First of all I am no longer a member, having resigned 2 months after being released as a YSA Bishop in the Pacific Northwest.
In 1999 while serving as a Bishops Counselor, I was interviewing youth for an upcoming temple trip. In the course of my interviews I was asked to follow the handbook of instructions regarding temple worthiness for proxy baptisms.
I will be using actual names here as they are a matter of public record, having ultimately at the time resulted in the largest settlement in LDS church history.
I interviewed a young women by the name of Ashley Cavalieri who was i believe 14 at the time. Shortly after the interview, I was nearly back to the clerk’s/bishops office when this YW came to me tearfully and told me she needed to tell me something. I responded that not being a Bishop I could not take her comments or statement regarding a transgression or confession etc. She did not like the bishop, but reluctantly agreed to meet with him. Here is the story.
https://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/jury-awards-m-in-sex-abuse-case-against-lds-church/article_ffaf8a9a-c3ec-5212-a48b-936e14b513a2.html
Both of these YM suffered immensely and both left the church including their mother. Their step father went to prison and eventually served his time. As he had been a firefighter he never regained his footing in the community as it was all over the newspapers and news feeds over the course of a few years.
What was so deeply offensive in retrospect was the blatant attempt of the LDS legal teams to discredit these young women. It was disgusting, and ultimately they had to hang the blame on someone. That someone was a good man by the name of Bruce Hatch who had been the bishop in their former ward. It ruined his life, and he took it stoically and even served a mission. I spoke with him a few years before my departure in 2013 and he wept at the stigma that had fallen on him as he had done all he could. The LDS legal community did nothing. They let him swing. It cost them some money and I’ve heard the sum awarded had been reduced.
I have one regret, that I didn’t leave then after all I knew and saw and went on to serve for 10 years on the HC, YSA bishops counselor and eventually the Bishop. Everything about this church is wrong. Everything. The prophets they revere are pedophiles when you examine the facts surrounding their lives.
Consider this from the Supreme Court in Boston concerning Brigham Young. You won’t find this in the church’s study manual about him…….and yet a University is named after him.
Brigham Young committed adultery while a missionary in Boston…
While on a mission in Boston in 1842-44, as a member of the 12 Apostles, Young had an affair with Augusta Adams Cobb, and she became pregnant, and left Boston, for Nauvoo, Illinois, where she married Young on November 2, 1843, and named the child she was pregnant with, George Brigham Cobb. The child died in 1843.
The reason this is adultery, and not just “spiritual wivery”, is that Augusta was married to a living man, Henry Cobb, since 1822, at the time of the 1843 marriage to Brigham Young. They (Augusta / Henry) were not estranged or separated, etc., at the time Augusta had the affair with Young (a common excuse given by Mormon Apologists, in a attempt to avoid the adultery claim). Furthermore, Henry successfully sued to the Massachusetts State Supreme Court, in 1847, for divorce, on the grounds of adultery.
It is a matter of law and public record, that Brigham Young was an adulterer, as a Mormon Missionary and Apostle.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/60955658(credit to u/mcquirerod
from the Supreme Court – Boston. Public record
http://www.truthandgrace.com/1847youngadultery.htm