In a year when Mitt Romney, a prominent and accomplished Mormon, is running for president, I have lately had numerous inquiries from people who know that I am an attorney for child abuse victims, asking me about child sexual abuse in the Mormon Church. Here is a summary of what I often say:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has historically had a significant problem with child sexual abuse in its midst. While there are to my knowledge no reliable statistics on the numbers of incidents or abusers, it is my sense that the scale and scope of the problem was at least as serious as that in the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, the Seventh Day Adventists, or other similar organizations that have had documented and severe child abuse problems. Over the last decade, I have handled probably two dozen cases of child sexual abuse in the Mormon Church, and have consulted with another 40-50 people who were abused in the LDS context. These victims of abuse have come from all over the country, but especially, of course, from the West: Utah, Arizona, and California, obviously, but also, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Alaska and Hawaii. The stories I have heard and the evidence I have seen convince me that there was, and maybe still is, a deep and pervasive problem with child sexual abuse in the Mormon Church.
