A former LDS Church Social Services counselor has been charged with sexually abusing a teenage relative over a 12-month period.
David Mark Novak, 47, West Bountiful, was charged in 2nd District Court last month with two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony. If convicted, Novak could be sentenced to spend up to life in prison.According to the charges, Novak abused a 13-year-old girl between October 1994 and October 1995, a time during which he "occupied a position of special trust with the victim."
West Bountiful police detective Pat Jellerson said Novak had been a counselor for LDS Social Services for 17 years but was not counseling the victim. Novak resigned from his position the day before police confronted him with the allegations in November, Jellerson said.
The victim was abused on at least three occasions between the ages of 12 and 13.
The girl, who is now 16, told police that when she was 12 years old, she and Novak were in her mother's room playing dress-up, Jellerson said. The girl said Novak dressed in a miniskirt, exposed himself and described sex acts.
Several months later, when the girl was 13, Novak invited her to sit next to him on a living room couch at her house, Jellerson said. When she sat next to him, he took her hand and forced her to fondle him.
In the third incident, Novak walked into the girl's bedroom, shut the door and approached her, Jellerson said. When the girl refused him, he threw her against a wall in the corner of the room. Then he began to fondle her until someone arrived at the house, and he stopped.
Novak warned the girl not to tell anybody or "it would get worse," Jellerson said. "She told me she thought the suspect was going to rape her."
The girl told her mother about the abuse after the third incident, but "it was nothing like what had actually occurred," Jellerson said. The version the mother heard was basically what had occurred on the first incident.
The mother, unaware of the full extent of the abuse, prohibited Novak from being alone with the girl, Jellerson said.
"In her mind, she did what was best for the family," Jellerson said.
The girl was living with her grandparents in October, about three years after the abuse, when she saw a Benchmark Hospital's crisis hot-line advertisement on TV for abused children, said Police Chief Quinn Lewis. She called the hot line and a meeting was arranged with a Division of Child and Family Services counselor at the high school she attends.
The DCFS counselor subsequently contacted police.
Novak's defense attorney, Ken Brown, did not return calls when contacted for comment.
Novak had given LDS Social Services two weeks' notice on Nov. 6 because he was aware of the investigation and knew "there would be some type of consequences, since he knew how sex abuse cases worked," Jellerson said.
LDS Church spokesman Don LeFevre confirmed Novak is no longer employed with LDS Social Services and said it would be inappropriate to comment on the case while it is still unresolved.
"But I would like to emphasize the fact that the church has long been on record as abhorring abuse in any form," LeFevre said. "We hold our members to the highest standards of self-disciplined behavior and sexual purity."
Novak is scheduled to make his first court appearance on Jan. 13 before Judge Jon Memmott.