Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Latter-day Saint movements Martinsburg, West Virginia, USA · 2013

United States: 35-to-75 years for a church-endorsed babysitter, and the civil case the church settled mid-trial

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

member of the congregation recommended to families by local church leaders

Organization

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

Jensen held no office; the authority that opened the doors was his leaders' — families trusted him because the men who led their congregation vouched for him.

Institutional obedience or isolation
Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2013-01-01 · conviction at trial; related civil suit settled mid-trial

Berkeley County Circuit Court, West Virginia (criminal, 2013); West Virginia civil courts (2018). Christopher Michael Jensen was convicted at trial in 2013 of sexual abuse and assault of two children and sentenced to thirty-five to seventy-five years; the conviction stands. Six families later sued the church alleging that leaders had recommended him to them and concealed prior concerns; the church settled mid-trial in 2018 for an undisclosed sum.

Documented coercion mechanisms

local leaders' endorsement of him as a role model, which is what put him in families' homes as a babysitter

Cited record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting conviction and civil case report The Washington Post: coverage of the civil trial and settlement.: National reporting on the criminal conviction and civil case.
national public broadcaster investigative report PBS NewsHour: investigation of church handling of abuse claims.: Public broadcaster's investigative corroboration.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/01/17/sexual-abuse-case-against-mormon-church-scheduled-to-begin-friday/ Corpus classification: national-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: conviction-and-civil-case-report.
Retrieval: 2026-07-27 · Retrieval failed; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/recordings-show-how-mormon-church-kept-child-sex-abuse-claims-secret Corpus classification: national-public-broadcaster; evidentiary role: investigative-report. SHA-256 39af75e634a8d83048959a726b4b91d1d511a7d84cb079e8214c6989b57a2be1
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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