Some contend that the incidents of reported sex abuse in the LDS Church are isolated and rare. It is hard to believe that a Church that we love has a systemic problem with leaders and members abusing others, but studies show that many organizations and churches have a problem with sex abuse. In the LDS Church, members are particularly vulnerable to abuse because they trust their leaders and because abuse is seldom reported. When it is reported, victims are too often ignored or shamed.
Recently reports of alleged sexual abuse have surfaced that has increased awareness of sexual abuse in the LDS Church, but unless one carefully reviews the reports of legal convictions of alleged sexual perpetrators in the Church, one may not recognize the magnitude of the problem.
I have spent many years working with sexual assault survivors in a city that is predominantly LDS. I have seen firsthand the trauma that survivors experience. Many of their perpetrators were active members and leaders in the LDS Church.
There are several reasons why some do not realize the extent of the sex abuse problem in the LDS Church:
1. Rape is the most under-reported crime in the United States ; depending on the study that you read, the vast majority of rapes (66% to 88.2%) are never reported to law enforcement, indicating that sexual violence is grossly underestimated.
2. Some have compiled accounts of legal convictions of alleged sexual perpetrators in the LDS Church. Because some have been excommunicated or silenced for compiling accounts of ecclesiastical abuse, we may never know the extent of it in the LDS Church.
3. Although we have records of hundreds of LDS perpetrators who have been convicted, we know that many thousands of members have not reported abuse or have signed NDA’s (Non-Disclosure Agreements) enforced by the Church’s legal counsel. For every six rapists who are convicted in the United States, 994 are not convicted or are unreported. For every rapist that is convicted, 166 are not reported or convicted. Studies show that rapists typically perpetrate on 1.8 to 11.7 victims before being convicted.
4. When abuse survivors report abuse, too often they are not believed, especially when the perpetrator is a Church leader. Some bishops do not think that someone they admire and respect participated in criminal activity. Perpetrators may appear to be overtly faithful members who hold temple recommends and seem to follow the Church’s teachings and rules.
5. Abuse survivors may not seem credible to a Church leader who is untrained in sexual abuse. Some survivors may have disassociated the abuse and may seem unemotional or dispassionate when they describe the abuse. Others may be so traumatized that they may seem irrational or troubled. Survivors may appear calm, hysterical, angry, apathetic, or in shock. When leaders are trained to better understand the varied emotions of abuse victims, they will be more willing listen to each one of them instead of disregarding or dismissing them.
6. Too often leaders do not realize that rape is never the fault of the victim. In addition, many leaders do not realize that with very few exceptions, those who report sexual assaults are speaking the truth. Some language in Church resources must be changed to correct this misinformation. I will address this is a future blog post.
7. Scholarly research shows that patriarchal systems tend to have a rape culture. “Behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, slut-shaming, sexual objectification, trivializing rape, denial of widespread rape, refusing to acknowledge the harm caused by some forms of sexual violence, or some combination of these.”[1] Some of these behaviors were common at Church-owned Brigham Young University, where rape victims were accused of honor code violations and expelled from the school. Since this practice has stopped, rate reporting has increased by 400% at that school. If Church members were assured that they would not be blamed or shamed after reporting rapes to their LDS leaders, rates of reporting would most likely increase exponentially as well.
8. Statistics show that Utah, which is predominately Mormon, has a consistently higher rape rate than the national average. In 2016, census results show that 62.8 percent of residents in Utah were Mormon yet according to the Uniform Crime Rates the rape rate in Utah is consistently higher than the national average and has been so for decades. Utah often has one of the top ten or eleven highest rape rates in the nation although the population is almost two-thirds LDS.
9. In a culture that emphasizes virtue and sexual abstinence before marriage, it is likely that fewer LDS members report abuse that in other cultures. In the LDS Church, sexual abuse can be especially shaming because of the teachings of Church leaders who sometimes indicate that sexual abuse victims are somehow responsible for being assaulted. I will devote a future post to that topic.
Many victims of sex abuse mistakenly blame themselves for being assaulted. They want to believe that somehow they could have prevented the rape, even though the rape was totally the responsibility of the perpetrator. It is the duty and obligation of Church leaders to teach victims of sexual assault that they are pure, virtuous, and deeply loved by God and to teach them that they are never responsible for being raped.
To summarize, few survivors report rape. We have no way to confirm how many rapes are reported to LDS bishops and branch presidents, but the culture of shame and blame in our Church would seem to discourage many from reporting rape. In the recent account of McKenna Denson, who was allegedly sexually abused by her mission president, she recounts reporting the rape four times to church leaders. After she taped an interview with her allegedly perpetrator, who admitted to sexual abuse on the tape and to BYU police, the Church discredited her in a press report, stating that she had returned early from her mission and was no longer a member. In addition, they released her confidential Church records and adoption records, including the name of her adopted daughter from a closed LDS Church adoption report, to the son and attorney of her alleged perpetrator.
This is not an isolated incident. Others have received similar treatment from the LDS Church after they reported incidents of sexual abuse by Church members and leaders. There are a number of documented accounts that confirm this is a serious problem in the Church.
The LDS Church has a sexual abuse problem that must be addressed and corrected with improved training, policies and teachings that hold perpetrators accountable and help survivors heal. To do so, it must first recognize that it has a systemic problem that in too many instances protects perpetrators and harms victims. This rape culture includes victims blaming, shaming victims or holding them responsible for rape because of their behavior or manner or attire, objectifying or demeaning victims, trivializing the victim, denying that the Church has a problem, and refusing to acknowledge that rape victims suffer.
The McKenna Denson case is a microcosm of the suffering of too many survivors in the LDS Church, who are shamed and blamed by the shepherds in the Church who are entrusted with caring for their flock. We pray for the day when the Church decides that every victim of abuse deserves respect and compassion. Surely, the Lord must weep when He sees His children suffer so.
“At some point in time, however, the Lord may prompt a victim to recognize a degree of responsibility for abuse. Your priesthood leader will help assess your responsibility so that, if needed, it can be addressed.” –Richard G. Scott, April 1992 General Conference
- Herman, Dianne F. “The Rape Culture”. Printed in Women: A Feminist Perspective (ed. Jo Freeman). McGraw Hill, 1994. Retrieved 18 October 2011.