The church has filed a legal motion asking Cardinal to delay implementing her order until it contests her findings with the Arizona Court of Appeals. It will also require church officials to turn over records of the disciplinary council meeting. “The judge’s order applies to the church’s secret records and to what happened at the secret ex-communication hearing,” said Lynne Cadigan, an attorney for the three children who filed suit.Ĭardinal’s order will require church official Richard Fife, a clerk who took notes during the excommunication hearing, to answer questions from the attorneys representing the Adams children. The victims’ attorneys also objected when a church official cited the privilege when refusing to answer questions during pre-trial testimony. The lawsuit accuses two Arizona bishops and church leaders in Salt Lake City of negligence in not reporting the abuse and allowing Adams to continue abusing his older daughter for as many as seven years, a time in which he also abused the girl’s infant sister.Ĭardinal issued her order, which the church is expected to appeal, after attorneys for three victims objected when the church refused to turn over disciplinary records for Adams, who was excommunicated in 2013. “His acts can only be characterized as a waiver of the clergy-penitent privilege.”
“Taken together, Adams’ overt acts demonstrate a lack of repentance and a profound disregard” for the principles of the church, widely known as the Mormon church, Cardinal said in her ruling.
0 kommentar(er)
