I was in my teens when I started masturbating. My bishop at the time was very much interested in emphasizing how sinful masturbation was. He regularly visited my Young Women’s classes and instructed us on the importance of seeing a priesthood leadership should we ever do it.
I felt immense guilt and shame and avoided going for a time. However, after fooling around with a boy I liked (we never had sex), my mom found out about the masturbation and fooling around and said I should go confess to the bishop. I was doing my best to be a righteous daughter of God and so I went.
He met with me many, many times. More than once, he made me describe in excruciating, explicit detail when, where, and how I masturbated. He wanted to know how I touched myself. He wanted to know about my orgasms. He also wanted to know in explicit detail what I had done with my boy friend.
He focused particularly on my breasts. I am large chested and my breasts are very noticeable. He asked a LOT of questions about my breasts and nipples and whether my boy friend had stimulated them, whether it was without clothes on, whether hands or mouth was used, and whether I stimulated them myself when masturbating. Those kinds of questions are EXTREMELY INAPPROPRIATE for a 30 something man to be asking a teenager alone in a room together with a closed door.
He also talked to me in explicit detail about what happens when a man and woman have sex after marriage, how it’s good for a woman to pleasure herself when her husband is inside her with his penis, and so on. Again, for a young, naive, and very innocent young girl, this was horrifying and put images in my mind that I desperately wanted out.
This was abuse. It was sick, and wrong. The current interview practice made it possible.