I’m gay. I thought if I was the perfect Mormon boy, God would cure me of my gayness because obviously this is sinful. When I found out as a teenager that masturbation was a sin I wanted to die. I felt worthless and terrible. I knew I had to tell the bishop if I wanted…
Trigger Warning * Sexual assault involving a bishop* **If you are a survivor of molest, be very cautious about being triggered reading my story!!!** * Sam Young, THANK YOU for Holding THIS TORCH. I cannot begin to tell you how much your work in shedding light on these interviews means to me!!! This post contains…
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…
I began masturbating around 10 years old. The guilt started around that time. As my 12th birthday got closer and I started thinking about my interviews to become a deacon, I became suicidal from the overwhelming guilt of masturbating and looking at porn (in the form of Victoria’s Secret catalogs, before high speed internet). For…
My duration at the Provo MTC was from September through November of 2008. Each and every day there were lessons, videos, talks, activities, and speakers which all focused on personal worthiness, and that all success as a missionary depends on that worthiness. The result was a constant and immense feeling of guilt, insecurity, and failure…
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…
I was 14 when I started dating a never-mo boy I was sweet on, and I suffered shaming for that. How could I betray God and my heavenly family for some boy that didn’t even believe in God? As the relationship progressed my mother found out about the sexual questions I was asking my more…
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…
At 5 years of age, I was caught playing doctor with the neighbor girl. It was pretty innocent, up to that point I had no idea boys and girls were different. But, we got caught and that’s when the shaming began. I remember that night, my mom told me that “God was ashamed of me.”…