Timeline of Mormon sexual abuse events, policies and responses

We’re working on a timeline of Mormon sex abuse-related events, policies and responses.

Please tell us about anything you’ve found regarding the LDS church’s history of dealing with sex abuse allegations.

—

Chronology of events related to sexual abuse in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

1985: The Church publishes Child Abuse: Help for Ecclesiastical Leaders. In a General Conference address, President Gordon B. Hinckley condemns “a plague of child abuse spreading across the world.”

1991: President Thomas S. Monson decries wife and child abuse during General Conference. A 1990 memo by Elder Glenn L. Pace on ritualistic sexual abuse is leaked to the press via Jerald and Sandra Tanner.

1992: The Ensign publishes a first-person account by a female survivor of sexual abuse. Deseret Book publishes Blaine M. Yorgason’s novel Secrets. April Daniels and Carol Scott publish Paperdolls: Healing from Sexual Abuse in Mormon Neighborhoods.

LDS Church Administration Building, Salt Lake City, Utah

1993: Deseret Book releases an audiotape by Cheiko Okazaki, Healing from Sexual Abuse: Eight Messages for Survivors, Family, and Leaders. It also publishes Confronting Abuse: An LDS Perspective on Understanding and Healing Emotional, Physical, Sexual, Psychological, and Spiritual Abuse. The Church settles a civil suit in California for “millions of dollars.”

1994: Former General Authority George Lee pleads guilty to attempted sexual abuse of a child. President Hinckley speaks against physical and sexual abuse during the October General Conference. At a leadership meeting in Calgary, Alberta, President Hinckley says that sex abuse cases “are costing the Church millions of dollars in lawyers’ fees and settlements.”

1995: The Church produces Responding to Abuse: Help for
Ecclesiastical Leaders (a revised version of their 1985 guide) and sets up a telephone helpline for Church leaders faced with child abuse cases.

1996: “Adult Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse: The Case of Mormon Women” is published in Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work. The first volume of the Case Reports of the Mormon Alliance is published. Marion Smith publishes in the Event, a local Salt Lake weekly, an investigative report chronicling 16 cases of Mormon-related sexual abuse.

1998: A new Church Handbook of Instructions is published with updated policies for dealing with child abuse. One of the changes requires annotation of the abuser’s membership record. A Texas jury awards $4 million to a boy molested at age eight by Church member Charles Blome.

1999: The Church is named the 1999 “Child Advocate of the Year” by Prevent Child Abuse Utah. The Salt Lake Tribune re- ports that “more than forty plaintiffs have alleged church officials knew of molestations or ignored warning signs and failed to alert either victims’ families or authorities.”

2001: LDS leaders settle a child sexual abuse lawsuit for $3 million. A North Carolina grand jury indicts Matthew Nash on twenty felony sex offenses committed while he was an LDS missionary.

—

Acknowledgements

We got much of the chronological list above from research done and published by the Mormon Alliance.