Ex-LDS leader George P. Lee booked for allegedly not registering as sex offender

The Salt Lake Tribune - July 31, 2007

by Nate Carlisle


George P. Lee, a former member of the LDS Church's First Quorum of the Seventy and candidate for Navajo Nation president, was arrested Friday in southwest Utah on suspicion of failing to register as a sex offender.

A spokesman for the Utah Department of Corrections on Monday said it had been three years since keepers of the state's sex offender registry knew Lee's whereabouts.

For a sex offender to fail to update his contact information is a felony punishable by as much as five years in prison, though Lee has not been formally charged. Lee, 64, was released Friday from the Washington County jail on $5,000 bond.

Lee's last known address was a 2001 listing in Santa Clara, according to the department of corrections.

"He's moved a couple of times since then and he's just failed to register," said Stephanie Coots, a spokeswoman for the Washington County Sheriff's Office.

Lee has been unaccounted for since July 19, 2004, said Jack Ford, a spokesman for the department of corrections.

The state's sex offender Web site on Monday listed Lee's address as "Not Available."

Detectives from the Washington County Sheriff's Office found Lee while searching for unregistered sex offenders in that county, Coots said.

Detectives found an address that Lee gave to St. George police, who had questioned him earlier about a minor traffic issue, she said.

In 1975, Lee was named to the First Quorum of Seventy, the first and only American Indian among LDS general authorities.

He served until 1989, when he was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Sept. 1 for what Mormon leaders called "conduct unbecoming a member of the church." It was the first excommunication of a Mormon general authority in 46 years.

In 1990 and 1994, Lee ran for president of the Navajo Nation, losing in the primary both times.

In October 1994, he pleaded guilty to attempted sexual abuse of a child, a third-degree felony, admitting that he fondled the breasts of a 12-year-old family friend.

The girl, 17 at the time of the trial, said Lee exploited the religious respect she had for him to fondle to her breasts, buttocks and genitals. She said the abuse began when she was 9 years old and lasted for three years.

Judge Kenneth Rigtrup placed Lee on 18 months probation and ordered him to pay a $1,850 fine, complete sex-offender counseling, write a letter of apology to the victim and pay costs of her counseling.

Ford said Lee is scheduled to remain on the registry until November 2011.


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