Former Mormon bishop highlighted in AP investigation arrested on felony child sex abuse charges

A former bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who was featured in an Associated Press investigation into the church’s way of protecting itself from sexual abuse allegations, was arrested by police in Virginia this week after he had been indicted on charges that he sexually assaulted his friends. daughter while accompanying her on a school trip as a child, court documents show.

Police and federal authorities were looking for John Goodrich after a grand jury in Williamsburg on Jan. 17 found probable cause that he committed four felonies, including rape by force, threats or intimidation, forcible sodomy and two counts of misdemeanor battery aggravated sexual battery by a parent of a child.

These charges were filed weeks after the AP investigation revealed how a representative of the church, commonly known as the Mormon Church, used a risk management playbook that helped it keep child sex abuse cases secret after allegations surfaced that Goodrich had abused his daughter Chelsea. in my thirties, at home in Idaho and on a school trip to Washington, DC twenty years ago.

“I hope this case will finally bring justice for the sexual abuse of my childhood,” Chelsea Goodrich said in a statement to the AP. “I am grateful that it appears the Commonwealth of Virginia is taking one case of child sexual abuse more seriously than years of repeated abuse in Idaho.”

A call Wednesday to John Goodrich’s cell phone immediately went to voicemail. Tommy Norment, a Williamsburg attorney for John Goodrich, declined to comment, saying he was still familiar with the case. Williamsburg police also did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Goodrich’s case.

Goodrich’s arrest in Virginia comes nearly eight years after he was arrested on similar charges in Idaho. Chelsea and her mother, Lorraine, went to Idaho police in 2016 to report extensive allegations of abuse during her childhood.

That charge was eventually dropped after a key witness in the case, another Mormon bishop to whom John had made a spiritual confession about him and his daughter, refused to testify. Although the details of that confession have not been made public, the church excommunicated Goodrich.

The AP’s investigation was based in part on hours of audio recordings of Chelsea’s 2017 meetings with Paul Rytting, a Utah attorney who headed the church’s Risk Management Division, which works to protect the church from sexual assault lawsuits abuse and other costly claims.

Chelsea went to Rytting for help in getting the bishop to testify about John’s spiritual confession. During the recorded meetings, Rytting expressed concern about what he called John’s “significant sexual transgression” but said the bishop, whose position in the church is akin to that of a Catholic priest, could not testify. He cited a loophole in Idaho’s mandatory reporting law, which exempts clergy from having to disclose child sex abuse information gathered in a clergy confession.

Without that testimony, prosecutors in Idaho dropped that earlier case.

Invoking clergy privilege was just one facet of the risk management playbook Rytting used in the Goodrich case. Rytting offered Chelsea and her mother $300,000 in exchange for a confidentiality agreement and a promise to destroy their recordings of their meetings, which they had made on the recommendation of a lawyer and with Rytting’s knowledge. The AP had similar recordings made at the time by a church member who attended the meetings as an advocate for Chelsea.

The church also used the so-called sex abuse hotline, which John Goodrich’s bishop called after his confession. As AP revealed in 2022, the Helpline is a phone number set up by the church for bishops to report cases of child sexual abuse. Instead of connecting church victims with counseling or other services, the Helpline often reports serious allegations of abuse to a church law firm.

In a statement to the AP before its recent investigation, the church said “the abuse of any child or any other individual is inexcusable,” and that John Goodrich, following his excommunication, “has not been readmitted to church membership.”

Reporting on the case in Idaho highlighted another alleged victim. After learning of Chelsea’s allegations, a 53-year-old single mother accused him of having non-consensual sex with her after giving her the drug Halcion, a controlled substance that John Goodrich often used to sedate patients during dental interventions. She alleged Goodrich drugged her last July after she broke off a sexual relationship with him.

Ultimately, John Goodrich reached a plea agreement in that case and escaped sex crime charges.

Chelsea Goodrich approached the AP with her story, she said, because her father remained free and practiced dentistry in Idaho with access to children.

On Tuesday, after authorities searched for him for two weeks, Goodrich turned himself in to police in Williamsburg, a court official told Chelsea Goodrich, and posted bond. He will be allowed to leave Virginia during legal proceedings, the court official said.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.