When I first went to get my bishop interview for the Temple Recommend, I was asked the usual questions such as, “Do you believe in the Church and it’s teachings?”, and other questions of similar points, but suddenly, my Bishop had asked me a very uncomfortable question. He had asked me “Do you watch pornography, or have you in the past?” I answered ‘no’ kind of quickly, as I was not about to tell this guy that I watch porn, and he knew immediately that I was lying, and he immediately said, “Are you sure you haven’t? It seems you answered that question very quickly as if you are lying…” And my heart dropped, and but i persisted, and told him I never did, and then he moved on to the rest of the questions, and at the end of the interview, his last question was, “Have you lied about any of these answers in this interview?” I couldn’t tell if he was reading it from the book, or if he was referring back to the pornography question he asked in the interview. So again, I said no, and the interview was over. And on the way out, he said “I know you lied about watching pornography, but don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about it.” This struck me as super strange, and I felt like he was shaming me over it.
When it came time to renew my temple recommend, he asked all the same questions, including the pornography one, so I assume it must have been regular for that question to be asked. so I finally gave up and said “Yes. I do watch it rarely,” which was a straight up lie, but I didn’t want to basically tell this guy that I was addicted to it. and he replied saying “I knew you’d eventually come out. This is a serious issue though, and I’m going to have to ask you some questions about it.” And I freaked out, and he then started asking questions such as “What type of porno have you watched?” and “How long have you been watching these videos?” and other stuff too.
He somehow did end up giving me a temple recommend in the end, and after the interview, he pulled out his phone and showed me a nude picture of his daughter, and said, “Does this make you turned on?” And I stayed silent, looking at it, realizing what I was seeing was somehow real. My bishop was showing me child pornography of his daughter. And I immediately got up, and ran off, and hid behind one of the trees outside the church building, and called my parents to come pick me up, and I never till this day have said anything about it since that day.
I still am traumatized about what I saw that day, and I tried my hardest since to forget about it. to this day, the man is still my bishop, and I am seriously contemplating on calling the police on him for possession of child pornography, but I know it will most likely make him rat me out to everyone saying that I liked it or whatever he might say about it. Since that day, he had been trying to get me to hook up with his daughter, who is about my age, and I keep contemplating if I should or not. She’s a very friendly, and cute, wonderful girl, but I’m just afraid if she might be something like her father, and I don’t know whether I should risk it or not. I still refuse to this day to tell anybody about what happened, and I hope this story stays anonymous, but I hope it gets out that these are the disturbing things that can happen with bishop interviews.