Paul Rytting listened as a woman, voice quavering, told him her story. When she was a child, her father, a former bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, had routinely slipped into bed with her while he was aroused, she said.

It was March 2017 and Rytting offered his sympathies as 31-year-old Chelsea Goodrich spoke. A Utah attorney and head of the church’s Risk Management Division, Rytting had spent about 15 years protecting the organisation, widely known as the Mormon Church, from costly claims, including sexual abuse lawsuits.

Rytting had flown into Hailey, Idaho, that morning from Salt Lake City, where the church is based, to meet in person with Chelsea and her mother, Lorraine.

Sound of Paul Rytting, director of the Risk Management Division for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, making a $300,000 offer to Chelsea Goodrich and her mother Lorriane in exchange for their silence regarding Chelsea’s father John Goodrich, who Chelsea accused of sexually abusing her.

After a quick prayer, he introduced himself and said he was there “to look into” Chelsea’s “tragic and horrendous” story.

Chelsea and Lorraine had come to the meeting with one clear request: Would the church allow a local Idaho bishop, which in the Mormon church is akin to a Catholic priest, to testify at John Goodrich’s trial? Bishop Michael Miller, who accompanied Rytting to the meeting, had heard a spiritual confession from Chelsea’s father shortly before John Goodrich was arrested on charges of sexually abusing her.

While the details of his confession remain private, the church swiftly excommunicated Goodrich.

Audio recordings of the meetings over the next four months, show how Rytting, despite expressing concern for what he called John’s “significant sexual transgression,” would employ the risk management playbook that has helped the church keep child sexual abuse cases secret. In particular, the church would discourage Miller from testifying, citing a law that exempts clergy from having to divulge information about child sex abuse that is gleaned in a confession. Without Miller’s testimony, prosecutors dropped the charges, telling Lorraine that her impending divorce and the years that had passed since Chelsea’s alleged abuse might prejudice jurors.

Sound of Paul Rytting, director of the Risk Management Division for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, explaining the $300,000 confidentiality agreement to Lorriane Goodrich, the mother of Chelsea Goodrich who accused her father, John Goodrich, of sexually abusing her.

Rytting would also offer hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for a confidentiality agreement and a pledge by Chelsea and Lorraine to destroy their recordings of the meetings, which they had made at the recommendation of an attorney and with Rytting’s knowledge.

Today, John Goodrich, who did not respond to the AP’s questions, is a free man, practicing dentistry in Idaho.

“Going into this meeting with Rytting, I felt like it would be very clear, once everything’s laid out that, look, this is not something that we want to cover up,” said Eric Alberdi, a church member who attended the meetings as Chelsea’s advocate and also made recordings, which he shared with the AP.

“This is something that we want to uncover for a number of reasons, so that John … doesn’t do this again. So that Chelsea can move forward,” said Alberdi, who was not bound by the confidentiality agreement and who has since left the church. “You know, covering this up did not make any sense.”

In a statement to the AP, the church said “the abuse of a child or any other individual is inexcusable,” and that John Goodrich, following his excommunication, “has not been readmitted to church membership.”

Alberdi’s recordings provide an unprecedented record of the steps the church normally takes behind closed doors to keep allegations of child sex abuse secret – steps that can leave predators free and children at risk.

“How many people can know the truth and choose to pretend they don’t and leave others at risk of the same abuse and they know it and they just don’t care?” Lorraine Goodrich said. “I don’t understand that. I’ll never understand that.”

Two years earlier, in the spring of 2015, Chelsea Goodrich, then a 29-year-old graduate student in psychology living in Southern California, began to confront disturbing memories. While her peers dated and created lasting relationships, she filled with anxiety and dread at the prospect.

“Instead of wanting to have a relationship, I just remember feeling terror and confusion and kind of disgust, like all at once, about it,” she said during a series of interviews with the AP.

Her memories included several occasions, she recalled, when John Goodrich slipped into her bed at night in their house in Mountain Home, Idaho, to spoon her while he was aroused, pushing himself against her backside. On one occasion, when she was nine, she remembered her father had apologised to her for being aroused while they were playing in the family swimming pool and told her not to tell her mother.

The last similar incident Chelsea recalls occurred during a school field trip to Washington DC, where her father admits he climbed into bed with her in a state of arousal and slipped close behind her. John Goodrich admitted that during a recorded conversation, obtained by the AP, with Chelsea, Lorraine and one of Chelsea’s brothers.

Lorraine and Chelsea had been recording their confrontations with John about the alleged abuse, which they would later turn over to police.

While grappling with these memories, Chelsea met a Mormon friend she came to trust and with whom she shared these unsettling remembrances. Her new friend told her that her father, Paul Rytting, was a high church official who often dealt with sexual abuse complaints and suggested Chelsea contact him.

Unbeknownst to Chelsea, who believed Rytting’s main responsibility was to aid victims, at about that time he was deeply involved in defending the church in a highly publicised West Virginia child sex abuse lawsuit.

Several Mormon families had accused the church of allowing a Mormon sex abuser, Christopher Michael Jensen, to babysit for their children, whom he allegedly abused. Jensen was sentenced to serve 35 to 75 years in prison after he was found guilty of abusing two of the children.

As revealed by the AP last year, Rytting made sworn statements in that case – which were sealed by a judge and obtained by the AP – describing the management of the secretive church Helpline, a phone number set up by the church for bishops to report instances of child sex abuse. Church officials say that they don’t keep any records of the reports to the Helpline. Rytting also revealed the lengths to which the church goes to ensure confidentiality for Mormon perpetrators who make spiritual confessions.

“Disciplinary proceedings are subject to the highest confidentiality possible,” Rytting said in one affidavit. “If members had any concerns that their disciplinary files could be read by a secular judge or attorneys or be presented to a jury as evidence in a public trial, their willingness to confess and repent and for their souls to be saved would be seriously compromised.”

Rytting did not respond to telephone calls or an email with a list of questions. In its statement the church noted that Goodrich’s “communications with his bishop were protected by Idaho state law. Only the perpetrator could release the bishop from his obligation under the clergy penitent privilege and he refused to do so.”

After meeting Rytting’s daughter, Chelsea travelled with her to Salt Lake City and met Paul Rytting while staying at the family home.

At that time, Chelsea didn’t feel ready to discuss her memories and kept them to herself, she said. But she eventually told her mother. And when Lorraine Goodrich confronted her husband in their Idaho home, in July of 2015, John confirmed becoming aroused while around his daughter, but denied any direct sexual contact, according to recordings of the conversations.

In one recorded conversation with Chelsea and Lorraine, he blamed the devil for his decision to climb into bed with his 13-year-old daughter after hearing sexual activity in an adjoining hotel room during the trip to Washington.

“The adversary I’m sure worked on me,” he said, using a Mormon term for Satan. “And that’s when it was going through my mind when I climbed in bed with Chelsea and was really aroused … with the intent of spooning and snuggling you but I didn’t.”

• An AP report