For years I was asked sexually explicit questions by grown men who held positions of power and authority over me. I was raised that way. I thought it was normal. Decades later I can now see the damage that was done to me. I do not want my children to be exposed to this. It…
Wow, where do I start? In 1985 when I was 22, I was raped and assaulted with a knife and almost killed in my apartment, by a stranger. I escaped my perpetrator before he could cut my throat. It was every bit what you would see on a lifetime movie. He was caught, tried and…
Dread, shame and guilt at every annual worthiness interview from my teenage years beginning in the early 1980s into adulthood for masturbation. The interview didn’t even need to be particularly invasive because the Mormon socialization which shames this behavior is so predominate, the mere interview itself brings the heavy weight of that social condemnation to…
I had just turned 16 years old. Raised in the church I was very sheltered and my mother never talked to me about sex. There was a 19 year old boy several doors down from my home that was obsessed with me. He would follow me around and would tell me that he prays every…
I have been a member for just over 23 years. I have never shared this story with anyone besides my counselor. I have always feared backlash from family or friends and even from the church. I share it here now because it is time. I want to heal and to move on. Sharing my story…
From them telling us our bodies, the very thing that gives us life…is a sin. From telling us we are responsible for other people abusing us. We are children that are born into a storm. Some cannot escape. Some can. My cousin was a victim of of pedophilia by my uncle since the age of…
I masturbated and was loving it before I knew what it was. It’s the way God created me, after all. I found out what it was and that the church was against it when I was a deacon. We went to a priesthood session of conference and it was discussed at that meeting. My dad…
As a young child: Setting, Salt Lake City, close to I have NO happy memories of my mother. My first memory of her is being probably two, and calling out, “Mommy, I can’t sleep. The baby (the fourth daughter, 18 months younger than me) is crying.” I was told it was my job to take…
I am sharing my husband’s story that he only recently dared share with me after 29 years of marriage. He finally decided to share it after learning about all of the other stories that have come out and finding he was not alone. When my husband was a teenager, he was asked several times in…
My story is not one of overt sexual abuse by my priesthood leaders, but I feel it represents the sometimes subtle but deep shaming and overall damage that is done to a developing child during one-on-one priesthood interviews. At any rate, the damage done to me is something I’m still working to heal from now…