Police, no-knock raid caught an LDS apostle in another woman’s bed

On Nov. 11, 1943, LDS apostles Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B. Lee gathered with Salt Lake City police officers, including Chief Reed Vetterli, outside the small Center Street apartment of elderly Anna Sofie Jacobsen. The apostles and officers burst into the home, breaking the door according to some accounts, and discovered LDS Apostle, Richard R. Lyman, 74, in bed with Jacobsen, who was not his wife. After gathering evidence, the two apostles reported back to J. Reuben Clark, first counselor to LDS President Heber J. Grant. Clark, who handled most of the church’s duties because Grant was ill, had ordered the raid. A day later, Lyman was excommunicated “for violation of the Christian law of chastity.”

The case of Richard Lyman is recounted by historian Gary James Bergera in the Fall 2011 Journal of Mormon History. Unlike the case of Albert Carrington, a 19th century LDS apostle also excommunicated for adultery, Lyman’s case is more complex. Unlike Carrington — who seems to have used his power to satisfy his lechery — Lyman appears to have been a victim of his own personal compassion, sexual dysfunctions within his marriage to his wife, Amy, personal tragedy in his family, and a rationalizing that his affair with Jacobsen was part of a polygamous pact that he had made with his mistress. For years, Lyman was bitter over his excommunication and sporadically continued his relationship with Jacobsen, who was also excommunicated.

There is some mirth in the idea of apostles in suits breaking in on the love nest of two senior citizens. However, by Bergera’s account, the affair shook the Quorum. In his diary, Spencer W. Kimball writes, “… To see great men such as the members of this quorum all in tears, some sobbing, all shocked, stunned by the impact was an unforgettable sight. …” In his memoirs, Kimball recounts the years that was spent getting Lyman ready for rebaptism and still lamented that the apostle eventually “… died a lay member of the church without Priesthood, without endowments, without sealings. …”

Bergera, in his article, has recounted trials in Lyman’s life that may have led to his rationalization that a sexual relationship with Jacobsen was not a violation of his church calling. His marriage to Amy Cassandra Brown ceased to have a sexual component after the birth of their second child. As Bergera relates in a footnote, “according to one family member, once Amy had brought forth two children, she informed Richard that their relationship from that point on would be celibate, living in amiable harmony …” Amy Brown’s biographer, David R. Hall, believes the pair’s gradual remoteness and lack of communication may have led to Richard’s adultery, writes Bergera.

In the 1920s, Lyman was assigned to assist Jacobsen in her efforts to return to the LDS Church. She was a Denmark native who had been excommunicated after being involved in a polygamous relationship after the church had banned the practice. In interviews just before he died (in 1963), Lyman recalls Jacobsen as “wonderfully unselfish and helpful.” As he prepared her for her rebaptism, the pair developed a close friendship and Lyman recalls that “she ‘was getting along in years with little or no hope of having a husband even in the great beyond,’” recounts Bergera. In 1925, after she was baptized, Lyman, suggested to Jacobsen, that the survivor among them get sealed to the other. Those preparations, which undoubtedly were a secret to Lyman’s sole wife, Amy, eventually progressed to sexual relations between the pair, who considered themselves “married.”

The death of the Lyman’s son, Wendell, 35, likely contributed to stress that Richard and Amy, with their emotional distance, probably didn’t handle well. Although Wendell’s death from carbon monoxide was reported in the press as an “accident,” it was most likely a suicide. Wendell had been depressed since the death of his young wife several years earlier and had recently clashed with his father over his drinking problems.

Given these trials, it’s not a surprise to consider that Lyman, in need of an emotional affair, allowed himself one that not surprisingly led to adultery. Bergera includes how Lyman rationalized his affair: “This woman had so many virtues and had done so much in an unselfish way for others that she and I agreed that while the present practice of the Church would not permit her to become my plural wife I began regarding her as my prospective plural wife with the mutual understanding that when by death or any other cause it would be possible for her to be my plural wife the ceremony would be performed.”

When Amy Brown Lyman was informed of her husband’s adultery and excommunication, her first words, according to Bergera’s article, were “I do not believe it. I do not believe it.” For Amy, the leader of the LDS Church’s women auxiliary The Relief Society, it was understandably a torturous blow. Bergera recounts that some advised Amy that she would be justified in leaving Richard. However, during this time of intense trial, as well as personal, public, and religious humiliation, Amy stayed with Richard. Frankly, it shows an admirable capacity for love, compassion and forgiveness by her. The pair went into seclusion for a while, in contact with family and close friends.

A comparison of the distinct strengths, temperament and even sensibility of the pair was demonstrated soon after the excommunication, recounts Bergera. Richard, soon after being expelled from his church, went to the LDS Church Office Building and asked to use his office. He was refused and told he had to leave. Amy, who also worked there, was greeted with warmth by future LDS Church President David O’McKay, who escorted her to her offices. Although Amy died four years before Richard, she enjoyed better health than him and nursed him through several age-related illnesses. Her explanation for her loyalty was simple: As Bergera notes in a footnote, Amy told “family members that ‘in every other way been an ideal husband and father ‘ and ‘she was not going to leave him now.’”

As mentioned, it took 11 years for Lyman to be rebaptized. He made many requests but they were defiant gestures, opportunities for him to criticize his former colleagues in the Quorum of the 12 Apostles who had kicked him out earlier. Finally, in the fall of 1956, Lyman’s repentance, couple with his wife’s assurances that she had forgiven him, resulted in his rebaptism. He died, as mentioned, a lay member without priesthood or temple recognitions. Those, Bergera recounts, were restored six years after his death.

As for Jacobsen, she lived the rest of her life in her Salt Lake City apartment. Bergera was unable to learn if she as ever rebaptized. Because the Lyman family, understandably, retreated into silence during crisis, it’s difficult to know why Lyman was defiant to former leaders, or the reasons for his sudden desire to repent and be baptized, or his late-in-life apathy that prevented priesthood blessings while he lived. 

His case is fascinating; it bridged the older church with its polygamy and preoccupation with making eternal plans while on earth, with the modern church and its more PR-friendly responses. Bergera notes that had Amy Lyman not left her husband in the 19th Century, she might have been excommunicated later for adultery as well, because 19th century church leaders considered adultery a dissolution of marital vows. There’s no doubt that the episode really shook up Lyman’s colleagues in the Quorum. Some speculate that the uncompromising message, considered harsh by some, of Kimball’s later, landmark LDS book, “The Miracle of Forgiveness,” is shaped by his experiences with Lyman’s sin and efforts to return to the church.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs.

Apostle's adultery rocked LDS Church 130-plus years ago

More than 130 years ago, the young Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was roiled by a tawdry affair of power-based predator adultery by elderly apostle Albert Carrington, who once named to the church hierarchy used his authority to seduce far younger women, including British converts barely out of their teens. Despite allegations stretching back a decade, Carrington escaped punishment until one of his mistresses confessed the sexual escapades to her new husband. At that point, his fall was swift.

Historian Gary Bergera recounts the Carrington case in the Summer 2011 issue of Journal of Mormon History. (It’s the first of a three-part series on LDS leaders who were disciplined for sexual misconduct). Carrington’s case is interesting not only for his bizarre defense, which echoes U.S. President Bill Clinton’s 100-plus years later, but for the culture of sexual dysfunction of that era, where elderly male church leaders were urged to select young plural brides while on assignments, yet “excessive indulgence in the marital relation” were denounced as sinful from LDS pulpits at the same time.

There’s no doubt that Albert Carrington, once editor of the Deseret News, was a despicable rake, and the outrage of his fellow apostles, who excommunicated him, was sincere. As Bergera relates, in 1882, more than a decade after being called as an apostle, Carrington was finishing his tenure as head of the LDS Church’s European mission when word reached his successor, John Henry Smith, that the 69-year-old Carrington has been seen in compromising positions with his housekeeper, Sarah Kirkman, 20.

Although church leaders were concerned enough to do a formal investigation and request a detailed response from Carrington in 1883, his denials brought a temporary end to the matter. Carrington rather shrewdly confessed to being “unwise” in his familiarity with Kirkman, but strongly denied any sexual misconduct. That was explanation enough for the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, which unanimously retained him as a member.

However, as Bergera relates, it wasn’t too long before the Quorum learned that Carrington had lied to them. In 1885, Kirkman, now married, told her husband, Richard Bridge, of her past sexual relations with Carrington, some of which had occurred in Utah after her marriage. After this reached the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, more investigation revealed that Carrington had committed adultery with other young women.

Confronted by his peers in the Quorum, Carrington admitted to sexual activity but used what might have been called a Clintonian defense a century later. He denied he had committed adultery because he “had not mixed his seed” with the women. Using what was later disgustingly referred to as a “four-inch defense,” Carrington insisted that withdrawing and ejaculating outside the women he had sex with cleared him of adultery. As his fellow apostles listened in horror and skepticism, Carrington described his activities as “a little folly in Israel” and thanked the Lord for clearing him of the sin of adultery.

As Bergera notes, the Quorum quickly excommunicated him. Besides disapproval of the sins, his peers must have been angry with how Carrington’s behavior would hurt the church’s image, already suffering due to its practice of polygamy. Yet in his diary, Carrington, who had two wives, was mystified as to why he was cast out, insisting, Bergera records, that he had “never committed, even in thought,” adultery.

The former apostle’s health declined rapidly and before long he was bedridden. For more than a year, the now-repentant Carrington’s pleas for rebaptism were rejected by the apostles, many of whom were outraged at the blatant adultery, his explanations, and his longtime deception to them. One apostle, Moses Thatcher, Bergera records, was so incensed as to wish that adultery was a life-forfeiting sin. Future LDS President Heber J. Grant noted in his diary that Thatcher “hoped that the day was not far distant when the adulterer would forfeit his life, and then the question of rebaptism would never be raised.” Other apostles, with their new perception of the disgraced Carrington, “recollected” that he had never been a positive force in the quorum.

Time heals anger, as well as feelings of betrayal, and eventually mercy was granted Carrington. By the fall of 1887, the Quorum approved his re-baptism and confirmation. It occurred at the bedridden’s Carrington’s home. More than 30 years later, Grant, as LDS prophet, noted in General Conference that it was Section 64 of the LDS scripture Doctrine and Covenants, that moved him to OK Carrington’s rebaptism. Verse 10 reads, “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.”

Bergera, in his JMH article, writes that many of the LDS apostles “may have wondered why Carrington, as family patriarch, had not simply brought Kirkman to Utah and married her regardless of his wives’ reaction.” Carrington was alone in London while mission president. Interestingly, Carrington and other missionaries had been urged by LDS President Brigham Young to get married. Bergera notes, from the Journal of Jesse Nathaniel Smith, that Young told Carrington and others in 1868: “When you get over there I want each of you to select a good girl and marry her.” However, Bergera adds that Carrington refused to marry another wife unless his first wife, Rhoda Maria, was with him to help select a plural wife.

As Bergera writes, “There are hints that Carrington’s first wife, Rhoda, did not respond favorably to the prospect of additional wives; and as a consequence, Carrington may have felt less constrained regarding extramarital sexual activity.” If that’s so, it was a life-wrecking assumption.

Carrington had been member of the LDS Church since the Nauvoo era. The stress of his excommunication doubtless contributed to his rapid physical and mental deterioration after 1885. (It also helped end his daughter Jane’s long marriage to Brigham Young’s son, apostle Brigham Young Jr.) In fall 1889, as the 76-year-old Carrington was dying, LDS leaders agreed to his family’s request that he receive the LDS priesthood so he could be buried in the faith’s garments. As Bergera relates from the diary of John Nuttall, secretary to the First Presidency, Carrington died minutes before he was to be ordained. “It was afterwards decided (that) Bro. Carrington may be buried in his Temple clothing,” Nuttall recorded on Sept. 19 1889.

In fact, 15 minutes after his death, LDS Church President Wilford Woodruff directed elders to ordain the deceased former apostle an elder. (Albert Carrington below)

Post originally published at StandardBlogs.