New accuser emerges in Wade Christofferson case. LDS Church addresses what his apostle brother knew
Source: New accuser emerges in Wade Christofferson case. LDS Church addresses what his apostle brother knew Publisher: The Salt Lake Tribune | Author: By Tamarra Kemsley | April 25, 2026, 5:00 a.m. | Updated: April 29, 2026, 3:18 p.m. Published: April 25, 2026 | Archived: May 9, 2026
Five months after Wade Christofferson was charged with attempting to sexually exploit a Utah child, a woman has stepped forward to publicly disclose that, as a young teenager decades ago, she reported to a Latter-day Saint bishop that Christofferson had sexually abused her.
At the time of her report, she and Christofferson — a brother of a now high-ranking Latter-day Saint apostle — attended the same congregation in Illinois. Speaking at an April 17 event held at Harvard Divinity School, Kristin Dunbar Mautz, now 48, said, “I did what I thought I should do.”
“I went to my bishop,” she said at the symposium on religious trauma. “I reported it. I was a child expecting safety, expecting protection.”
The adults, she thought, would decide what the consequences should be, caution others, set things right.
“Instead, I was given a punishment,” Mautz said. “I was forced to sit in that congregation Sunday after Sunday and watch him … sitting up on the stand, serving in the bishopric, a position of honor and trust.”
In a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune, a spokesperson for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said that Wade Christofferson was excommunicated more than 30 years ago. He was then rebaptized before again serving, “for a brief time,” as a member of a bishopric, this time in Ohio.
The statement also stressed that apostle D. Todd Christofferson, a member of the faith’s governing First Presidency, did not know about any allegations of abuse against his younger sibling until five or six years ago.
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“The church strongly condemns and does not tolerate abuse,” the statement read, “and honors the courage and respects the rights of survivors.”
Not all are convinced.
Mautz’s story is a case study in a new paper by Suzanne Greco, a University of Edinburgh doctoral candidate in ethics and applied theology. In it, Greco argues that the Utah-based church systematically silences victims and fails to protect vulnerable members in favor of “institutional self-preservation.”
For her part, Mautz, who remains a committed member of the faith, said the recent criminal charges against Wade Christofferson are what compelled her to come forward. She argues that her experience is evidence that reform is needed to better protect members from predators in the pews.
Wade Christofferson’s attorney did not respond to questions from The Tribune.
At a bail hearing Thursday in Ohio, a federal magistrate ruled that Christofferson will remain in custody. Prosecutors argued, in part, that they have strong grounds for the case against him.
They also said they have evidence that “reflects additional victims at church where he held leadership roles. … Other alleged conduct includes sexual assault of very young children.”
‘I just cut everyone off’
In November, Wade Christofferson was arrested and charged with federal crimes after he allegedly attempted last year to sexually exploit a child in Utah. Federal prosecutors said at the time that the father of an Ohio child had reported that month to police in that state that Christofferson had sexually abused the Ohio daughter more than a dozen times. No charges have been filed in connection with that report.
Mautz is not involved with the federal case or investigation.
In an interview with The Tribune, Mautz said Wade Christofferson sexually abused her at least twice in or around 1990, about the time she was in eighth grade, while she was staying the night at the Christofferson home — something she said she did often as a family friend.
The Tribune does not generally name alleged sexual abuse victims, but Mautz said she agreed to the use of hers in hopes of spurring action aimed at protecting others from abuse.
Mautz said she did not report her allegations right away. Instead, she said, she tried to minimize her interactions with Christofferson, avoiding him in church hallways and turning down invitations to stay over at his home. She said she shut down emotionally — and not only from him.
“I just cut everyone off,” she said. To this day, she said, she mourns the close friendships she lost as she turned inward.
A year or so later, Mautz said, Wade Christofferson was called to be a counselor in a bishopric, a trio of lay leaders who oversee a congregation. She was in high school then and said she felt the time had come to inform the bishop, a close family friend, of the alleged abuse.
“The three families — ours, the bishop’s and the Christoffersons — were all really close,” Mautz recalled. “We did everything together.”
Mautz said she assumed the bishop, a trusted father figure, would believe her and that Wade Christofferson would be immediately demoted. Instead, she said, he remained in his post for a time.
“At some point he was replaced,” she remembered. “But not on any kind of time frame that felt connected to me and my conversation with the bishop.”
Meanwhile, she said, Christofferson was a frequent presence at youth activities and someone often tasked with providing transportation for those activities.
The church, for its part, emphasized in its statement that it “is not aware of any abuse involving \[Wade Christofferson’s\] volunteer church service.”
Excommunication and rebaptism
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Salt Lake Temple stands as the iconic centerpiece for Latter-day Saints. The church says it “strongly condemns and does not tolerate abuse.”
Mautz said she left the Chicago suburb and its tight-knit Latter-day Saint community for college in 1995 determined to put the experience behind her but was summoned into the bishop’s office during a visit home in December 1996.
She recalled that the new leader invited her in to speak with him.
“He said, ‘Some girls have come forward and have talked to me about some experiences that they’ve had with Wade Christofferson,’” she remembered. “‘It’s been mentioned that maybe you’d had an experience also, and I was wondering if you would be willing to share that with me.’”
She said she did.
After she was done recounting the alleged sexual abuse, Mautz said she remembers the man saying, “‘Yeah, unfortunately, that pretty much sounds like the same thing that other girls are telling me.’”
She said this bishop “was the first person that was like, ‘Are you OK?’”
Toward the end of the conversation, she said, he told her, “‘I’m going to take care of this. It’s not right. It’s not OK.’”
The next time she visited the congregation, she said she noticed that Wade Christofferson no longer had a calling, or volunteer position in the church.
“And I remember thinking that was weird at the time,” she said, “because he usually had big callings.”
She took it as a sign that his membership had been withdrawn.
The church’s statement confirmed that Wade Christofferson’s membership was withdrawn, saying that action took place in 1993. Members of the congregation were not told the reason, it explained, as “was consistent with church policy and Illinois law at the time.”
Speaking at the Harvard event, Mautz lamented this lack of transparency.
“The institution’s priority was…secrecy,” she said, “not protection.”
Ed Nachel, another former member of the congregation, described on the “Mormon Stories” podcast and to The Tribune his experience serving as a member of Christofferson’s church disciplinary council, which he recalls as having taken place in 1996.
Nachel said he remembers being told during the council discussion that Christofferson, someone he considered a friend at the time, had confessed to abusing a girl during a sleepover at his house.
Per the church’s handbook from that period, policy also required stake presidents, or regional leaders, to alert the First Presidency of excommunications and submit all related documents.
Local leaders also would have been instructed to notify church headquarters of Wade Christofferson’s rebaptism, which, according to the church’s statement, occurred in 1997 “following confession and established procedures.”
He later moved to Ohio, where, the church said, he again served in a bishopric “for a brief time.”
In a March story by the Chicago Sun-Times, a member of the Ohio congregation Christofferson attended said he knew him and his family but was never alerted to past allegations of abuse.
What D. Todd Christofferson knew
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Apostle D. Todd Christofferson, with his wife, Katherine, at General Conference this month. The church says he did not learn about any abuse allegations against his brother until sometime in 2020-21.
Apostle D. Todd Christofferson, a former attorney, was made a general authority Seventy in 1993. He was promoted to the Presidency of the Seventy the year after his brother’s rebaptism.
The church’s statement did not provide a response to a Tribune question regarding whether Wade Christofferson’s membership record was annotated to reflect his excommunication and the reason behind it — or if that annotation was removed.
Either way, the church statement asserted that D. Todd Christofferson never saw any confidential church records relating to his brother.
According to the same statement, the apostle, elevated to the First Presidency a month before his brother’s arrest, did not learn about any abuse allegations against his sibling until sometime in 2020-21.
“That matter involved abuse from decades earlier that was denied,” it explained. “Consistent with respect for adult survivor rights and a request for privacy…he did not take independent public action.”
In contrast, the statement noted, when the apostle learned “late last year” of an allegation of recent abuse of a child, he “reported it to legal authorities within hours.”
‘We need to change’
Nachel, who has since left the church, said Wade Christofferson’s arrest spurred him to speak openly about that disciplinary council, normally a highly confidential process. He said he’s remorseful that he didn’t do so earlier.
Mautz maintains her decision to come forward was not intended to harm the church or Wade Christofferson.
“I am speaking out now because I naively assumed things were fine — maybe not handled the way that was ideal for me, but past history,” she said. “It happened, and I moved on.”
Since Christofferson was charged, however, Mautz said she has found herself running through possibilities in her mind of steps she might have taken to prevent the alleged abuse, and what changes are needed to protect those in the pews who are most vulnerable.
“I don’t know what avenue I can take to help the church hear my voice,” she said, “a voice saying we need to change.”
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