My story happened not because of a Bishop with inappropriate intentions, but because the several men I dealt with were trying their best with very little guidance and only very confused cultural teachings to work with. My parents did NOT speak with us about sex. I learned from a medical textbook my mom gave me…
My 17 year old daughter has been sexually active for a bit. Her mom and I knew about it and mostly talked about safe sex. Daughter felt she needed to repent, went to the bishop—who is a really decent guy—and he pulled out a sheet of paper and said “I’ve been instructed to ask you…
I have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). It started when I was a teenager, originally manifesting behaviorally as excessive confessing of sins to my bishop. I was a textbook case of a subtype of OCD sometimes called “scrupulosity”. My story provides a good example of a bishop not having the training necessary to deal with certain situations.…
My brother, recently served as a bishop, never fully disclosed the extent of how he showed himself to me completely nude and erect in his bedroom while I was 12 and he was 16. He would have liked everyone (his bishop and my dad) to still think it was an “accident”. I was told by…
When I was 18 years old I confessed to my bishop that my boyfriend and I had been having sex. It was terrifying to be a teenage girl, fresh out of high school, alone with a man I hardly knew, talking about sex. My own parents never even talked to me about sex After confessing,…
When I was 15, I became involved with a girl in my class. I already felt shame from this, as the church instructs kids to wait until age 16 to date. I became really close with this girl and we would kiss often. It was a very innocent relationship. However, when I went in for…
I had just turned 12 and was incredibly excited to finally get the chance to go to the temple with all of my friends. They were all older than me, and had therefore been going on temple trips quite often with each other. I was also fascinated by the temples and what they meant. They…
From a young age I have felt a disconnect from church. I moved to a new ward when I was 6. Due to marriages connecting families or families living close together the members of the ward were inseparable and had a long rich friendship with each other. And I was a new, weird, poor kid…
I was abused by the boys in my neighborhood when I was 4-6 years old. I didn’t understand it at the time. But I was coerced and sometimes physically forced to do things with my mouth which no child that young had any business knowing about, nonetheless doing on a repeated basis. Most of these…
Long story short; When I was 11, I was molested. At 15 I was raped. I told the bishop and he told me I was going to hell and it was my fault. Then he proceeded to tell me that everything that happened was my fault and how premarital sex was a sin. I was…