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 always had to report to my bishop growing up if/how often I masturbated or looked at porn. It was always degrading, and left me with a ton of guilt. I once got asked by my bishop how many fingers I used and if my fingers penetrated my girlfriend at the time. Super inappropriate and…
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,…
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…
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…