George W. Johansen, Sexual Predator and Stake President
Written by Go El
Apr 15, 2026
Another Church of Satan Member Exposed
In March 2026, IRA submitted a GRAMA request with the Emery County Sheriff’s Office for all records pertaining to George Wilford Johansen, the former Mount Pleasant Stake President and owner of George W. Johansen Construction. George Johansen is named in the Hamblin Victims Statements, and he is identified as a a rapist and a participant in the abuse of Katie Hamblin, aka Kate Baxter.
Johansen’s involvement with David Lee Hamblin’s Spring City Church of Satan (CS) group was repeated and extensive. At the time he was alleged to have raped Katie Hamblin in a CS Gathering Ceremony, Johansen was on the cusp of being called to a stake presidency in the Mormon Church. He was also an active attendee and participant in sweat lodge ceremonies where satanic rituals were performed.
The allegations would not mean much by themselves, but paired with Johansen’s documented sexual assault of his female employee, the allegations take on new credibility. In October 2008, that employee decided to file a report alleging sexual abuse by George W. Johansen, her boss. According to the employee, the main assault took place on October 6, 2008, after lunch. Johansen had taken her to the courthouse in Castle Dale to drop off a bid, but after the drop-off, Johansen pulled her shorts open while he was driving to see what color her panties were.
This was followed by Johansen reaching into the front of her shorts and touching the top of her vagina.
Under Utah’s criminal code, Johansen’s actions were consistent with the forcible sexual abuse statute.
The report details Johansen’s progressively inappropriate conduct, including asking his employee about her bra size and sex life, and discussing the personal grooming habits of his employee with respect to shaving her pubic hair. Like many other women, the employee felt like she had to tolerate the behavior because she was a single mother with bills to pay. The price of holding down a job involved tolerating boorish and even criminal conduct from her employer.
That is, until an October day in 2008, when Johansen’s female employee had enough of being pawed at and solicited by her married boss and former stake president. George Johansen’s wife Barbara Ann is not mentioned in the Hamblin Victims Statement, nor is she mentioned in the police report. What is mentioned is George W. Johansen’s bizarre aside that he was struggling with erectile dysfunction. Johansen asked the investigating officer interviewing him to shut off the recorder when he disclosed his erectile dysfunction as a 67 year old nearly 300 pound man.
There is no evidence that the Emery County Sheriffs Office was aware of additional allegations against George W. Johansen, including the allegations dating back to the mid- to late-nineties. The court records contain nothing that would indicate that the Emery County prosecutors were aware of additional allegations against Johansen, either. What is stunning is the sheer speed with which Emery County moved to prosecute Johansen, who was facing a criminal information in the case a mere 20 days after the victim reported the incident. Less than seven months later, Johansen filed a plea of no contest to third degree attempted forcible sexual abuse and accepted a deal from the prosecutors.
If you have tips or information about the individuals named in the Hamblin Victims Statements, you can reach IRA at goel@investigationsinritualabuse.com.
In that deal, it appears that Johansen agreed to a year’s probation in exchange for a plea of no contest and counseling. On April 26, 2010, LDS Family Service gave Johansen their imprimatur, and the next day, the court dismissed the charges. On August 18, 2014, the case stay ended, and Johansen was free of the charges. Two years later, he would die at his Mount Pleasant home. Four years later, the allegations against Johansen and dozens of others in Sanpete County would exploded into the open when the Hamblin case entered the mainstream as Utah County Attorney David Leavitt decried Utah County Sheriff’s Office investigation into a widespread ritual abuse ring operating in at least four Utah counties.
When paired with the allegations of rape and abuse by Kate Baxter against Johansen, his no-contest plea for sexually assaulting his employee takes on the appearance of yet another corroborative coincidence where the CS is concerned. What is stunning about Johansen’s behavior is how brazen it was: he openly engaged in sexual conversation and solicited his employee, up to and including a sexual assault. The assault allegations are true with respect to Johansen’s Emery County victim. This tends to increase the credibility of Kate Baxter’s allegations against Johansen.
There is no doubt that David Lee Hamblin’s former patient and cousin in law Sterling Van Wagenen is a child predator based on Van Wagenen’s multiple convictions and his confession to abusing a male victim. There is no doubt that David Lee Hamblin’s former brother in law Tim Tuttle is a child predator based on Tuttle’s guilty plea to molesting his adopted daughter, because Tuttle pleaded guilty to molesting his daughter. There is no doubt that David Lee Hamblin is guilty of raping his daughter because he explicitly apologized on a recorded line for raping her.
There is no doubt Gordon Bowen molested multiple children given the DCFS reports and journal entries where he acknowledges that ritual abuse is greater than power and potency than non-ritual abuse. Multiple children who were subjected to Bowen’s abuse have exhibited extreme mental illness and trauma as adults. The dozens of affidavits and statements of Bowen’s coworkers and friends paint a picture of a mentally disturbed man who believed sugar exacerbated his homosexual inclinations, which were caused by his possession by female spirits. His former associates note instances of Bowen paying boys to live with him at his private residence, along with a disturbing incident in Bowen’s Salt Lake City home where “a young, sickly boy” appeared to Bowen’s dinner guests before a party and told them he was staying with Bowen.
Each of these examples is corroborative of the allegations against the men named by Rachel, Eliza, and Kate as abusers. These are the publicly known allegations and convictions. There are hundreds of victims who were abused by those individuals appearing the Hamblin Victims’ Statements, and IRA continues to interview and research additional allegations.