Former Mormon leader sentenced on sexual assault conviction in Minnesota

KASSON, Minn. (FOX 9) - A former Mormon leader in Minnesota has been sentenced to 30 years behind bars after he was convicted in a sexual assault case.

Michael Adam Davis, age 38, was convicted in May of criminal sexual conduct of a minor and a count of felony indecent exposure. Investigators say Davis assaulted the child in 2019.

The case wasn't Davis' first conviction related to crimes against a child.

Before the recent case, Davis had been convicted in 2003 in Utah on counts of lewdness involving a child. In 2006, Davis pled guilty to two more changes in Utah for attempted forcible sexual abuse of a disabled woman. As a result, Davis is a lifetime sex offender registrant.

As a FOX 9 investigation uncovered, in the years after the Utah arrests, Davis somehow managed to get a leadership role at a Mormon church outside Kasson, Minnesota – a small city west of Rochester in Dodge County.

He served as "Elders Quorum President" at the church until a traffic stop in 2019 when Davis was pulled over by a Dodge County Sheriff's deputy, due to a child in Davis' vehicle not wearing a seatbelt. When the deputy ran Davis' license they found he was a registered sex offender in Utah. The 13-year-old boy later told deputies that Davis had repeatedly sexually assaulted him and tried to rape him.

Davis got the maximum sentence allowable after prosecutors argued for an aggravated departure from sentencing guidelines. A person who witnesses the sentence says the judge had stern words for Davis, quoting from his psychosexual assessment and saying this was the first time in her 20 years on the bench that she's used aggravated sentencing.

Davis is set to serve his time in St. Cloud, according to court documents.