A former deputy in Utah accused of sexually assaulting two female relatives allegedly confessed to his wife and Mormon bishop – but one of his alleged victims is furious amid claims of a “cover-up” by church leaders who apparently never alerted police to the admission, according to a police report.
In 1995, two women told police in Mesa, Arizona, that a former officer in the department had groped and sexually assaulted them during sleepovers some 11 years earlier. A handwritten police report does not detail what happened next, but the case went cold within months. Ultimately, an investigator determined that little evidence existed that would convict Officer Gerald Salcido, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
Salcido would later move to Utah, where he worked as a police officer for 12 years with the Provo Police Department. He then served another decade in law enforcement as a deputy with the Utah County Sheriff’s Office.
But during Salcido’s employment in Provo, he allegedly confessed to the 1984 crime to his wife and Mormon bishop. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints then excommunicated Salcido in 2016, but seemingly never told investigators about his confession, according to the newspaper, which obtained a 2017 police report in which a detective wrote that Salcido’s relatives “often wondered” why he had never been arrested before realizing news of the confession was never relayed to police.
Salcido was arrested on charges of molestation in January after the mother of one of the alleged victims contacted police in Arizona. One of the women, now 42, told the newspaper she was 19 in 1995 when she finally decided to tell her parents about the sexual assault some 11 years earlier in her bedroom. Her younger sister had a similar experience, she said.
“We didn’t know each other’s stories growing up,” she told the newspaper. “We just needed to tell our story and get it out.”
The allegations fractured the woman’s family, she said. Her parents relayed what she told them to the Mesa Police Department, but Det. Jerry Gissel felt the matter did not warrant “any further follow-up investigation,” according to a police report.
No other records beyond the initial report show that investigators took additional steps to look into the allegations, the Tribune reports. But when the case was reopened in 2017, Gissel told an officer in Mesa that he remembered the allegations against Salcido, his former colleague in Mesa during the 1980s.
“Jerry advised me that many steps were taken into the investigation,” a detective wrote in the most recent police report, including a phone call and a trip to Utah where Salcido was working at the time. “An interview was conducted with Gerald, but no admissions were made.”
Mormon church officials then got involved in the case as Gissel conducted his investigation in 1995, according to recently obtained report, including a letter by an Arizona bishop who wanted to make sure Salcido was investigated in Utah since the “allegations seem truthful.” A bishop in Utah, meanwhile, said he was concerned with the church’s disciplinary process in another letter in 1996.
But church leaders didn’t take action against Salcido until a decade later when he allegedly confessed to his wife and bishop in Utah. Salcido’s wife told police in Mesa last year that he confessed in 2006 to molesting the young girls, as well as three other children at a Sunday school in Mesa.
That confession prompted Salcido’s excommunication, but it doesn’t appear church officials alerted authorities to the confession, according to the police report.
Eric Hawkins, a spokesman for the LDS Church, did not indicate whether church officials notified police after Salcido was excommunicated. Salcido’s bishop in Utah confronted him and cooperated with police after the allegations surfaced and another bishop in Arizona worked with the alleged victims’ family while reporting the abuse to law enforcement in Arizona, he said.
“Authorities did not choose to prosecute at that time,” Hawkins told the newspaper. “Years later, the church was contacted again by authorities and cooperated with a new investigation. We are supportive of the efforts of law enforcement to investigate and prosecute this matter.”
Salcido’s accuser, meanwhile, accused church leaders of a cover-up during an interview last week.
“I am angry,” she told the newspaper. “I feel like [church leaders] cover up a lot of things, and I honestly feel like that’s what happened. He went to his bishop. He was excommunicated. So why were the police never called?”
The woman said the case was only reopened because her mother contacted police in Mesa and inquired about the statute of limitations while claiming Salcido had confessed. A detective later concluded that the women’s accounts had stayed consistent, ultimately leading to sufficient evidence along with Salcido’s alleged confession to charge him with two counts of molestation of a child and two counts of sexual conduct with a minor, according to the newspaper.
Salcido, who has pleaded not guilty, was fired from his job as a Utah County deputy in January after 14 years because he missed shifts “without adequate cause,” authorities said. Salcido has since posted bail, but his attorney, Matthew Long, declined to indicate whether he’s currently residing in Utah or Arizona.
Long characterized the case as “troubling” since the allegations against Salcido had been previously investigated and led to no charges.
“The system that’s in place harms victims and defendants alike in these types of cases,” he said. “Because it doesn’t do the victim any good to bring cases many, many years later that weren’t adequately investigated. But too often, what [prosecutors] are relying on is that the allegations are so shocking and so disturbing that the truth doesn’t matter.”
Salcido’s accuser, however, is angry that he was allowed to post bail, but she’s relieved her alleged molester will be held accountable some three decades later.
“He should be in prison,” she told the Salt Lake Tribune. “I hope that he goes to prison and he’s not around other children.”
