You may use my name, I resigned from the Church a couple years ago and I am not afraid of the Church discipline or threats anymore. ” A current active bishop raped my 12-year-old daughter.
In the middle of a night at 3:30 am she came to me hysterical and told me what happened. I believed her. I called the Bishop the next day and asked to meet him in his office. His words in response to me, I remember exactly “Why, I haven’t done anything wrong?”
Have you ever asked a Bishop for an appointment and heard him respond like that? I had told him nothing about what the appointment was about. Weird response. I met with him and started asking him questions. He became nervous and then afraid. When I told him I knew all about it, he broke down and sobbed and admitted it. I told him to tell his wife and stake president that night as I was calling them the next day. I also said that he needed to meet with my daughter’s therapist and validate her experience and pay for it.
He never paid a dime but he did meet with her. As a court-mandated reporter, she contacts the County he lived in and got his Foster Parent license pulled quickly. He only had girls in his home over the years. I called his wife I still remember her words “I know what he does and it isn’t so bad”!!! I called his Stake President and his words were “Haven’t you ever done anything wrong? How about cheat on your taxes….”
As a lawyer he started interrogating me, now I know it was to try to find dirt on me but there was none to be found. Then he said if I told anyone or tried to sue the Bishop or Stake President he would see to it I was excommunicated. I was a young TBM single mother at the time and my energy needed to be spent on healing my daughter and I was afraid of that lawyer SP. He just covered it up, no one ever knew about in that ward or stake. He stayed the Bishop a few more years. He was given no Church discipline of any kind. That was quite a while ago and that man died when he was about 65. I had gone to my own Bishop and others in my ward about it and was told nothing could be done it was in the hands of that SP. A woman in the Church like me at the time or the girl harmed had no place to go with this info in the Church. There were no women leaders that had a voice to stop it. I’ve asked several times over the years if the Church cared about stopping cover up situations like this, “Why don’t they have a woman or a woman led committee to review these threats and cover-ups that girls could feel they could talk too other than intimidating male leaders who may also be lawyers trained in interrogation?”