When I was in my mid-30’s, my father admitted to me that he molested me when I was a very young child. He said that he “took care of it” by going to the bishop. He never said that he was sorry. He never stopped looking at me in a sexual way. Nothing changed. Yet…
As a girl, I never heard any messages directed to the young women about masturbation, which made me feel like I must be especially bad because I couldn’t stop doing something that seemingly no other young women had a problem with. I prayed and begged god to help me stop, to take away my desire…
Hi. I didn’t grow up LDS, but I did have a “problem” with masturbation. I had done it before I became a member (around 25 years old) and had no problem with it. I am not sure how I got the knowledge that it was a sin. If it was me asking or the Bishop…
I don’t have the horror stories that some people have, but I have a few incidents to relate. First, when I was about thirteen, Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped. I was afraid for her and I was afraid that something similar could happen to me. I began having panic attacks that made it difficult to breathe…
I am the mother of two grown and married daughters with their own children. We have all signed the petition Sam started because we felt it to be important. As a teen and later as a newly married, I can honestly say that I was never asked any improper questions by a Priesthood holder. I…
The first interview I remember was my pre-baptism interview when I was 8. The bishop took me into his office, having my parents wait outside. He asked me a lot of different questions, including whether I had ever touched myself. Due to the tone in which he asked, I recognized that “touching myself” was a…
I turned twelve in 1973, while living in Cache Valley, Utah. I spent the two years I was a Deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood in Utah. I do not recall any intrusive or poignant, sexually-themed questions at all during that time. But we moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee around my fourteenth birthday. The sexualization of my…