- 7 hours ago
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00:00Oh, wow, that is beautiful.
00:18And still, amidst it all, I can't deny that God exists, you know.
00:23And I'm, like, still mad that they took God away from me.
00:33I just feel like everything is loaded now, you know.
00:38Like, a sunset isn't just, like, a beautiful sunset.
00:41It's, like, somehow tainted.
00:45I used to just think, God is good, God is great.
00:48You know, He created the earth and the heavens and loves me unconditionally.
00:53And if I just follow His plan, everything will work out.
00:57And I'm hearing more and more and more about people that follow His plan.
01:02And it was a map to nowhere.
01:06And now I have to, like, start rebuilding my connection to God with a completely different map.
01:12And no compass and no idea where to go or what direction.
01:15You know, I'm not sure what the next chapter will be.
01:20But I just feel sad that I wasted so many years trying to be a good Mormon
01:24rather than just trying to be a good person.
01:36The house is on fire.
01:38And if we don't pull these bodies out, there's going to be devastation.
01:42I get DMs.
01:44I get emails.
01:44I hear over and over and over how the Mormon church has affected and hurt so many people.
01:52People are not born gay.
01:53Period.
01:53End of discussion.
01:54The guy that was teaching conversion therapy for and on behalf of the church was actually
01:59gay all along.
02:00Like, if there's one message I want to make sure gets said over and over and over, you
02:04cannot heal the gay out of a person.
02:06You just can't.
02:08While I didn't experience conversion therapy, I know a lot of people that did, including men.
02:14I heard that Ben had a story that was really critical of the church.
02:18You know, so many people reach out to me, Shane.
02:20And, like, you and Ben are the people in my life.
02:23And I'm hearing stories from everyone all around the world.
02:27And I'm not sitting down and hearing the most important stories.
02:30Would he be open to sharing it with me?
02:35You know what?
02:36I don't know.
02:37What scared me so much about Ben's story was that what he was talking about was so dark,
02:44and that was just a reality that was overwhelming for me to face.
02:48So I pulled away.
02:49I told my bishop when I was 14, and also mentioned some sexual abuse that happened by my neighbors.
03:01He didn't tell anyone, not even my parents, but put me into conversion therapy at that time.
03:06Seven years into my marriage, I told my eternal companion about my desire to be with men.
03:11She told me if I left, I'd never see our daughter again.
03:15So I stayed for eight more years.
03:19My father confronted me and asked if I had same-sex attractions.
03:23I denied it, but he scolded me for being effeminate.
03:26And my church bishop told me to control my mannerisms.
03:30Deep down inside, I knew something just didn't feel right.
03:33Ended up coming out to my mission president, and that was a horrible idea.
03:37They would ask questions like, do you masturbate?
03:41Do you watch pornography?
03:44Are you sexually pure?
03:46And if not, what have you done?
03:48There was still part of me that was wanting to destroy that feeling that I had towards men.
03:54So I had discovered conversion therapy.
03:57It feels more like an expression of faith to go to conversion therapy.
04:02That's what motivates a lot of these men.
04:04That's what motivated me.
04:05Plus, I didn't want to go to conversion therapy and being forced into a camp to deprogram me.
04:11It just struck the fear of God in me.
04:14The next four years were the worst four years of my life.
04:17I felt like I had to really fit this mold of what a perfect little Mormon boy is.
04:24I don't want to be that disappointment and ruin my whole family lineage,
04:30because that's the whole thing.
04:32If you don't finish your mission, you disappoint not only yourself, but your whole lineage.
04:37You know, when he kept saying, like, letting down his entire lineage, like, I just know that just rings so true to me.
04:54I mean, that's how I feel every day, because I don't know why they tell us that to us so much.
05:00But, like, it's like we're holding up, like, the weight of all of our ancestors by our behavior here.
05:13And we're sold it, and we just readily, readily buy into it.
05:18Talk to me about that.
05:37I remember specifically when I realized that Ben was in Shane's life to stay.
05:43I remember we were in London on a trip together, and he confided in me that he and Ben had said, I love you.
05:53The few things Shane told me about Ben was that he is successful and smart and came from a very, very active Mormon family.
06:00And he just kind of alluded to that he had been really traumatized and abused by the church.
06:07And I remember hearing it and just not wanting to hear it.
06:13It's made me realize how much of my knee-jerk responses are not my own, but what I've been trained to believe and do by virtue of being, you know, raised in the Mormon church.
06:26I mean, I believed preposterous things in the name of religion.
06:33Mormons started originally back east.
06:35The first vision happened in Palmyra, New York, through Joseph Smith.
06:39Joseph Smith claimed he was visited by angels who showed him and only him gold plates with ancient texts telling him the story of Jesus' second coming in America.
06:51Well, my whole life, I heard stories about Joseph Smith being tarred and feathered because he was a prophet and he was saying things that the people didn't want to hear.
06:59They were reluctant to accept the gospel, but the truth is he was tarred and feathered because two brothers found him sleeping with their 14-year-old sister.
07:11That's why they were run out of town.
07:13They were run out of every town that they inhabited because the townspeople didn't want polygamy.
07:20They didn't want Joseph Smith and his charlatan ways.
07:24When Joseph Smith was killed in Illinois, Brigham Young decided that they were going to move the pioneers out west and create a new Zion in Utah and a new land where they would live and be able to worship freely without persecution.
07:39This historical story of persecution is something that's deeply embedded in the Mormon belief system, even today.
07:46And the idea of it colors how we see ourselves versus the outside world.
07:50This is a process.
07:54It's hard to detangle yourself from the identity that you crafted for your entire life.
08:00And it reminds me of who I was when I first heard Ben's story because those instincts kicked in way more than, wait a second, that's not right.
08:11I should ask him more questions about it.
08:15Ben said he is ready to talk with me.
08:18Today, driving up there, I would hope that I'm in a place to talk about this now.
08:25I know that whatever he was going to tell me is probably going to be a lot, maybe more than I could handle.
08:36Do you want to get in your high chair?
08:42Should we try this?
08:44Let's try a banana.
08:45Do a little taste test.
08:51Oh, good job!
08:53Yay!
08:54Such a big girl.
08:55I mean, I've known Heather for like five years.
08:59I don't know how she's going to respond to my story.
09:03I don't know what level she's at to look at the church in that way because it's hard, even if you've left the church, there's still an element of you that that's been a part of your life forever.
09:17What I've learned, that I feel like it's true for most people, they don't like their beliefs to be challenged.
09:25And I know with Heather, it's not been easy for her to walk away.
09:29Can I get this?
09:31Oh!
09:33Let's go get the door.
09:35Hello!
09:36Hi!
09:37Come on in!
09:37Hi!
09:38Hi, Dorothy!
09:39Say hi!
09:41Hi, love you!
09:41How are you?
09:42It's so good to see you.
09:43Hi!
09:44How are you?
09:45You look so good.
09:47You do too.
09:48Hi!
09:48How are you?
09:49Good, how are you?
09:50I'm good.
09:50Good.
09:51It's so good to see you.
09:52Good to see you.
09:52I'm glad to be here.
09:54I'm going to go put her down for now.
09:55Okay.
09:55I'll just be upstairs.
09:56Let's just go sit in here.
10:00I know I said it before, but you've just been on my heart and mind so much.
10:06There's something I never have told you.
10:08When you first started dating Shane, I googled you and looked you up, and I found an interview
10:16you had done on some of your abuse in the church.
10:19And I didn't want to listen to it.
10:25I just didn't want to believe it could be true.
10:28It just scared me.
10:31Yeah.
10:31It's difficult to hear these things.
10:35Like, I didn't want to believe it was true either.
10:37I spent most of my life running from my truth.
10:41The thing that you and I have in common is our religion.
10:46I mean, you say our religion in common, but our identity.
10:48Our identity.
10:49There's no separation between your church community, your school community, your neighborhood.
10:56My whole world was right there.
10:58I am from American Fork, Utah.
11:04I am the fifth of eight children.
11:08In the first neighborhood I lived in, it was just a small community.
11:13The town is primarily Mormon.
11:15So everyone that I grew up around was Mormon.
11:17My family is very religious.
11:18The religion bled into sports and school.
11:23That started as soon as I can remember.
11:27I don't even know that I looked at things as so much being like a neighborhood.
11:32It was more like if you were a part of our ward.
11:35There's a ward that's like your geographical area that you go to church with on Sunday.
11:41And then there's a stake, which is also a geographical area, which is made up of multiple wards.
11:47So wards, that was supposed to kind of be like your extended family.
11:52So if they were in your ward, you could trust them.
11:54I never had that pure childhood experience because when I was four is when I first was sexually abused by this man.
12:09His name is Jess Hurtado.
12:14It lasted till I was nine.
12:18The first time I remember being abused.
12:20I remember being in my Sunday school class and a man coming in and getting me and another girl and taking us to a field by the church.
12:34And I can just remember his face being right there above mine.
12:39I would have been laying on the ground looking up to see him.
12:43I don't remember physically everything he did.
12:47I just remember crying.
12:49I remember looking at the girl next to me and she was crying.
12:54And like, I can never get that image out of my head.
12:58Jess was a member of our ward.
13:01I knew who he was from church.
13:04And as long as I was home by a certain time, I pretty much ran free in that neighborhood.
13:12And so it wasn't always at church or taking us from church.
13:16It could have been when I was out playing and I got taken into this man's house.
13:23Sometimes I was abused alone.
13:26Sometimes I was abused with other kids.
13:30Sometimes I remember multiple adults being there.
13:33But was this Jess guy always there?
13:35Yes, Jess was always there.
13:37I didn't tell anyone because I believed that I had committed sin that was next to murder.
13:46Because even though I was abused, I had had sexual relations with other people.
13:52I've always viewed that as something that I've needed to repent of.
13:56And then being taught by my abusers that if I were to speak out, I would get excommunicated.
14:06So while I didn't fully understand what any of that meant,
14:11I grew up my whole entire life fearing that if anybody knew that, I would be separated from my family.
14:19What we're taught in the Mormon church, they use this metaphor of like no empty chairs at the table.
14:29And that chair at the table is supposed to represent you and your family in heaven.
14:35Most of my life, I have lived in fear of being separated from my family.
14:40So I was so terrified of ever talking about it or ever saying anything to anybody.
14:49Because I viewed it in the way that was in my head.
14:52It's like it was sin, right?
14:54And if I told anyone, like I would eternally be banished from my family.
15:01And so the abuse continued.
15:04Oh my gosh.
15:06This is one time I remember being taken away from church by Jess.
15:11And it was presented to me as like a Sunday school lesson.
15:17And he was there with another girl.
15:26And I remember Jess and a couple other men on each side of him.
15:36I don't know who they were.
15:38They were all like dressed in temple clothes.
15:43And it being taught to us as it was like a Sunday school lesson.
15:48That this is what like marriage looks like.
15:51And she had like the bail, like pulled over.
15:55This little 12-year-old girl.
16:02And he married her.
16:06And then said, this is what we do after we get married.
16:11And he raped her.
16:11My gosh, Ben.
16:21Can I take a break?
16:29Yes.
16:35Oh.
16:36At what point did the attraction to other men become something you were conscious of and that you were talking about?
16:51That's a complicated answer.
16:55I'd been abused until I was nine.
16:59In my teenage years, I knew I had attraction to like men.
17:03But my whole context of how I view everything is within the framework of the church.
17:08I felt like I was born with a challenge that I needed to endure in this life.
17:15And I somehow needed to overcome that so I could remain a member in good standing in the church.
17:23When I was 23 and I came out, it wasn't like a powerful moment for me of like, oh, I'm gay.
17:31You know, telling that to my parents.
17:32It was more of a heartbreaking experience for me.
17:38So when I told my parents, I approached it as something that needed to be fixed.
17:43My two choices were therapy to correct my sexual attractions.
17:48Or the consequences of not doing that were to like, be eternally separated from my family and from my church.
18:01So then I went to conversion therapy.
18:03My parents ended up contacting my neighbor, whose name is Dean Byrd.
18:11At the time and for many years, he was the unofficial aficionado for like the LDS church when it came to same gender attraction.
18:19What is clear is that some people can and do change.
18:24The risk for harm is not any different from any other intervention.
18:28I didn't know anything really about conversion therapy.
18:31But like to me, it was like, this is how I'm going to save my soul.
18:33I'd go in, I'd talk about my attractions.
18:38They said, you know, maybe these attractions never go away, but you can reduce them.
18:43The stupid thing they told me is it's like petting a dragon.
18:47It may be fun and it may be exciting, but eventually the dragon will turn on you.
18:52Things didn't seem to be getting better.
18:57I didn't stop trying to meet guys.
19:00I felt like I was ping-ponged back and forth between living more of a gay life and then also going to church.
19:08So these two parts of myself were just battling back and forth for years.
19:12I honestly believed from some of my conversion therapy that my attractions or being gay only existed because of the abuse.
19:27So I truly believe that if I healed from the abuse, I'd be straight.
19:37That you'd heal from the gayness?
19:39So the church felt like where I would do that.
19:47It was like over and over again, sexuality, the abuse, go fix yourself and you can rejoin us.
19:56It was taught to you, too, because we teach in the church that if you are gay, when you die, you won't be.
20:06It'll go away the minute you die.
20:09That's how I felt.
20:11That's what the doctrine says.
20:13It is an earthly affliction.
20:16I just knew that part of the reason my life had gone the way it had gone is because I'd suffered trauma.
20:28And so I was trying at that point to deal with that.
20:32I decided I'm going to get the help that I need.
20:36I know I was abused, I know I was abused, and I'm going to start reporting it.
20:42And that's when you started disclosing what had happened to you as a little boy?
20:45Mm-hmm.
20:46Well, how did that go over?
20:49Um, it was hard.
20:50And then, I reported what I just told you to the bishop.
20:55And Jess was a member of my parents' stake at that time.
21:00And you named him?
21:01Yes.
21:02And what happened?
21:03When I reported that, my bishop had told me that he was concerned because he was still a member of their stake.
21:11And, I don't know, I guess he was probably calling people, but he obviously escalated it to the stake president.
21:18And my dad was in the stake presidency.
21:21Oh, geez.
21:22So he ended up going with the stake president to Jess's house to confront Jess.
21:28They told Jess that I remember being abused by him.
21:33And Jess said, he must have me confused with someone else.
21:38Tell him to call me, and I'll clear it up.
21:44And that's where it stopped.
21:46That's what they came back and said to you?
21:49I had an expectation that people would take action.
21:53And they didn't.
21:59When I reported, and I'm talking to people, I'm really looking at them to guide me on how to handle the situation.
22:05I didn't even think at that point to take whatever information I give them and report it to the police.
22:11The most important thing to me was to resolve it through the church.
22:15Why didn't they take that information and do something?
22:19Why didn't they give it to the police?
22:21Why didn't they discipline Jess?
22:24And when no one took action, and no one helped me in that journey, and they put it all back on me, I felt like there was nothing I could do.
22:33I felt helpless.
22:34I felt like no one cared.
22:39After that, I never wanted to talk about Jess again.
22:44I was devastated.
22:46The focus wasn't Jess.
22:47The focus wasn't like, let's take these people down.
22:50Let's do this.
22:51The focus was my sexuality.
22:55How do we get you to be spiritually whole again?
23:00Was there a part of you that was just like, you guys are missing the point?
23:03Yeah.
23:03Absolutely, I was upset about it, and it was really shocking to me because going into that was like, these are spiritually chosen men who will guide me to spiritual safety.
23:16And protect you.
23:17And protect me, and I 1,000% believe that, like with every single fiber of my being.
23:23Jess, as a heterosexual, head of household dad, serves the image and purpose of the church.
23:33Growing up, I believed that the head of the household direct your family to eternity, to salvation, and all that.
23:41So you did not take down the man of a family.
23:47The church was more important to protect than the children.
23:53People never understand why we go back to, you know, the place where we were abused.
24:10But that's the only place we were taught to look for answers.
24:13It's the only structure and plan we were ever given.
24:17And I honestly didn't think that I had the answers for myself.
24:21After I reported my abuse, they told me to make it to heaven, that I needed to repent, for being gay, and for acting out on it.
24:33Looking back, it was healing me enough so that I could go through a disciplinary council.
24:38The disciplinary council is a public flame cataloging everything you've ever done wrong.
24:45And that you should be repentant for when you've done something more egregious than just a bishop at the local level can handle.
24:52And that would be any sexual sin.
24:55Twelve church leaders from the general geographical area sit at a table in white shirt and tie.
25:03And they're allowed to ask him any question they want.
25:05And they often do.
25:06And it's basically a purging of every sexual sin in front of 12 men that you've may or may not have ever met before.
25:16Then they excuse you and convene and discuss amongst themselves what they believe the appropriate punishment should be.
25:24And a disciplinary council can result in disfellowship, which is abstaining from the sacrament and church callings, excommunication,
25:32or nothing at all, go home and go with God.
25:37This is kind of a summary of, like, the disciplinary council.
25:41Oh, my God.
25:42And you can just read, like, kind of what the summary was.
25:46From their perspective, it doesn't say anything about the abuse in the context of, like, punishing Jess.
25:54The lifestyle you have lived these past years is not who you really are.
26:00It will be very important for you to continue to walk toward the greater light, to completely forsake the past.
26:05You must now stay completely clear of any and all triggers that could tempt you back,
26:10that could harm your progress on the path to the full light of the gospel.
26:14Reading it, it's like, because of the gospel and because of us, you're going to be able to be forgiven.
26:19It's just plug and play.
26:21Right.
26:21This is how we deal with anything that doesn't fit the mold.
26:27Yeah.
26:28And it's victimizing you all over again.
26:29All over again.
26:31But at the same time, I felt like I had sinned and I needed that repentance.
26:38I let that be the focus, too.
26:41I believe this was my path back to the kingdom of God.
26:46And you believe that because you were taught it.
26:48Yeah.
26:48And everything and everyone in your life reinforced it.
26:51Yeah.
26:52To the point where you're willing to give up your future and your sexuality just to get let back in through the doors.
26:57Yeah.
26:57But everything that I was writing in my journal was like, I'm miserable.
27:03I'm unhappy.
27:05I feel so lonely.
27:07But this is what God wants me to do.
27:09I was so proud of myself that I was able to make it back to the temple.
27:12But it came at a cost that wasn't worth it for me.
27:16And if I look at what my life might look like in that context versus how I'm living it now, I don't want that.
27:26No one would want that for you.
27:27It's an emotional prison.
27:29I finally got to the point where I just broke.
27:35I couldn't do it anymore.
27:37And finally told myself, you're gay.
27:44And that's okay.
27:46I felt free.
27:47At that point, I just left the church and I started dating.
27:54Yeah.
27:57Dorothy, do you want to go outside?
27:59Come here.
27:59Let's put your sandals on.
28:01Come here.
28:01Do you want to go say hi to the horses?
28:04Yeah.
28:05What does the horse say?
28:07Yay.
28:08Oh, good job.
28:09When I had gone back to church in 2012, these gay friends posted a bunch of pictures on Facebook.
28:18And in these pictures was the most beautiful shoe that I'd ever seen.
28:27And though I didn't know this at the time, I just kept thinking, where were you when I was gay?
28:34Which is funny.
28:36And I never saw him again after that.
28:38Ow!
28:39Okay, look.
28:41You see the horses?
28:42So fast forward.
28:43Four years later, we matched on Tinder.
28:47And he accepted all of me.
28:50And so I felt like Shane's the first person I ever was able to truly be myself with.
28:56We haven't been apart since then.
28:58Okay.
28:59I'll dance.
28:59You go back in.
29:02Okay, let's go.
29:04If you were to go back through the doors today and say,
29:08I have a beautiful daughter, a companion who I love and cherish, and I want to be active in the church, we know what they would say to you.
29:18Yeah, I'm not welcome.
29:20It's the fact that Jess seemed to have more value than I did because he was straight, married man.
29:29Let's protect him.
29:30I don't understand that.
29:31We can believe that it happens in other religions.
29:35But it can't happen in ours.
29:37We're the true church.
29:38Right.
29:38We have the spiritual guidance.
29:41We have the true prophet.
29:43We have the modern-day revelation.
29:45And they can't fully open the door to that happened.
29:49And if it did happen, it happened when I was a kid.
29:53And it was bad, but it doesn't continue anymore.
29:56The fact that these things happened to me as a child, now because I'm an adult, they seem to not matter.
30:05How many times was it reported before?
30:08How many church leaders knew?
30:10Had they taken action, and had they done the right thing, could it have saved me?
30:19Could it have saved other kids from being abused?
30:22Because that's how I'm thinking about it.
30:24Where is this motherfucker?
30:26Like, for real?
30:27He still lives in their stake.
30:29He's still walking among the living.
30:32He could come up to my house today.
30:35I cannot believe that, Ben.
30:37I didn't feel like there was any justice.
30:41Jess was in their congregation.
30:44Kids and dinner.
30:45Eating dinner and, you know, testifying in church.
30:48And going to church on Sunday.
30:49Yeah, probably teaching kids.
30:50Yeah.
30:52So I never felt safe publicly talking about this.
30:56I have never named him outside of reporting.
31:01But I have a friend who did take Jess on.
31:04Who was abused by Jess?
31:06Yes.
31:06And accused him publicly?
31:09And did take on the church, in a sense.
31:14When?
31:18My friend Ginger took Jess on in 2017.
31:23There was a local news article that came out about someone who had won a civil case against Jess.
31:31And I felt vindicated.
31:43I didn't know her before that, but I reached out to her and said, thank you for sticking up and standing up for herself and that case.
31:55Doesn't that make you feel like everything I've said was true?
32:20Yes.
32:21Let's go get them.
32:22Yeah.
32:22And it encouraged me to keep speaking.
32:26Yeah.
32:26Naming Jess.
32:28So when I found that information out, I sent it to my parents and I said, look, Jess is capable of doing this type of stuff to people.
32:39And it's now on public record and it's now on public record and it's now on public record that he did.
32:45Now, what do you think?
32:47And they took that article and they went and they met with the stake president and said, he's in our stake.
32:58He's got this evidence against him now.
33:01And then in 2019, they started pursuing disciplinary action with Jess.
33:06So on the church level, excommunication, that's like the worst you could get.
33:21If you get excommunicated, your baptism, your temple, covenants, everything that you've done, it's erased.
33:28But they said, this person's repenting, this person did this, but they're trying to do better.
33:36Everyone would have been on board with that.
33:39He'd still be an active member of the community and go to church.
33:47Talking to the stake president, I said, what I would like you to do is take all the information I give you,
33:53all the information anyone else gives you, and I think you should turn this information over to the police.
33:59That's what you should do.
34:00He said they couldn't do that.
34:03How are you still not taking legal action against him?
34:07Even if you can't press charges against him, you can provide all this information to the police.
34:12Why are you not doing this?
34:14I don't think they're interested in doing the right thing.
34:18I think they're interested in protecting themselves.
34:20I've reported to the church and just still lives in my parents' stake.
34:31And one of the reasons that the church can get away with it so much
34:36is because they have an attorney.
34:39The church has directed them to poke as many holes as they can in the victim's story
34:49and discredit them so much to where they can't stand a chance to protect the good name of the church.
34:56They are a billion-dollar institution.
35:00No lone voice stands a chance against that system.
35:04These stories are hard to tell.
35:07They're hard to hear.
35:08And I just, I'm like with you, 100%.
35:12I'm so grateful that we were able to have this conversation.
35:16And I'm, I do feel like it was long overdue.
35:19And I want you to know that I believe you.
35:22And I want to be here for you.
35:24And I want to fight the people that hurt you.
35:27And I wish I had protected you sooner.
35:34And I'm sorry.
35:38You don't need to apologize.
35:40I do.
35:41That I love you.
35:42I love you, too.
35:44And it's a journey.
35:45And it's a journey for everyone.
35:56Gosh, that was overwhelming to hear.
36:00That was a lot.
36:10I just feel like crying.
36:12It's like all his dreams came true, but he's still so sad, you know?
36:25And there's still so much pain.
36:29And I want to help ease that.
36:35I feel like I'm pulling back layer by layer.
36:38And there were so many layers to Ben's story that I just can't even, I just can't process what to do next.
36:49The church, because there's so much familiarity and so little questioning of people's integrity.
36:56If you're a member of the church, if you're a member of the church, we assume that you were honest, right, truthful and fair and true in all things.
37:02You know, we believe that about each other.
37:04And so to think that that type of evil is lurking and able to like hide in plain sight, it just made me question my entire childhood.
37:15I went to church in my ward, and it was always these charismatic guys that would have all the kids over for sleepovers.
37:22And the kids would say, he's coming out and sleeping with us on the tramp.
37:26And we think, oh, he's such a nice guy.
37:27I mean, there was a youth leader throwing Kool-Aid parties all the time.
37:33And we were all encouraged to attend.
37:35And it turned out years later, that guy had been molesting girls in the ward.
37:38You heard stories, but you just thought not to me and not to mine.
37:45And I just think that when you are in a church that values obedience over everything else,
37:51it is a safe haven for adults to take advantage of children.
37:54If this happened to Ben, it could have happened to thousands of children.
38:05It happened from when I was six till 10.
38:10He abused me for a long time.
38:11He was like giving me just really weird vibes.
38:14He kept being like, tickle my back.
38:15And me, no, I don't want to.
38:18When you go through things like what I went through as far as being raped,
38:22the immediate thing that happened was my dad called the bishop.
38:26I went and made an appointment with my bishop.
38:29I remember telling his bishop, hey, he's done this to me.
38:34I went to the bishop and I said, this happened to me.
38:38I didn't pursue it.
38:39It wasn't my fault, but it happened to me.
38:42My bishop was probably the closest, one of the closest people to God in my mind.
38:47And I trusted him.
38:50He first lectured me on the importance of modest dress and standards.
38:54And then he counseled me to hurry up and get married so I'd stop being a temptation for the young men.
38:59Family members confessed abuse to their bishops.
39:02And it was allowed to continue for years because the bishops aren't required to report it.
39:07The bishop believed him.
39:08He never asked for my side of the story.
39:11The bishop basically talked me out of pressing charges.
39:15The church does not care about crime.
39:19They're not reporting crime.
39:21They're not concerned with local law enforcement.
39:24They're concerned with their set of rules and their church laws.
39:28They're concerned about sin and compensation for sin.
39:33And I think that is a scenario that allows predators to hide in plain sight.
39:37As Mormons, we're taught that your bishop is there to serve your temporal, spiritual, emotional needs.
39:51He can save your family.
39:53He can save your marriage.
39:54He can protect your child.
39:56He can use God's wisdom and God's help to solve the problem.
40:01I know when we had crises in our home or with our family, first call was always to the bishop.
40:08And he'll help us know what to do.
40:10Men are allowed to ask you any question they want to as they go around.
40:15My whole life, I assumed that the criminal authorities were never involved because nothing bad was ever happening.
40:20I think that we are trained to just look the other way because no one ever talks about it.
40:29And if they do talk about it, we tend to just not believe them.
40:33I feel guilty that I was so naive and I feel repulsed that I cared so little to look any further than what my church leaders told me.
40:43I just took everything they told me as fact.
40:46Man's laws are nothing compared to God's laws.
40:48The police aren't going to take as much action as my bishop is.
40:52My bishop speaks for God.
40:55He's going to keep me safe.
40:56He's going to guide us through this.
40:58He's going to make sure that we can, you know, do this the right way.
41:02So why are the bishops not reporting crime to law enforcement?
41:08When somebody is physically abused, whether it's a child or a woman or anybody, when a bishop hears that, they have to call the bishop's hotline.
41:17So there's a hotline that only bishops have access to.
41:22There's a church hotline you call for pretty much anything.
41:25Call the helpline when you believe there has been abuse and you need to talk with someone who can answer basic questions about this grievous problem.
41:33The helpline stands at the center of an elaborate system to divert child sex abuse complaints away from law enforcement and instead send them to attorneys for the church.
41:44They have lawyers on staff 24 hours do kind of triage calls.
41:48Yeah, so the church's law firm, the hotline would just basically give them advice, but most of that advice amounted to helping them bury it.
41:58Even if you have experience dealing with abuse issues, to protect the child, yourself, and the church, you must call the abuse helpline as often as needed.
42:07Now what we're going to do is we're going to read the protocol for abuse helpline calls that is not public information, that is not shared with all church members, and I think it's scandalous.
42:18The first question is, did the abuse happen on church property?
42:22Question number two, does your call concern child sexual abuse, which may have occurred at a church-sponsored activity?
42:28I mean, it's obvious that the focus is on things that would be most likely to make the church liable.
42:35I think the church is very adamantly against bishops calling the grief.
42:39That's why they want you calling the lawyer, and the lawyer will say,
42:43it's client-attorney privilege now between me and you, and you don't have to say a word, and we're telling you not to.
42:49I can wrap my mind around an institution or a corporation, like, protecting its interests,
43:00but I cannot wrap my mind around a church instituting a system where you call lawyers to help with your abuse
43:13and thinking that that is, you know, what Jesus would do.
43:16I'm pretty sure Jesus would not, you know, have a law firm suffer the needs of his disciples,
43:26and there's a big disconnect there for me.
43:32It should be when someone reports a crime, you call the local authorities,
43:36and then if you need spiritual help or guidance after you've reported it to the authorities, then call us.
43:42The last person in that equation should be a law firm.
43:46That's there to serve and protect the interest and reputation of the church.
43:50Someone needs to serve and protect the interests of the children that are being cast around.
44:02I owe it to my work, family.
44:05Hear it from me.
44:06I've been, I've asked to be released.
44:20There's just a few things that I've been required to do that I personally cannot morally stand by.
44:25I can't.
44:25So I need to step down for me and my family's will be.
44:34Nick Jones is a former bishop in the Mormon church.
44:39Bishops never get up and step down from their position ever,
44:43and they certainly don't do it during testimony meeting.
44:47It was a really big deal.
44:54Hi, Nick.
44:55Hi.
44:55How are you?
44:56Good.
44:57How are you?
44:58Doing well.
44:59I just watched your video for the first time of you at the pulpit.
45:04Yeah.
45:04I had never seen it.
45:05I know it went kind of viral, but I thought it was just like balls of steel, very, very cool,
45:10and you rarely see that.
45:12Well, thank you.
45:13You're just doing what you feel is the right thing to do.
45:16Well, sometimes it looks like courage, right?
45:17It looked like courage.
45:18I think it took a lot of courage.
45:20I mean, I have never spoken to a bishop that has left and, like, spoken on the other side.
45:27I mean, how long had you been a bishop when you left?
45:31Two and a half years.
45:31Two and a half years.
45:32Two and a half years.
45:33I saw things that I just was like, this is happening.
45:37What?
45:37You know, eye-opening.
45:39Eye-opening at a number of levels because when you're a bishop, you see it all.
45:42You see the inner workings of it all.
45:44And, uh, man, it just didn't sit well with me.
45:49I was a bishop for three weeks.
45:51Like, my third Sunday, a 17-year-old girl came to me who just had sex, like, the night
45:56before, and she just felt terrible.
46:00And she's just bawling.
46:02And then she asked me this question that just triggered me.
46:05She says, well, don't you need to know the details?
46:06Come to find out, the previous bishop is asking details.
46:10Did he orgasm?
46:11Did you orgasm?
46:12Did, you know?
46:13That made my stomach sick.
46:15But she looked at me like, you don't need to know.
46:18And I'm like, no.
46:19I don't want to know.
46:20When I look back at my childhood, I got called in when I was a teenager all the time because
46:25my bishop kept having this spiritual impression that I was masturbating, and he just wanted
46:31to make sure I wasn't.
46:32I mean, even though I was in a closed room with a 50-year-old man who was my dad's best
46:37friend directly asking me about masturbating, I made a choice right then and there to not
46:43feel weird about it and not make him creepy, because that's the last thing I wanted, is
46:48to feel that way about this, my bishop.
46:52I didn't want to be critical of him either.
46:54I knew that wasn't allowed at all.
46:57He's our bishop.
46:57You know, you didn't ask to be put in that position.
47:02I'm assuming you got zero training in that position.
47:06Zero.
47:06I mean, I'm shooting from the hip.
47:08Yeah.
47:08I've never done this before.
47:09No idea what to say.
47:09I've never had a 17-year-old in my life and how to deal with that.
47:13The system is set up to give ordinary men great power with zero training.
47:21So your dentist pays his tithing, shows up to church, has well-behaved kids, and all
47:26of a sudden, he finds himself bishop of a ward, and he's just a dentist, and now he's
47:31dealing with sex abuse and crime, and he has zero training, zero instruction, and except
47:40a hotline to call.
47:41So when you were a bishop, did you have access to, like, the helpline for sex abuse, or what
47:46was, what was that?
47:47The helpline is crazy.
47:49I had a guy in the ward whose ex-wife called me saying, my ex-husband is a pedophile, and
47:56he's in your ward.
47:57And I had an email from his daughter telling of all the abuse he did.
48:02I ended up calling the hotline, and I asked him.
48:04I said, look, what do I do?
48:06Well, yeah.
48:07I talked to the Curtin and McConkie Law Firm.
48:10Curtin and McConkie is a renowned law firm in Salt Lake City.
48:13I happen to know it on a personal level because one of the arms of Curtin and McConkie is dedicated
48:19to, like, policing and protecting the word Mormon and the trademarks of the Mormon church.
48:24So when I tried to sell sweatshirts and mugs with the word Mormon on it, you know, they
48:29swooped in and sued me.
48:31I talked to McConkie maybe three or four times, plus text messages, and he basically said,
48:37Bishop, you're pushing your limits now.
48:40You cannot do anything unless you have proof of abuse.
48:44And it's coming from somebody who you have stewardship over.
48:47Well, his daughter lived in Texas, and she was grown at this time.
48:50So unless the daughter actually filed a report, I couldn't do anything.
48:55This is just a guy who's just a bad guy.
48:57And the church basically just said, no, you can't do anything about it.
49:00It's not right.
49:02He is wrong.
49:03It finally got to the point where I just couldn't do it anymore.
49:07A convicted pedophile in my ward, his wife died of COVID when she had her fourth baby,
49:13girl, four girls, and she's dead, and he lives with four girls, served seven years in prison,
49:20and he calls me at one o'clock in the morning, says he wants to throw his baby out the window
49:24because he can't take the crying.
49:25What did you do?
49:27Put on my suit and went to his house.
49:29Did what bishops do.
49:31Oh, my gosh.
49:33Yeah.
49:33It's what we do, you know, when we're in, we're in.
49:35Did you give him a blessing?
49:37Of course.
49:37Gave him a blessing.
49:38Gave him the best advice I knew how to give him.
49:40Well, yeah.
49:41I mean, it still haunts me.
49:43It still haunts me to this day.
49:45He's on floodlit now.
49:47And what's the other guy who raped his daughter?
49:51Stake presidency member.
49:52And they're on there.
49:53I put them both on there.
49:54So that's like a pedophile list within the church?
49:58100%.
49:58Yeah, members in the church who have been convicted of forms of pedophilia, whether it's child pornography or actually acts of sexual abuse.
50:07Wow.
50:11When Nick first mentioned floodlit on our call, I thought it was some program the church had instituted in order to keep track of sexual predators within the church and to keep their members safe.
50:21And I thought, wow, how progressive.
50:25Oh, so this is not run by the church.
50:30367 times LDS officials allegedly hid abuse.
50:36Oh, my gosh.
50:38Oh, my gosh.
50:39I'm only through, like, the A's.
50:41I'm not even, there's so many.
50:43I didn't have any idea that abuse was so prevalent in the church.
50:51I heard about stories, but never in numbers like this.
50:57This guy was inseminating virgins with his sperm.
51:00I mean, what the fuck?
51:02And it got dismissed with prejudice in 2021.
51:06He admitted to it.
51:08He admitted to it and it got dismissed.
51:10A lawsuit filed by multiple families accusing the church of covering up sexual abuse.
51:16Yeah, these families claim the LDS church leaders knew that one of its own members was abusing children but did nothing to report the cross.
51:22This church knew that these girls were being sexually abused and the subject of pornographic videos.
51:29The Mormon church did nothing to stop the rapes.
51:32Nothing.
51:33It was well known within the church that Paul Adams was abusing his children and referred to this abuse as Paul Adams misbehaving.
51:41These bishops were told to keep this a secret for seven years.
51:47Family babysitter Michael Jensen sexually abused her four and six-year-old boys for two months back in 2008.
51:54How do you forgive something like that?
51:56I don't think that I'll ever be able to forgive him.
51:59Five other families and nine children are suing the LDS church.
52:04Their attorneys argue LDS church members actively covered up the abuse, which continued for over five years.
52:10This Mormon church tried to say that the church had a religious right to conceal sex abuse of children they knew about and children they cared for.
52:20A woman sexually abused for years by her father when she was a little girl is now suing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
52:28She was told along with her mother not to disclose, not to report it.
52:31How is it right that so many people knew what was happening and just let it happen?
52:37It's almost like they cover up sex abusers and the system functions to cover up crime.
52:50There was never a time that I remember not being abused.
52:55My earliest memories are of abuse.
52:58They reinforced to you as the victim and child a code of silence to protect him.
53:04Oh, absolutely.
53:05No one called the police.
53:06And I feel sad that I was part of the problem for so long.
53:13And I guess I know how devout I was and what it would have taken for someone to make me think or feel differently.
53:22And I know deep down that that's what we're up against.
53:27And I'm scared that I'm not enough.
53:30I'm scared that I'm not enough.
53:37And I know what happened.
53:39I know what it was.
53:39I know what it would have happened.
53:40They thought that I ownership they were on.
53:41And I know what about theaultiques.
53:41That's mine.
53:42Pittsburgh
53:43And I remember�� через French dynasty.
53:44And then I know that they gave it to me.
53:44That's my weekend.
53:46I know what I wanted to call stop the luck.
53:48But I know what it was wrong.
53:49That's my name.
53:50I know what life mode is.
53:51It sounds like hot.
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