The reporter of ‘Spotlight’ fame discusses his exposé on sex abuse in the LDS Church | Episode 247

Mormon Land

Earlier this month, an Associated Press investigation of several child sex abuse cases, including a particularly horrific one in Arizona, revealed that the much-debated “help line” supplied by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its lay leaders failed to protect the victims. The exposé brought responses of dismay, disgust and anger from insiders and outsiders alike — and the reverberations are still being felt. On this week’s show, AP journalist Michael Rezendes, who previously earned a Pulitzer Prize with The Boston Globe for uncovering the Roman Catholic Church’s pattern of covering up clergy sex abuse while part of the team dramatized in the Oscar-winning film “Spotlight,” to talk about his latest story, how came upon it, how he reported it and how it compares to his previous reporting on this sensitive subject. Rezendes also talks about an astonishing amount of document shredding on sexual abuse — for instance, all records of calls to the help line, he reports, are routinely destroyed — within the Utah-based faith and points to a lack of transparency surrounding its handling of these cases.