The Mormon Church Was Sued for Reporting Abuse — and for Not Reporting It

Two lawsuits that cannot both be right

Here are two true stories about the same church, five hundred miles apart.

In Arizona, a member named Paul Adams confessed to his bishop that he had abused his daughter. Arizona law makes clergy mandatory reporters — but exempts confessions. The bishop, advised the confession was privileged, did not call police; he pressed Adams to self-report, brought Adams's wife into a second confession so she would know, counseled him to move out and never be alone with the children, and followed up. The abuse continued anyway — the wife assured the bishop it wasn't — until federal agents arrested Adams in 2017. His children sued the Church for not reporting.

In Oregon, a member named Timothy Johnson confessed to his clergy in 2017 that he had sexually abused a minor. Oregon law makes clergy mandatory reporters — with a much narrower shield. The confession was reported to authorities. Johnson pleaded guilty and is serving 15 years. In January 2020, his wife, Kristine Johnson, sued the Church for $9.54 million — for reporting. Her theory: the Church violated its own doctrine of confidentiality. A church spokesman answered that "leaders and members should fulfill all legal obligations to report abuse."

Sued in Arizona for staying silent. Sued in Oregon for speaking up. In both states, the Church followed that state's law.

You cannot understand the abuse-lawsuit debate — or last month's Arizona Supreme Court ruling — without understanding the legal machinery both cases turn on. So let's open it up.

What the Handbook actually says

Critics describe Latter-day Saint confession as a vault no key opens. The Church's own General Handbook — public, online, searchable — says otherwise, in five numbered circumstances and one unmistakable sentence. Section 32.4.4 permits a bishop to share confidential information: in consultation with senior leaders, when a member moves, with the member's permission, in a membership council, and when required by law. Then comes the ceiling: confidentiality may be broken when "necessary to prevent life-threatening harm or serious injury." The handbook's reasoning is one sentence long and it is the whole ballgame: "the duty to protect others is more important than the duty of confidentiality."

Section 32.4.5 instructs leaders to obey reporting laws even where law and doctrine collide, supported by a 24/7 help line staffed to keep them legal in all fifty states — a system investigated separately. And §38.6.2.7 tells bishops to urge abusers to report themselves to law enforcement. This is a different architecture from the Catholic sacramental seal, which admits no exception — not consent, not law, not imminent harm — and whose priests have accepted jail over breach. Latter-day Saint doctrine is confidentiality with a ceiling. The critics' vault does not appear in the documents.

Arizona: who decides what a confession is

Now the ruling that put this subject back in the headlines. The Adams children's lawsuit — the hardest case in this entire literature, which is examined unflinchingly in the lawsuits investigation — had been dismissed in 2023, partially revived by an appeals court in 2025 on the theory that Adams waived the privilege by repeating his confession before his wife and a disciplinary council. On July 30, 2026, the Arizona Supreme Court reversed, unanimously.

The court held two things. First, the clergy-penitent privilege is a testimonial privilege — it answers who can be compelled to testify, and says nothing about the reporting statute, so waiver analysis was the wrong tool. Second, the reporting statute's exemption turns on the clergy's own reasonable religious determination of what constitutes a confidential communication — and under the church-autonomy doctrine, civil courts cannot second-guess that religious judgment.

Be precise about what that means, because both celebration and outrage are outrunning the text. It is not a merits verdict; the children's claims return to the lower courts on remand. It is a who decides ruling: in Arizona, the boundary of a confession is drawn by the faith's sincere framework, not reconstructed by a jury afterward. Critics call that churches grading their own homework. Supporters call it the First Amendment doing exactly its job — and note that a Washington law drawn the other way was declared unconstitutional in 2025, with a federal court entering a permanent injunction. Both descriptions are about the same line: the one between civil courts and religious doctrine. The place to move the reporting rule, if a state wants it moved, is the legislature.

The honest case for reform — and its honest cost

Steelman the reformers, because their position is sincere and its emotional core is legitimate: a confessed abuser walked out of a church office and no phone rang. Washington's legislature found that intolerable. Utah's has debated it. If even one report stops one abuser, the argument runs, the privilege is priced in children. And reformers are right that the privilege is not cost-free in the individual case — Arizona is the proof.

But the strongest reform argument has to face two facts this article has laid on the table. First, the empirical record suggests mandates don't produce more confirmed reports — they produce fewer confessions, and the doors stay shut. Second — less discussed and more uncomfortable — mandatory reporting also binds victims. Most survivors first disclose decades after the abuse, on their own terms; trauma researchers describe compelled reporting of a victim's confidential disclosure as a second betrayal, this time by the confidant. A rule written to trap perpetrators' confessions also tells a fifty-year-old survivor that the pastor she finally trusts is a police informant. Any honest reform has to price that in too. The debate is real. It should be had with evidence, in statehouses — not with a vault that doesn't exist.

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