While my story is a bit different, I feel compelled to tell it to you in hopes that maybe it will show light on another issue facing youth within the LDS faith. One day, while my regular teacher was out for a teaching conference, my class and I were substituted by a different. He was…
I began dating my husband when I was sixteen and he seventeen. I lost my virginity after we had been dating about a year. I felt an immense amount of shame and guilt and went to my bishop. He wasn’t loving. He was cold and condescending. He told me that I could go through the…
Bishop’s interviews made me feel like my sexuality belonged to everybody but me. I lost my right to secrecy, and that has had dire consequences. From those interviews, I became so uncomfortable with sex, that I was already too weak to defend myself when I needed to. Aged fourteen, I was raped by my best…
I am writing on behalf of someone close to me who told me that he gets asked specific, vile questions regarding sexual behavior by the bishop of his church. Whenever his parents think he’s depressed, they send him to the bishop. He said he told his mother he doesn’t want to see him anymore and…
So I was always kind of a weird child(at least, in my mind) I can remember sneaking into our family’s computer room in the middle of the night when I was 9 to google pictures of naked women. Keep in mind that my parents had never had the sex talk with me. At this time,…
My story is short and not nearly as bad as others. I’ve suppressed these memories for a long time now. I don’t remember much detail. Just the shame that came from it. I am now 21 years old. I have been inactive for about 3 years now and found this through the ex mormon subreddit…
While in high school I struggled with sexuality. I kind of liked girls and occasionally acted on it. I went to my bishop for support thinking that’s what I was supposed to do. It wasn’t normal to like girls, so I forced myself into relationships with boys which led to threats against my life, molestation…
The bishop I had from age 12 to mission departure was seemingly obsessed with the sexual purity of the youth in our ward. My biannual youth interviews with my bishop consisted of a long battery of questions deeply probing my activities. The most invasive and lengthy part of the interviews was a series of questions…
I will never forget when a young inexperienced bishop’s counselor took it upon himself to come into our Deacons Quorum and “warn” us against the horrors of masturbation. This lesson was not in the manual. To this day, I have no idea why he felt compelled or authorized to give us such a lesson. I…
I was sexually abused at age 4 and again at age 7 by members of the Church. I learned early that extreme compliance was the way to keep safe. I was also raised to believe that bishops represented God in everything they said and did and that I could not be forgiven without seeing a…