Ex-Mormon bishop pleads guilty to child sex abuse

Criminal Law

A former Mormon bishop and co-founder of a nonprofit group that helps women and children in Third World villages faces sentencing in November for sexually abusing children.

Lon Harvey Kennard, 69, from Heber City, Utah, pleaded guilty this week to three counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child. Each count involves a different victim, and carries a sentence of 5 years to life.

The victims were among six children the man and his wife adopted from Ethiopia, where the couple helped establish an orphanage.

The Associated Press isn't naming the man to protect the identity of the victims.

The couple's nonprofit organization provided services to destitute villages in Mexico, Central America, Africa and the Caribbean.

Kennard was initially charged with 43 counts stemming from abuse that began in 1995, around the time the defendant was bishop of his Latter-day Saints ward and one year after he and his wife started the nonprofit agency.

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Grounds for Divorce in Ohio - Sylkatis Law, LLC

A divorce in Ohio is filed when there is typically “fault” by one of the parties and party not at “fault” seeks to end the marriage. A court in Ohio may grant a divorce for the following reasons:
• Willful absence of the adverse party for one year
• Adultery
• Extreme cruelty
• Fraudulent contract
• Any gross neglect of duty
• Habitual drunkenness
• Imprisonment in a correctional institution at the time of filing the complaint
• Procurement of a divorce outside this state by the other party

Additionally, there are two “no-fault” basis for which a court may grant a divorce:
• When the parties have, without interruption for one year, lived separate and apart without cohabitation
• Incompatibility, unless denied by either party

However, whether or not the the court grants the divorce for “fault” or not, in Ohio the party not at “fault” will not get a bigger slice of the marital property.

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