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.
A Utah lawmaker and prominent attorney for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day 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, reports AP.
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.
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.
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