"Paperdolls: Healing from Sexual Abuse in Mormon Neighborhoods, was written by two Salt Lake Valley women using the pseudonyms April Daniels and Carol Scott.... While the women tell their stories of sex abuse separately, they share more than authorship: One of the teenage boys who abused Ms. Daniels in the 1970s married Ms. Scott's daughter and later abused his own children....
" 'I wrote it out of a need to empower myself, just some deep need to have the truth spoken,' said Ms. Scott, who relates how her grandchildren were abused at 'touching parties' staged by the daughter and son-in-law of a Mormon Church apostle....
"In the book's foreword, Salt Lake County psychiatrist Dr. Paul L. Whitehead reports he treated three of the children described in the book and 'can verify the accuracy of their horrific experiences.' "
On page 52 of Paper Dolls, Carol stated that when she thinks of the kids from one of the neighborhoods, "it makes me physically ill. Six kids dead. Three of them suicides. Three in and out of institutions. Five with eating disorders or drug abuse."
Carol claimed that the apostle's daughter was very generous about tending children, but felt there was an evil motive: "This mother... is a daughter of a general authority in the Mormon church, a daughter of one of the Twelve Apostles. Her husband is in the bishopric... Our children told about the 'touching parties' at her house. About what the dad did to his two little girls and ours while the mom gave out Popsicles and cookies and took videos. About how she used some of the Junior Sunday School visual aids for backgrounds in the videos.... The detail from each matches what the others have said." (page 55)
On page 108, Carol related that pornographic videos were shown and then the children all took part in various sexual acts: "The whole 'party' took less than an hour. Usually about seven children, a couple of teenagers, and three or four adults were there. Sometimes there were costumes and props, and sometimes the children were given injections, 'especially if it was going to hurt.' " On the same page we find that the children were threatened: "Cynthia said the apostle's daughter told them, 'I'll run over your Mommy and Daddy with my truck if you tell,' and 'I'll drop Claire in the road going to pre-school, and she'll get lost or run over.' Cynthia and Claire watched as the apostle's son-in-law strangled a baby kitten. They made the children help bury it. 'We can do this to Claire,' they told Cynthia. 'We'll bury her right here by the kitty if you ever tell.' "
According to Carol, the church did not take any action against this man: "...the stake president... talked with one of the children's therapists. The stake president told us he believed it. There has never been an excommunication trial.... the ones who had the 'touching parties,' are the daughter and son-in-law of an apostle in the Mormon church.... What Utah police official, what church authority is going to deal with that?" On page 145, she stated: "The apostle's son-in-law would continue to sit next to the bishop on the stand in church, looking down on all the faces of the children he had molested."
In a letter to Sunstone, Marion B. Smith indicated that she felt there was a cover up with regard to the daughter and son-in-law of a Mormon Church apostle:
"A little over five years ago... I, along with five or six other therapists, interviewed approximately twenty children from a Bountiful ward. In this same ward other children had made allegations about Bret Bullock and other adults in what appeared to be a group sex ring. Bullock was subsequently convicted.... In this same neighborhood, totally different adults were named by totally different children... the children who reported the second, non-Bullock sex ring did not know what the children in the Bullock case had said and were too young to come up with the consistent, spontaneous, explicit detail and congruent emotional affect that they manifested. These two Bountiful sex rings were never linked by any children as far as I know. Both groups involved ritualized sex acts but to my knowledge, not satanic rites....
"One aspect of the second alleged sex ring was that a daughter and son-in-law of a general authority were named as the main abusers by at least seven children. Explicit detail was given about this couple's activities by all of these children. When the couple's names surfaced, the Bountiful police, for all practical purposes, dropped the case.... At the time, the stake president and others in the Church system said they believed the children, but no Church action was ever taken against any of the alleged perpetrators.... much of the sex ring activity being reported allegedly has taken place within LDS congregations and is perpetrated by active LDS members.... Within the Salt Lake Valley alone, sex abuse rings have been reported in Midvale, West Valley, Salt Lake, and Bountiful.... The patriarchal system where the priesthood holder's authority is not questioned allows pedophiles a unique opportunity. Bishops often support the perpetrator because he is a priesthood holder.... The Church needs to change its implied message that its leaders are morally infallible.... LDS denial of anything being wrong within family or Church systems is exceedingly strong. I believe that a Church cover-up occurred in the case of the general authority's children... If there has been a cover-up, obviously it is intolerable to Mormons and non-Mormons alike...." (Sunstone, December 1991, pages 4-6)
In the story published in Paperdolls the apostle's son-in-law is referred to only as "Hank." The Mormon Alliance Case Reports gives additional information with regard to this matter:
"The story continued after the publication of Paperdolls. In the summer of 1992, Carol's two youngest daughters and one of their husbands met with Hank's current bishop and his stake president. They sought this meeting with these ecclesiastical leaders as part of their own healing. They pled with Hank's priesthood leaders to take action to right the wrong that had been done and to protect the children to whom Hank still had access. Carol reports: 'These authorities told us they were worried Hank might kill himself if they took action against him, but they said they believed us. They said they would have to check with their legal department and get back to us. We heard no further response from them.' Carol's son-in-law wrote to the stake president later:
" 'We met with you, as spiritual leaders, with the hope that something could be done to protect against more abuse, to better facilitate the long and difficult healing process... President, I cannot begin to tell you how crushed I felt to look you, a fellow priesthood holder, in the eye and tell you that a diagnosed pedophile, who had returned from a mission and who had married in the temple, raped and sodomized my wife and many others when they were but small and innocent children, only to have you tell me that you would have to check with your legal department and get back to me, which you have not bothered to do.... Because we cannot get any support from our Church, we are forced to resort to a civil court of law.... I pray for you, as well as the children.'
"A copy went to Elder Loren C. Dunn, then area president. Two of the women initiated a civil suit against Hank for damages from his abuse when they were children. Criminal action was not possible because the statute of limitation had run out. Even though Hank was an attorney and a member of the Utah Bar, he did not contest the suit, and the women were awarded a default judgment for $5 million. Their 'damages' consisted of a token $100 a month, as Hank had sought protection from previous creditors by declaring bankruptcy. He had never paid any child support for his four children.
"In 1992, an adult woman who had read Paperdolls called Carol and said, 'I know who Hank is.... He abused me for four years when I was a child, right up until he left on his mission.' She had gone to Hank's current bishop and stake president and told her own story... hoping they might warn families in his present ward. But nothing ever happened.
"In fall 1993, Hank was fired from his position with the State Tax Commission, allegedly for sexually harassing a teenage female employee. Carol and her daughters were amazed to be told later that Hank's mortgage was paid from ward welfare funds for many months, a payment authorized by Hank's bishop, who apparently felt that Hank's financial needs took precedence over his victims' claims.... Carol, reported to me in the spring of 1996 the ending of this story for Hank... She had learned these details when Hank's second wife, Elaine, called her. A year before in the spring of 1995, Hank and Elaine separated... When Elaine told her two daughters by her first marriage and the son she had borne to Hank that she planned to divorce him, the three children told their mother of their years of sexual and physical abuse at his hands.... Elaine called Hank, told him that the children were in therapy, and that she was going to see him 'rot in jail for what he'd done.'
"Hank disappeared from his job. Elaine later learned that he had returned to his mother's home in Salt Lake City. The morning after his return, his mother found him dead from an overdose of prescription drugs. A suicide note addressed to his stepdaughters said... he knew God would forgive and understand his death because he could not continue the destruction of more lives....
"Carol summarizes bleakly, 'I know of at least thirty people Hank molested when they were children.... Hank was never called to a disciplinary council, and we have never been given an explanation for this lack of Church action against him. We believe that Church officers shielded Hank from ecclesiastical action and even paid his bills because of his connection to an apostle's family.' "
(Quoted from the the SLC Messenger: 11/96)
