While still a general authority of the LDS Church, George P. Lee went to the top of the mountains and told God he had fallen in love with a 12-year-old girl, the teenager testified in court Thursday.
The girl, now 16, said "Brother Lee" sexually abused her from the time she was 9 years old.Lee, 50, was ordered Thursday to stand trial for aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony, after a judge ruled there was enough evidence to bind him over to district court.
Lee immediately pleaded not guilty to the charge that he has strongly and repeatedly denied.
Lee was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in September 1989 for "apostasy and other conduct unbecoming a member of the church." Church officials say, however, they did not know then about the current allegations.
The girl said Lee came to her Phoenix home in the summer of 1989 while on a church assignment and offered to take her and her brother back to Utah for a month-long visit. She and her brother were very close to two of Lee's children because they used to live near the Lee family in West Jordan.
During that trip, she went camping with the Lee family. She said Lee came home a day early along with her, her brother and two of his children. His wife and other children stayed behind. That night, the girl said, Lee called her into his bedroom and told her to sit on his bed.
During that camping trip, she said Lee had been gone for a day and a night. He explained to her that he had hiked to the top of a nearby mountain.
"He told me he was speaking to the Lord and he told the Lord he'd fallen in love with me," the high school junior testified. "I was confused about him speaking to the Lord and the Lord saying it was OK."
The girl, then 12, said Lee then began talking to her about poly-gamy.
"He said that it was going to be brought back to the Earth and we'd be asked to live it," she testified.
The girl said she went back downstairs but returned to his bedroom later that night, woke Lee up and said, "I don't want my father to have to take another wife. He said, `You don't have to worry about it. He won't have to.' "
She said Lee told her to lie down with him and he caressed her.
The girl said she was scared and returned downstairs to bed. "Brother Lee came downstairs and woke me up," she said. "He told me he was sorry he'd ever started touching me and that he'd never do it again."
During that monthlong visit, she said, the sexual abuse occurred "almost every day" in her friend's bedroom, in the family room, in the pool at the Deseret Gym, and in hotels when they traveled to Canada.
The first abuse occurred when she was 9 years old when she went with Lee's family to Lake Powell, she said. After the first incident, she said he called her into the bathroom. "He told me that I shouldn't tell anyone because the Lord had told him to do it and it should just remain between the Lord and him and me," she said.
"I thought it was what I was supposed to do."
The girl said she first told her parents about the abuse in November of 1992. The night before, she had had a dream about Lee chasing her through a forest. "I was getting scareder and scareder. He was getting closer and closer," she said.
Defense attorney Ron Yengich asked why she waited three years to say anything.
"Because Brother Lee had told me it was between him and me and the Lord," she said. "He told me that it was no one else's business."
She said she sometimes gave excuses when she didn't want to go to Lee's home but continued to visit the home regularly. She said she felt safer when she was with Lee's daughter.
Prosecutors filed the case as a first-degree felony because Lee "occupied a position of special trust to the victim."
In August, Lee warned that God will punish the "perpetrators or those who are doing this to me and my Indian people." He and Yengich declined comment Thursday.
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Hearing stays open
The Salt Lake County attorney's office filed a motion and fought to have Thursday's preliminary hearing for George P. Lee closed to the press and the public. Third Circuit Judge Robin Reese, however, refused to exclude anyone from attending the public court hearing and denied the motion.