The reporter of ‘Spotlight’ fame discusses his exposé on sex abuse in the LDS Church | Episode 247

08/17/22 • 26 min

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Earlier this month, an Associated Press investigation of several child sex abuse cases, including a particularly horrific one in Arizona, revealed that the much-debated “help line” supplied by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its lay leaders failed to protect the victims. The exposé brought responses of dismay, disgust and anger from insiders and outsiders alike — and the reverberations are still being felt. On this week’s show, AP journalist Michael Rezendes, who previously earned a Pulitzer Prize with The Boston Globe for uncovering the Roman Catholic Church’s pattern of covering up clergy sex abuse while part of the team dramatized in the Oscar-winning film “Spotlight,” to talk about his latest story, how came upon it, how he reported it and how it compares to his previous reporting on this sensitive subject. Rezendes also talks about an astonishing amount of document shredding on sexual abuse — for instance, all records of calls to the help line, he reports, are routinely destroyed — within the Utah-based faith and points to a lack of transparency surrounding its handling of these cases.

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A law professor explains “temple divorces,” and how they changed through the years | Episode 246

Marriage in a Latter-day Saint temple is called a “sealing,” which is believed to stretch beyond death into the eternities. So what happens when a couple split up? Well, for devout members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that’s much more complicated than a governmental divorce. In today’s world, that is something called a “sealing cancellation.” But there are different rules for women and men. Men can be sealed to more than one woman without any cancellation, but women can be sealed only to one man so must obtain a cancellation. And rules about who can be sealed to whom in the hereafter via proxy rituals are different from living couples. Many believe this confusion reflects remnants of polygamy. But does it? On this week’s podcast, Nathan Oman, a Latter-day Saint law professor in William & Mary in Virginia, who has been researching the history of the faith’s modern sealing rules, tells how he discovered some startling facts. In fact, sealing cancellations and their gender differences arose in the early 20th century, well after the church officially had abandoned the practice. And Oman speculates about why it happened.

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Expert sees a better approach than the church’s abuse ‘help line’ | Episode 248

Ever since The Associated Press published its explosive account of an egregious case in Arizona — where a Latter-day Saint father sexually abused his young daughters for years, even after counseling with his bishop — social media has been lit up by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, asking one another how this could have happened and what, if anything, the church could do to ensure it never happens again. Many commenters have focused on the faith’s “help line,” which bishops can call to find out how to safeguard the victims and what legal obligations the lay leaders must consider. Critics say the help line should focus more on the victims and not legality management. Some members, though, see other areas that could be improved to help victims. On this week’s show, Laura Brignone, a Latter-day Saint visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studies technology and interventions for domestic violence and sexual assault, discusses how the church could partner with existing help lines to assist abuse victims and offers suggestions for enlarging the group of helpers and the way they are trained.