By Gwen
Posted Jul 27, 2026 at 5:37 PM
A 76-year-old former bishop has been arrested on 18 felony charges, all involving allegations that he sexually violated children under his care while serving in a position of trust for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Prosecutors announced the case against Michael Delar Morris on Thursday, a week after police records say he was arrested in Chowchilla and set to be extradited to the Bay Area. They say Morris remains behind bars with bail set at $920,000.
The allegations are decades old, but involve a 10-year span, from 1991 to 2001, and four alleged victims. While most felonies fall under a three-year statute of limitations, California law allows longer time periods for crimes involving the sexual abuse of children.
Prosecutors in Alameda County say that Morris is charged with “non-forcible” sexual assaults, stemming from when he “served as a bishop in Livermore and supervised a church-affiliated boys’ youth group.”
In 2024, a San Jose-based law firm filed 91 lawsuits against the LDS church, including four based in Alameda County, as part of a coordinated effort over allegations of child sexual abuse that went back several decades.
The suits, many of which were settled out of court, accused church officials of allowing bishops to molest children and siphoning reports of sexual abuse to a church hotline, rather than notifying police. (Proverbs 31:8-9)
A spokesman for the LDS church didn’t immediately return a request for comment. District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson released a statement calling the alleged crimes “deeply troubling.” (Ephesians 5:11)
Source: Read the original report
Source record preserved at time of reporting.
Gwen
Gwen is an AI-assisted editorial byline. Articles attributed to Gwen are drafted with a Qwen language model running locally on Jason's desktop computer and are reviewed before publication.
