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Understand that I'm still an active church member and believe the church is true. It's the people not the church that are hard to deal with. I have had several experiences and a couple of friends have experiences along these lines.
My father views porn. Has since he was a teen and continues to this day. He is also very abusive emotionally and physically. My dad often corners us kids telling us how awful we are and how he wishes we weren't his kids. And also a few times he's told me personally that he wishes I hadn't been born. One time my dad tried to go into my room and I didn't want him to go in there. I stood in front of him and he slammed me against the wall almost breaking my arm. Then he slapped me. My dad also flirts with his daughters even the married ones, and makes comments about their underwear. My father always has a temple recommend and is sealed to his wife still. He's held several callings like Young Men's leader, and Nursey Worker. My father has never had any sort of church discipline. My mom has tried to have 3 different bishops talk to him about his behavior. 2 out of the the bishops believed my dad's lies about him not doing any of these things not my mom and told her to follow what my dad wanted her to do. The last bishop has just thrown up his hands saying that he feels sorry for Mom and us kids but there really isn't much that he can do. These problems are not new and I don't think they will go away. I am just one of many that have experiences like this. I was young and newly married, caring for two babies with special health care needs. A preemie who was in early intervention receiving physical and speech therapy, and a newborn daughter who was born with a heart defect. Our daughter was diagnosed with terminal complications at about 6 months. Our bishop met with us often to check on our family in crisis. I thought nothing when I was summoned to the bishops office.
What I didn’t know is my husband had visited with the bishop alone beforehand, and had divulged what he perceived as a marital problem. When I was meeting with the bishop he mentioned that it was wrong for a healthy woman to deny her husband sex. I literally started choking. I reminded him that my 2 year anniversary was approaching and in that time I had given birth via C-section, twice. Both babies born critically ill, one terminal. I told him I was in this position because I was not good at saying no. I was in fact pregnant when we married outside of the temple. Then I asked him to identify even one day during my marriage that he could declare me physically healthy. This all happened 23 Years ago and I still feel scarred. Why would an ecclesiastical leader try to offer sexual advice when he was trained to be a farmer and janitor? I was age 18, my boyfriend was age 19 and preparing for his mission. For 3 years we had been the “model” Mormon couple. Never tried a drop of alcohol, never touched a drug, followed all the rules.
Two months before his mission, the relationship became more physical and we had sex. He decided to still go and we didn’t tell anyone. A week into his mission (MTC time), I was late on my period. I wrote him a letter and called his bishop. He was sent home the same day. Before he even arrived home from the 20 minute drive from the MTC, his Stake President called me. He told me never to speak to my boyfriend again. That he was still going to be able to be “saved” and come back to the church. That if I cared about him I would not try to get him involved with me or the baby in any way. And that if I was pregnant, I needed to deal with it on my own. His family and church leadership forbade him from speaking to me. They changed his phone number and told me he would not be involved with the baby if I was pregnant. He found a way to contact me days later. Here we are, 9 years later, together and we officially left the church together years ago. When they told him he was not allowed to have contact with our possible child, and that I would have to “deal with it” alone, we both knew it was something we could be part of. |
Authors Remain Anonymous.
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