This was right after that mess in WV which the Church settled out of court.
The SP told us that part of the repentance process was "confession" and that if someone confessed to him about a serious illegality he would escort the subject to the nearest police establishment where he could confess his crime to the authorities.
This was about the same time they established the help line.
I think he was right on the money.

I wonder if people will think twice about confessing at church (I'm thinking Catholic and Mormons mainly) now if they think they will end up going to law enforcement anyway.

Until now, confessing at church was a way to get it off a guilty conscience without having to face actual real world consequences.

I was chuckling at the cartel boss in the show Ozark who had a priest available all the time to make good with all the people he was killing. Religious confession is sort of a joke, IMO. It's really the church being a busybody and intruding into everything without having to actually do anything.

Plus, confession has the effect of making everyone concerned feel that the sin has been washed away, and the sinner will sin no more. I know that Pope Francis has been far more concerned with the repentance process than he has with protecting children. In my view, a priest can offer redemption from sin, but he can also report it to the appropriate authorities.

It is well known that child molesters *cannot* reform.

I once heard someone refer to religion as "Crowd Control".

The church butt kisses governments. In fact one of the Articles of Faith states the church believes in being subjects to governments. During the Nazi regime when resistance groups were starting to form local church leadership ratted out members of the church who were in resistance groups.

In short, the church will rat you out to the dictator’s secret police to save the church and it’s leadership. The members are always expendable in the church but the leadership demands complete loyalty in everything. The leadership stand for nothing other than demanding complete loyalty to them. It’s what the church is.

PHIL Wrote:
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> This was about the same time they established the
> help line.

The hotline has been in existence for at least 20 years, well before the WV debacle.

There was a big abuse case in WV in the early 90s which got a lot of neg publicity for the church. I think your thinking of a later WV incident.

The hotline was established in 1995

https://ksltv.com/501730/church-responds-to-ap-story-on-abuse-of-a-child-and-reporting-hotline/

The case in WV that LW is referencing occurred in 2008, but the perp had been doing it elsewhere since 2004

https://wjla.com/news/local/w-va-families-suing-mormon-church-for-allegedly-covering-up-child-sex-abuse-by-member

Finally from the story that started this discussion

https://apnews.com/article/Mormon-church-sexual-abuse-investigation-e0e39cf9aa4fbe0d8c1442033b894660

"The Associated Press has obtained nearly 12,000 pages of sealed records from an unrelated child sex abuse lawsuit against the Mormon church in West Virginia. The documents offer the most detailed and comprehensive look yet at the so-called help line Herrod called. Families of survivors who filed the lawsuit said they show it’s part of a system that can easily be misused by church leaders to divert abuse accusations away from law enforcement and instead to church attorneys who may bury the problem, leaving victims in harm’s way."

I was indeed thinking of the 2008 mess.

Thanks to you both for straightening me out.

So much is known about the 2008 WV case because while it settled prior to the case going to the jury, it did "go to court".

In the run up to the trial, interrogs were sent out by both sides and depositions were taken.  I don't know the details regarding why the case did not settle prior to a whole lot of discovery, but I think I recall the church announcing that they were blameless and could prove it.

...The church apparently ended up thinking that maybe they couldn't 'prove it', and that a jury of fair and impartial West Virginians might really sock it to'em!  So the case settled, before it was handed to the jury for their deliberations.

You can be pretty certain that if the church had ever made an offer prior to the start of the trial, it probably took at least triple that amount to get the plaintiffs to not 'let it ride' on the jury.

civil jury trials are often more fun that going to Vegas for the weekend.