Reply to Anyone read the AP Story about sex abuse in the LDS Church?

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Reply to "Anyone read the AP Story about sex abuse in the LDS Church?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Abuse is built in to the Church. Bishops point blank ask minors, in a room alone without their parents present, if they watch porn or if they masturbate in  interviews for baptism, temple worthiness, or to apply for an LDS mission. Children as young as 11 or 12. They ask specific questions. Like “when was the last time you watched pornography?” Not just occasionally or with some particularly overzealous bishops—this is standard in every bishop interview for them to interrogate children about this. It’s sick and it’s wrong. [/quote]

I am the ex-Mormon who has posted in other threads.  I was raised in the LDS church and was never asked any specific/explicit questions in any temple recommend interview and that was as a single woman into my 30’s, so two full decades of mandatory celibacy.  The only question I was ever asked on the topic was “Do you obey the law of chastity?” They left it to me to define that.

I am not saying my experience is universal, and I am well aware that the situation you describe happens and is perhaps common, but it is not policy and it is not universal.

It’s important to me to draw this line because far too often I see things about how Mormons are this or that and the goal is to other Mormons and paint the problems of this particular organization as being unique to the LDS church because Mormons are weird or backwards or evil.  The reality is that the LDS church has these issues for reasons that are common in our society—it’s an organization with a top-down structure that encourages deference to those who outrank you, defense of the organization from outsiders and devalues women and children and individuals.  That is true of many religions, workplaces, sports teams, etc.  To combat abuse we need to break that paradigm everywhere, not ONLY within this particular religion.[/quote]

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