My brother is currently serving time (up to 25 years) for sexual assault of a child. He pled guilty in 2019. He has been inactive his entire adult life and this particular incident was never reported to any church authorities.
However, when we were children (late 90s-00s), he also sexually assaulted me and one of my siblings over a period of many years. He was 15 and I was 11 or 12 when I reported the repeated assault to my parents. As I remember it, CPS got involved and a cursory investigation was conducted which quickly fizzled and did not go anywhere.
At that time my family was active in the church. I don’t think the bishop of our ward was aware of the assault at first. But he soon became involved after an incident that involved the bishop’s own family.
To the best of my memory/knowledge, the bishop lived in our neighborhood and my mom asked him if my brother could stay at their house for a weekend while my parents were out of town and the rest of us kids were away visiting family for the summer. The bishop had 2 young kids around ages 5-8. This was less than a year after I reported his assault of me, dating back to when I myself was around 6. You might be able to see where this is going. Yes, extremely irresponsible parenting on my mom’s part, or maybe she was just in extreme denial. I can only assume that the bishop did not know anything about the assault otherwise he would have said no, I would hope.
From the few details I was told about the incident, they had my brother babysit their kids at some point that weekend, and he acted inappropriately with their young daughter, to the point where she locked herself in the bathroom to get away from him.
The bishop confronted him and my mom about the incident. I always assumed at this point the previous assault on me probably came to light as well, although looking back I wouldn’t be surprised if she still didn’t mention it, just to save herself the shame and embarrassment. Or, again, extreme denial.
As far as I know, the bishop’s response to the incident was not to report him to the authorities, but instead to transfer our entire family to a different ward. I came back from visiting family for the summer and was devastated to learn that we had to attend a different ward (leaving behind friends, etc) and even more devastated once I learned about the incident.
I’m not sure what exactly happened with my brother’s membership in the church, I just know he didn’t come to church with us at the new ward after that. Do they disfellowship 15 year olds? Excommunicate them? You would think so, given that the “age of accountability” is the ripe old age of 8, but somehow I doubt it.
Either way, the bishop saw fit to “banish” our entire family (I can only assume for his own family’s comfort and protection), but somehow did not see fit to follow up on the safety of the 3 children still living with this predator.