Editor’s note: This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.

A recent Associated Press article about a horrific case of child sexual abuse by a Latter-day Saint father in Arizona has “significant flaws in its facts and timeline, which lead to erroneous conclusions,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Wednesday evening in a scathing critique of the piece.

It was the Utah-based faith’s second response to the AP article published Aug. 4, written and reported by Michael Rezendes, a member of The Boston Globe’s investigative team that won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing clergy abuse in the Catholic Church.

The LDS Church’s initial response called the AP article an “oversimplified and incomplete” story about the faith’s handling of child sex abuse cases, but didn’t supply any examples of what was wrong with it.

Rezendes’ reporting centered on Paul Adams, a one-time Latter-day Saint in Bisbee, Ariz., who raped his two young daughters for years, then posted videos of his acts on the internet. He later was arrested and took his own life in prison.

Adams confessed to his lay Latter-day Saint bishop, the AP story stated, but the bishop said he was advised by the church’s help line that he did not have to report to the police, because the leader learned about them in a priest/penitent encounter.

To read more about the abuse case and the church’s response, go to https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/08/17/lds-church-hits-back-even-harder/.

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