A former Hyrum LDS bishop, who posed as a teen-age member of the church on the Internet to lure a 17-year-old North Carolina girl to Utah for sex, has been sentenced to prison.
Gordon Brent Bodily, 51, will serve 21 months in federal prison on a charge of enticement for illegal sexual activity. The former Cache County gym teacher was spared a harsher sentence because he promptly admitted to the crime.
"He has accepted full responsibility for his unfortunate behavior in this matter," said U.S. District Court Judge David K. Winder.
Bodily's lawyer, Lyle Hillyard, asked Winder to suspend prison time for an outpatient sex offender program with a doctor Bodily has been seeing since last year. Hillyard also argued Bodily's crimes were "aberrant behavior," that he faced intense scrutiny in his hometown of Hyrum and lost his position as a bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Hillyard also said the victim, now 18, did not want Bodily punished for the consensual affair.
"The victim will suffer again if she finds out that Mr. Bodily will go to prison," Hillyard said. "For her own closure she needs to know that he is being treated fairly by this court."
But Winder said even if he wanted to spare Bodily prison time he could not because federal sentencing guidelines leave him in a "straitjacket." Bodily also contacted other girls through the Internet, prosecutors noted, although he is not suspected of having sex with anyone else.
"He needs to get this prison time behind him as soon as he can," Winder said.
Bodily, however, will not have to report to federal authorities until May 7 so he can get financial matters in order and attend his daughter's college graduation. In prison he will be required to attend sex-offender treatment.
Following incarceration, he will be required to be on supervised release for two years and add his name to the state's sex offender registry.
Bodily was supported in the courtroom by his wife and children. In a brief statement, Bodily said: "I've come to realize that even through tragedy good things can result. I express my remorse for what's happened and all of those people I've affected."
In February 2000, Bodily met the girl in a teen chat room focusing on the LDS Church. At first, Bodily pretended to be a 19-year-old member of the church. But after the relationship began to include sexual telephone conversations, he admitted to being a middle-age man.
A few months later, Bodily invited the girl to Utah on the pretext to her parents that she would be coming to look at colleges and visit Mormon landmarks, he said in court documents.
The two had sex at a Salt Lake City motel several times from June 13 to June 16, 2000, he admitted. Under Utah law, it is illegal for a person to have sex with a 16- or 17-year-old if the individual is 10 or more years older than the minor.
During their relationship, Bodily was serving as an LDS bishop. After the charge was filed, he was removed from the position and excommunicated, a church spokeswoman said. Bodily had worked for 14 years at the South Cache Center. Last year, he surrendered his teaching license.