This is not my story. This is my sister’s story. But she is not here to tell it. My younger sister LeeAnn became a “special project” of her Bishop _____ in Florida. She was neither his first nor his last victim. Bishop _____ convinced my blindly obedient mother that LeeAnn needed to come live with him for special care. He started raping her several months shy of her 15th birthday. The abuse continued. My sister begged my mother to be allowed to come back home but my mother refused saying that Bishop was____ a man of god. Her fellow mormon congregants in Florida knew what was happening but blamed my sister rather than the bishop. LeeAnn was finally able to break free when she went away for college. But as you can imagine, the damage was severe and deep. She was unable to have children of her own. She became a police officer in an attempt to protect others from the evil she had endured. When I learned of this whole thing later (I was older and lived in Colorado at the time), I was racked with guilt, though my sister assured me that there was nothing I could have done. She said that the only thing that she wanted was for our mother to apologize to her for forcing her to live with a pedophile rapist. That apology never came. And on December 25th 2015, LeeAnn took her life. My mother actually attended a mormon church in my sister’s neighborhood on the date of the memorial service. When my other sister asked my mother why she did not protect LeeAnn, my mother stated to this sister that she thought about turning the rapist in but then felt too guilty because he was called of god.
PLEASE do whatever you can to protect the vulnerable from the predators.