I was about 16. I had a blind date with someone who proclaimed to be a returned missionary. He was returned missionary but he was a predator. I was pressured into doing many things. All in a hotel room that I was under the assumption we were picking his friends up there. I felt so awful about everything. I was totally victimized. The man was 23 and I was 16. I felt so much shame that I contemplated suicide.
I decided to go to my Bishop and tell him what had happened. I assumed in part that I was confessing to help with the shame but also let him know what this horrible man had done to me. It’s when chat rooms first came out. Went into my Bishop’s office and told him what had happened. He wanted details. He asked if I had been penetrated. He asked if I had an orgasm (after I told him how terrified I was). He asked me if I enjoyed it. As I’m crying, I answered every question with a sobbing “No no no”.
The next part of the meeting was the Worst! He leaned forward from his desk and told me “You’re lying!” “You knew what you were doing when you went into the hotel room!” I was shocked. I just kept repeating what happened and that I really didn’t know what he was trying to do. I was barely 16 years old. Come to find out this man was a predator and had manipulated and sexually assulted multiple times young teenage girls online.
The man’s Bishop was contacted and he was disfellowshipped……….AGAIN!!! For the same thing!!!!
As for me….. I was also just disfellowshipped. I was told that I was very close to getting excommunicated. Apparently they thought my first offense of letting a boy touch my boob six months prior, combined with this event, put me in a very compromising situation with my membership.
I couldn’t take the sacrament for 6 months. My young women youth leaders were informed of my transgression and were told that I could not pray or have a calling in young women’s. It was the most humiliating thing I’ve ever been through. I was victimized. I was a young girl and then incredibly sheltered one at that. I feared men. Hence the reason I didn’t dare stand up for myself and tell this man NO when he was pushing my resistant head to put his penis in my mouth. The man saw me sobbing while he was pushing me to do these things.
Please don’t be blind to this. I was raised without a father and I don’t believe Bishops are equipped to handle issues such as the one described above. I do understand that there’s personal revelation and that’s what the bishop is supposed to have during times like this. But all too often, grave mistakes are made. I don’t hate my old Bishop. I do think he was probably doing the best he could. I try to think so anyways. I still don’t understand why I got punished and humiliated when I already feel such deep humiliation. I’m now 33 and I still have issues from this. Unfortunately this wasn’t the only issue with a bishop but it is the one that seems to come back to me during my dark days.