BishopAccountability.org
	Mormon Family's Sex Secrets By Christine Kellett Brisbane Times [Australia] April 20, 2007 http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/mormon-familys-sex-secrets/2007/04/20/1176697046855.html A Brisbane teenager was quoted religious scripture and banned from taking the sacrament as punishment for molesting a female relative after the girl's parents decided against reporting the offence to police, a court has been told. The family instead left it to a church bishop to discipline the boy, but the strategy failed and the teenager went on to commit multiple sex offences against young girls over a 15-year period, ending with the stalking of his wife's 16 year-old sister last year. Now aged 29, the man admitted at Brisbane's District Court yesterday to spying on his sister-in-law on eight separate occasions while she used the bathroom. He also pleaded guilty to seven counts of indecent dealing with children under 12 and 16, stemming from the molestation of his younger sister and two female cousins between 1991 and 2006. The court heard the man, who cannot be named, had been just 13 when he began sexually abusing the girls, the youngest of them aged 11. The abuse continued for years, with one of the attacks occurring in the back of the family car while the man's mother and father were present. When one of the girls complained, her father was persuaded to allow her attacker to be counselled by the church bishop for six months, instead of going to the police. "The bishop quoted scriptures to him and the discipline was that he was not to take the sacraments for a period of time," Defence counsel Tim Ryan said. "It didn't have the desired effect." Mr Ryan told the court of his client's "dysfunctional" upbringing in a Mormon household of eight children "where there were completely inappropriate [sexual] behaviours." Mr Ryan said the man and his brother had been sent out to trawl through recycling bins in search of pornographic magazines for their father, who would discuss his sexual exploits at the dinner table and play "inappropriate" movies while the children were present. The man's father was convicted in 2004 of sexually abusing his daughter and two other young girls. Although the prosecution yesterday argued for a two year jail term for the man, Judge Robert Pack was asked to take into account the impact of his father's behaviour on shaping his own "abnormal" sexual conduct. The judge sentenced him to serve four months behind bars, with a probationary period of three years.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.