The Hive Pt. 1: How Bonneville Communications Was Overrun With Ritual Abusers

Gordon Bowen wasn't the only one

Previous articles on ritual abuse involving David Lee Hamblin’s LDS Church of Satan have focused on the individuals who appear in the Hamblin Victims Statements written by Hamblin’s three eldest daughters Rachel, Eliza, and Katherine Hamblin. What was not known at the time the GRAMA request for Hamblin’s 2012 to 2014 criminal case yielded records was that the Department of Homeland Security had focused on at least one other familial group.

That group was headed by Heber Wolsey, whose daughter Janene Baadsgaard sued her children when they alleged that she and her husband Ross were ritual abusers. For over three years, the case wore on until the Baadsgaard parents agreed to a dismissal with prejudice. IRA has interviewed sources within federal and local law enforcement over the Baadsgaards and other ritual abuse groups operating within Utah. IRA has also interviewed the victims of these groups, who tell a consistent story about the ritual abuse rings that have operated within Utah with impunity over decades.

This article focuses on what one victim characterized as a “hive” operating out of Bonneville Communications in the Eighties. Gordon Bowen, the alleged Punisher for the LDS Church of Satan High Council in Salt Lake City, was a creative director for Bonneville Communications in the early to mid-Eighties before being terminated due to his misuse of expense accounts. Bowen has since achieved infamy on a variety of fronts: first, due to his notorious homosexual escapades in New York and Utah; second, due to his sexual proclivities interfering with his work obligations at various companies; third, his 2003 excommunication from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and subsequent divorce from ex-wife Barbara Timothy, replete with allegations of child sexual abuse and trafficking; and, finally, his inclusion in the Hamblin Victims Statements, where the Hamblin sisters described in detail how Bowen raped and tortured them on at least two occasions at his Salt Lake City home.

Heber Wolsey worked with Bonneville due to his position as Director of Public Relations for the Public Communications Department of the Church. In that capacity, he and Gordon Bowen clashed, which resulted in Wolsey’s removal and subsequent move to the BYU Communications Department as a professor. Wolsey was one of several individuals Bowen successfully managed to have fired or removed during his tenure at Bonneville.

While at Bonneville, Bowen’s erratic behavior was well-known. He routinely regaled his coworkers with claims that evil spirits were tormenting him, physically assaulting him, and destroying his apartment. He used those claims to enlist male coworkers to stay overnight at his home, where he would insist on sharing a bed with them. Bowen would show up to his coworkers’ homes in the middle of the night, distraught and disheveled, asking to sleep on the floor next to the beds they shared with their wives.

During his time at Bonneville, Bowen’s reputation was that of a man who stole credit for the work performed by his creative teams. During his divorce, many of those men recounted Bowen taking credit for their award winning advertisements, even to the point of including their work in his reels when he applied for future employment. Nevertheless, when Bowen was fired, his creative team went to Arch Madsen’s house to lobby Madsen to hire him back. When Madsen did not, Bowen managed to lure Lincoln Kevin Kelly, Parry Merkley, Thomas Pratt, along with Lynn Dangel to go east to New York when Bowen accepted at job at Ogilvy-Mather. Kelly, Merkley, and Pratt were Latter Day Saints; Dangel was not.

The question of why four professionals would leave their jobs with Bonneville to follow Gordon Bowen to New York has no obvious answer. Bowen’s reputation within Bonneville was cemented early on, as he displayed an instinct for befriending his superiors, gaining their confidence, only to dispatch them later on by leveraging his relationship with Apostle Boyd K. Packer. His coworkers watched as Bowen took credit for creative ideas that originated with others, stealing credit and even physical awards for the work done by others.

Bowen Testimonials

Additionally, the question of why Bowen’s former coworkers at Bonneville would continue to associate with him years afterwards is significant. His behavior was that of a deeply troubled and mentally unstable individual, and yet four of his coworkers pulled up stakes in Utah to go to New York with him after he was fired. His sexuality was an open secret even in the early Eighties, as were his tendencies to abuse expense accounts and undermine his bosses while stealing the credit from his peers for their work. None of these qualities would have added up to a compelling reason to leave employment with Bonneville, but when paired with the reality that Kelly, Merkley, Pratt, and Dangel would be following a clearly troubled man like Bowen, the decision made by Bowen’s creative peers is even more inexplicable.

The most innocuous explanation is offered up by Gordon Bowen’s deposition during his divorce. He notes that he gravitates towards individuals with sexual identity issues, and specifically cites Kevin and Khaliel Kelly. While in New York, Bowen would meet and begin seeing David Lee Hamblin as a therapist, and Hamblin’s proclivities as a bisexual man would ultimately lead to the loss of his license to practice psychology.¹

Hamblin had sex with his male and female patients and convinced them that the sexual contact was therapeutic. He specifically claimed that his own semen as a righteous man could drive out the semen of the unrighteous men who had ritually abused his patient as a child. This was how Hamblin convinced that male patient to perform fellatio on him during a session. Hamblin would later be retained by Gordon Bowen after he lost his license to practice psychology, in order that he might exorcise the female spirits Bowen believed were causing his homosexuality.

Another member of Hamblin’s CS network was bishop and stake president Conrad Gottfredson, who informed at least one patient of Hamblin’s that he had been cured of his own homosexual inclinations through Hamblin’s methods. Gottfredson referred multiple individuals to Hamblin, some of whom were sexually abused and exploited. It would not be beyond the realm of plausibility for Hamblin to have engaged in a sexual relationship with Gordon Bowen under the guise of therapy or even ritualized sexual contact. Hamblin’s documented history as well as the eight victims’ statements in his 2012-2014 criminal case conclusively show that he was involved in both forms of sexual behavior.

Bowen, Hamblin, and Lincoln Kevin Kelly were all named as ritual abusers and members of the LDS Church of Satan in the Hamblin sisters’ statements. Heber Wolsey was accused by two of his daughters of ritual abuse, and then his own grandchildren, who also accused one of his daughters and his son-in-law of ritual abuse. Within one small network spanning Bonneville Communications and the Church Media Office, there were four alleged ritual abusers spanning two ritual abuse groups and networks.

There was also a fifth alleged ritual abuser who worked at Bonneville Communications. Michael McLean, the LDS composer who worked on the Homefront campaign while at Bonneville, was the subject of ritual abuse allegations IRA looked into last year. His alleged methodology involved the use of music as a form of victim programming. Composers were linked to sexual acts, and when a composer’s name was referenced, the victim was cued to perform a specific sexual act. IRA has interviewed McLean’s accusers, who allege that he still acts as a handler for adult victims of ritual abuse.

In the coming days, IRA will be publishing stories about each of the alleged ritual abusers named in this introductory article. Those stories will detail our findings with greater specificity.

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1. When one of his patients confronted him in his Provo home office, the others present for the confrontation were Joseph Wood Bennion and Gordon Bowen, both of whom were alleged members of the LDS Church of Satan.