Utah Republican advised Mormon Church not to report sexual abuse of very young children

Utah Republican State Rep. Merrill F. Nelson has been in the Beehive State’s legislature since 2013. Before that, he was an attorney with affiliations to the Utah Supreme Court, the Utah State Bar, and many other prestigious Utah groups, in including the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. In December 2021, Rep. Nelson announced that he would not seek reelection and is due to leave at the end of 2022. In his announcement, Nelson said that one of the things he would “miss” was “having a voice and a vote on issues of public importance. Particularly, I hope that my efforts to protect children and strengthen states’ rights prove beneficial.”

On Thursday, the Associated Press released an explosive story showing that Nelson, who was also an attorney for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly known as the Mormon Church), once “advised a church bishop not to report a confession of child sex abuse to authorities, a decision that allowed the abuse to continue for years.” This truly detestable allegation was filed in the Arizona Court of Appeals by the abused children who are seeking to have the Church disclose their communications in an ongoing lawsuit.