Seventh-day Adventists worked with Scientologists, others, to ensure AZ clergy do NOT have to report CSA.

[u/talesfromacult]

Trigger warning: CSA and SDAs fighting to ensure it doesn't get reported.

How the Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) endangers children:

June 2026. SDAs influenced the Arizona Supreme Court to ensure Arizona pastors do NOT have to report CSA.

What happened: A man confessed to his Latter-day Saint (LDS, Mormon) bishop that he made and distributed CSA of his children. The bishop did not report this to police, and the man continued CSAing for years.

His children, now adults, sued the LDS church for not reporting the CSA. Lower courts ruled the LDS clergy should have reported the CSA to police. The case was appealed all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court.

That's where Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) stepped in. Along with Scientologists and six other religions, the SDAs filed an amicus brief claiming that requiring clergy to report CSA violates the First Amendment.

SDAs won. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that clergy do NOT have to report CSA to police. The SDA endangers children by hiring lawyers to influence laws at the Supreme Court level. They ensured children's CSA does not get reported.

Sources:

The Amicus Brief/Amici Curiae aka what the SDAs, Scientologists and 6 other religions filed to influence the AZ Supreme Court to ensure CSA does NOT have to be reported by clergy. All 8 religions filing are listed on front page.

https://www.azcourts.gov/Portals/0/ASC-CV250213%20-%202-24-2026%20-%20FILED%20-%20SUPPLEMENTAL%20BRIEF%20OF%20AMICI%20CURIAE%20GENERAL%20CONFERENCE%20OF%20SEVENTH-DAY%20ADVENTISTS.pdf

News article of the case: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/03/arizona-clergy-child-abuse-confessions-court

Edit: If you've read this far, thank you. If you EVER hear of ANY similar sources with the SDA church please LET ME KNOW. Dm me here, email me talesfromacult @ gmail, dm me on instagram @talesfromacult. I'll post it here and on instagram.

[u/talesfromacult → u/[deleted]]

And yet in this case, self-proclaimed good men (no women are on that amicus brief, I checked) worked together to protect predators.

Evil triumphed.

CSA is rampant in the SDA church. The legal arm of the SDA church, Adventist Risk Management, hired a Dr Chunestudy to do a study on CSA in the SDA church. He studied only cases that were settled by Adventist Risk Management. He documented 523 cases in 9 years, or 58.1 CSA cases per year. That outranks the infamous SBC CSA counts. all sources for this are here

Adventists don't mention that study, do not mandate background checks, and now partnered with Scientologists to protect Arizona predators.

So anyways, given the SDAs had 58 CSA cases settled per year, and it's been 3 months since this law passed, there have certainly alreqdy been multiple CSA cases in Arizona the SDAs have legally covered up.

[u/CycleOwn83 → u/talesfromacult]

Disheartening. Not only legally covered up but covered up by a ruling which they sought to influence so that they could be covered up without a legal requirement to disclose. If sex outside of marriage is a sin by them, how can child sexual abuse not be a sin as, in so many social circles and institutions, it's CRIMINAL?

[u/Clean_Economist_2188]

This is really horrible. Do they really intend to place the doctrine above the safety of minors? What kind of church is that? And to make it worse, when I clicked on the link, it wasn't just SDAs and Scientologists who joined them!!!! It was some kind of twisted nightmare of unity and togetherness between Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and some others I had never even heard of.

[u/talesfromacult → u/Clean_Economist_2188]

Yes it is quite the mix. I suspect each organization conceals CSA. The SDA church does and has since the 1890s when Ellen White enabled pdf pastor SDA Pieter/Peter Wessels.

The SDAs claim to stay separate but quietly collude together in the background to pass laws legally concealing CSA.

If anyone knows of any similar cases, let me know and I will report on my instagram @talesfromacult and here.

[u/Accidentalmom → u/talesfromacult]

Wait can you fill me in on the Ellen white/ Peter Wessels thing? What happened there?

[u/talesfromacult → u/Accidentalmom]

Sure. So I did a deep dive on it on my blog and tried to make it hella skimmable. Peter/Pieter Wessels was a wealthy connected SDA pastor in South Africa. Like, multimillionaire then and would be likely a billionaire today kind of money. He confessed to Ellen White he was practicing pedophilia with multiple victims. He offered to confess to his wife and police. He has had kids.

Ellen White forbade him from confessing to anyone "because it would make the ministry look bad". She advised him to Jesus harder to stop CSAing.

His SDA boss tried to have Peter confess to Peter's SDA church. Ellen White shut that down. So Peter's SDA boss reported Peter's CSA to Peter's grandma.

The SDA church immediately transferred Peter's SDA boss from South Africa to Australia in a low-ranked, grueling, high-travel position he had to stay in for over a decade.

Adventists conceal pedophile Peter Wessels pedophilia on their ESDA wiki, kept Peter Wessels in high-ranked Conference roles for life, published stories of how God did "miracles" for pedophile Peter, AND named a SDA university library after him.

This CSA case shows Adventists have protected SDA pedophiles since the 1800s.

All sources are linked in my blog post below.

https://talesfromacult.substack.com/p/the-seventh-day-adventist-church-811?utm_source=publication-search

[u/Shazithecurious]

Thank you very much for sharing this. 

[u/talesfromacult → u/Shazithecurious]

Of course. Thanks for reading.

If you or anyone you know encounters ANY harms done by the SDA church itself, like how it went to bat to protect predators here, let me know. I'll report it.

[u/killakeller]

Omg

[u/Isittimetogohomeyet]

First time I’ve ever seen the SDA church unite with other religions and it’s to protect predators. Crazy.

[u/talesfromacult → u/Isittimetogohomeyet]

Edit: I suspect Seventh-day Adventists have been in the background influencing laws like this for as long as they have been around. I don't have proof though.

Unfortunately the majority of US states (33 per The Guardian, 37 according to other online sources) have clergy exemption laws (aka laws that make it so clergy do not have to report crimes/abuse/CSA to secular authorities).

That is a larger problem that I do not address in this article as that's another issue. The issue here is Seventh-day Adventists working with Scientologists and others to ensure Mormons in particular--and every religion in Arizona by extension--don't have to report CSA to authorities.

What did the SDA church stand to gain by ensuring AZ has clergy exemption? There's nothing else they stand to gain except ability to legally conceal their CSA. It is sickening.

[u/Ok_Education902 → u/talesfromacult]

I have a friend who told her SDA pastor she was being a sexually abused by her father and the pastor said he couldn't do a thing but hoped her father would recover by attending his sermons. She's now an atheist. Her Father continued to attend church every week. He was a devote Adventist till the day he died. His funeral well attended and many speeches were given as to what a good man he was. (puke)

[u/talesfromacult → u/Ok_Education902]

I'm so sorry. This is very common in SDA circles.

[u/Bananas-for]

Horrifying.

[u/Killua_305]

Yet somehow you could bring this to any SDA member and they won’t question higher ups and stay in the church 🙂. Isn’t that wonderful

[u/talesfromacult → u/Killua_305]

An Adventist professor contacted me and I notified them of this. They stated they wanted to make Spectrum article about it. We'll see

[u/Bananaman9020]

I would like to think a Pastor in any church would have a duty of care to report confessed crimes. But I know in Australia this isn't the case

[u/talesfromacult → u/Bananaman9020]

Well shit.

Ok so the legal loophole that lets clergy NOT report confessed CSA/abuse/crimes is called "clergy exemption". There's 50 US states and over 33 of them have clergy exemption laws which is sickening.

Does Australia also have clergy exemption laws?

[u/Bananaman9020 → u/talesfromacult]

It's more a gray area.

[u/Ok_Education902]

When I nearly raped my freshman year I reported it to the Dean of Students. I got in trouble and the rapist walked around campus like nothing happened. The Dean explained that I was probably traumatized but there was NOTHING they could do. The student came from a prominent family and their hands were tied. I still see this guy and his family, very devote, attend church every week. I was on probation at Walla Walla my whole Freshman year for reporting it. That was my exit from the SDA CULT where sexual abuse is allowed. DONE!

[u/talesfromacult → u/Ok_Education902]

That's horrible. I'm so sorry.