Associated Press investigative reporter
Michael Rezendes
1 topic · 2 dated events · 1 source
Their part in each topic
Sexual Abuse and the Institutional Response
Associated Press investigative reporter
Rezendes, formerly of the Boston Globe Spotlight team, published the August 2022 AP investigation of the Bisbee, Arizona case, built on thousands of pages of sealed court records. His reporting introduced the phrase "help line" to a national audience and produced the follow-up story identifying the Kirton McConkie attorney who took the first call. Nearly every subsequent argument, in either direction, is a response to his account.
In the timeline
2 events across 1 topics, chronological. Only events this person was actually part of — present at, responsible for, or the subject of — not every event where the name comes up.
The Associated Press publishes its investigationhinge
Michael Rezendes reported that when a Bisbee bishop learned a member was sexually assaulting his five-year-old daughter, he followed Church policy and called the help line, and that attorneys who staff it told him he was legally bound to keep the matter secret. The bishop later told federal investigators: "They said, 'You absolutely can do nothing.'" The abuse continued for as many as seven more years and extended to a second daughter born after the bishops knew. The AP said it had obtained thousands of pages of sealed court documents.
The call log names an attorney and a legislator
AP reporting based on two pages of a call log and a deposition transcript, filed with the Arizona Court of Appeals by the plaintiffs, identified Merrill F. Nelson — then a Republican member of the Utah House and a Kirton McConkie lawyer — as the attorney who took the initial help-line call and who spoke with two bishops over roughly two years. In the same period Church spokesman Sam Penrod said: "As clergy, the bishop was required by Arizona law to maintain the confidentiality of the father's limited confession."
Sources in their own name
Source records in the database whose author line names this person. Each links to the topic that uses it.
Seven years of sex abuse: How Mormon officials let it happen (and follow-up reporting)
Michael Rezendes and Jason Dearen, Associated Press
The account, drawn from sealed court records, of how the help line routed the Bisbee bishops' calls and what they were told.
Appears alongside
People who share the most dated events with Michael Rezendes.
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