Lawsuit accuses Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1970s of supporting convicted child molester's habit

By Aimee Green
Oregonian
August 26, 2014

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/08/lawuit_accuses_seventh_day_adv.html

Two men who say they were molested when they were children in the 1970s by an Oregon youth leader with the Seventh-day Adventist Church are suing for $13.5 million, claiming the church knew the man was a convicted child molester but let him work with children anyway.

The suit, filed Tuesday in Multnomah County Circuit Court, claims the Maryland-based church knew Leslie “Les” Bovee had served two years in prison for molesting at least one boy. Nonetheless, the suit claims, church officials didn’t warn parents in Junction City or Veneta when it placed the ex-con in charge of the Pathfinder Club, a church-sponsored youth activity program.

“The SDA Church made a conscious choice to let a ‘wolf’ guard the ‘flock,’” said Portland attorney Steve Crew, in a news release Tuesday.

Crew’s firm -- O’Donnell Clark & Crew -- is representing the two plaintiffs, identified by the letters D.M. and F.D. The suit claims that the men were 10 or 11 years old when the abuse started in 1974, and it lasted for about six years, ending in 1980. The plaintiffs’ families attended churches in Junction City and Veneta, both near Eugene.

“This is not a case where everyone is looking back and wishing they would have seen some warning sign,” one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Peter Janci, said in the news release. “We intend to prove that the Church knew this man was a predator when they put him in charge of the children, and they let him stay in that position even after receiving reports that he was abusing kids.”

An attorney representing the church couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

The men's attorneys claim that Bovee molested an undetermined number of boys, and that the problem with childhood sexual abuse within the Seventh Day Adventist Church was widespread. Attorneys for D.M. and F.D. said that from 1992 to 2011, church documents show more than 400 claims made against the church in the U.S., involving 525 child victims -- costing the church more than $30 million.

Reports about Bovee targeting children started coming into church officials shortly after he was appointed to his youth leader position in about 1972, the men's attorneys say. Bovee was indicted in or around 1970, 1975 and 1979 for child molestation, the men’s attorneys say. In all, Bovee was convicted of molesting three boys -- one child before he started in his youth-leadership position at the church and two children from the Pathfinders program, including one of the plaintiffs, the men's attorneys say. One of those two Pathfinders convictions was later overturned, the attorneys say. 

Now 70, Bovee apparently lives in an RV park in Myrtle Creek, the men's attorneys say. He is not required to register as a sex offender under Oregon law. Bovee couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The suit lists the church, with more than 17 million members, as the defendant. It does not seek damages from Bovee.

D.M. and F.D. came to realize the negative effects the molestations had on their life in 2012. Oregon law allows victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue up until age 40, or within five years of realizing how the abuse damaged them.

The men are seeking $250,000 each for past and future counseling and medical costs, and $6.5 million each for emotional trauma.