Mitchell Blake Young

Sources

1. Victim Sues LDS Church, Sex Abuser , Salt Lake Tribune , July 2, 2002.
2. Sex-abuse victim sues molester and LDS Church, Deseret News, July 2, 2002.
3. Mitchell Blake Young, Offender Radar, September 25, 2023.

• 1. Victim Sues LDS Church, Sex Abuser

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  [NOTE: FLOODLIT is working on improving the following excerpts for accuracy]

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  "A victim filed suit against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stating that the church protected the perpetrator.
  The plaintiff, 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 and was sentenced to 15 years in Utah State Prison for the crime."

  "The suit also alleges church leaders knew Young had sexually abused children for more than a decade when he began abusing A. Doe."

  "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. In 1975, Gordon Young received complaints that his son had abused neighborhood children in the Butler 20th Ward in Salt Lake County. And then 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. The 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 according to the lawsuit.”

  “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 Young's and church leaders, and the abuse against her son continued, the lawsuit claims. The suit asks for unspecified damages."

• 2. Sex-abuse victim sues molester and LDS Church

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  A man who was sexually abused between the ages of 6 and 12 has sued the now-convicted perpetrator, the perpetrator's father and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

  Now in his 20s, the man is named only as A. Doe in the lawsuit, which alleges that the church did not protect him from the child molester when he was a boy.

  Named in the suit is Mitchell Blake Young, who was convicted in 1993 of sexually abusing the plaintiff. The abuse occurred repeatedly between 1987 and 1992.

  Young was initially charged with three counts of first-degree felony sexual abuse of a child. He later pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree felony sexual abuse of a child and was sentenced to up to 15 years in the Utah State Prison, according to court records.

  The lawsuit alleges that Mitchell Young's father, Gordon Young, told A. Doe's mother she should let her son receive religious instruction from Mitchell Young even though the elder Young knew his son was on probation for sexually abusing children in Arizona.

  In 1985, Mitchell Young was convicted of molesting two children, ages 4 and 7, in Maricopa County, Ariz., and was granted probation, according to the suit.

  The suit said church leaders and Gordon Young wrote letters to the court urging leniency and probation instead of prison.

  The suit claims that by 1985 the defendants in the suit "knew that (Mitchell) Blake (Young) was an extremely dangerous serial predatory pedophile who was unsafe to be unsupervised, even for a moment, around children, and further knew that plaintiff's mother was totally unaware of the danger (he) presented to A. Doe."

  The lawsuit said Gordon Young and many LDS church leaders, including bishops and stake presidents, "failed and refused to warn" the boy's mother that the younger Gordon was a danger to her son.

  As a result of the abuse, the victim has suffered physical and emotional pain, incurred costs for psychological treatment and has lost earning capacity, the lawsuit said.
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  The civil suit filed in 3rd District Court on Monday seeks damages to be determined at trial.

  "We have not seen it yet, so there's not really much we can say," said LDS Church spokesman Mike Otterson.

  Although he could not address the specifics of this lawsuit, Otterson said he could address the LDS Church's stand generally on such things. "The church has long had a zero-tolerance policy toward child abuse, and we're determined to eliminate this child abuse as far as it's possible."

• 3. Mitchell Blake Young

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