These are personal accounts of the negative consequences that inappropriate interviews have had on people.
I have a few but the one that was directed towards me was when it was my birthday interview. The bishop asked basic questions like how’s school, how family, anything new… I confessed that I was really struggling with dating… I was almost 17 and had never been even asked out on a date. Not…
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 in Young Women’s, I was being interviewed to get my temple recommend and I felt that I wasn’t worthy because I had been looking at pornographic images. I knew that I was supposed to talk to the bishop about serious sins, but I wasn’t sure what exactly was meant by that, except…
I confessed to the bishop that I had been masturbating when I was 15 years old. His response was that he “didn’t know girls could do that,” and that there must be something abnormal about my sex drive. This haunted me for years because I assumed he knew what he was talking about. He also…
I was never sexually abused by a bishop. I was however sexually abused by various people including family members from the age of 5 until 13. After the abuse stopped at 13, when I would get scared at night, when my anxiety was so bad, I sometimes couldn’t sleep for days, I found myself masturbating…
When I was a sophomore in college I went to watch a movie with a foreign exchange student who lived in our appointment complex. I was hoping he would be my first kiss. He raped me halfway through the movie. I called the secretary of the singles ward I was in the next day and…
I could write a whole story about my experience, but I’ll just tell you what happened in the Bishop’s office. I was 18, living away from home in the college dorms. I was feeling guilty because my RM boyfriend and I had “gone pretty far”, not only that, but my BF would “go” even if…
Where do I even begin? My family is 5th generation Mormon. My lineage is through James Godson Bleak – of the Martin Handcart Co. My family, along with others who wanted to continue polygamy after it was banned in the U.S., moved to Colonial Juarez, Mexico to continue the practice of polygamy within the Mormon…
