As a child, I wish I had known about the grooming processes that sexual predators use. The way they gain a child’s trust, maybe even their parents’ trust, before attempting anything inappropriate. Instead, the church indoctrinated me to believe that men have the absolute authority and the power to act in God’s name. I was…
When I was a 12 year old I went to my father full of shame and confessed I had masturbated. His reaction led me down a path of intense self-loathing that lasted well into adulthood. Because what he didn’t say was “Literally everyone, especially kids your age, masturbates sometimes.” What he did do was make…
I went through those highly emotional and impactive teen years, in the 70s. This was when our LGBTQ brothers and sisters were still in the closet. A time when much that we now understand about our sexuality was misunderstood and frankly the LGBTQ community was demonized. (I regret that my opinions and likely comments as…
Innocence Taken I grew up going to the Sugar Land wards of the Houston Texas South Stake. I was going in for my first temple interview to do baptisms for the dead. I was very naive and at the time didn’t know what self pleasure or masturbation were or what sexually active meant. I was…
You may use my name, I resigned from the Church a couple years ago and I am not afraid of the Church discipline or threats anymore. ” A current active bishop raped my 12-year-old daughter. In the middle of a night at 3:30 am she came to me hysterical and told me what happened. I…
Lisa O. Idaho, USA My story takes place in the 1980s, in a town of about 30,000 people in Los Angeles County, California. One Sunday when I was about 15 years old, all the girls were brought together to watch a film called “Morality For Youth” (1982). The video used a group of teens on…
My sister was asked by her bishop if she masturbated before she was old enough to know what the word meant. Her husband (who is not LDS) has been so horrified by this story he will NEVER set foot in the church or allow his kids to be baptized. I was a student at BYU…
When I was a teen, I attended EFY (Especially For Youth) church camps, which are commonly attended by Mormon kids hosted on church-owned university campuses. One year, when I was sixteen years-old, on the first day of the program one of our male youth counselors informed everyone in his group, that sometime before the week’s…
I was raped when I was 17 by the Stake President’s 22 year old RM son. I was terrified to say anything to anyone because I was afraid I would be punished. When I finally told my parents, they helped me report it to the police, the police told me they didn’t believe me and…
Local church leaders conduct worthiness interviews with their members, even the children. Every child in a Mormon congregation will have at least one interview with the presiding member of their congregation (Bishop or branch president) at age 7-8, and several more from the age of 11 to 18 prior to temple attendance or full-time missionary…