My bishop asked me if I engaged in masturbation when I was about 12-13. He told me I can’t have the spirit with me if I don’t confess. I denied I ever did and left his office. I had constant guilt for years because “I’m so bad, not even God wants to comfort me.” I…
Trigger Warning: child sex abuse. This is about church teachings being used by my abuser. I grew up in a small Mormon town and was an innocent and naive child. When I was in grade 3, 8 years old, a teenage neighbor boy trapped me in my grandpa’s barn & molested me. I didn’t know…
I hesitate to relate this history, to talk explicitly about matters of a sexual nature, but am compelled to do so because church leaders did not hesitate to invade my young life with explicit words and judgments! My story; Deacon, teacher, priest, elder, mission, 2 temple marriages that ended in divorce, single, approaching retirement.. First…
One of my first interviews that I can remember happened when I was 12. I felt fine about meeting the bishop. He asked me if I obeyed the law of chastity. Fully believing I had, I answered in the affirmative. He questioned back with ‘are you sure?’ still fully believing in myself, I said Yep!…
I was fifteen lost my virginity to my boyfriend. I felt terrible about attempted baptism for the dead when others work so hard for a temple recommend so I confessed to my bishop. He ask me so many unnecessary details about the act. He asked me about thing I myself didn’t know about. I felt…
When I was in high school, I had a serious boyfriend. After about a year of dating, we mutually decided to have sex. Many months passed and my bf felt guilty and that he needed to confess to his bishop so he went and met with him. They met and the following day my bf…
This practice destroyed my self-esteem, caused me to experience nearly relentless anxiety from age 8 on and led me to take desperate actions to “fix” myself of normal adolescent behavior deemed to be amoral. This extreme and relentless psychological distress eventually royally messed up the trajectory of my life as I took desperate measures to…
I want to start by saying I am an active member of the church. I debated about sharing this, because all of the people involved with one exception are good people who just made understandable mistakes. The current status quo and puts people in a position where bad things can happen. That is why I support…
At twenty, I was depressed and hadn’t taken the sacrament since moving out of my dad and stepmom’s house 2 years earlier. I was sexually abused by my stepdad when I was 9, mom found out he’d done it to another kid and started asking me questions. The police got involved, I had to testify…
I grew up very active in the church and quite believing. I tried to do everything right. To the outside I was a model member, seemingly obeying the commandments, being an excellent student and also excelling in athletics. But starting at puberty there was one habit that I struggled with: masturbation. I loathed myself for…