Lawsuit dropped that alleged sex abuse in Wenatchee Mormon church fostercare
http://www.ifiberone.com/wenatchee/lawsuit-dropped-that-alleged-sex-abuse-in-wenatchee-mormon-church/article_033d3776-db9c-11e8-bdeb-93edf693eca4.html?modalid=followed-notification-modal-47bd9940-4cf4-11e8-b8d2-db22dea8e6cf
Vernon’s lawsuit claimed the victim, a Crow tribal member who was not identified by name, was abused in the care of a Wenatchee family that fostered her under the now-discontinued Indian Placement Program. That program, carried out by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, removed children from American Indian communities and placed them in the foster care of white Mormon families between the 1950s and the mid-1990s.
The project was also known as the Lamanite Placement Program, after scripture in the Book of Mormon that characterizes Native Americans as descendants of “Lamanites,” cursed by God with dark skin. Indian families were asked to voluntarily surrender their children into foster care, in order to provide educational opportunities not available on their reservations. The program's main director, Navajo Mormon leader George P. Lee, was excommunicated from the church in 1989 and pleaded guilty to attempted sexual abuse of a child in 1994.