I am a girl and I remember as early as 4 or 5 years old casually feeling slight sexual feelings that were immediately followed by shame and guilt. I was on my bed in my room and had already had doctrine ingrained into me that I was bad for feeling those feelings. Feeling like you’re…
I first experienced orgasm as an 8 year old girl, at the hands of a teacher. I didn’t understand the sensation I had felt nor had I wanted it. It was in discussing it with a friend (who was also being abused) and her “older” sister (who was 10) that we were told that what…
So in light of the current trend, here is one of my stories. This is not necessarily a story of abuse per se, but of my paranoia to be worthy and how it affected my health. Like any teenage boy, I masturbated. Growing up in a super TBM home, I didn’t need to talk to…
I’ve lived with decades of shame, guilt and anxiety due to dozens of private worthiness meetings with LDS leaders when I was as young as eleven years old. The questions were always sexually-based and completely inappropriate. As a father and now a grandfather, I cannot fathom how this perverted system still exists. There is no…
This is the story of my two children. One MIA night, my son, 17 and my daughter 14, were called into the bishop’s office separately. This couldn’t have been a birthday yearly interview because their birthdays were months apart. One in March and the other in May. It was an unscheduled, no appointment, impromptu interview,…
On average, from age 5 to 28, I considered suicide and/or self-mutilation roughly once a week, in part because I was subjected to these interviews. I encountered some of the church’s teachings about sexual sin early on, and as early as age 5 (I was molested by another child a few years older than me—as…
What a terrible policy that needs to be changed- These specific questions have caused me so much unneeded stress and anxiety because what kind of 13 year old wants to talk about this stuff when they know if they slip up everyone in deacons quorum is going to know exactly why you didn’t pass the…
As a teen and as a young woman in college I was asked by the Bishop about whether or not I masturbated. The discussion with my college Bishop kept me out of the temple and made me feel unworthy and unloved for years afterwards. Looking back, I was already dealing with depression at the time…
When I was being interviewed to enter young women’s at the age of 12, I was brought into a room with the lights turned off to speak with a member of the bishopric. He asked me the usual questions, things about tithing, reading scriptures, etc. I was so nervous that I would answer the questions…
I grew up in the 1970s and ‘80s. I loved the church and never thought I would leave, but now I’m a middle-aged apostate who believes that one immense contributing factor to a loss of testimony is the church’s obsessive, abusive relationship to sexuality and shaming members. As a young woman (teen) I was interviewed…