WEST VIRGINIA
Charleston Daily Mail
Andrea Lannom, Legal affairs writer
West Virginia Supreme Court justices will decide whether victims will have to pay a more than $20,000 legal bill for what they argue is civil defense for a man convicted of sexually abusing them.
In this case, filed in circuit court in Berkeley County, minor victims accuse the church and other people related to the church of facilitating abuses by Christopher Michael Jensen, 23. Jensen’s father was a high priest and high councilor of the West Virginia Stake and his mother was president of the church’s relief society at the time.
The lawsuit alleged Jensen’s parents and other members knew about Jensen before he raped a 3-year-old and 4-year-old boy, discussing abuses of minors by Jensen at a meeting of the West Virginia Stake High Council.
The lawsuit alleged Jensen’s mother suggested church members hire him as a babysitter. Jensen was charged in 2012 when one of the children assaulted in 2007 brought the abuse to his parents. Jensen was convicted on those charges in 2013 and is currently serving a 35- to 75-year sentence on two counts of sex abuse by a guardian or person in a position of trust and one count of first-degree sexual assault at Mt. Olive Correctional Center.
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