West Virginia Latter-day Saint Church Abuse Liability Case

A civil liability case filed in West Virginia in 2013 by six families on behalf of nine children, alleging The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and local officials knew a young ward missionary had a history of sexual offending and failed to warn or protect them from it. The accused had been convicted in a 2005 Utah juvenile proceeding of sexual offenses, a matter his bishop was aware of at the time; he was later convicted in West Virginia in February 2013 on two counts of sexual abuse by a custodian and one count of first-degree sexual assault, and sentenced that July to 35 to 75 years. On 19 June 2017 the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, in Jane Doe-1 v. Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, reversed a lower court's exclusion of evidence of the 2005 Utah conviction, holding it relevant to the church's own knowledge of his propensity to reoffend and that resolving that factual dispute was the jury's province, not the court's. The case reached trial and settled mid-trial on 30 March 2018 for 32 million dollars, announced by Berkeley County Circuit Judge Christopher C. Wilkes, releasing the defendants from all claims; it followed an estimated 27 million dollars the church had already spent on its own legal defense, and was reported as the largest known abuse-related payout tied to the church at the time. No individual involved in the underlying abuse is named on this record.