SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
Deseret News [Salt Lake City, UT]
August 8, 2025
By Tad Walch
‘This is as valuable a tool as exists in the world to protect children,’ Randy Austin says at FAIR Conference
The abuse helpline for bishops of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and strong clergy privilege laws are the best option for protecting children from abuse, an attorney and a social worker for the church said Thursday.
“Far more abuse gets reported when the bishop calls the helpline than if we didn’t have one‚” said Randy Austin, an attorney for Kirton McConkie who serves as lead outside controversy-and-crisis counsel for the church.
He said clergy privilege laws that exempt bishops from mandatory rules for reporting abuse actually lead to more reporting, not less.
“We learn about more abuse in places where the privilege exists than where it doesn’t,” Austin said.
Coupled together, the increased reporting generated by the help line and clergy privilege protect more children, he said.
Austin provided an in-depth presentation on the church’s help line during a presentation at the 2025 FAIR Conference with Kerri Nielsen, a licensed clinical social worker for Latter-day Saint Family Services.
They reiterated several times the church’s position that abuse cannot be tolerated in any form.
How the help line helped a Boy Scout troop
Austin and Nielsen provided a full-throated defense of the church’s approach to preventing abuse and helping survivors.
But first Nielsen described abuse as a scourge.
She said approximately five American children die every day because of child abuse and that many experts estimate that 20% of American children are sexually abused. The percentages are higher in many places in the world, she said.
“Children and families are safer” because of the help line and privilege laws, Austin said.
“A child’s safety always comes first. We never, ever, ever, ever leave a child in harm’s way, ever,” he said.
For example, when a Boy Scout told his bishop that the scoutmaster was sexually abusing him, the bishop initially thought he should go talk to the scoutmaster, who was a neighbor. That could have allowed the suspect to destroy evidence or begin a cover up.
Instead, help line workers counseled the bishop to cancel a campout scheduled the following day to keep the scouts safe and report the allegation to police. The scoutmaster was arrested a few days later and eventually convicted and sent to prison.
The issue is personal for Austin, who said the church’s system is not set up to cover up abuse or protect abusers, as some critics and lawsuits have alleged.
“I’ve done this work for 30 years. I am a survivor of child sexual abuse,” he said. “I have not spent my life covering up abuse or overseeing an operation that does.
“This is as valuable a tool as exists in the world to protect children.”
How and why the help line works
Austin and Nielsen said the abuse help line provides 24/7 legal and counseling advice to 31,000 bishops and branch presidents who lead Latter-day Saint wards and branches (congregations) around the world about how to respond to reports of abuse.
The line also supports 4,000 stake and district presidents responsible for groups of congregations.
Austin said he was present when the church’s First Presidency developed the help line.
“The reason for it, its overarching purpose, its undergirding principles, its foundational principles are the protection of children,” he said.
Local church leaders can call the line for advice on how to minister to abuse victims and to learn their responsibility for reporting abuse to civil officials. The help line staff monitors clergy privilege laws in all 50 states and in countries around the world local church leaders
Bishops typically serve three to five years, so the church has about 6,000 new bishops a year, lay leaders who generally are not experts on intervening in abuse cases, Austin said.
“In addition to the love and the care that he has for the people sitting in front of him, (a bishop) can tap into hundreds of years of experience dealing with child abuse — clinical and legal — to aid him from day one,” he said.
Austin said there are three primary reasons the help line is beneficial. First, most people don’t know where the line is for what qualifies as abuse. Second, the help line counselors know the numbers of places bishops around the world can call to help victims in their care. Three, while police need time to investigate, bishops can provide immediate action to help.
“Now somebody knows, and now we can begin to take some action to protect people,” Austin said.
The help line leads to more reports of abuse to law enforcement
Nielsen said bishops armed with good counseling advice can provide crucial help to victims.
“I’ve had the opportunity to work on this helpline, and I can tell you from personal experience that it is designed to protect children and help victims,” she said. “For many church members, the leader consultations available through the helpline are the first step in helping individuals on the pathway to healing.”
Nielsen and other mental health and social work professionals can provide tailored counseling advice and access to local community resources.
Austin and Nielsen said that part of the help line process is to remind bishops that the church’s policy is to report abuse allegations to legal authorities.
The church’s General Handbook instructs leaders and members to take reports of abuse seriously and report them to civil authorities.
“The bishop can use the mantle of that office to help that person to understand that the church as an institution favors reporting of abuse,” Austin said. “That is our policy. If the bishop calls it up, and that’s what the bishop’s told.”
The help line leads to reports to authorities of hundreds of cases of abuse each year, he said.
Why the church supports clergy privilege
The priest-penitent privilege or clergy privilege provides an exception to laws that declare adults to be mandatory reporters when they learn about abuse if a bishop or priest learns about the abuse through a confession.
The majority of U.S. states — 37 of them — have laws providing this exception because it protects children, Austin said. He said scientific studies and the church’s experience confirms that.
“The studies show that if you protect particularly the clergy privilege, you get more actual abuse reported than if you don’t,” he said.
He said his team regularly presents to law enforcement officers and asks them if they ever have had an abuser stop them to confess their abuse. The officers always say no.
“But because the privilege exists, victims and sometimes offenders go to bishops,” Austin said. “That happens every Sunday in chapels all over the United States, because that relationship is cloaked in privilege.”
Protecting confessions to clergy, the privilege provides a safe space for reporting abuse, Austin said. Those confessions mean a responsible adult who can protect the child is now aware of what is happening, he said.
Other church safeguards that protect children
Nielsen said the policy of the Church of Jesus Christ is to prioritize the protection of abuse survivors.
“When abuse occurs, the first and immediate responsibility of church leaders is to help those who have been abused and to protect vulnerable persons from future abuse,” the church’s General Handbook says in section 38.6.2.
She outlined additional safeguards the church has in place to prevent abuse:
- Two adults are required to be present for any child or youth activity, and leaders in those situations must complete training on abuse prevention.
- If a church member commits abuse, their membership record is annotated in a way that bars them from serving with children and youth.
- Background checks are increasingly a part of screening adults for working with children and youth. (“The church was very supportive of the new Utah law requiring sex offender registry checks for those serving with children and youth,” Nielsen said.)
- Church members can invite others into interviews with a church leader. Youth can bring their parents.
- The Gospel Library app has a section called “Life Help” with a resource section about abuse and another for counseling.
“The Lord expects us to do all we can to prevent abuse and protect those who have been victims of abuse,” Nielsen said.
By Tad Walch
Tad Walch covers religion with a focus on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.