Laura Cardinal to rule Aug. 8, 2022, that Adams had waived his right to keep his 2010 confession to Bishop John Herrod secret.
On Dec. 15, the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the church, saying it did not have to turn over disciplinary records for Adams, who was excommunicated in 2013. The Appeals Court also ruled that a church official who attended a church disciplinary hearing could refuse to answer questions from the plaintiffs’ attorneys during pretrial testimony, based on the clergy-penitent privilege.
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