UTAH
Deseret News
By Pat Reavy @DNewsCrimeTeam
Published: June 23, 2017
MAPLETON — A former LDS Church bishop has been arrested and accused of drugging and sexually abusing two teenage boys.
Erik Wayne Hughes, 51, of Mapleton, was arrested Wednesday night and booked into the Utah County Jail for investigation of 20 counts of forcible sexual abuse, dealing in harmful materials to a minor, sexual exploitation of a minor and witness tampering.
An 18-year-old man recently came forward to report that when he was 15, there were at least two occasions he believes he was drugged by Hughes, who was his bishop, according to a police affidavit filed in 4th District Court. In one incident, he said Hughes gave him a pill he claimed was melatonin, typically used to help a person’s sleep cycle.
The boy said the pill made him feel “weird and things seems disproportionate,” according to the affidavit, and “he has never felt that way before after taking melatonin.” Hughes allegedly told him “he must have given him the wrong pill and that it would not happen again.”
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