My experience with “confessing” to my bishop at an interview came in teens. I was 16 years old. I wasn’t a child, but it affected my life and who I am today.
My then-boyfriend and I, both being active and devout followers of the LDS Church, kept “toeing the line” of the lds rules. We decided to go speak to our respective bishops. While his bishop stopped him from relaying his story, read him a scripture, and told him to stop the sin, my bishop shocked me by asking crude questions and wanting more and more details- where, when, how many times, what position, how I felt during “this part”, clothing involved, how many fingers… I left sobbing with an appointment with my bishop the very next week. And the week after. And the week after that.
I thought I deserved it, the shame. I thought that was what confessing to the bishop was. When my then-boyfriend told me of his experience, I was hurt, betrayed, and confused. We had done the exact same thing… Why was I treated differently? Why did I have to go back, week after week, to be able to take the sacrament again, and get a new temple recommend?
I went to those meetings for two months before I decide enough was enough. Every time he’d ask if anything new had happened and read me scriptures about sexual sin, a sin that I was taught to believe was one of the worse you could commit.
This lead me down a path of wanting to do what I was taught and be obedient, but hating myself and my teen urges in result of it. I no longer felt comfortable with my priesthood leaders and pushed away from any authority they had over me. Several weeks later, when my bishop pulled me from the halls of my church into his office and told me he was prompted that I needed to tell him about my current sins, I stopped attending that ward.
I ended up marrying my boyfriend in a lovely city hall (several years later).