was an LDS church member in California and Arizona; convicted three times of child sexual abuse; sentenced in 1979 to 6 years in prison for sexually abusing a child; returned to the Mormon church after being released from prison, was made a scout leader and allegedly molested a scout on a campout in about 1987, according to a civil lawsuit; sentenced in Arizona in 1989 to 37 years in prison

Case report

This case arose in 1979 in Prescott, Arizona.

From a court document in FLOODLIT’s possession, Case 20-10343-LSS Doc 3265 Filed 05/06/21 in the US bankruptcy court for the district of Delaware (related to the Boy Scouts of America):

“For example, in 1974, a Mormon member named Robert Gene Metcalf (“Metcalf”) was arrested in California for sexually abusing a minor boy. [He was convicted, per FLOODLIT’s sources.]

“Five years later, in 1979, Metcalf was arrested in Arizona for anally raping a 13-year-old boy.

“As a result of the 1979 conviction, Metcalf was sentenced to six years in prison and was excommunicated from the LDS Church.

“After he was released from prison, however, the LDS Church allowed Metcalf to return to the Spring Valley Ward (a local unit of the LDS Church) in Mayer, Arizona, and to serve as a Scout volunteer for one of its Cub Scout Troops.

“[…] Not surprisingly, Metcalf then used his position as a Scout leader to sexually abuse Claimant No. 32543 on a Scout camping trip.

“[…] The sexual abuse occurred in approximately 1987, when Claimant No. 32543 was approximately 9 years old. […] Metcalf’s sexual abuse of Claimant No. 32543 included Metcalf [redacted by FLOODLIT – contains details of the abuse] Claimant No. 32543.”

from an article series called “Sins of the Temple,” written by Lisa Davis in 1994:

“December 22- 28 1994
Phoenix New Times News and Features
Sins of the Temple
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emphasizes personal propriety and the value of children. The same church has protected serial child molesters across the country.

By Lisa Davis

Editor’s note: To protect the privacy of sexual abuse victims, some people in this report have been identified by first name only. Those first names are pseudonyms. All other names used in this report are real.

The Seeds of Abuse

The Mormon community in the small, rustic town of Mayer, just outside Prescott, considered Robert Gene Metcalf to be a decent man. People say he was a good provider who looked after his wife’s three children as though they were his own.
He was the kind of guy who was always ready to lend a hand to a neighbor, or help out with an activity at church.

A large stocky man, frequently decorated with a cowboy hat, Metcalf was prone to the kind of cordial conversation you’d expect from a salesman. He was “Gene” or “Brother Metcalf” To everyone who knew him, and “Robert” only on official documents.

Metcalf has had problems with the law, and some people had heard a thing or two about that, but one man’s sins are not another man’s business in Mayer. Besides, he obviously had dealt with those past problems. He was back in the good graces of the church.

He and his wife were blessed with a baby shortly after they were married. On top of that, his children from a previous marriage came to live with the family for a time. That made for a crowded house hold, but they seemed to manage on the money from his work at Bennett Oil and his wife’s job as an elementary schoolteacher.

Metcalf also was busy in the community’s social life, especially when it involved children. Always musically inclined, he took charge of performances the church put on to raise money and spirits. He helped out with the Boy Scout troop, and oversaw the lambs his sons were raising to earn money and learn responsibility.

But when Gene Metcalf looked at little boys, he would see things most other people don’t. In fact, as court proceedings would show, he was a serial child molester.
Metcalf had his first brush with the law in California in 1974, when he was convicted of sodomizing a young boy. The next year, he married Gail Coen, a mother of four children. Together they had three more children.

One night in 1978, Gail Metcalf walked into the living room and discovered her husband engaged in anal intercourse with a 13-year-old boy who was living temporarily with the Metcalf family. At the time, Metcalf was wearing his sacred temple garments-underclothing symbolic of the Christ like attributes expected of those people deemed worthy to enter the Mormon temple.

Metcalf pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct with this boy and with Gail’s children. He was excommunicated from the church and sentenced to six years in prison. He was excommunicated from the church and sentenced to six years in prison. After a few years, Gail divorced him.

Her husband’s parental rights were not terminated, but Gail obtained a court order that kept him from visiting her or their children for six months after he was released from prison.

Gene Metcalf met and married his third wife even before that order expired. The third wife already had three children. The five of them moved to Mayer, where Gene Metcalf was again involved in church activities.

In late 1987, Gail Metcalf developed a brain tumor and needed extensive medical treatment. She contacted her local bishop to discuss what might happen to her younger children while she was hospitalized.

There are varying versions of what happened next.

In a civil lawsuit against the Mormon church, Gail Metcalf, claims she was ordered by her bishop and the bishop’s superior in the church hierarchy, the stake president, to send her children to live with Gene Metcalf-a pedophile who had been convicted of sexually abusing one of her other children.

“We are trained in the [Mormon] church to be submissive…….It is a patriarchal system. I was trying to abide by church leaders’ rules that they had set down and told me what to do.” She says.

“We do not tell people what to do with their children,” says Dale Shumway, a local spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the official name for the Mormon religion.

Ultimately, Gail Metcalf sent her children to live with their father for about eight months, beginning in August of 1988.

Even as she pondered her children’s future, their father’s propensity to molest again became known. In 1988, Gene Metcalf’s 6-year old stepson told Gene’s wife, his in-laws and his

church leader in Mayer that Gene periodically masturbated him and had forced him to masturbate Metcalf, often in the cab of his truck.

No one reported the incident to anyone outside the church.

In 1989, Gail Metcalf’s children told her that their father had been fondling them and their stepbrothers. She called the police, and Metcalf was convicted for a third time on sexual deviancy charges.

During a court hearing on Metcalf’s sentence, an array of people lobbied on his behalf. Many of them had official connections with the Mormon Church. Former Prescott city councilmember Perry Haddon was one of those people.

Another was former state senator Boyd Tenney, who described himself as a leader in the LDS church. Tenney testified that Metcalf was an asset to the community who was likely to exhibit proper behavior in the future.

The prosecutor in the case, Jim Landis, had a question for Tenney:

“What information do you have that a man who has been a child molester since 1974, notwithstanding the fact that he’s had a church that’s done everything in its power to help him, what makes you think that now he is going to miraculously be healed and not commit further felony child molestation offenses against other innocent children?”

Tenney answered, “I have seen miracles happen in that direction, and I believe that he could become one of those miracles.”

The court did not. Gene Metcalf was sentenced to 37 years in prison.

His third wife sat in the courtroom with tears running down her face, clutching a teddy bear. She had not wanted him to receive a prison term. She had testified earlier that her children needed him.

The sexual abuse of children unquestionably violates the official teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latte-day Saints. Sexual sin stands next to murder in the church’s hierarchy of wrongdoing.

In an October address at the church’s General Conference, Gordon Hinckley, first counselor to the president of the church, called child molestation “reprehensible and worthy of the most severe condemnation.”

But for all its public pronouncements, for all its written condemnation, the Mormon church continues to foster a patriarchal system that protects those who repeatedly molest children. And that system gives the victims of that sexual abuse little if any protection, assistance or comfort.”

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