Paul Bryant

Paul Bryant Mormon Sex Crime Case Summary

Paul Bryant was a former HOA president and LDS church member.

Bryant served a full-time mission for the LDS church in Cordoba, Argentina.

LDS church callings Bryant held include branch president (on his mission to Argentina), cub scout leader, Primary teacher, young men’s leader, and elders quorum presidency member.

Bryant was married in the Salt Lake LDS temple. He was later divorced and his temple sealing was cancelled (often informally called a “temple divorce”).

In 2016, Bryant was convicted of child sexual abuse. He took a plea deal and served two years in prison.

Bryant was convicted in 2016 of:
Description : 76-5-404.1 – AGGRAVATED SEXUAL ABUSE OF A CHILD-ATTEMPTED/1ST DEGREE FELONY (attempted)

According to FLOODLIT’s sources, Bryant’s LDS bishop wrote to the judge in his behalf.

A source familiar with Bryant’s case reported that one of Bryant’s victims told an LDS bishop in Alpine, Utah about the abuse. The bishop called the victim a liar and did not notify police or Bryant’s wife, according to the source.

After Bryant’s divorce, plea agreement, admission of guilt and prison time served, his new Mormon bishop in Lehi, Utah continued to protect him at great lengths to his congregation, according to the source.

—

Thanks to your donations, FLOODLIT has obtained court records in Bryant’s case.

A police probable cause statement in Bryant’s case reads in part:

“PROBABLE CAUSE STATEMENT: [officer], Utah County Sheriff’s Office, having probable cause to believe a crime was committed, submitted evidence in support of the filing of this Information: For more than a decade, Paul Bryant has been sexually abusing two [redacted] children, in the Highland/Alpine area, on a regular basis.

Between 3/25/1998 and 3/24/2005, Bryant molested [a boy] at least twice a year (he disclosed at least 1-2 times a month) for seven years when he was between 6 and 13 years of age (COUNTS 1-14). […] During the years of molestation, Bryant told [the boy] not to disclose the abuse, saying that if [the boy] did disclose, Bryant “would kill [him] or make [his] friends disappear and get away with it because he was in the FBI and knew all the laws and how it worked.” […] Bryant was in a position of special trust, which is an aggravating factor.

Between 7/6/2003 and 7/5/2007, Bryant molested [a girl] at least twice a year when she was between 10 and 13 years of age. […] Bryant was in a position of special trust, which is an aggravating factor.

During the investigation, [a woman] disclosed she was molested by Bryant when she was 6 or 7 (and he was 14 YO) […]. Post-Miranda, Bryant confessed that [the woman] was the sexual aggressor […]. He denied sexually touching [son] and or [daughter]

After Bryant was booked into jail on August 31, 2015 for the above 22 charges, he called his father and neighbor/girlfriend on September 1 to repeatedly asked them to tamper with the victims’ willingness to cooperate with the investigation and prosecution of the case. At 2:48pm, he called his father and told him to contact [the male victim] and [the female victim] to explain to them the “grave consequences” of what they were doing and to have them “go and tell the officers, ‘Hey, we were mad at [Bryant] and we were willing to work things out;’ maybe there would be a change of heart” (COUNTS 24 & 25). At 3:59pm, Bryant called his neighbor/girlfriend to tell her that she needed to “beg, plead, do whatever you have to do to talk to [[the male victim] and [the female victim]] and have them drop the charges” (COUNTS 26 & 27).”

—

According to Bryant’s plea agreement, he was to “serve two consecutive one-year sentences in the Utah County Jail” and be on supervised probation for five years.

On April 3, 2019, Bryant completed a sex offender treatment program.

—

from KSL on 2019-12-04:

“AMERICAN FORK — Utah County sheriff’s detectives are investigating why they say a registered sex offender visited an elementary school for four consecutive days during Halloween without ever signing in at the front office.

Paul Bryant, 51, of Lehi, was arrested Monday for investigation of four counts of being a sex offender in a protected area.

From Oct. 28-31, Bryant visited an undisclosed elementary school in American Fork, according to a police affidavit. Bryant is a friend of a teacher in the school and went to that teacher’s classroom, said Utah County Sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Cannon.

Bryant does not have a child who attends the school, Cannon said. Whether the teacher knew Bryant was not allowed to be on school property was not known Tuesday, but Cannon said it was something that Bryant should have known.

“He had no legitimate reason at all to be there. He knew that. His signature is on the Sex Offender Registry agreement,” he said.

Bryant pleaded guilty in 2016 to three counts of attempted aggravated sex abuse of a child, after originally being arrested for investigation of 21 counts of aggravated sex abuse of a child. He was given a suspended prison term, but sentenced to a year in jail followed by probation.

“In July of 2019, Paul was released early from probation but as a lifetime member of the Sex Offender Registry, he was still required to register as a sex offender and adhere to the Sex Offender Registry laws and requirements,” deputies noted in the new arresting affidavit.

As part of the requirements for being a registered sex offender, Bryant is not allowed to enter “protected areas” such as schools.

But over Halloween, Bryant visited an elementary school — an action that was noticed by “several others” who called the sheriff’s office to investigate, Cannon said.

“Interviews with the teacher and school administrators revealed that Paul had been present in the elementary school on at least four different occasions the week of Halloween, Oct. 28–31. All visitors to the school are required to sign the ‘visitor registration log’ located in the main office. Even though Paul visited the main office on all four of his visits, he never signed the visitor registration logbook,” according to the affidavit.
“There would be ample opportunities for Paul to interact in an unsupervised manner with the children. This interaction would be further facilitated by the presence of a dog.”
–Police affidavit

A picture was presented to detectives showing Bryant in a Halloween costume at the school, the affidavit states. On at least one occasion, he also brought a service dog to the school with him.

“This occurred during the lunch hour when the kids were in the halls and where there would be ample opportunities for Paul to interact in an unsupervised manner with the children. This interaction would be further facilitated by the presence of a dog,” the affidavit states. “It should also be noted that on at least one occasion, Paul brought treats for the children in the teacher’s class. Many of these elementary school children would be around the same approximate age of the male child victim that Paul has previously admitted sexually assaulting.”

Bryant requested his attorney be present when deputies went to his home to interview him, according to the sheriff’s office. After he was arrested and taken to jail, his attorney was able to post bail.”