(4th) Update on Arizona Abuse Case

smac97 · January 5, 2023

5 hours ago, puzzlehobbit said:

FLOODLIT's purpose is to help people learn about instances in which LDS church members were accused of committing sex crimes, or accused of failing to prevent or respond to sex crimes or allegations of sex crimes.

Tons of problems here, which you have so far not addressed.

Problem #1: Your "Mormon sex crimes database" is haphazard and hugely unvetted. I think you are doing this to pad your numbers. To embellish and distort. To make the Church and its leaders and members look at absolutely terrible as possible (as "dozens" of "profiles" in an organization numbering in the millions doesn't sound nearly as horrible as "hundreds").

Problem #2: Your "Mormon sex crimes database" includes persons who are Latter-day Saints and who have been accused of misconduct, but whose membership/activity in the Church is questionable, negligible, and/or irrelevant to the alleged misconduct. I think you are doing this to foment ill will, even hatred, against the Latter-day Saints.

Problem #3: Your "Mormon sex crimes database" includes some persons based solely on unsubstantiated accusations against them. This is a very serious issue. From a legal and journalistic and ethical standpoint, you are inverting the "innocent until proven guilty" presumption. This despite having previously expressed some regard about that presumption in your "Posting Policy" (which apparently you have changed in the last 24 hours).

Problem #4: Your "Mormon sex crimes database" apparently includes some persons who have been accused and then exonerated (or found "not guilty" or "not liable") after examination of the evidence in a criminal or civil trial. It appears that in the past 24 hours or so you have revised your "Posting Policy" to omit this (which was there yesterday) :

Quote

13. If an individual is found not guilty or not liable after a trial, but other victims have come forward with allegations, the individual is listed in the database, and a note about the acquittal or defense finding is included in a certain field on the case information page.

So have you just re-worded the policy, but otherwise left the "profiles" of such persons on your site? If so, which profiles have you removed?

Problem #5: Your "Mormon sex crimes database" includes some persons who have been accused of misconduct after they left the Church (and hence stopped being "Mormon"). Again, you have in the last day removed the following from your "Posting Policy":

Quote

8. If the individual faces an allegation for an act which occurred after the individual has left the church, the individual is listed in the database.

So have you just re-worded the policy, but otherwise left the "profiles" of such persons on your site? If so, which profiles have you removed?

IIRC, yesterday your website was showing "436 "cases" / "profiles," but today it is showing "433." Have you removed profiles? If so, which ones and why?

Problem #6: Your "Mormon sex crimes database" includes quite a few people who are long dead.

Problem #7: Your "Mormon sex crimes database" conflates correlation with causation, and the result is something pretty ugly. Imagine if you were to create a "sex crimes database" about "instances in which left-handed people were accused of committing sex crimes, or accused of failing to prevent or respond to sex crimes or allegations of sex crimes." Or "instances in which Detroit Red Wings fans were accused of committing sex crimes, or accused of failing to prevent or respond to sex crimes or allegations of sex crimes." OR "instances in which brown-skinned people were accused of committing sex crimes, or accused of failing to prevent or respond to sex crimes or allegations of sex crimes." If you did this, the purpose would be . . . what? It appears that you are trying to say that the "sex crimes" are attributed to the shared trait. That the listed left-handed / Red Wings fans / brown-skinned person persons committed sex crimes because of their left-handedness / Red Wings fandom / having brown skin.

Problem #8: I suspect you are only listing people on your list if you think you can get away with it. That you are not going to list people who might choose to defend themselves and their reputations against being listed in a "Mormon sex crimes database."

Problem #9: I think your website is dressed up as moral crusading to disguise what it actually is, namely, a protracted expression of hostility against the Church, its leaders, and its members. An exercise in getting a proverbial "pound of flesh," in fomenting hostility against the Latter-day Saints.

From your "Posting Policy":

Quote

We wanted to find out how Mormon teachings or practices might have influenced the detection of and response to sexual abuse or sex crimes in Mormon families, congregations and communities.

Most of the problems listed above are incongruent with this purported objective. But they are congruent to fomenting ill will against the Church, its leaders and its members.

5 hours ago, puzzlehobbit said:

Maybe the accused were guilty, maybe they weren't ... maybe the church was portrayed accurately, maybe it wasn't ... it's not FLOODLIT's goal to make those determinations.

As pertaining to the problems noted above (mostly #2 through #8), this is one of the ugliest things I have seen you write.

If there is a man in your life (a father, a brother, a husband, a son), I hope he is never subjected to the behavior you are demonstrating here.

5 hours ago, puzzlehobbit said:

It's our goal to make it easier for people to follow these stories and get accurate information about them.

I can't quite go along with this. And I say this as someone who has started many threads regarding allegations against Latter-day Saints of sexual or other misconduct. A sampling:

I think we can and ought to have discussions about difficult topics, including instances where the Church or its leaders or its members have erred or engaged in misconduct.

But I don't think we should have such discussions in order to get a "pound of flesh." Candidly, that is how your website - with its haphazard "throw everything against the wall and see how much of it sticks" approach - comes across.

5 hours ago, puzzlehobbit said:

I'm sorry if I have caused any confusion or upset feelings by not making that clear!

The issue, I think, is not "confusion." I am not confused about your "Mormon sex crimes database." I am objecting to it, in both broad and specific ways.

5 hours ago, puzzlehobbit said:

Thank you so much for your feedback on our posting policy. We've revised it in an attempt to be more clear:

https://floodlit.org/posting-policy/

Please read that and let me know what you think I could do to make it better. Thank you!

I think cosmetic modifications to your Posting Policy doesn't do much to address the pervasive and systemic defects/problems noted above.

5 hours ago, puzzlehobbit said:

What's a better word than "tracking?" I can see how it can create confusion - sorry about that. I thought it would be clear to most people that tracking meant researching, reporting, looking into, following up on - not necessarily monitoring in real time. Hard to keep tabs on someone who's been dead a while. But there are cases like Paul Douglas Adams where the courts are still working on things years after the death of the accused.

There are also cases like Joseph Smith. "Tracking" historical figures long dead doesn't work. It doesn't come across as a good faith thing.

5 hours ago, puzzlehobbit said:

We've got to work on cleaning up and providing more and better source information for many of the cases in the database - thank you for pointing that out. The database is really only going to be as strong as its weakest entry, and fairness and accuracy are paramount here. I would never want to defame anyone, and I only want to tell the truth on FLOODLIT.

I don't really accept this. I don't think you "only want to tell the truth." Again, consider the thought experiment above. If you created a "Brown-Skinned-Persons Sex Crimes Database," and if that that database

makes no effort to explain the relevance of the skin color of the "profiled" persons to the alleged misconduct,
includes people have only been accused of sexual conduct (with no substantive evidence, investigation, legal adjudication, etc.),
includes brown-skinned persons who have actually been found "not guilty of" or "not liable for" the alleged sexual misconduct in a trial,
includes dead brown-skinned persons (who are conveniently unavailable to defend themselves), and
if you then said that you "only want to tell the truth" about brown-skinned persons, then

how do you think brown-skinner persons would view your database? I think they - and most other people - would see it as an attempt to foment ill will, suspicion, animosity, hatred, etc. against "brown-skinned" people.

And they might just be right.

5 hours ago, puzzlehobbit said:

As a sexual abuse survivor myself, and someone who has seen what tremendous damage false accusations can have, I want you all to understand that I am keenly aware of the balance that must be struck between listening with empathy to someone's story and taking great care to not lead anyone to be harmed or treated unfairly.

As your database currently lists 433 profiles, and since yesterday it listed (IIRC) 436, and since yesterday I listed three "profiles" I found particularly problematic (for Spencer Palmer, Lowell Robison and Chesley Nels Pierson), I searched for those three and see that you have apparently removed them.

I credit you for that. Well done. However, just as removing three profiles from a list of 436 "brown-skinned people" or "left-handed people" accused of sexual misconduct would not, I think, alleviate the overarching problem, I think the substantive problem with your database remains. You are still conflating correlation with causation. You are still compiling a list based on a shared trait. You still seem to be attributing that sexual misconduct to that shared trait. You still seem to be wanting to foment ill will against people who have that shared trait.

5 hours ago, puzzlehobbit said:

We have a lot of people coming to us with allegations that will never make it into our database for a variety of reasons.

I'm glad to hear it. But I think the bar is still set far too low, and the apparent objective of the "Mormon sex crimes database" is still far too ugly.

5 hours ago, puzzlehobbit said:

Please, if you can spare a little time, let me know and we'd love to have you help us conduct research. That's how floodlights work - many little lights coming together to form a brilliant array.

The more "floodlit" this topic can become - the more we are able to discuss it openly and accurately - I think the less abuse there will be in the world.

Honestly, I don't think your website will do much to improve the situation. I think it will, however, foment ill will, even hatred, against an unpopular religious minority by impliedly attributing widespread sexual misconduct to that communicate because of the shared religious identity.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited January 5, 2023 by smac97

smac97 · January 5, 2023

3 hours ago, helix said:

My advice: take the entire site down. This site is blatant bigotry.

I agree with that the entire site is problematic, but not because it is "blatant" bigotry ("blatant" meaning "done openly and unashamedly"). I think the website is intended to foment ill will against the Church, its leaders, and members, but does via implication and pretext.

I think the closest that the website gets to "blatant" is this part of its recently-reworked "Posting Policy":

Quote

The Mormon church has claimed to be the world’s most effective religion – the “gold standard” – when it comes to preventing and responding to abuse. So, we think it’s important to gather and share accurate information that may help people compare the Mormon church to other religions in this regard.

See, the target here seems to be not so much the individuals listed (a number of which are dead, after all), but rather . . . the Church.

And here:

Quote

We believe that in general, wherever there is secrecy and discouragement of open dialogue about abusive behavior, there is greater opportunity for abusers to hurt others. The Mormon church has long been publicly portrayed as being secretive about its doctrine, practices and administration. We wanted to find out how Mormon teachings or practices might have influenced the detection of and response to sexual abuse or sex crimes in Mormon families, congregations and communities.

I'm just not buying this. If there was on Floodlit a candid and straightforward assessment of discussion regarding the Church's policies, procedures, resources, etc. regarding handling allegations of sexual abuse, I would be totally on board with that. I think we need to be having such discussions (and I myself have, over the years, started many such discussions on this board). But I don't think that is the point or purpose of Floodlit.

And this:

Quote

Like most people, we find sex abuse to be one of the most revolting things imaginable. We wish there was none of it. It can leave deep, lifelong scars. We wanted to do something that might provide comfort to survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of a Mormon church leader or member.

Slightly re-worded, how does this statement sound?

"We wanted to do something that might provide comfort to survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of a Jew."
"We wanted to do something that might provide comfort to survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of a Muslim."
"We wanted to do something that might provide comfort to survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of a Black person."
"We wanted to do something that might provide comfort to survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of a Mexican."
"We wanted to do something that might provide comfort to survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of a homosexual."

Doesn't really come across very well, does it?

3 hours ago, helix said:

People who use their shovel in only one mud pit to dig up and publish accusations against only one group are bigots, by definition. Whether it be a site focused on publishing accusations against exclusively Jews, or exclusively Muslims, or Latter-day Saints, or Latinos, or Blacks, or Whites, or gays, etc.

I'm presently inclined to view Floodlit as A) ultimately malevolent against the Church, its leaders, and members, but B) that its proprietor(s) created it based on strong emotions and outrage, but also that C) the strong emotions and outrage are obscuring what seems pretty clear to you and to me: that the website is intended to vilify the Church, its leaders, and members.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited January 5, 2023 by smac97

Stormin' Mormon · January 5, 2023

Quote

of sexual abuse at the hands of a Mormon church leader or member.

This right here gets to the heart of my objection to the Floodlit database. It's probably a valid endeavor to catalog sexual abuse at the hands of Mormon church leaders (with a number of caveats that I won't go into here), because that can tell us something about the institutional church and how it responds to, covers up, or enables such abuse.

But cataloging abuse at the hands of just members of the Church is nothing but an exercise in bigotry. When a nominal member of the Church commits an atrocious crime, it tells us nothing about the institutional church or its policies. The fact that a crime has been committed by a member of the LDS church is no more meaningful of a data point than that a crime was committed by a Taco Bell enthusiast, or a Wikipedia editor, or a cell phone technician.

Lumping the two together then comes across as a bit of sleight-of-hand, an attempt to hide the bigotry of the second effort (abuse by members of the LDS church) by combining them with the more valid endeavor of the first (abuse by LDS leaders). That paints the whole database as dishonest and untrustworthy, which in turn is more detrimental to its supposed cause than it is helpful.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Stormin' Mormon

Calm · January 5, 2023

5 hours ago, puzzlehobbit said:

We've got to work on cleaning up and providing more and better source information for many of the cases in the database

You should check out mormonr as it is doing a good job of collecting documentation and showing sources.

https://mormonr.org

For the adams case, they have tons of sources, use search terms “paul adams”. You have some of them already. These are necessary especially when news articles get stuff so wrong at times.

https://mormonr.org/sources

This is an example of what I would want to have available if possible to research allegations. Massive amount of work of course.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Calm

Calm · January 5, 2023

1 hour ago, Stormin' Mormon said:

This right here gets to the heart of my objection to the Floodlit database. It's probably a valid endeavor to catalog sexual abuse at the hands of Mormon church leaders (with a number of caveats that I won't go into here), because that can tell us something about the institutional church and how it responds to, covers up, or enables such abuse.

But cataloging abuse at the hands of just members of the Church is nothing but an exercise in bigotry. When a nominal member of the Church commits an atrocious crime, it tells us nothing about the institutional church or its policies. The fact that a crime has been committed by a member of the LDS church is no more meaningful of a data point than that a crime was committed by a Taco Bell enthusiast, or a Wikipedia editor, or a cell phone technician.

Lumping the two together then comes across as a bit of sleigh-of-hand, an attempt to hide the bigotry of the second effort (abuse by members of the LDS church) by combining them with the more valid endeavor of the first (abuse by LDS leaders). That paints the whole database as dishonest and untrustworthy, which in turn is more detrimental to its supposed cause than it is helpful.

I think if the effort is to also track how the Church responds to abuse, it makes sense to include cases that focus on that, which is what the Bishop and Adams cases primarily are at this point (once the lawsuit against Bishop was dismissed due to the legal deadline for claims had passed). But I agree adding cases of just regular members and especially former members doesn’t really tell anything about the Church because it’s missing context…we have no way to compare the frequency of crimes committed by Saints vs members of other faiths or other meaningful comparisons to see what members’ behaviours might actually say about the Church. We can’t tell if church teachings or policies increase or decrease likelihood of offenses, for example.

As currently set up, it does come across as more smear campaign or than useful resource or even allowing victims’ voices to be heard. If there were separation of types of allegations, that might be a start. Not just a checklist in the data that may not just have been filled out yet or not, but visually different sections of website. Some categories could be open vs closed cases, any with church after that crime involvement (which would include reporting or not reporting as in claims of neglect or cover up, use of hotline, priest penitent confidentiality issues, lawsuits against the Church, etc) making sure to include positive reports as well as the ones involving lawsuits against the church, cases that were investigated by police vs just allegations made (these last may give victims a voice, but it opens the door to you being seen as a collector of gossip, so separating them off showing you recognize the issue of accusations without evidence is very important, imo. Resources given should probably be divided into or at least clearly labeled as court or legal documents, investigative news reports vs book reviews or other articles that accept accounts as given, personal accounts if included.

There needs to be some meaningful context added to avoid the potential bigotry issues, imo. Keep testing if you (puzzlehobbit) would feel comfortable if someone was doing the same work for another minority group as done above with Jews. If you wouldn’t, then explore what could help. Get as well feedback from several groups, including nonmembers and members of all kinds because you will have blind spots because it’s your baby, that is just natural and impossible to avoid. You won’t please them all, but you need to avoid the biggest accusations of inaccuracies, imbalances, defamation, bigotry, etc if you want to be considered credible and a useful resource. And I would suggest stopping for a bit with adding new material until you do that exploration as it will be easier to correct what you have now and then add more cases than to keep adding cases and then having to go back maybe multiple times to bring old entries into compliance with your new standards. The larger your database, the more overwhelming changing it will feel and the harder it will be to convince yourself it needs to be improved, that it isn’t good enough as is. And that might keep your work as just another minor amateur effort of little actual value.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Calm

helix · January 5, 2023

29 minutes ago, Calm said:

I think if the effort is to also track how the Church responds to abuse

Yes, I'd love to get a better feel how these processes work. I find myself coming to this forum and mormonr.org because these two sites have the best info on details of cases. Here smac and webbles have helped me catch info I've missed.

I wish there was a site that dug further than mormonr. I want to flesh out the nitty gritty details just to learn what exactly is happening. Some of these sex abuse cases are one-sided with a clear innocent person and a clear guilty person. Sometimes cases are messy because multiple people are involved in wrongdoing against multiple innocent people. Sometimes they're messy because news media mislead or tell outright lies (I'm talking about you Rezendes). Sometimes cases are messy because two awful people with storied histories collide.

Calm, I saw you mention the McKenna Denson/Joseph Bishop situation. That's a perfect example of two awful people colliding where more info was needed up front. When her story came out, a few of us were stumbling upon bits of info about her. That she had a combined history of con-artist behavior, seeking attention, and baseless accusations. And he had a long history of inappropriate creepy behavior with women. But for about a year, when any of us said something like "This is the lady who faked cancer for attention and money, and who locked herself in a trunk and said she had been kidnapped for attention and money, or who swallowed bits of razor blades for attention and money...are we really going to take everything she says at face value?" We were scolded and scorned for bringing it up. This didn't let up until she made yet another baseless accusation against the church (which Fox 13 and KUTV gladly ran). Only when she claimed the church was trying to silence her a year later by poisoning and/or physically abusing her did people start to accept that we could talk about her past.

What was needed a few years ago was a database that better laid out what we knew about both individuals. That would have accelerated this case to its same ending much quicker. Right now, the best source for detailed info I know of for general sex abuse stories in the news are smac's detailed threads and when mormonr jumps into a particular case.

Unfortunately floodlit is far, far, far, removed from providing an overall picture. For example, regarding this Arizona case, this site provides minimal info combined with factually wrong statements. For the wife Leizza, it describes her as: "church member, wife of sexual abuser Paul Douglas Adams; charged with child sexual abuse". Wrong. She was NOT charged with child sex abuse. She was charged with enabling and covering up sex abuse. Paul is listed as "church member". Wrong. He was excommunicated in 2013, he's not a member.

Seriously. What good is floodlit if it's that's bad at getting basic facts correct?

The site seems only to exist only to manipulate others into believing Latter-day Saints have a disproportionate problem in sex abuse. It does so by only focusing on noteworthy rumors and accusations against any who can be called a Latter-day Saint if you squint hard enough.

provoman · January 6, 2023

.........

Edited January 6, 2023 by provoman

provoman · January 6, 2023

I looked at one record I was surprised to see in the data base. When the charges became known, there wasn't the typical response from certain /r's.

I tried all sorts of searches at the time, and was unable to locate anything to indicate the individual was a member of the LDS Church. Even a document from Utah Attorney General did not indicate religious affiliation.

In the fldlit data base, there is no evidence of religious affiliation. As the information linked in the data base does not show a LDS connection; I seriously question whether fldlit is trying to prevent cast misleading shadows.

Calm · January 7, 2023

2 hours ago, provoman said:

I looked at one record I was surprised to see in the data base. When the charges became known, there wasn't the typical response from certain /r's.

I tried all sorts of searches at the time, and was unable to locate anything to indicate the individual was a member of the LDS Church. Even a document from Utah Attorney General did not indicate religious affiliation.

In the fldlit data base, there is no evidence of religious affiliation. As the information linked in the data base does not show a LDS connection; I seriously question whether fldlit is trying to prevent cast misleading shadows.

I don’t see Tom Kimball even though allegations were he abused a number of children and it was all over Mormon websites, in the news.

I am wondering if stuff is turned off because google links for the site aren’t working.

Edited January 7, 2023 by Calm

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