SANDY, Utah, Oct. 12, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — A registered sex offender has been charged after he allegedly used his phone to record images of a boy relieving his bladder in a Sandy meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Zachary Wallin, 32 was arrested Tuesday for the July 31 incident. He faces charges of voyeurism — committed against a child under 14 years of age, a third-degree felony; and sex offender and kidnap offender registry violation, a class A misdemeanor.
Wallin’s probable cause statement says the young victim, identified in court documents as “V1,” “was attempting to urinate in the bathroom at a local LDS Church during church services. While attempting to urinate, V1 noticed a cell phone being held over the stall and it appeared to be recording their actions.
“V1 described the male suspect as being a darker skinned white male with a red and black cell phone.”
A Sandy City Police officer interviewed Wallin, and he “confessed to having a ‘moment of weakness’ and stated he was the one who was taking the photos inside the church bathroom. Wallin was discovered to be currently on the Utah sex/kidnap offender registry.”
… was arrested after more than 1,100 images of child pornography was found on his personal computer
when he was 25? Gosh, if there were only some way a Bishop could’ve known he had a sex offender in his Ward. Perhaps JohnW can explain to us what steps the Church took to protect a kid from getting his junk uploaded to a pederast’s phone.
- Doc
Hiring a part-time news entertainment anchor as SecDef, what could go wrong?
"He disturbs the laws of his country, he forces himself upon women, and he puts men to death without trial.” ~Otanes on the monarch, Herodotus Histories 3.80.
I"m trying to figure out what the Church does in these cases. This guy had a record. Was free in society. Went to a church knowing he might find opportunity to take pictures of underaged boys and got caught? Honestly are members supposed to be on guard for any attending member? People go in and out of bathrooms during the meetings. I just don't know how this case would have been prevented short of everyone knowing about this guys' record and everyone on guard watching him, with an escort following him around and even into the bathroom.
I don't know what we do with people like this in society. They should be jailed. But when free they have the same proclivities. Do we make them wear those ankle bracelets all the time so we all can see them and watch them?
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
I think they need to let everyone know if someone is on the sex offender registry. When I was attending, the word came out to members with kids about some other member that had been convicted of pedophilia so as we could be watchful. The registries are there for a reason. We were also advised to take our kids to the bathroom ourselves when they needed to go. I was periodically called out of meetings to do so. Unfortunately these precautions need to be instituted and they aren't that tough to follow.
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
I think they need to let everyone know if someone is on the sex offender registry. When I was attending, the word came out to members with kids about some other member that had been convicted of pedophilia so as we could be watchful. The registries are there for a reason. We were also advised to take our kids to the bathroom ourselves when they needed to go. I was periodically called out of meetings to do so. Unfortunately these precautions need to be instituted and they aren't that tough to follow.
I guess my question exists because we don't know if anyone in this ward knew this guy. Someone shows up to Church. No one knows him. Do they need to run a background on him to see if he comes up on the registry? Should we really take our 14 year olds to the bathroom in case the new guy who showed randomly is after our kids?
I don't know the details of this incident other than what's posted here, so maybe they knew him and someone knew he was on the registry. I could be wrong, but this seems far more difficult an issue then sometimes we like to say.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
I"m trying to figure out what the Church does in these cases. This guy had a record. Was free in society. Went to a church knowing he might find opportunity to take pictures of underaged boys and got caught? Honestly are members supposed to be on guard for any attending member? People go in and out of bathrooms during the meetings. I just don't know how this case would have been prevented short of everyone knowing about this guys' record and everyone on guard watching him, with an escort following him around and even into the bathroom.
I don't know what we do with people like this in society. They should be jailed. But when free they have the same proclivities. Do we make them wear those ankle bracelets all the time so we all can see them and watch them?
We have decided as a society that sex offenders cannot be within a certain distance of a school. We've also decided that organizations like the LDS church have the ability to exclude anyone they wish from entering buildings. The church did this until 1978 with black people being banned from entering their temples.
It would be trivial for the church to spend a little money doing cursory checks of free public databases of sex offenders on the ward records. And exclude those people from being at the ward buildings. And yet they're more worried about making sure members don't steal tithing money...
We have decided as a society that sex offenders cannot be within a certain distance of a school. We've also decided that organizations like the LDS church have the ability to exclude anyone they wish from entering buildings. The church did this until 1978 with black people being banned from entering their temples.
It would be trivial for the church to spend a little money doing cursory checks of free public databases of sex offenders on the ward records. And exclude those people from being at the ward buildings. And yet they're more worried about making sure members don't steal tithing money...
How does a Church enforce a law to keep sex offenders away from Church services if the offender is randomly visiting a Church? Did we know if this guy was a member of the ward or was visiting?
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
As far as I can see, we don’t yet know under what circumstances he was in the building. He may have simply been passing and popped in. He may have been staking out the building. He may have been brought by missionaries. He might have been attending the ward for a while. We don’t know.
