A Utah man has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing two patients during so-called “conversion therapy” sessions that he conducted to cure them of their homosexuality.

Ex-therapist Scott Dale Owen, 66, is also a former Mormon bishop and was the men’s ecclesiastical leader.

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Mormon conversion therapist charged with sexually abusing his male clients
He told them that his “intimacy” therapy would help them have relationships with women.

His guilty plea covers three charges of first-degree felony forcible sodomy. Owen admitted that he sexually abused the two male patients “using his position as a therapist” and led them to believe that sexual contact was part of their therapy.

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He pleaded no contest to another first-degree felony charge for abusing a 13-year-old girl. He faces a sentence of up to life in prison at a hearing scheduled for March 31.

Owen — the former owner of Canyon Counseling in Provo, Utah — forfeited his therapy license in 2018 after several patients lodged complaints with the state licensing authority that he’d touched them inappropriately. Those allegations may or may not have been forwarded to police — Utah doesn’t require reporting — and were not taken up by law enforcement at the time.

Owen continued to play an active role in his counseling business until 2023, when an investigation by the Salt Lake City Tribune and ProPublica made the complaints public. Police subsequently took up his case.

Owen had built a reputation in the Mormon church as a “conversion therapy” specialist. According to the victims, their bishop used church funds to pay for the therapy that included the sexual abuse.

The two men told police that included kissing, cuddling and Owen touching their anuses. The ex-therapist admitted in plea documents to having sexual contact with the two young men; he put one patient’s testicles in his mouth.

Owen told his victims the physical contact was “part of their treatment process” and “person-centered therapy.”

Provo police interviewed at least a dozen former patients, according to court records reported by The Tribune. All of them said Owen touched them in ways they felt were inappropriate during their sessions, and several said they were seeking therapy for “same-sex attraction.”

As well as state licensors, local leaders in the Latter Day Saints (LDS)/Mormon Church knew of the allegations lodged against Owen as early as 2016, reporting by The Tribune and ProPublica showed. Neither would say whether church leaders shared the therapist’s conduct with police.

Church leaders said then that LDS takes all matters of sexual misconduct seriously; in 2019, they confidentially annotated internal records to alert bishops that Owen’s conduct had threatened the well-being of other people or the church, they said.

During their weekly sessions, one victim said Owen became “increasingly physical” while assuring him that “he was making progress and that others may not understand the treatment,” according to a charging document.

Owen told the man, if he “would give his full trust to him, he would be cured.”

“What they were doing was consistent with their religious standards,” the victim recounted Owen saying. Their intimacy would “result in a closer relationship with God.”

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