Nearly $2.3B Awarded in Sex Abuse Lawsuit That Had Named the LDS Church

The Salt Lake Tribune's 27 April 2023 report on a Riverside County Superior Court jury's 25 April 2023 award of 2.28 billion dollars, 836 million dollars in general damages and 1.44 billion dollars in punitive damages, to a woman (identified in court papers as Jane Doe) who said her stepfather sexually assaulted her from age five to fourteen at their Lake Elsinore, California 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 at trial and the award followed as a default judgment; he had been convicted years earlier, pleading guilty to a count of committing a lewd act with a child under fourteen. The lawsuit named the church as a co-defendant, alleging local officials, including bishops, failed to report the abuse despite repeated disclosures and used intimidation and shaming tactics to keep the plaintiff silent. The church denied wrongdoing and settled its portion for 995,000 dollars in December 2022, before the verdict; the plaintiff's mother, alleged to have had knowledge of the abuse, settled separately for 200,000 dollars.