Lake Elsinore Civil Verdict Naming the Latter-day Saint Church as Co-Defendant

In April 2023, a jury in Riverside County Superior Court, California, awarded 2.28 billion dollars, 836 million dollars in general damages and 1.44 billion dollars in punitive damages, to a woman who testified that her stepfather sexually assaulted her from age five to fourteen, abuse she said took place at the family's Lake Elsinore home and at meetings and on property of the local congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The stepfather did not appear for the third day of trial, and the jury's award followed as a default judgment against him. He had been arrested in 1997 after the plaintiff disclosed the abuse to her high school basketball coach, and was separately convicted, pleading guilty to a count of committing a lewd act with a child under fourteen, for which he served a three year prison sentence.

The lawsuit named The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a co-defendant, alleging that the plaintiff repeatedly told local church officials, including bishops, about the ongoing abuse, and that officials failed to report it to law enforcement in violation of the church's own policy and used intimidation and shaming tactics to keep her from telling anyone outside the church. The church denied wrongdoing and settled its portion of the case for 995,000 dollars in December 2022, months before the jury returned its verdict against the stepfather. The plaintiff's mother, alleged in the suit to have had knowledge of the ongoing abuse, settled separately for 200,000 dollars.

The 2.28 billion dollar figure attaches to the stepfather alone; the church's own exposure in this case was fully resolved by its earlier, far smaller settlement, reached without a trial and without an admission that the allegations against it were true.