The Abuse Help Line: What It Is, What the AP Alleged, What Honesty Requires

Does the Church Protect Abusers? · Part 2 of 5

Part of the series Does the Church Protect Abusers?

No single feature of the Church’s abuse response draws more fire than the help line — the 24/7 telephone line bishops and stake presidents are required to call when they learn of abuse. Critics, following a 2022 Associated Press investigation, describe it as a machine for routing abuse reports to Church lawyers instead of police. The truth is more complicated, and an honest treatment must present both the system’s rationale and its documented failures.

Why the help line exists

The Church’s clergy are unpaid volunteers — accountants, farmers, nurses, teachers — serving temporary callings with no legal training. Child-abuse reporting law differs across all 50 states and every Canadian province: who must report, to whom, within what time, and what is privileged varies jurisdiction by jurisdiction. A lay bishop cannot be expected to know Arizona’s statute from West Virginia’s.

The Church states the help line’s purpose is threefold: (1) to comply with the child-abuse reporting laws of every U.S. state and Canadian province, ministering to victims while reporting abuse consistent with law; (2) to encourage victims, family members, and perpetrators to seek professional counseling and to report abuse to authorities themselves; and (3) to directly report abuse to authorities, regardless of legal exemptions from reporting requirements, when a child is in imminent danger. (Source 1)

The Handbook makes calling it mandatory, not optional, precisely so that reporting decisions are made by people who know the law rather than by well-meaning amateurs. (Source 2) A system designed to suppress reports would not need to exist at all — a bishop who says nothing to anyone suppresses a report perfectly well on his own. The help line exists because the Church decided untrained leaders should not handle these situations alone.

What the AP alleged

The August 2022 AP investigation (Source 3) centered on the Arizona case of Paul Adams, examined in detail on the cases page. The AP reported that a bishop who learned of Adams’s abuse in a confessional setting was told by help line attorneys that he was legally bound to keep it confidential under Arizona’s clergy-penitent statute, and that the abuse continued for years afterward. The AP also cited a West Virginia lawsuit alleging the help line exists to “snuff out” complaints and protect the Church from lawsuits.

What the Church answered

The Church’s response, issued the next day, called the AP account “oversimplified and incomplete” and “a serious misrepresentation of the Church and its efforts,” stating that “the help line is instrumental in ensuring that all legal requirements for reporting are met.” (Source 4) A follow-up release stated flatly: “The suggestion that the help line is used to ‘cover up’ abuse is completely false,” and laid out a detailed timeline showing that Church leaders did not learn the full extent of the Arizona abuse until 2017 media reports — not 2011, as the AP account implied. It also stated that after the bishop called the help line he was advised how to comply with Arizona law and “repeatedly tried to intervene and encourage reporting.” (Source 1)

Two courts subsequently vindicated the legal analysis the help line gave: the Arizona Court of Appeals (Source 5) and the Arizona Supreme Court (Source 6) both held that the clergy-penitent privilege applied. The bishop had been told the law correctly. Whether the law itself is good policy is a separate question — see Clergy Privilege and the Law.

What we concede

Two things, without hedging.

First, the help line has a dual character. It is staffed through the Church’s legal apparatus, and legal counsel serves the institution’s litigation interests as well as its protective mission. Those interests usually align — an abuser reported to police is an abuser who stops — but when they diverge, the record shows the legal function can win. The Idaho case of John Goodrich (Source 7) is the hard example: recordings show a Church attorney invoking the clergy exemption in a way that discouraged testimony, after which prosecutors dropped charges, and a confidentiality settlement was offered. The Church excommunicated Goodrich promptly upon his confession and states he has never been readmitted — the ecclesiastical system worked — but the legal posture in that case did not protect children first, and we will not pretend otherwise.

Second, “legally correct” is not the same as “morally sufficient.” In Arizona, the advice was accurate and the outcome was seven more years of abuse. A protective system should be judged by outcomes, and that outcome was a catastrophe.

The honest conclusion

The help line’s design purpose — putting reporting decisions in expert hands, with a standing override to report imminent danger regardless of privilege — is protective, and in the overwhelming majority of its thousands of calls per year it functions invisibly and correctly, which is why only the failures make the news. Its failure mode is real: when confession-privilege law binds the Church’s hands, or when litigation defense overrides protective instinct. The remedy for the first is legislative — and as documented here, the Church declined to oppose Utah’s 2024 law protecting clergy who choose to report. The remedy for the second is exactly the kind of scrutiny the AP applied. Critics are entitled to demand the Church do better. They are not entitled to convert a legal-compliance system used by a church with categorical anti-abuse policy into evidence of institutional intent to protect abusers. Intent is shown by design, and the design — mandatory calls, imminent-danger override, annotation, discipline without conviction — points one direction.

Next in the series: The Cases Critics Cite

Sources and Verification

Direct sources retrieved and relied on in this article. Readers are encouraged to verify every claim.

  1. Church Newsroom, “Church Provides Further Details about the Arizona Abuse Case,” Aug. 17, 2022 — states the threefold purpose of the help line, that the “cover up” charge is “completely false,” and the 2017 timeline. Link
  2. General Handbook 38.6.2.1, “Abuse” — requires bishops and stake presidents to promptly call the abuse help line. Link
  3. Associated Press (Michael Rezendes), “Seven years of sex abuse: How Mormon officials let it happen,” Aug. 4, 2022 — the investigation of the Paul Adams Arizona case and the help line.
  4. Church Newsroom, “Church Offers Statement on Help Line and Abuse,” Aug. 5, 2022 — calls the AP account a serious misrepresentation and states the help line ensures legal reporting requirements are met. Link
  5. Arizona Court of Appeals, ruling of Dec. 15, 2022 — held the clergy-penitent privilege applied in the Adams case. Link
  6. Arizona Supreme Court, ruling issued Apr. 7, 2023 (released Apr. 11) — upheld the clergy-penitent privilege in the Adams case. Link
  7. Associated Press (Michael Rezendes and Jason Dearen), Idaho John Goodrich abuse case, Dec. 3, 2023 — recordings, clergy exemption, dropped charges, and a confidentiality settlement offer. Link