by Jessica Schreifels, The Salt Lake Tribune

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The last time Sam met with his therapist, Scott Owen, the session was nothing more than an hour of Owen sexually abusing him, he told a Provo, Utah, courtroom this week. Sam remembers sitting in his car afterward, screaming as loud as he could.

“I could feel him all over my skin,” he said. “I could not believe this was happening.”

It was October 2017, and Sam had been seeing Owen for therapy for more than a year. A faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was struggling with what he called “unwanted same-sex attraction.” Owen was a high-ranking leader in the LDS Church at that time, and Sam said Owen assured him that he had helped more than 200 men who felt similarly.

Instead, he said, Owen “meticulously leveraged” his two roles as a therapist and a church leader to assure him that the sexual touching during their sessions was key to helping him heal, learn how to accept intimacy and grow closer to God.

“He exploited my trust, he weaponized my faith and dismantled my confidence,” Sam told the courtroom. “What he did was not just unethical. It was calculated, predatory and destructive.”

Police began investigating Owen in 2023 only after The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica reported on a range of sex abuse allegations against Owen, who had built a reputation over his 20-year therapy career as a specialist who could help gay men who were members of the LDS Church. Some of the men who spoke to The Tribune said their bishop in the faith referred them to Owen and used church funds to pay for sessions where Owen allegedly also touched them inappropriately.

Austin Millet at his home in Oregon. Millet is one of several men who told The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica that Owen abused them during sessions paid for with funds from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Amanda Lucier for ProPublica)

In February, Owen pleaded guilty to three charges, admitting he sexually abused Sam and a second patient who also said he sought Owen’s help because he was struggling with his sexuality and Latter-day Saints faith. Owen also pleaded no contest in another case, saying prosecutors likely had enough evidence to convict him at a trial on an allegation that he had groped a young girl during a therapy session.

But the number of people who say that Owen harmed them is much larger — and they filled a Provo courtroom on Monday as Owen was sentenced to spend at least 15 years in prison.

One by one, they stood at a podium in court and told Owen how he had hurt them. Most were his patients, like Sam, a pseudonym to protect his identity from his community.

One man told the court Owen had abused him when Owen was a leader of a young men’s group organized by the LDS Church.

“He had sleepovers at his house,” Mike Bahr said. “I was there once, and I have lived in a nightmare since.”

Also speaking were family members of a man who had died by suicide, including his brother who said his sibling disclosed to him that Owen had abused him just days before he took his life.

And there was one of Owen’s own family members, his cousin, who alleges that Owen molested him on a family trip when he was a kid. After becoming more public with his own abuse allegations several years ago, James Cooper has worked to gather others who say his cousin victimized them.

James Cooper speaks during Owen’s sentencing hearing. Cooper is Owen’s cousin and alleges the man abused him when he was a child. (Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune)

He spoke about the dynamics that allowed Owen to hurt others for so long without repercussions.

“Certainly, we know how charismatic he is, and what it’s like to be a victim of sexual assault. The shame you carry. The guilt you carry,” he said. “The fear of Scott. The fear of not being accepted by your family, your society, your church. All those things are enormous factors.”

One woman spoke about Owen touching her inappropriately during therapy when she was 13 years old, in 2007. During the hearing, the only woman to have publicly accused him said Owen had made her feel like something was wrong with her. Now, she added, “He no longer holds power over me.”

When Owen, 66, was given a chance to speak, he said there was no excuse or rationale for what he had done.

“I am so sorry,” he said. “All I have to offer is what’s left of my life. And I hope that in offering those years, justice will have been met in some small fashion, and those who I have hurt can disconnect from me and move forward with their healing.”

Defense attorney Earl Xaiz said Owen did not want leniency from the judge but mentioned in court that his client had been sexually abused himself as a child and had struggled with his sexuality.

Fourth District Judge Kraig Powell sentenced Owen on Monday to 15 years to life in prison. Given Owen’s age and the nature of his crimes, both prosecutors and the defense agreed it is likely he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Powell became emotional as he handed down the sentence, telling Owen that he harmed not only those who spoke publicly on Monday, but all of those therapists and church leaders who are ethical and working to help people.

“Thousands and thousands of these people, I fear, will be affected by this terrible, abhorrent case,” the judge said.

Owen was sentenced to prison after he admitted he sexually abused patients during sessions. (Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune)

While Owen gave up his therapy license in 2018 after several patients complained to state licensors that he had touched them inappropriately, the allegations were never investigated by the police and were not widely known.

Under a negotiated settlement with Utah’s licensing division, Owen was able to surrender his license without admitting to any inappropriate conduct, and the sexual nature of his patients’ allegations is not referenced in the documents he signed when he gave up his license. He continued to have an active role in his therapy business, Canyon Counseling, until The Tribune and ProPublica published their investigation.

Police interviewed more than a dozen former patients of Owen’s, all of whom reported that he touched them in ways they felt were inappropriate during therapy sessions. But Owen faced charges in connection with only three patients, because the type of touching that the other men alleged fell under parts of the criminal code that had a shorter window of time for prosecutors to file a case, called the statute of limitations. The crimes that Owen was charged with are all felonies that have no statute of limitations.

Both state licensors and local leaders in the LDS Church knew of inappropriate touching allegations against Owen as early as 2016, reporting by The Tribune and ProPublica showed, but neither would say whether they ever reported Owen to the police.

The church said in response to that reporting that it takes all matters of sexual misconduct seriously, and that in 2019 it confidentially annotated internal records to alert bishops that Owen’s conduct had threatened the well-being of other people or the church.

The church also said it has no process in place to vet the therapists its church leaders recommend and pay for using member donations. It is up to individual members, a church spokesperson has said, to “make their own decisions” about whether to see a specific therapist that their bishop recommends.

Michael, a former patient of Owen’s who agreed to be photographed but asked to be identified by only his first name, looks at his wife while speaking in court about the inappropriate touching he said happened in therapy sessions. (Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune)

For some who accused Owen of abuse, Monday’s sentencing was the only chance they had to address Owen because charges could not be brought in their cases. That includes Michael, who asked to be identified by only his first name. He said he saw Owen for therapy on and off for about a decade, starting when he was 14. He read a letter to his younger self in court on Monday.

“I just learned on Thursday that we are beyond our legal opportunity to fix this problem,” he said. “And it broke my heart to learn that I can’t pursue a court case for you. … You’ll have to be strong. It’s going to be so hard, but you’re going to make it through.”

Editor’s note: Sam is identified only by a pseudonym because he requested anonymity. We have granted this request because of the risk to his standing in his community. The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica typically use sources’ full names in stories. But sometimes that isn’t possible, and we consider other approaches. That often takes the form of initials or middle names. In this case, we felt that we couldn’t fully protect our source by those means. We know his full name and have corroborated his accounts in documents and through interviews with others.

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