A Utah judge has caused outcry after he called a former Mormon bishop convicted of rape an “extraordinarily good man” who did something wrong, a judicial oversight organization said on Friday.

In sentencing Keith Robert Vallejo on Wednesday, Judge Thomas Low said: “The court has no doubt that Mr Vallejo is an extraordinarily good man … but great men sometimes do bad things.”

Low appeared emotional as he sentenced Vallejo to up to life in prison, the Salt Lake Tribune reported, after a jury found him guilty of 10 counts of forcible sexual abuse and one count of object rape.

One victim said on Friday that Low appeared to care more about the person he was convicting than he did about the victims. She said she planned to file an official complaint against him in the hope of getting him removed as a judge.

“He only cared about the person he was convicting, and I think that is really kind of despicable,” said Julia Kirby, 23, who gave the Associated Press permission to publish her name.

Kirby said she was 19 when Vallejo, a relative, groped her multiple times when she stayed at his house while attending Brigham Young University in 2013.

Dozens of complaints have come in since late March, said Jennifer Yim, executive director of the Utah judicial performance evaluation commission.



Low did not return a request for comment submitted through Utah court spokesman Geoff Fattah.

A second victim told police Vallejo raped and groped her while she slept on his couch in 2014 when she was 17. The abuse occurred in Provo, a Mormon stronghold that is home to BYU. Low attended BYU, where almost all students are Mormon, but it is not clear whether he is a member of the faith.

There was no indication that Low had any prior friendship or relationship with Vallejo, said Ryan McBride, the prosecutor on the case. A judge would have to disclose something like that, he said.

McBride called Low’s comment inappropriate, and it they may have come in response to more than 50 character letters sent in about Vallejo. McBride said the suspect’s brother spoke at the hearing and compared Vallejo to Jesus in making the argument that he is being wrongly convicted.

“I don’t think it’s wrong to acknowledge the good things that someone has done in their lives,” said McBride. “But I think whenever you do that in a case like this, you’ve also got to say, ‘But it doesn’t excuse what you’ve done.’”

“I maintain my innocence,” Vallejo said during the hearing after a brief comment on how the justice system bullies people into confessing.



A spokesman for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Vallejo was released from his position as bishop after church leaders found out about the accusations.

In the faith, bishops are regular church members who lead their congregations for four to five years. The position is unpaid and part of the religion’s lay clergy structure that makes it different from many other religions.

Sexual assault victim advocates also expressed outrage over the comments.



“The signal that it sends to sexual violence survivors is that if you choose to disclose, that we’re still going to treat your perpetrator as if they’re a good person,” said Turner Bitton, executive director of the Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault.