"what the [lds] church misrepresented in the AP article response"

[Marcus]

I like that term, Marcus. “Severity softening.” It feels subversive and designed to make the “church” unaccountable to its own sins. The passive language is inherently bad-faith posturing.

- Doc

Thanks, it does fit pretty well, right? i think i read it from Chase Hughes, a behavior analyst.

In a podcast with Scott Rouse, i also heard another behavior explanation term that just cracked me up. It seems to fit pretty well in apologetics discussions. He calls it:
"Jesus loves you, yes. But...I'm his favorite."

[IHAQ]

If the Church's priority was to protect victims then the Church would ensure members knew the extent of the risk their children face at Church. The air travel industry is now one of the safest forms of travel because the airlines collectively decided to be fully transparent with each other about all errors and near misses. In that way solutions and safer practices could be found - one simple example is the flaps and the gear levers were the same design, which led to mistakes happening. The solution was to redesign the flap lever in the shape of flaps, and the gear lever in the shape of a wheel. Unmistakeable. Problem solved. And so on. The key to the air travel industry improvement was transparency, ensuring everyone knew the problems and the risks.

The Church could, whilst protecting individual privacy, ensure members were fully informed as the the extent of the risk, the types of risk, exactly how perpetrators were operating, which Church roles they were using etc etc etc. That would be a great move towards putting the potential victim first. But the Church actually does the opposite. It tries to keep these incidents quiet. It covers them up. It settles out of court to keep from matters being made public. This desensitises members to the actual risks their children face and enables more incidents to happen.

The Church proactively desensitises members to the risks of predators within their midst - look at the Church response to the AP article, it seeks to lie and obfuscate to keep the size of the problem out of the public eye, to keep members in the dark. How is that putting victims first?

The Church refuses to instigate background checks, the Church refuses to end the practice of an adult male being along with a minor asking them questions about sex - something which the Church says on their Child Abuse resource website is "against the gospel" and "harmful behaviour".

[IHAQ]

Is it too much to say the church acted so as to allow known child sex abuse to continue, that such is unacceptable and measures should be taken to never allow this to happen again?

One would think we could all agree on this point.

I think that is the question in this court case. If the church knowingly allowed abuse to happen, that would be a big problem. Anyone would agree that is bad behavior that needs to be corrected.

By advising the Bishop against reporting the matter to law enforcement the Church, via its lawyer, knowingly allowed abuse to happen. Children continued to be abused despite several Bishops and the Church knowing about the abuse.

[Res Ipsa]

If there is "plenty of room for improvement", and the recent efforts by the church are impressive, I'd expect to see huge improvements in the works as a matter of urgency. The church has, effectively, unlimited funds to use, a large law firm at its call, and a membership willing, nay eager, to obey every whim of their leaders, be it working against gay rights, or castigating women with more than one ear piercing.

With the resources at its disposal the church could revolutionise its handling of abuse cases overnight.

Perhaps I'm the only one who is missing any little sign of that happening.

No, you're not. The pdf of cases that Doc has posted repeatedly is subtitled "a history, 1959-2017." And there have been a flood of reports and stories published continuing to document this problem well past 2017. The simple fact that background checks are required by law in CA, and CA is the only state the lds church has now decided to "require" them for its members is a perfect example. There is not much in way of sufficient "recent efforts."

Just a word of caution about trends. When Doc posted the pdf of cases, I read a bunch of them starting from the most recent and going back. The dates listed are of court filings (like complaints or conviction) or media articles. The dates do not represent the dates of alleged abuse. Sometimes the dates on an entry are decades after the alleged abuse. The publicity over abuse in the boy scouts and the BSA's bankruptcy filing caused a ton of cases to be filed, many by adult men alleging abuse years or decades before the suit was filed. Also, many states have special statutes of limitations for sexual abuse of minors that extends, and sometimes eliminates, the statute of limitation. Even if the pdf of cases and media articles were complete, it would take a ton of work to figure out whether the frequency of abuse has changed over time.

To make it even more complicated, the entries include accused abusers who at any time had a connection with the LDS church, even if the abuse itself had no connection. So, one case was about an LDS member who was caught, convicted, and excommunicated for child sex abuse and then years later went on to commit abuse in a setting unrelated to the LDS church. It's in the list.

Finally, changes in rates of reporting may not reflect similar changes in rates of actual abuse. All we can see are incidents of abuse that someone has reported. It is entirely possible that the number of reported incidents could increase due to heightened vigilance and awareness at the same time the rate of abuse incidents is decreasing due to preventative actions.

I don't think we know what we should expect to see today as a result of changes made over the past few years. Most likely, the reports will lag the actual abuse by perhaps years. Without doing the analysis needed to make sure we are comparing apples to apples, I have to say that I have no idea whether changes the church has made over any given period of time have been effective.

[Marcus]

No, you're not. The pdf of cases that Doc has posted repeatedly is subtitled "a history, 1959-2017." And there have been a flood of reports and stories published continuing to document this problem well past 2017. The simple fact that background checks are required by law in CA, and CA is the only state the lds church has now decided to "require" them for its members is a perfect example. There is not much in way of sufficient "recent efforts."

Just a word of caution about trends. When Doc posted the pdf of cases, I read a bunch of them starting from the most recent and going back. The dates listed are of court filings (like complaints or conviction) or media articles. The dates do not represent the dates of alleged abuse. Sometimes the dates on an entry are decades after the alleged abuse. The publicity over abuse in the boy scouts and the BSA's bankruptcy filing caused a ton of cases to be filed, many by adult men alleging abuse years or decades before the suit was filed. Also, many states have special statutes of limitations for sexual abuse of minors that extends, and sometimes eliminates, the statute of limitation. Even if the pdf of cases and media articles were complete, it would take a ton of work to figure out whether the frequency of abuse has changed over time.

To make it even more complicated, the entries include accused abusers who at any time had a connection with the LDS church, even if the abuse itself had no connection. So, one case was about an LDS member who was caught, convicted, and excommunicated for child sex abuse and then years later went on to commit abuse in a setting unrelated to the LDS church. It's in the list.

Finally, changes in rates of reporting may not reflect similar changes in rates of actual abuse. All we can see are incidents of abuse that someone has reported. It is entirely possible that the number of reported incidents could increase due to heightened vigilance and awareness at the same time the rate of abuse incidents is decreasing due to preventative actions.

I don't think we know what we should expect to see today as a result of changes made over the past few years. Most likely, the reports will lag the actual abuse by perhaps years. Without doing the analysis needed to make sure we are comparing apples to apples, I have to say that I have no idea whether changes the church has made over any given period of time have been effective.

Thank you for your reading further into it and for commenting on the pdf, those are excellent points. I appreciate your expertise in assessing these reports.

I still will argue, however, that “recent efforts” are not sufficient, on the basis of this:

….the simple fact that background checks are required by law in CA, and CA is the only state the lds church has now decided to "require" them for its members is a perfect example. There is not much in way of sufficient "recent efforts."

The best practice recommendations of experts, going back more than a decade, are still not uniformly incorporated into the lds church methods. In fact, many lds policies are known to invite and encourage abusive situations. From a public policy standpoint, that is sufficient to conclude that the recent efforts are not the best efforts that could be made, and will result in the lds church most likely not have a sufficient impact on their problem with abuse. There is so much more they could do, and they are not doing these things.