Paul Rytting listened as a woman, voice quavering, told him her story.
When she was a child, her father, a former bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had routinely slipped into bed with her while he was aroused, she said.
It was March 2017 and Rytting offered his sympathies as 31-year-old Chelsea Goodrich spoke. A Utah attorney and head of the church’s Risk Management Division, Rytting had spent about 15 years protecting the organization, widely known as the Mormon church, from costly claims, including sexual abuse lawsuits.
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Audio recordings of the meetings over the next four months, obtained by The Associated Press, show how Rytting, despite expressing concern for what he called John’s “significant sexual transgression,” would employ the risk management playbook that has helped the church keep child sexual abuse cases secret. In particular, the church would discourage Miller from testifying, citing a law that exempts clergy from having to divulge information about child sex abuse that is gleaned in a confession. Without Miller’s testimony, prosecutors dropped the charges, telling Lorraine that her impending divorce and the years that had passed since Chelsea’s alleged abuse might prejudice jurors.
And the same is likely true with virtually every other large denomination and probably a lot of small ones too, because those who preach morality the loudest are often the most hypocritical.
The point of any church is to centralize wealth and power. Otherwise why bother with the bureaucracy, the buildings, and the mandatory meetings?
The problem with centralizing wealth and power is that it attracts people who prioritize wealth and power. The problem compounds itself by making it ridiculously easy for basically any man (men, usually and specifically) to become leaders with basically no qualifications necessary other than claims of faith and a little bit of charisma.
People who wish to abuse power (e.g. for personal sexual satisfaction) will seek institutions that already have power that readily and easily allow it to be abused. Churches have always been their perfect home, always ready and willing to accept new abusers into their flock.
Religion and piety are the easiest things to lie about. No qualifications necessary! In fact, you can work your way all the way to the top of any religion and count on it to protect your abuse at every step of the way because publicly acknowledging that abuse happens is really bad for any religion or religious institution.
Once you get higher into the organization you’ll learn about other bad things the church and its people have done and be able to use that knowledge to blackmail others and maybe even hold the entire institution hostage! It’s how big, rich church leaders are made!
I don’t know what the solution is but I can say that so far the best defense against sexual abuse in general is to avoid church and religious institutions.
Do you really think that church and religion is the primary source of child abuse? You sweet summer child.
Although framed as if religion (and a certain one in particular) were a central part of this case, the perpetrator abused his own daughter. Being at one point a bishop in the Church offered no additional power or opportunities that being a parent didn’t already afford him. The problem is the state of Idaho has a clergy-penitent privilege law. If that law didn’t exist, there would have been no problem with a Latter-day Saint bishop testifying against the abuser.
Go ride supply side Jesus a little harder, and evaporate your critical thinking skills in favor of authoritarian fairtales. Talk about being an idiot, as if those same religious institutions did not lobby for the privilege to not disclose, but sure this isn’t because of religions being able to lobby for laws and buy politicians, sure bud.
Reason failed you, and so you resorted to more bigotry and ad hominem attacks?
Sure, bud.
…Which Mormon leadership strongly pushes to keep. Mormons represent a significant bloc of power in Utah (duh), Idaho, and Arizona. State lawmakers haven’t exempted sexual abuse from priest-penitent privilege in part because the Mormon pro
fphiet has such a strong interest in keep it. They know that the church as a whole would be liable if the privilege didn’t exist, because the policy is to generally cover up sexual crimes because knowledge of those crimes hurts the reputation of the Mormon church. It’s all a PR move; they want to keep the image clean, and that means covering up all the dirty, nasty bits instead of exposing them.These laws exist in nearly every state. Even California has a similar law, and you could hardly say that the Church has a significant influence on politics there.
Most states have religious interests that have lobbied hard to prevent their clergy from having to report sexual abuse to cops, yes. Most state legislatures bow to those interests, rather than really trying to protect people from sexual abuse.
These laws are mostly from the early 19th century. It wasn’t necessary for religious interests to lobby back then because religion was ubiquitous at the time. And even if the laws were more recent, there is nothing inherently immoral or unethical about lobbying for legislation.
There everything immoral and unethical in lobbying for legislation that protects abusers or shields them from consequences. Churches should stay the fuck out of lawmaking.
With that logic, we would have to have a “guilty until proven innocent” judicial system with vigilante justice against people accused of child abuse because our whole system is designed to be (relatively) fair to people accused of committing crimes.