Key Points:

• Appeals court rules against Mormon church in child sexual abuse case

• Lower court has tossed lawsuit

• Church leaders say they will appeal, citing confession confidentiality

An appeals court has revived a lawsuit accusing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and two of its bishops of failing to tell authorities that a Bisbee man was sexually abusing his young children. 

The lawsuit filed by two daughters and a son who were victims of Paul Adams had been dismissed by a judge in Cochise County in 2023. The judge ruled there was no evidence church officials knew of the abuse of the children identified in court as Jane Doe 1 and 2 and John Doe outside of the confidential communications they had with Adams. 

Cochise County Superior Court Judge Timothy Dickerson noted that Arizona laws that require such incidents to be reported are overridden when the only source of that information is divulged to them in ‘confession’ or similar conversations.

The Court of Appeals had ruled before Dickerson dismissed the case that church confessionals in this case were protected. 

But the new ruling said a jury should decide if church leaders knew of the abuse in other ways.

Attorneys for the three children pointed out in their appeal that Adams had told his wife, Leizza, about the abuse during a meeting their bishop set up after he confessed to him. They argued that statement triggered Arizona’s mandatory reporter law because it fell outside the confession and the bishop was present. 

They also argued that the excommunication hearing and subsequent appeal, during which Paul Adams admitted the abuse, triggered the law. Adams had admitted the abuse to a church appeals panel that upheld his 2013 excommunication.

The appeals court’s new ruling said a jury could conclude that was the case.

“A jury could reasonably infer that Paul’s actions in the later proceeding voluntarily waived the clergy-penitent privilege for the purpose of disclosing his abuse of Doe to all members in attendance, clergy and non-clergy alike,” Appeals Court Judge Christopher P. Staring wrote for the three-judge panel that reversed the trial court dismissal.

The church argued both were protected.

The children’s attorneys also pointed to a portion of the church’s “general handbook” and testimony of Adams’ first church counselor, which they said contradicted assertions by the church lawyers that Paul’s confession “must have been kept secret” according to Church doctrine, according to the new ruling.

The trial court judge didn’t indicate if he had considered that argument or whether it constituted a “genuine issue of material fact,” Starling wrote for the panel. 

“We believe it does,” he wrote.

The handbook entry and testimony also raise questions about whether the church and its bishops broke their own rules about when reporting Adams was required, the appeals court said.

“In other words, there is a genuine issue whether it was “reasonable and necessary” for Church Defendants to withhold reporting Jane Doe I’s abuse,” the ruling said.

The Court of Appeals ruling, issued July 29, found that a jury could conclude that the bishops and the church did have outside knowledge of the abuse. They sent the case back to the lower court for a trial.

But The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says it will appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court. It issued a statement saying that it “dedicates significant resources to prevent, report and address abuse.”

“In this tragic case involving abuse perpetrated by the children’s father, the Church and its clergy acted in accordance with Arizona law,” the statement said. 

The failure of church leaders to tell authorities what they knew about the abuse meant Adams’ children were subjected to years of additional abuse before he was arrested. The arrest came after an unrelated tip to authorities about sexually explicit videos of the abuse he posted online.

In addition to the LDS church, the lawsuit names two bishops who counseled Adams. Adams confessed to John Herrod, a bishop of the Bisbee Ward, that he had sexually abused his elder daughter. Herrod then had Leizza attend a session where he repeated the admission. 

When Herrod left his post in 2012, he told the new bishop, Kim Mauzy, about the abuse. Adams was excommunicated from the church in 2013, but he continued to live with his wife and their children.

He committed suicide in jail after his 2017 arrest. Liezza Adams, who learned of the abuse in the church meeting with their bishop, was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison after admitting she did not report that her children were being molested. She was released in 2020.

In an interview on July 30, the children’s attorney, John Trebon, said the appeals court ruling was important because it prevents clergy from hiding abuse when the law requires that it be reported to authorities. He called that duty “fundamentally important for the protection of children who have no voice and have no other protection if they’re being abused by their own parents.”

If third parties know or should know about abuse, he said it is a minimal and moral obligation to report it. And he said courts need to look carefully before letting exceptions be carved out. 

“If everybody can chip away at (mandatory reporting laws), then the children don’t have any protection anymore,” Trebon said. “So it’s good that the courts are willing to give it a real life, because sometimes those statutes can be snuffed out with litigation.”