How to Navigate a Snake Pit

Going public with your story

Housekeeping: Substack has issued a warning that this article is so long that some email clients might truncate it. If it’s hard to read, please read this on Paperdolls.Today

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I grew. I changed my mind.

I had a significant “a-ha” moment after I published, “Being able to let others make amends.” For decades, I was quite adamant that survivors did not need to go through the legal system or tell their stories in a public fashion in order to heal. I still believe that. However, in the past 5-6 weeks, I’ve learned more and grown more. In fact, I’ve learned that taking legal action, even if the case gets thrown out for legal loopholes, can help survivors. ¹

Photo Courtesy of AJMartine

What I learned? Who am I to tell a survivor what path to take?

Simply because healing worked for me, doesn’t mean everyone should follow my path to get there. Granted there are stages one must go through, hence we structured Paperdolls to follow those jagged and non-linear milestones.

But, the confrontation stage can take many different forms.

The Majority of People Don’t Believe Child Sexual Abuse in a Problem

Simply because the vast majority of people in Utah and in our Country still do not believe that sexual abuse is problem, I believe any and all who feel like speaking out about their stories, should speak out.

When I was in Israel, I saw the location where many believe the battle of Jericho happened. According to the bible, the walls of Jericho fell after Joshua’s army surrounded the city blowing their trumpets. May all victims speak out and blow their trumpets to disintegrate the walls of denial perpetuating abuse. (see Paperdolls & Cowboy Boots, approx page 206

Additionally, most perpetrators manipulate their victims’ silence with horrific threats. If the child tells anyone: the perps will commit horrific crimes against the child and anything they care about. I know survivors who watched their beloved pet get killed, others have been threatened that their sibling would be harmed or killed. The list of threats that perpetrators use the manipulate the victims’s silence is endless….²

And, as adults, many perps still hurl threats. DARVO³ is real, and perps will use it. I strongly suggest getting familiar with DARVO, and preparing for it when you tell. No matter the degree and extent of your telling. Many ignorant and stupid people believe the perps.

I want survivors to tell

Simply to break that complicated and horrific “brainwashing,” I want survivors to tell! It’s not the victims/survivors fault. It’s the perps fault and that’s why the perps resort to such horrible and perilous threats to the children. The perps KNOW they are committing repulsive crimes and the perps will do just about anything to try to prevent the children from telling anyone about it.

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David Hardy, Esq

As I wrote a few weeks ago, I reached out to David Hardy, an attorney in Salt Lake City, to provide legal context. The legal advice I received before Paperdolls was first released isn’t quite accurate in today’s legal climate.

As our conversations progressed, I realized that David’s experience with challenging large institutions for their actions in covering up abuse of their members needs to be told. Additionally, one of the matters in which he assisted, ties to my co-author’s story. My co-author died before COVID, and I’m left with trying to ensure that her story and the valiant souls in her side of the story are honored.

David Hardy explains:

• His involvement and interest.
  You can also read my review of meeting with David in 2018, in Paperdolls & Cowboy Boots, approx 328

• His assistance in the Court Case involving two of the well known perpetrators in my co-author’s writings in Paperdolls & Cowboy Boots.

• The Court rulings of these matters, that was not decided on the Case Merits

• His advice on using the Judicial System for justice

• And much more.

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The following is written by David E. Hardy, Esq:

On an evening in March 2018, I found myself sitting alone at my desk at home facing an unexpected existential decision. For two days a viral news story had taken front page in Utah: the surreptitiously taped confession of prominent man in LDS Church leadership who several years ago had sexually abused a young female under his responsibility had surfaced and created a firestorm. As I sat there and read an online transcript of the taped confession, a series of seemingly unrelated events and relationships that I had been directly connected with over the previous four decades unmistakably came into focus for me. All at once, in something like a rare multiple planetary alignment, I realized I was in a unique position to publicly expose another long-dormant claim of serious child sexual abuse that took place in the 1980s involving multiple victims and multiple perpetrators.

I had recently become aware that one of the three alleged perpetrators in this situation was the husband of my (then) wife’s best friend since childhood. We had been socially involved with them when he and I were in law school together. Our young children had lined up in ages for play-dates and sleepovers. I had recently discovered that his sudden death in 1995 had, in fact, been suicide. He killed himself after the police had been called when it was discovered that he was sexually abusing his two young stepdaughters in a second marriage.

I had also become independently aware that the other two alleged perpetrators at the center of the 1980s allegations were the daughter of Russell M. Nelson (since 2018 President of the LDS Church) and her husband - who, completely unrelated to our friends, I had hired to build our first house in 1984 on the recommendation of my law partner. Out of curiosity, I broke from the confession transcript I had been reading and Googled him. I was prepared for a lot of things, but not seeing a portrait photograph of his smiling face beaming back at me, together with his wife’s, in a 2011 Church News article announcing that he had been called to serve as an LDS Mission President in Europe. That was the when I made my decision. I had been a practicing attorney for thirty-eight years, and at that moment I resolved to undertake my own in-depth investigation into those allegations of serial child sex abuse. If what I found supported it, I would take it to the local and national news media.

You see, the largest of these planets that had lined up was the fact that thirty-one years earlier in 1986 I had personally delivered into the hands of then junior Apostle Nelson a letter directly relating to this matter and how to keep it out of public view (i.e., covered up). The letter had been faxed to me at my law office to walk across South Temple and hand-deliver personally to the recently appointed Apostle Nelson in his corner office at the Church Office Building. It was from my older brother, who was a Church leader and prominent media attorney in Washington D.C. For years my brother was the Church’s go-to “fixer” and had asked me on several other occasions to receive and hand deliver sensitive letters to members of the First Presidency or Apostles to safeguard their content. The letter I had pulled off the fax machine that summer afternoon in 1986 began: “Dear Elder Nelson, I am so sorry this tragedy has befallen you and your family. It is important that it be kept out of the public eye.” It referenced claims of sexual abuse involving multiple neighborhood children by a family member and her spouse, but didn’t identify them or detail the allegations. It then went on over four or five pages to provide a set of instructions as how to immediately approach and deal with both the media and local law enforcement authorities. No news ever did surface. I didn’t think much more about it and dismissed it as surely one of the many unfounded claims that must regularly be aimed at the Church and the General Authorities. I was a believer - an obeyer - and ready to give the Church and General Authorities the benefit of the doubt on pretty much anything. ⁴

Then on that evening in March 2018, all the disparate planets in that universe lined up, and I knew what I had to do with the information I uniquely possessed. The Cliff Notes version is that I spent the next year heavily involved in researching writings, declarations, and court documents, collecting facts, and interviewing many of the parties involved. I interviewed victims, spouses, family members, therapists, etc. That led to long days in Washington D.C. with the religion editor of the Washington Post and in New York City with the senior producer of Vice News and award-winning investigative journalist Barry Meier of the New York Times. We spent several days going over my findings, reviewing the evidence I had amassed, and planning the interviews they needed to travel to Utah to film. All the while they were doing their own due diligence and becoming more and more sure they had a significant story. Vice News had never before dedicated an entire one-hour episode to a single story, so it was an “all hands on deck” exercise. Barry Meier’s investigative journalistic piece was planned to appear online and in syndicated newspapers all over the country on the day after the Vice News episode aired. Decks were cleared and they started flying teams out to Utah to film the interviews.

And then I learned a hard truth about power.

Up to this point, none of what I was doing had become public information. Then in the latter part of 2018, six of the victims, now adults, decided to file a civil lawsuit claiming heinous child sexual abuse against the daughter of President Nelson and her husband, because the Utah statute of limitations (”SoL”) on such civil claims had been significantly extended by the Utah legislature in 2016.⁵ They intended to join President Nelson personally as an aider and abettor defendant for his actions in covering the abuse up, but wanted to take his deposition first. I was asked if I would collaborate with their attorney in providing him with all the background and evidence I had amassed - which I gladly did. On October 2, 2018 the lawsuit was filed in Utah federal district court using “John and Jane Does” for both the plaintiffs (victims) and defendants (perpetrators) in the case heading. The Complaint included my sworn declaration detailing my receipt by fax and hand-delivery of the letter to President Nelson in 1986, and chilling excerpts from the diaries and therapy writings of the victims when they were children. Also attached as an exhibit was another powerful piece of evidence: the Johns Hopkins Medical Sexual Predator Unit’s diagnosis and confession of the deceased perpetrator (he had checked himself into that program in 1986 after the children’s allegations initially surfaced). Within hours of the Complaint being filed in federal court, the husband and wife defendants, through their major Salt Lake City law firm attorney, went in front of the cameras and self-identified as the defendants (which I’m quite sure was a tactic dictated by the attorneys for President Nelson and the Church to “get out in front” of the story).

The next day, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the federal lawsuit, based on the argument that the extended SoL for child sex abuse adopted by the Utah legislature and enacted into law in 2016 could not apply retroactively to the claims against them that had arisen and expired under the former, much shorter SoL. The defendants’ attorneys argued this even though the Utah legislature and the new law itself expressly stated that the new SoL did apply retroactively. There was a similar case with the same SoL for child sex abuse claims issue, Mitchell v. Roberts, then pending before the Utah Supreme Court. Because of this, the Utah federal court stayed the proceedings on the defendants’ motion to dismiss pending the expected definitive ruling by the Utah Supreme Court on the SoL issue. We filed an “amicus curiae” (friend of the court) brief supporting the victim in the Mitchell case on the retroactive application of the expanded SoL (the position taken by other state courts on the SoL issue all over the country). But a strange thing happened - rather than rendering a decision in the case in a relatively expeditious manner as it normally does, the Utah Supreme Court inexplicably went radio silent. (At that time all five of the justices were either practicing members of the LDS Church or had been raised in the Church.)

During this extended waiting period, both the expanded Vice News episode and the Barry Meier exposé article to be nationally syndicated by the Post and NYT were put on hold pending the Utah Supreme Court’s decision on the threshold SoL issue. Remember, though, that it didn’t relate at all to the merits of the case, but only whether or not the case would be summarily dismissed on the procedural SoL issue alone. The defendants’ attorneys were trying to make sure the case would never be tried on its merits. To say that this unexpected delay was frustrating is putting it mildly, as I knew from inside information that Russell Nelson and the Church were working to shut the entire matter down any way they could. I was being warned by others that the longer the exposé remained on hold, the greater would be the chances of personal repercussions to me and my reputation. What I had been working on for the last year was out in the open and I now had a target on my back. Character assassination of the “messenger” is often used by perpetrators and their aiders and abettors to attempt to diminish and defang the horrific facts and accusations. In this case, involving allegations against a daughter and son-in-law of the serving President of the Mormon Church and the exposure of a cover-up he had instigated, the stakes were certainly high.

The waiting went on and on. The Utah Supreme Court didn’t announce their decision in Mitchell v. Roberts until June 2020, longer than I’d ever experienced or heard of. Utah became the first state supreme court to rule that applying a new, expanded SoL would be an unconstitutional taking of an alleged child sex abuse perpetrator’s vested right to be able to rely on the expired, shorter SoL to shield him or her from liability. Even though the Utah State Legislature had specifically intended and written into state law that the new SoL was to apply retroactively. It was a shock. The ruling ensured the speedy dismissal of the Utah federal court lawsuit against President Nelson’s daughter and son-in-law before the merits were ever considered. It also cemented that President Nelson could never be sued as a defendant in a lawsuit by any of the victims.

More Disappointing

Even more disappointing to me personally was the fact that after the Utah Supreme Court’s decision in Mitchell v. Roberts was announced, both the Vice News producer and journalist Barry Meier called me and told me that the “powers that be” above them had axed the exposé. I had been naive to think the particular “powers that be” in Utah could not impact the national news media to that degree.

Why do I relate all this?

To be able to summarize for you my opinions as to both the personal and potentially legal risks and costs involved in making a decision to speak out publicly against your perpetrator(s), and why- even though I am not a victim of child sexual abuse myself - I decided it was worth it to me to take action and speak out.

The personal cost of speaking out

I know that the personal cost to me as a third party is minimal compared to a that of a victim. I was exposed to a fair amount of skepticism and derision by those who are skeptical and derisive. That is to be expected and processed as background noise that will always be there. The people who matter most in your life know who you are, and a vast number of people who don’t know you are grateful for your courage in taking a principled stand at some personal discomfort and difficulty. A greater cost is dealing with the very real potential that you will be thwarted or stopped by unexpected forces at unexpected times. The disappointment was real for me, and would only be more pronounced for you, as one who experienced the nightmare of abuse. You have to be aware of that and be willing to experience and pass through it - whatever the outcome. I think I have become somewhat jaded by my experience, and have to remind myself of that and guard against its effects in my life. I know, however, that my actions made a positive difference in a few other lives - and because of that I would do it again. Bottom line - there is a permanent good feeling I have that I did what I believed to be right.

As for the legal risks, let me preface my remarks by establishing that although I have been a practicing attorney for over forty-five years, I am not offering legal advice here nor am I being compensated in any way for participating with April in this article. I am offering my thoughts and personal opinions, borne out of my general knowledge of the law and my personal experiences.

Truth is an Absolute Defense

The primary⁶ risk you may be faced with if you go public is that your perpetrator may threaten to sue you for defamation. The defamation torts⁷ your perpetrator may threaten to sue you for are essentially “libel” and/or “slander.” Libel means defaming someone in the written word, and slander is defaming someone verbally. While I’m not going to get into which side has the burden of proof in establishing a claim for libel or slander in America as opposed to the UK (you can watch Rachel Weisz in Denial (2016) on that fascinating rabbit-hole) - suffice it to say that truth is an absolute defense to either tort claim. The only problem is that if your perpetrator is stupid or vengeful enough to actually sue you if you go public (which does not happen as often as one might think - unless you’re thinking logically), truth may be an absolute defense for you, but you’d have to go through the emotion churning, time consuming, and costly legal process of litigation, and possibly a trial, to ultimately prove it to be the truth.

All this is to say be personally certain of the truth of what you say publicly before you say it. If it happened to you and you know who did it, you know the truth of the matter and have that certainty. Your perpetrator knows the truth of it as well. Ultimately, you can’t control whether a perpetrator will draw the public attention down on himself by suing you, or at least threatening to sue you, but you can control what you say and allege up front.

What about things you hear or learn about your perpetrator that are reported to you by other people?

This is more problematic. You should not use these “facts” as a basis for what you say or allege in public (or private for that matter) unless you have thoroughly vetted the source and are comfortable and convinced with the reliability and veracity of its provenance. Even then be careful. I spent a year heavily researching the facts and allegations of the events I went public about. I haunted the private collections areas of libraries for diaries and articles written by those involved. I did numerous in-person, in-depth interviews that I video recorded, and then confirmed everything I learned to the extent possible through follow-up research. I scoured available court and municipal records. There was a lot of ancillary information (including some hair-raising allegations) that I could not corroborate from at least one more valid source - so they remained in my notes and never saw the light of day.

Bottom line: there is always a risk of becoming entangled in a lawsuit. If you stick with facts and allegations you know to be true personally because they happened to you, or have come from a vetted and trusted source and you have been able to corroborate them, it is unlikely that your perpetrator will want to risk the public attention of being the aggressor and filing a lawsuit against you.

It’s good that the axiom “truth is an absolute defense” ultimately matters, but it’s safer to be smart and careful about what you will say and allege before you go public.

1. April Note: https://www.paperdolls.today/p/navigating-the-snake-pit

2. April Note: My co-author provides chilling examples of the perpetrators killing beloved pets to threaten the children “not to tell.”

3. April Note: I’ve written quite a bit about DARVO. One of my favorite articles is “Let us dedicate ourselves to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”

4. David Note: My own very public disagreements and parting of the ways with senior Apostle Boyd K. Packer and President Gordon B. Hinkley over the “homosexuality” issue, arising from my integrous gay teenage son who had come out to me in tears the same week I had been called as a bishop - along with my ultimate resignation from that position and dissociation with the Church three years later - was still a decade away.

5. David Note: Owing to the growing awareness of child sexual abuse throughout the country, and the problem of the typical 3-year statute of limitations on civil claims in such actions in virtually every state in the nation, a nationwide effort had resulted in most states amending their statute of limitations for child sex abuse claims to a much longer period when the child would have a chance to mature and make an informed decision as an adult whether or not to bring a claim in court against their perpetrator.

6. April Note: David’s perspective is the legal aspects. For me, the primary risk is with DARVO and being betrayed by those you once thought loved you and supported you.

7. David Note: An injurious thing someone may do to you for which you may have a claim against them is called a “tort” - the Old French word for a “wrong”. In American jurisprudence, we use a lot of Old French terms because after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 establishing William of Normandy and the Plantagenet line on the throne of England, French was the language of the English aristocracy, higher education, and law for quite a long time. You see references to torts almost every day - think: all the billboards on I-15 showing eager, smiling attorneys wanting to represent you for the personal injury you sustained a car accident.