Richard Kent James

Sources

1. Rinse & Repeat: Mormon church trying to force BSA victim to dismiss sex abuse lawsuit, Floodlit.org, September 23, 2025.

• 1. Rinse & Repeat: Mormon church trying to force BSA victim to dismiss sex abuse lawsuit

  • 23 Sep 2025
  • News article
  • Floodlit.org

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  Rinse & Repeat: Mormon church trying to force BSA victim to dismiss lawsuit against it, billionaire Bill Marriott & four LDS officials, after judge rejected its $250 million attempt to group him in settlement. Convict (excomm’d, re-baptized) denied BSA abuse in 2002, but changed story in 2025. Why?

  Floodlit case report: Richard Kent James
  Complaint: John Doe v. LDS Church, Bill Marriott, Mormon officials
  John Doe Objection to LDS Church Motion, BSA Bankruptcy, July 21, 2025

  Hotel magnate Bill Marriott’s home was the first place John Doe remembers being sexually abused by Richard Kent James.

  It was early 1995. James, a 28-year-old financial advisor, was house-sitting for the Marriotts. Doe was 12.

  Marriott, Doe and James all belonged to the same Maryland congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon church.

  That summer, the church assigned James to be Doe’s Boy Scout leader in the Potomac South Ward, according to James’s BSA ineligible volunteer file (“perversion file”).

  From 1995 until 1999, James allegedly assaulted Doe approximately 50 times in a variety of settings, including LDS-sponsored scout trips and at church.

  Doe told investigators in 2001 that James abused him while serving as the lone adult on a youth “high adventure” trip to Maine. The trip was approved by and had the financial support of their Mormon bishop, Ronald Taylor Harrison.

  The alleged abuse didn’t end when Doe moved across the U.S. to Washington at age 17. That’s when, according to Doe, James mailed him a video camera and instructed him to record himself masturbating and send James the video. Doe did so.

  In the spring of 2001, Doe reported James’s abuse to his Washington bishop, Lynn Paul Seegmiller, according to a 2024 lawsuit Doe filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court in Maryland against the church, Marriott and his wife, two former bishops (including Seegmiller), two former stake presidents, and another former church member.

  The two spoke for more than an hour, as Doe recounted the details of James’s abuse. Rather than offer help, Bishop Seegmiller dismissed Doe’s allegations by saying, “There is not enough evidence,” despite Seegmiller not launching an investigation. In addition, he discouraged him from going to police and told him, “You need to repent for your part in all of it,” according to the lawsuit.

  Seegmiller then allegedly called Maryland church officials, enlisting their help to discourage Doe further. Bradley Hugh Colton, a bishop in Maryland, and Stephen Charles Wilcox, an educator and friend of Doe’s, both called Doe, ostensibly to “see what Doe was up to,” without offering any support, the complaint said.

  Nolan D. Archibald, a Maryland stake president, also contacted Doe, telling him, “There is not enough evidence,” according to the suit.

  In August 2001, James was arrested and charged with multiple felonies related to child sexual abuse. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to reduced charges.

  James received letters of support from several members of his Mormon ward.

  At sentencing, James and his attorney insisted that the abuse of Doe did not begin until Doe turned 16, and that it did not involve Scouting.

  On May 8, 2002, James was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The judge, noting the many letters of support for James, suspended all but one year of the sentence.

  Ultimately, James “served only a few days in prison,” the lawsuit said.

  James was required to register as a sex offender, but records show he is no longer registered.

  The church excommunicated James, but later re-baptized him in 2021 or 2022, according to deposition testimony James gave in July 2025.

  James’s deposition resulted from a motion the Mormon church filed on May 29 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, which oversaw the BSA’s $2.4 billion bankruptcy reorganization.

  In its motion, the church argued that James’s abuse of Doe was all Scouting-related (and therefore resolved by the BSA bankruptcy settlement), and asked judge Laurie Silverstein to force Doe to dismiss his Maryland lawsuit with prejudice.

  The church’s motion in May was sealed. The only way we know what it said is via Rhoades’s response, and the only way we know what Rhoades said is because we dug like hell to find it. We’ll get to that in a minute.

  On July 14, James was deposed. He said, “I wouldn’t have known [Doe] if not for scouting” and reversed his story from 2002, insisting, “My abuse of [Doe] happened with scouting. That’s the only reason I knew [Doe].”

  On July 21, Doe’s attorney, Joseph Rhoades, filed an objection to the church’s motion, calling it “deeply disingenuous” and accusing the church of “piec[ing] together snippets of the record to construct a curated version of the facts” to make it sound as though Doe never alleged that any of James’s sexual abuse of him took place in a non-Scouting setting.

  Rhoades accused the church of excluding all but the first page of James’s 20-page BSA Ineligible Volunteer file (or “perversion file”) in its May motion in order to leave out a 2001 news article revealing that the original criminal charges against James resulted from allegations that he abused Doe not only at Marriott’s home, but also on scout trips while working for the church as Doe’s scout leader.

  Calling the church’s logic “perverse,” Rhoades wrote, “In 2022, TCJC at least was offering to pay an additional $250 million to be shielded from claims […] like Doe’s. But the Court rejected the settlement agreement and TCJC kept its $250 million. To accept its argument now would be to give it for free something that the Court was not willing to let it buy for $250 million in 2022.”

  In 2022, the church attempted to include Doe in proposing to pay $250 million to be released from liability for ALL​ claims of sex abuse that involved Scouting in any way, and attempted to define “Scouting” as inclusive of virtually every Church-related activity.

  That year, Judge Silverstein rejected the church’s proposal, saying it went too far in attempting to gain protection from abuse claims that were only loosely tied to scouting activities.

  Rhoades’s filing and its six attached exhibits cannot be downloaded on the BSA bankruptcy court docket website, despite not being listed as sealed. Floodlit reviewed the entire docket – over 13,000 documents – as far as we can tell the Rhoades filing is the only docket item that is censored from the public eye.

  After extended investigative efforts, Floodlit.org obtained Rhoades’s filing and attachments. We want the public to have them, and will make them available on our website.

  Stick with us as we dig into this story and its connections.

  If you attended the Mormon church in or near Potomac, Maryland in the 1990s or 2000s, please contact us: https://floodlit.org/contact/