SALT LAKE CITY — A woman who says a former Mormon missionary leader raped her in the 1980s and that the church failed to take her allegations seriously has filed a lawsuit, saying Thursday she wants the church to change the way it handles sexual abuse reports.
McKenna Denson, 55, said she opted to take legal action after becoming fed up that local church leaders failed to take disciplinary action despite reporting the allegations several times over three decades. She said her experience illustrates systematic problems in the church with sexual abuse claims.
Eric Hawkins, a spokesman for The Church of Jesus of Christ of Latter-day Saints, said the institution has faith in the judicial system. The church has previously said it’s investigating Denson’s allegations and last week updated guidelines for how local leaders should deal with sexual abuse claims.
The church should encourage members to report abuse first to police, not local leaders, and require local leaders to call police when they hear of abuse, not a church hotline as currently directed, Denson’s attorney, Craig Vernon, said at a news conference.
“Nothing happened. McKenna wasn’t believed,” Vernon said. “McKenna was blamed, McKenna was shamed.”
The Associated Press doesn’t usually name alleged victims of sexual assault but Denson has decided to go public with her story.
In the federal lawsuit filed Wednesday, Denson repeated her allegation that Joseph L. Bishop singled her out, groomed her and sexually assaulted her in 1984 when he was president of the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah.
Bishop, now 85, has denied raping Denson but acknowledged to police who investigated the report this year that he asked her to expose herself, which he says she did. Denson, of Pueblo, Colo., said that didn’t happen.
Gregory Bishop, an attorney serving as his father’s spokesman, didn’t return a request for comment Thursday.
The case became public last month when a conversation Denson secretly recorded with Bishop in December came to light. In the conversation, Bishop is heard apologizing to Denson after she confronts him about the incident, but he doesn’t say what happened.
In the same conversation, Bishop acknowledged molesting an unidentified second woman and described it as back rub that he says got “too frisky.”
The Mormon church has said it is investigating both incidents and has vowed to “bring accountability.” The church says no discipline was taken against Bishop after Denson previously reported the abuse because he denied it and they couldn’t verify the allegations.
“Our hearts ache for all survivors of abuse, and the church is committed to addressing incidents of abuse wherever they are found,” the church spokesman said.
