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…
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!…
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…
Ugh, this is hard. I’m not really used to telling my story. But if I can help one child… I was born into an extremely devout Mormon family. Extremely devout. We were never talked to about sex, nor about avoiding or reporting sexual abuse. Unfortunately, my older brothers and sisters were the victims of sexual…
I hesitated to write my story because I wasn’t sexually abused. I decided to write it though, because my experience around these interviews has been a big contributor to my depression and constant feelings of shame. I remember my first orgasm at 12 years old. I was downstairs watching TV and I was flipping through…
The mission and stories of this website have validated my pain and my experience. This validation has brought about so much healing in my heart. This validation has empowered me to finally stand up to my shame and to stand up to the beliefs, people, and experiences which generated and nurtured my shame and say…