I have had too much shame to share my story with even my closest friends. I have been faithfully active for 40 years. In the past five years I have been on a break due to this very subject. I am bold and sassy and able to have a voice in every other area of…
Quite apart from the standard questions on masturbation and sexual purity that always made me feel uncomfortable, I had one incident that was the most harrowing. I did some things on two occasions as a teenager, which of course are no one’s business. When it came time for my interview to go on a mission,…
When I was 8 I was shown pornography by my older brother but I kept it hidden. As years went by I felt dirty and worthless especially at church. Then when I was 13 I had sex for the first time and talked to adult men online and my mom found out. I was forced…
I am a woman in my 30s. In college, first in AZ then at BYU, I had urges to masturbate several times a week. It was a nice release, left no trace and wasn’t unhealthy in any way. Despite that, the church had me believe that I had committed a great sin in the sight…
It was my sophomore year of high school and one night when my boyfriend and I were making out he put his hand down the front of my pants. It was there for a few seconds but then I pushed it out and told him I had to go home. That was it. I feel…
Dear Sam: Thank you for fighting to protect LDS children. They need all the protectors they can get. It has taken me all week to write this letter; I have never told anyone else my story. Who would I have told? Who could I possibly trust with these details? My story goes back 50 years…
Growing up in the church, I first learned of masturbation from a bishopric member asking if I did it. I was young and being interviewed to go to the temple to do baptisms. I said “no,” as it sounded horrible, and then went home to look up the definition in the dictionary. (Thank goodness I…
My story is too long so I’m writing a book. To offer some insight I can tell you that my father was taking religious classes at BYU from 1959 -1967 and during that time he was taught secret doctrine that fed his narcissism and he began sexually abusing me when I was three. He would…