Sex-abuse video victimizes child long after abuser confessed to Latter-day Saint (Mormon) leaders

Rape video continues to circulate, even though its creator Paul Adams has died.

By Edward Era Barbacena

The video of a man raping his 9-year-old daughter was discovered in New Zealand in 2016 and triggered a global search for the little girl.

MJ was a tiny, black-haired girl, just 5 years old, when her father admitted to his bishop that he was sexually abusing her.

The father, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and an admitted pornography addict, was in counseling with his bishop when he revealed the abuse. The bishop, who was also a family physician, followed church policy and called what church officials have dubbed the  “help line” for guidance.

The video of a man raping his 9-year-old daughter was discovered in New Zealand in 2016 and triggered a global search for the little girl.

Investigators contacted Interpol and the pursuit eventually included the FBI, the U.S. State Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Months later, investigators raided the Bisbee, Ariz., home of Paul Adams, arrested him and rescued the girl in the video along with her five siblings.

While Adams no longer can physically hurt his daughter — he died by suicide in custody — the videos live on, downloaded and uploaded by child pornographers across the U.S. and around the globe, growing ever more popular even as as police, prosecutors and internet companies chase behind in a futile effort to remove the images.

The number of times the Adams video has been seen soared from fewer than 100 in 2017 to 4,500 in 2021, according to data provided to The Associated Press with the permission of the girl and her adoptive mother, Nancy Salminen. The tally was produced by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a nonprofit that tracks child pornography on the internet and works with law enforcement agencies throughout the world.

“That’s the horrendous part about it,” Salminen said. “You can’t just say that’s in the past and shut the door and move on. She will never be able to turn her back on what’s happened.”

The ongoing victimization of the child could have been avoided.

Six years before the video surfaced in Auckland, Adams, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, confessed to his bishop that he abused his daughter, identified by the AP as MJ.

But a prominent church lawyer told the bishop to keep the abuse secret. As a result, MJ was brutalized for seven more years. Today, she continues to be victimized almost daily in a different way, as the video, and others Adams took, circulate on the internet. Details of the Latter-day Saint officials’ cover-up of the Adams rapes were reported in an AP investigation in August.