Victim
Sues LDS Church, Sex Abuser
Tuesday, July 2, 2002
BY ELIZABETH NEFF
A child sexual abuse victim filed suit against The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints Monday, accusing Mormon leaders of providing a safe harbor for
the pedophile who abused him.
The plaintiff,
identified only as A. Doe, claims defendant Mitchell Blake Young abused him
between 1987 and 1992, when he was 6 to 12 years old. Young was convicted in
1993 of sexually abusing the boy and is serving a term of up to 15 years in Utah
State Prison for the crime. Filed late Monday in 3rd District Court, the suit
names Young and his father, Gordon Young.
The suit alleges
Gordon Young encouraged A. Doe's mother to entrust her children to Young for
religious instruction, despite knowing his son was on probation for molesting
children in Arizona. The suit also alleges church leaders knew Young had
sexually abused children for more than a decade when he began abusing A. Doe,
who is a Salt Lake County resident now in his 20s.
The case is the
latest in a string of lawsuits that accuse the LDS Church of failing to report
sexual abuse of children to law enforcement. Church spokesman Mike Otterson
declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying he had not yet seen it. "We are
determined to pursue child abuse in the church where it exists, and we have an
unsurpassed record in doing it," Otterson said.
The church has
said it encourages members to report abuse to law enforcement and now has a
system that flags the membership records of those with any reported child abuse
complaints. The church also set up a toll-free number for leaders to report
abuse. According to the lawsuit, Gordon Young and the LDS Church knew of Young's
abuse of children as early as 1975. That year, the suit said, Gordon Young
received complaints that his son had abused neighborhood children in the Butler
20th Ward in Salt Lake County.
In 1980, the
church sent Young on a mission to the Whitefish Bay area of Canada, where the
church received reports he was sexually abusing children from a nearby tribe,
the suit said. The church recalled Young from the mission but failed to report
him to authorities. Instead, he was "cured" through counseling and
therapy, it said.
In 1985, in
Maricopa County, Ariz., Young was convicted of sex crimes against two children,
ages 4 and 7, and was sentenced to 5 years' probation. Then-Butler ward Bishop
James H. Woodward wrote a letter to the judge volunteering to monitor and
supervise Young and urging against a prison sentence. The letter did not
disclose the church's prior knowledge of child abuse allegations against Young.
In 1986, Young
met A. Doe's mother, a single woman in the Butler 20th Ward. Gordon Young hoped
to "cure" his son by marrying him to the woman, who had just
immigrated to the United States, the suit alleged. Gordon Young told the mother
his son was a religion instructor to gain her trust, the suit claims. Young was
often left alone in his father's Utah home with her children, and there he
sexually abused the plaintiff, the suit alleges.
Although church
leaders knew Young's unsupervised contact with the plaintiff and his siblings
was a violation of his Arizona probation, the contact was not reported, the
lawsuit said. In April 1988, Young pleaded guilty to new criminal charges of
sexual misconduct with a group of four boys in the locker room of a Salt Lake
City youth center. That information was deliberately concealed from the young
mother by the Youngs and church leaders, and the abuse against her son
continued, the lawsuit claims. The suit asks for unspecified damages.
