https://helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/montana-sees-flurry-of-child-sex-abuse-lawsuits-as-deadline-approaches/article_bd24f56d-fe32-5268-b5d7-dc02fa8ce3d0.html
Montana sees flurry of child sex abuse lawsuits as deadline approaches
· By PHOEBE TOLLEFSON
· Apr 29, 2020
On Friday, two sisters sued in U.S. District Court in Billings, accusing the Jehovah’s Witness Church of failing to act after Bruce Mapley Sr. and Gunner Haines admitted to sexually abusing them in the 1970s. Mapley and Haines confessed to Martin Svensen, senior elder of the Hardin congregation, who investigated the allegations, “and was himself engaged in serious sexual abuse of children,” according to attorneys with the Missoula law firm Meyer, Shaffer & Stepans.
The church temporarily relieved the men of their duties but reinstated them within a year, attorneys say. And while church elders told the congregation that the men had committed a wrongdoing, they gave no more information, the attorneys say, and the abuse continued.