FLOODLIT.org has learned of a newly filed lawsuit against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over the alleged rape of an 11-year-old girl inside a Mormon church building in Raleigh, North Carolina, in January 2010.
The lawsuit was filed on Oct. 20, 2026 in Wake County Superior Court by a woman, now an adult, who says she was the girl. It names the church, convicted child sex abuser Jared Harding Wilson, former Raleigh 4th Ward bishop Bryan Cope, former Raleigh North Carolina Stake president Matthew Harding, and Kenneth Carlile, who was Cope’s second counselor and then succeeded him as bishop in January 2011. The suit demands a jury trial and punitive damages.
Cope, Harding and Carlile were also the defendants in a 2013 lawsuit over Wilson, brought by the mother of three children, which ended in September 2015 with a voluntary dismissal after mediation. The new complaint quotes the church’s own filings and Harding’s sworn affidavits from that earlier case.
FLOODLIT has not seen a response from the church. The allegations in the lawsuit have not been proven in court.
What the lawsuit says happened on Jan. 12, 2010
According to the complaint, the girl was a fifth grader whose family belonged to the Raleigh 2nd Ward. On Tuesday evenings the church held youth activities at the Raleigh Stake Center on Six Forks Road, including an “Activity Days” program for girls. The suit says the girls were routinely let out about thirty minutes before the other youth activities ended, with no adult supervising them.
On the evening of Jan. 12, 2010, the complaint says, the girls began playing tag and hide-and-seek through the building’s hallways, including a dark, unused rear hallway near the Family History Center where the accessible restrooms were unlocked and unmonitored. That night, the suit adds, the church had also invited adults into the building to play basketball as part of its missionary outreach, “without screening or vetting them and without monitoring where they went in the building.”
The complaint alleges that when the girl entered the rear hallway, “a lone adult man was there. He grabbed her and forced her into one of the accessible restrooms.” It says he threw her against the wall, striking her head, threatened her with a weapon, threatened to kill her if she made any noise, and raped her. He left her on the restroom floor, the suit says, “warning that if she told anyone, he would kill her and harm her family, because he knew where she lived.”
No one came to her aid, according to the complaint. When the activities ended she rejoined her family and went home.
Disclosure, and what church leaders did next
The lawsuit says that within days the girl swallowed household cleaning products and told her family she wanted to hurt herself. On Jan. 19, 2010 she was admitted to the pediatric psychiatric unit at UNC Hospitals, where she stayed 48 days. She had never been admitted for psychiatric care before.
On March 25, 2010, according to the complaint, she told her mother she had been raped at the stake center.
The suit says church leaders, including stake president Harding, “were immediately informed. After Harding contacted Church headquarters, [the plaintiff]’s family was told that whether to report the rape to police was up to them. No Church Leader reported the rape to law enforcement and instead treated it as a family matter.”
The family reported it. On March 31, 2010 the girl’s mother met police officers at the stake center and a report was filed. Because the attacker’s threats had kept the girl silent for more than two months, the complaint says, the chance to collect physical evidence was lost.
After learning of the attack, the suit says, Harding ordered changes across the stake: no dropping children off outside the building, children to move through the building only in pairs, the accessible restrooms locked except during Sunday meetings, and a member of the bishopric to walk the halls on activity nights. “These measures were simple and inexpensive,” the complaint says, “and they were available to the Church at all times before 12 January 2010.”
The photo lineup
In the fall of 2010, according to the complaint, the detective investigating the attack contacted the family about Wilson’s arrest. In October 2010 the detective showed the girl a set of photographs. “[The plaintiff] selected Wilson’s photograph, without hesitation, as the man who attacked her,” the suit says. Day-treatment staff documented her acute distress afterward.
The complaint alleges that the church knew of a sexual assault at the stake center in or around January 2010 and that Wilson had been considered a suspect. Wilson was never criminally charged with the attack on her.
What church leaders allegedly knew before the attack
The suit says Wilson, an adult member of the Raleigh 4th Ward, had been given callings that included ward Sunday School president, ward music chairman and ward missionary, and that he also taught children in the ward. In about 2007, the complaint says, he sexually abused two daughters of another 4th Ward member.
According to the complaint, in 2008 or 2009 Wilson told Cope, then his bishop, “that he had a sexual interest in children and had engaged in sexual misconduct with one or more children.” Cope, the suit says, shared the information with other stake leaders, and leaders “changed Wilson’s authorized Church activities in response.”
The complaint alleges that Cope told Harding and Carlile before Jan. 12, 2010. It cites Harding’s own affidavit from the 2013 case, in which Harding said that in regular trainings he instructs bishops who learn of child sexual abuse to call him and the church’s help line.
Under the church’s written policies, the suit says, a member who had sexually abused a child was to face church discipline, hold no callings, and have his membership record annotated so he would not be called to work with children. “Upon information and belief, none of those policies were followed with respect to Wilson before 12 January 2010: no disciplinary council was convened, his record was not annotated, and he remained a member in good standing with callings and access to Church meetinghouses. At most, upon information and belief, Church leaders reassigned Wilson away from teaching children while leaving him free to move about the Church’s buildings.”
No church leader reported Wilson to police or social services, warned parents in the stake, or restricted his access to church buildings during children’s activities before the attack, the complaint alleges.
“When the Church chose to act, it acted quickly and effectively,” the suit says. In May 2010, after the mother of the two girls reported the abuse to church leaders including Cope, Cope arranged a meeting at which Wilson was confronted. The complaint says Wilson confessed and turned himself in to law enforcement the next day. Wake County court records show his first arrest on June 30, 2010 (see below).
The criminal case
Wake County court records show Wilson was arrested on June 30, 2010 on two counts of indecent liberties with a child, with an offense date of Sept. 1, 2007, and again on July 30, 2010 on further charges, including first-degree rape and incest with a child under 13, with offense dates listed as Jan. 1, 2010. The dockets do not identify the children in those counts.
On March 7, 2011 Wilson pleaded guilty to six counts of indecent liberties with a child. Prosecutors dismissed the first-degree rape and incest counts. He was sentenced to two consecutive terms of 20 to 24 months in prison and was released in June 2015.
The new complaint says that in July 2011 Harding presided over a church disciplinary council for Wilson, to which Wilson submitted a written statement containing admissions, and that the church excommunicated him. After Wilson was released from prison, the suit says, “the Church reinstated his membership.” Church leaders, it adds, told the girl’s family “in substance, to avoid Church activities so they would not encounter Wilson.”
The years after
The complaint describes roughly one hundred days in psychiatric hospitals in the year after the attack, bed-wetting and nightmares for about three years, hallucinations, a residential treatment school at 13, and suicidal crises through 2013. She remained in psychiatric care into adulthood and, the suit says, is unable to work. Her parents, it says, locked away every medication, chemical and sharp object in the house and for long stretches never left her alone.
For years she could not sit through church meetings in the building where she had been attacked, the suit says. Her classes were moved away from the restroom areas.
Harding, Wilson and the Raleigh temple
Harding, a lawyer, went on to become an area seventy and, in 2023, president of the Raleigh North Carolina Temple. Church News reported on March 5, 2026 that a new president would succeed him beginning in September 2026. FLOODLIT wrote about Harding’s path in January 2026: A temple’s tale.
Wilson now lives in Utah County, Utah, according to the complaint. On Sept. 5, 2025 a Wake County judge granted his petition to be removed from the North Carolina sex offender registry. In a blog post published Oct. 24, 2025, Wilson wrote that during a trip to North Carolina in early September 2025, “before flying home to Utah, we attended an endowment session at the Raleigh North Carolina Temple.” Harding was the temple’s president at the time.
Why the suit can be filed now
North Carolina’s SAFE Child Act, signed in November 2019, allows people who were sexually abused as children to sue until they turn 28. The complaint also says the plaintiff and the church signed a tolling agreement effective June 1, 2026, which paused the filing deadline while the two sides dealt with each other, and that she gave notice ending it on Oct. 19, 2026, the day before filing.
The ten counts include negligence, negligent supervision and retention, gross negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, assault, battery, false imprisonment, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, and punitive damages. The plaintiff is represented by J. David Stradley and Juliette T. Kaestner of White & Stradley, PLLC in Raleigh.
The complaint is a public court record, Wake County Superior Court case 26CV039927-910. It can be requested from the Wake County Clerk of Superior Court or looked up through the North Carolina eCourts Portal.
FLOODLIT will continue to monitor and report on this and hundreds of other ongoing cases involving alleged sex crimes by Mormon church members and alleged failures by church officials. (Ongoing criminal cases / ongoing civil cases)
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Wake County Superior Court case number:
26CV039927-910
