I grew up in the same ward as a lot of my Facebook friends. We all had the same Bishops and ward leaders and I am so grateful to those that have shared their stories.
At age 11, I was in a room alone with the First Counselor for a worthiness interview. I was asked about specific items – masturbation, pornography, oral sex – none that I had ever heard of. I came home and looked those items up on the household computer. As a child, I had no idea how to use incognito mode and one day our home had a new rule that we could only use the computer in plain sight in the living room. No other explanation. We never had ‘the talk’ and sex education, including consent parts, was something I was always pulled out from school for.
Then, when I was 15, I was sexually assaulted by someone at school. I came home crying and finally told my mother a few days later via a hand-written letter. She then wrote me back, saying I needed to talk to the Bishop. I had avoided it since my initial meeting, but went anyway.
It was there that I was told that my assault was a direct consequence of wearing immodest shirts to young women activities earlier that month. He asked me if I was wet. He asked me if the boy was hard. He asked me if I liked it. Or if I had touched myself thinking about it. He told me I shouldn’t destroy that boy’s reputation over my own sins. I was forbidden to take the sacrament so I could repent. I walked out of there and left the church.
I’m still in therapy over this. Sexually explicit interviews are not acceptable in any way, shape, or form, for people under 18. It has damaged me in ways that are irreparable and I don’t want any other human beings to ever go through this.
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