I don’t understand how the religion of the offender has any bearing on the crime.
(It would if you're the parent of a teen who knows your teen hangs out with a church youth group...so rather than broadbrush ALL church youth leaders out there...inquiring parents are gonna wanna know if their child's been in harm's way of a given...specific, that is...youth leader)
It's a Salt Lake City newspaper. EVERTHING around there is about what religion you follow.
Because, it gives angry and bitter people more fuel for their fire of justification.
It's perfectly relevant when the offender held a position of authority in the religion in question. Different religious groups have different standards for checking out the backgrounds of people called to serve in positions of authority, with some having a stricter set of standards for those who will have particular access to youth. The Catholic Church certainly has a horrible record, having quitely transferred known child molesters to other locations, giving them a new set of victims and keeping the new community of parents in the dark, and also having paid off parents of victims with huge sums of "hush money" in exchange for the parents agreeing not to report the case to law enforcement (which makes the parents essentially pimps of their own children, IMO), in some cases when the offender was being quietly transferred to a new location. I've never heard of the LDS Church doing anything that egregious, but there's nothing wrong with including religious affiliation in stories like this -- helps people keep track of different denominations' track records.