WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post
January 9, 2020
By Antonia Noori Farzan
In recent years, prominent religious institutions have been dogged with accusations that they persistently covered up sexual abuse and failed to report heinous crimes.
But a new lawsuit makes the opposite argument, claiming that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints violated a child molester’s confidentiality by turning his confession over to the authorities.
The $9.54 million suit was filed Friday by Kristine Johnson, whose husband, Timothy Samuel Johnson, is serving a 15-year prison sentence for sexually abusing a child. As the Salem Statesman Journal first reported, the lawsuit alleges that Johnson became aware of her husband’s misdeeds in 2016, but chose not to involve the police. Instead, the couple went to the leaders of their church ward in Stayton, Ore., so that the matter could be handled through Mormon doctrine.
“The Mormon Church is, for lack of a better word, a unique institution,” Bill Brandt, the attorney representing Kristine Johnson, told The Washington Post on Wednesday night. “They firmly believe that they can deal with their parishioners better than law enforcement.”
Timothy Johnson, now 47, went before a council of lay clergy and confessed to the abuse so that he could begin the process of working toward absolution through “fairly intensive” spiritual counseling, Brandt said. But one member of the panel notified the authorities. In 2017, Johnson was arrested on charges of first-degree sodomy, sexual abuse and unlawful sexual penetration for sexually abusing a child under the age of 16. He pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree sexual abuse the following year.
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