NEW INFO ON REDACTED BYU POLICE REPORTS

[consiglieri]

Just got some additional information on those police reports.

Not from the police, but from a different source.

I now know some of the information in some of the redactions. There are parts still redacted that I have not been able to gain access to.

PAGE 6--In the two lines immediately after Joseph Bishop tells the police "the room did not have a bed, TV or VHS tapes," the redacted portion reads: "He said he also gave a backrub to ____ _____ where he rubbed her buttocks. ____ _____ was living in his house at the time." The following two lines remain redacted.

Note this is the sister missionary who tried to kill herself at the MTC. After that, Joseph Bishop took her into his home to help her recuperate. I know the name of this girl, but am not disclosing it.

PAGE 7--The first redacted line at the end of the first paragraph, right after, "He (Bishop) said he didn't remember when ___ confronted him about the rape," states: "A copy of the recording is attached to this report. Refer to the recording for more details."


It appears the police did not want the public to know there was a separate audio recording of their interview with Joseph Bishop that contained "more details."

PAGE 9--The three lines redacted here read: "McKenna Denson sent me a rough draft of her statement through email. However, the case was closed before she was able to send me a completed version." I think the last line of this paragraph is still redacted.

It appears the police didn't want the public to know about McKenna sending in a rough draft of her statement.

If anybody has any additional thoughts on why BYU Police wouldn't want these aspects released to the public, I am all ears.





By the way, I have now obtained a copy of the rough draft letter sent by McKenna to the BYU Police Department and which forms part of their investigative file. (Let's just say I have a mole in the BYU Police Department.)


At the top of page four of this letter is an interesting detail related by McKenna, and which I have little doubt serves as at least part of the basis for the BYU Police not wanting the public to know about this letter.

You will recall McKenna was sent on her mission to Washington D.C. where she suffered a mental breakdown.

After that, she was sent back to Utah for rehabilitation and to see if she could still go out and complete her mission.

McKenna saw a mental health counselor and then a church authority before being approved to return on her mission, only this time to Wisconsin.

The church authority McKenna saw was not just her bishop or stake president, as it would have been if you or I were in the same situation.

It was Thomas S. Monson.

Here is the line from her rough draft that the BYU Police doesn't want the public to know they have.

"I had to meet with Elder Thomas S. Monson before I could be released back into the mission field."


And no.

I am not making this up.

[Red Ryder]

What's the implication of having to meet with Monson?

That the church knew at the highest level (12 apostles as he obviously wasn't the prophet at the time)?

They can't claim this was a local matter or blame Elder Carlos E Asay?

[consiglieri]

The meeting with Monson is made more mysterious by the fact McKenna had told nobody about the attack at the MTC.

If Monson's meeting with McKenna had anything to do with Joseph Bishop, it would seem he would have had to learn it from some other source.

Or maybe just how frisky Joseph Bishop was being with other sister missionaries.

What makes absolutely no sense to me is why a nobody sister missionary would be meeting with an apostle to get cleared for returning to the mission field.

[Red Ryder]

Wasn't that protocol back then?

Shummy from the RFM board had to meet with (then apostle) Gordon B. Hinckley to be able to go on a mission. That was in the late 60's though. I thought it was standard procedure to have to meet with a GA when certain sins had to be transgressed and resolved. It wasn't until later when the sheer numbers of missionaries needing to meet outweighed the schedules of the GA's and they pushed these duties down to the SP to take care of. I don't know the timing of the shift in policy though.

Can anyone know confirm this theory? I'll ask around.

[AllieOop]

Wasn't that protocol back then?

Shummy from the RFM board had to meet with (then apostle) Gordon B. Hinckley to be able to go on a mission. That was in the late 60's though. I thought it was standard procedure to have to meet with a GA when certain sins had to be transgressed and resolved. It wasn't until later when the sheer numbers of missionaries needing to meet outweighed the schedules of the GA's and they pushed these duties down to the SP to take care of. I don't know the timing of the shift in policy though.

Can anyone know confirm this theory? I'll ask around.

What sin would Mckenna need to have cleared or resolved? Her pregnancy and her giving a daughter up for adoption?

Do we know when she met with Monson? I would have thought she'd have been cleared of all her past sins and gone through repentance prior to entering the MTC (if she met with him after the MTC/Bishop incident).
To be honest, I haven't kept up with the timeline here....
(Ok...just read the opening post again here and I see when it was she met with Monson. If she'd just had a breakdown and wanted to go back out, it seems odd she'd have to meet with an apostle for that, but maybe?)


**************************

[Red Ryder]

What sin would Mckenna need to have cleared or resolved? Her pregnancy and her giving a daughter up for adoption?

I'm definitely not implying that she had any past sins to resolve with Monson.

I'm simply implying that at that period in time it might have been church protocol to meet with a GA to get mission clearance for certain circumstances.

1. either to go when a sin of sexual nature had to be resolved (as in Shummy's case); or

2. To get readmission to return to a mission (as in McKenna's case).

My point is that today most complications that need to be resolved to go on (or return to) a mission are resolved by the SP and in special circumstances go up the chain to FP.

Back then it may have been normal to meet with a GA.

Either way, this should indicate Monson knew her circumstances and was aware of the rape. If not then the church covered it up before it got to Monson (probable). If so, then the church covered it up at the top (highly probable).

I hope these details come out so that we can all point to Monson and imply the cover up went all the way to the top! I certainly believe it did.

[Not Buying It]

Well, now wait - she publicly mentioned speaking to Elder Asay, and he is no big name in the Church. Am I to believe she had a personal meeting with Elder Monson and never bothered to mention in anything she has made public so far?

[Just This Guy]

I would guess that they were holding that info back for the trial. Basically not wanting to show all their cards too early.

[Palerider]

This isn't a problem. Dead prophets are easily thrown under the bus nowadays.

One time thing. Monson probably didn't know details. May have been suffering from early onset Alzheimers and no one knew. Was making decisions as a man. Give Monson a break. Everyone makes minor mistakes. Nothing here to see. These are not the droids you're looking for. Move along, move along.....

[Hagoth]

It was Thomas S. Monson.

Did anyone else hear a dramatic orchestra hit when you read this?

Thanks for the update, Consiglieri! And thanks for breaking it out as a separate topic. I really hope the audio tape will be forthcoming. What will you do then? You've already gone to all caps for the subject line. Maybe add some ***s.

These details are unfolding just like a Netflix documentary. Anybody out there working on the screenplay?

[Yobispo]

It was Thomas S. Monson.

Did anyone else hear a dramatic orchestra hit when you read this?

Thanks for the update, Consiglieri! And thanks for breaking it out as a separate topic. I really hope the audio tape will be forthcoming. What will you do then? You've already gone to all caps for the subject line. Maybe add some ***s.

These details are unfolding just like a Netflix documentary. Anybody out there working on the screenplay?

Holy moley. She met with TSM! I felt that little twinge of rage that I rarely feel anymore. (These days its mostly disgust) Consiglieri is not going to let this thing go, and I'm cheering from NorCal.

[IT_Veteran]

It was Thomas S. Monson.

Did anyone else hear a dramatic orchestra hit when you read this?

Thanks for the update, Consiglieri! And thanks for breaking it out as a separate topic. I really hope the audio tape will be forthcoming. What will you do then? You've already gone to all caps for the subject line. Maybe add some ***s.

These details are unfolding just like a Netflix documentary. Anybody out there working on the screenplay?

Holy moley. She met with TSM! I felt that little twinge of rage that I rarely feel anymore. (These days its mostly disgust) Consiglieri is not going to let this thing go, and I'm cheering from NorCal.

Hey - me too (NorCal)!

[Rob4Hope]

There are all kinds of dirty-little-secrets.

I've been made aware of 2 specific accounts, one first hand, that I can't HELP but want to believe are false. I will not share them here because its "hearsay and innuendo". The problem is, however, when you begin to hear additional stories from disparate sources, one wonders if there may be a little truth down in there....



On topic: I had a missionary companion who had to get cleared by a GA to serve his mission. I don't think it was an apostle, but it was pretty high up the food chain... 1987.

[slavereeno]

One time thing. Monson probably didn't know details. May have been suffering from early onset Alzheimers and no one knew. Was making decisions as a man. Give Monson a break. Everyone makes minor mistakes. Nothing here to see. These are not the droids you're looking for. Move along, move along.....

Yes this exactly, my TBM father is already throwing McKenna Dawson under the bus too, like she made it up and is just a complainer. He didn't say this to me but to DW, I am not sure how I would have reacted. It made me really upset when DW was telling me about it.

[consiglieri]

I am currently recording a podcast on these new developments.

Something I want to mention here is this:

On page 4 of McKenna's written statement to police, she mentions Joseph Bishop taking her through two locked doors in order to get inside his "preparation room."

To my knowledge, McKenna never mentioned this publicly. She only described the basement room in some detail.

It was only after her description of the room was reported in late March, 2018, that a former MTC employee went public to say: (1) That he was familiar with the room in the basement described by McKenna; (2) that the room in the basement exactly matched the description given by McKenna, up to and including the bed; (3) and that the former employee could not imagine why any missionary would be down in that basement given the fact they would have to go through more than one locked door to get there.



This was the first time the presence of locked doors was mentioned publicly.

But in McKenna's written statement to the police, emailed to them on December 7, 2017, she wrote the following:

"He escorted me out of his office and we turned toward the reception area. We went down a hallway and he opened a locked door that lead .... (the ellipses are in the original) I don't remember if there were any stairs or not but I think there might have been. He escorted me through the first locked door and towards another small storage room which was also locked. He unlocked that door, escorted me in, turned on the light and closed the door."

Now, if McKenna had added the details about the locked doors they had to pass through AFTER the former MTC employee mentioned it to KUTV, it could be said that McKenna was just copying that detail and putting it in her story for verisimilitude.

But the opposite seems to be the case.

We have instead a statement by McKenna emailed to BYU Police on December 7, 2017, more than three months before the former MTC employee was quoted in the newspapers.

And her statement to the police mentions multiple locked doors.

I find this evidence highly corroborative of McKenna's story.

[IT_Veteran]

Equally troubling is he church’s acknowledgement that the room exists, but that it didn’t have a tv or vcr. Again - how would McKenna know if she hadn’t been in there? Why would she be in there if not for nefarious intentions from Bishop?

[Hagoth]

It is disturbing that the BYU police, let alone anyone in the upper offices of church leadership, sat on this information and waited for the statute of limitations to tick down. Whoever's writing the screenplay for that documentary should have a statute of limitations clock ticking away in the corner of the screen during the years McKenna was trying to get someone to believe her.

I suppose Bishop's mention of a small preparation room next to a break room or kitchen was put forth as a lesser evil than the specially prepared chamber of horrors that McKenna describes. This is the place where Bishop admits he asked a sister missionary to bare her breasts, to which she complied. I think we were supposed to assume he was talking about McKenna and that the incident was brief and a lot less rape-ish than McKenna made it sound. But it sounds to me like this is an entirely separate event. There is now good evidence to back up McKenna's basement room story and Bishop admitted to fondling another sister in his home (because, apparently, that's how a priesthood leader councils girls who attempt suicide), so it looks like we have at least 3 girls about whom Bishop has offered some degree of confession.

If it can be shown that people at the level of Carlos Asay and Thomas Monson were aware of this stuff at the time, we have some big ugly news on our hands.

[Hagoth]

Equally troubling is he church’s acknowledgement that the room exists, but that it didn’t have a tv or vcr. Again - how would McKenna know if she hadn’t been in there? Why would she be in there if not for nefarious intentions from Bishop?

Yes, that's really interesting, since in the leaked recording McKenna never mentions porn, as far as I recall. That is a detail that came out later. The church, for whatever reason, was insistent that there was no VCR player, which suggests that they knew something they weren't talking about.

[consiglieri]

I am going from recollection, here, but I believe the church admitted to the room and the vcr and tapes, but denied the bed.

Found it.

When asked about these new details, Eric Hawkins, spokesperson for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said, "Yes, Joseph Bishop had an secondary office in the basement of the MTC. People we have interviewed who were familiar with the office report it did not contain a bed."

http://kutv.com/news/local/former-emplo ... bed-and-tv

So it looks like in this "denial," the video tapes and VCR were not mentioned.

[IT_Veteran]

I am going from recollection, here, but I believe the church admitted to the room and the vcr and tapes, but denied the bed.

Found it.

When asked about these new details, Eric Hawkins, spokesperson for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said, "Yes, Joseph Bishop had an secondary office in the basement of the MTC. People we have interviewed who were familiar with the office report it did not contain a bed."

http://kutv.com/news/local/former-emplo ... bed-and-tv

So it looks like in this "denial," the video tapes and VCR were not mentioned.

I'm glad you're here to keep me straight on this stuff. I'm often working from recollection as well, so I appreciate steering me back toward the facts. I tended to be more careful about getting every detail correct when sharing this stuff with TBM family, but I've had to stop sharing it with them altogether to preserve the relationships.