I grew up in the same ward as a lot of my Facebook friends. We all had the same Bishops and ward leaders and I am so grateful to those that have shared their stories. At age 11, I was in a room alone with the First Counselor for a worthiness interview. I was asked…
My story happened not because of a Bishop with inappropriate intentions, but because the several men I dealt with were trying their best with very little guidance and only very confused cultural teachings to work with. My parents did NOT speak with us about sex. I learned from a medical textbook my mom gave me…
When I was 18 years old I confessed to my bishop that my boyfriend and I had been having sex. It was terrifying to be a teenage girl, fresh out of high school, alone with a man I hardly knew, talking about sex. My own parents never even talked to me about sex After confessing,…
When I was 15, I became involved with a girl in my class. I already felt shame from this, as the church instructs kids to wait until age 16 to date. I became really close with this girl and we would kiss often. It was a very innocent relationship. However, when I went in for…
I had just turned 12 and was incredibly excited to finally get the chance to go to the temple with all of my friends. They were all older than me, and had therefore been going on temple trips quite often with each other. I was also fascinated by the temples and what they meant. They…
From a young age I have felt a disconnect from church. I moved to a new ward when I was 6. Due to marriages connecting families or families living close together the members of the ward were inseparable and had a long rich friendship with each other. And I was a new, weird, poor kid…
I was abused by the boys in my neighborhood when I was 4-6 years old. I didn’t understand it at the time. But I was coerced and sometimes physically forced to do things with my mouth which no child that young had any business knowing about, nonetheless doing on a repeated basis. Most of these…
Long story short; When I was 11, I was molested. At 15 I was raped. I told the bishop and he told me I was going to hell and it was my fault. Then he proceeded to tell me that everything that happened was my fault and how premarital sex was a sin. I was…
I had previously dated the son of the bishop of our neighboring ward. We were sexually active, I had a lot of guilt and tried repenting and met with the bishop. There were many times I had said no, but he proceeded to still touch me and it eventually led to rape and it happened…
I lived in Dallas, Texas in the early 1980s… I am almost 50 now. Like most normal boys, I was excited to find some “dirty magazines” when I was walking home from school. I found them to be very interesting, to say the least, and being 13 or 14 at the time, I did what…