>The AP News article describes the positions the LDS church as taken with HB90. It includes quotes from a written response received from the LDS organization describing confessions as "sacred." Pointing to a single congressman, or pointing to a single case doesn't help here.

HB90 did not only apply to sexual abuse, it would have compelled clergy to report any and all neglect and anything they reasonably believe could constitute abuse or neglect. It also compels the police to act on all reports.

So if a Bishop visits the home of a member who is sick / lost their job, and the kids have gone without food, or clothes, or seem neglected in any other way that is not due to deliberate abuse, the Bishop is not able to decide to get food and clothing for their kids and make sure the situation is fixed, he has to report it to the police, who are forced to investigate and report their findings to what ultimately becomes CPS, and there is the risk of the kids being removed from the home.

If a person comes to the Bishop and says "We need money for food, we haven't eaten in 2 days" the Bishop is forced to report neglect to the police.

In these cases, are people in need more or less likely to approach their Bishop when they have issues? Because it seems to me this is likely to make people less likely to try to get help, which will ultimately cause more harm to kids than good. More members approach their Bishops with welfare concerns than with all other abuse concerns.

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>Nor does pointing to the LDS stances on abuse. It's not helpful. Every company can produce a legal document on sexual harassment policies. It doesn't prevent it. It's their actions around how they handle it. That's how we can judge them.

How did the Church handle the Arizona abuse case? What did the Bishop do? Do you know? The Arizona case is recent and that's why I'm referring to it.

1. The man confessed to a single incident of abuse of one child in the past. This happened in 2011.
2. It seems the legal advice given was because the Bishop had no evidence or belief that there was any ongoing abuse and, in the context of what the Bishop knew, there was no ongoing abuse to stop.
3. He regularly counselled the man to get professional help for himself and the child.
4. He encouraged the man's wife to get professional help for the man, for herself and for the child, and encouraged her to report the incident. She refused.
5. The abuser rarely attended church before and after his confession, and resisted efforts by the Bishop to speak to him.
6. The man was excommunicated from the Church (that is, he lost his membership) in 2014, less than 2 years after his confession. This may seem like a long time, but he had extremely limited interaction with the Bishop during this period and actively avoided him.
7. It wasn't until 2017 (4 years later) that the church learned (from media reports) the extent of the abuse, and that it had been ongoing.

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>Now you have produced some good examples of how they have handled it. And I have produced some examples of how they are currently advocating against mandatory reporting from clergy.

Lets draw a clear line between mandatory reporting of sexual and extreme physical abuse, and mandatory reporting of anything that could be construed as abuse or neglect, even if it is clear that reporting it is not in the interest of the child.

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>You'd think they'd defer to the best case scenario for the vicitms involved EVERYWHERE. But it's obvious that is not the case.

Is it in the best interest of children suffering from unintentional or non-abusive neglect to have their situation reported to the police without any judgement calls being made as to whether there were better ways to deal with the situation?

Bishops deal with welfare issues tens of thousands of times more often than they deal with sexual or physical abuse cases. The proposed HB90 changes would have had unintended negative consequences for thousands more simple welfare victims who benefited from the welfare program than it would have helped the victims of sexual abuse.

Regarding "best case scenario for the victims" (I only became aware of this info when I was looking for HB90), the church hotline directs Bishops to ignore legal reporting requirements when a child is in imminent danger. The Hotline itself routinely reports cases of abuse to the authorities.

Things are seldom black and white, and the instances you have shown of the church resisting changes to the exemption clauses have included resisting changes that would have other, seemingly unintended, consequences.

It's also highly misleading to claim that the church does this to cover up abuse in the church or to avoid embarrassment. It acknowledges this happens, and has the long-established helpline as one tool to deal with it. It addresses it in training for all leaders who work with children. It happens, the church acknowledges it happens, there is no cover up. From reading media reports it's easy to be critical of the church's response, but at the same time many of the media reports I've read seem one-sided and more interested in making the church look bad than reporting the facts objectively.