Have you ever talked to mormons or exmormons who say they loved growing up in the mormon church because of its cleancut activities and positive programs? Or whatever?

I think many many members attend for a lifetime without seeing the backbiting, the manipulation, the possible sexual perversions, or the physical and emotional abuse in many of the most cheerful and happy-looking mormon families.

For example, I would bet that no one in my childhood ward saw the signs that my family ran a polygamy compound and worshipped a fundie plyg prophet when we weren't attending primary and sacrament meetings. They would have no idea that my mother was depressed and cried in her bedroom many days or that my rageful father sometimes smashed furniture and threw kids across the room. We looked and acted like every other sugary morgbot family.

Does anyone else know of such situations? Were they in your family or did you find about about them later? Or did everyone know what was happening and lend a blind eye to it?

Was anyone surprised years later to find out that a mormon ward had a sick underbelly?

Were you surprised to find out about abuses or infidelities? About overly intrusive bishop interrogations and RS character assasinations?

I think some of these things are invisible to those who are not personally involved. Then it comes as a shock when we find out that we attended church for years with practicing polygamists or child abusers in the bishopric.

Image is sometimes more important than reality to morgbots.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2011 11:12AM by Cheryl.

True! I think most real TBM's are so busy doing nonsense all week that they don't have time to think about it, let alone do research.

Ron

I think the older you get, the more you find out, but there was some of that "bad feeling" when I was young as we weren't treated as mormon royalty since my dad wasn't a perfect little mormon man, but as I grew older, I saw more and more of the reality and then all the family secrets from other families.

The thing I found REALLY interesting was that after our secrets came out--all the women I knew in the ward started coming to me with their secrets. I was inactive and I was safe--especially since I'd been through so much. I even had 2 R.S. presidents tell me some family secrets. I still have a few women in the neighborhood who come by to run their issues by me.

Like your tattling threads have talked about--this starts at the top. This isn't about women in the neighborhood running around gossiping--the whole organization is sneaky and it just trickles down. I remember YEARS ago when I was still living at home and my dad was the ward clerk. He hated having ANY calling--but he would come home from meetings and tell my mom what a bunch of gossips all the men in the ward were, that he was disgusted.

No--I have to correct your statement, IMAGE IS ALWAYS more important to mormons.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2011 11:03AM by cl2.

You nailed in your last sentence. They DO NOT WANT TO KNOW about the bad people and events that are the foundation of the TSCC.

I have a Catholic friend who is very defensive about her faith right now. She is SURE that "only 1% or 2%" of priests are abusive and that "the faith" is being persecuted by the media. She just refuses to see the bigger picture.

It is so infuriating to know the truth and watch my family stick their fingers in their ears and go "la la la la" with every reveal of the ridiculous nonsense that is the Book of Mormon and pathetic "prophet".

"Don't wear flip-flops in church, don't have more than one earring for each ear." For goodness sake, the whole world is waking up and throwing off chains of ignorance and tyranny and God is talking through his prophet against women's footwear??

For what it is worth, most of the next generation of kids will just not put up with abuse and lies. I think the loud screams of outrage from the "Focus on the Family" and similar religious groups is that they feel their iron grip on women and children is slipping.

Well, in defense of your friend, she is telling the truth. Catholic priests don't become pedophiles, pedophiles become priests. Same thing with teachers and coaches, or boy schout leaders. It means easy access to childern and they are put in an authority position where people don't question you. Why would they?

After EFY I've discovered even more youth in my stake don't believe in the church, same as I.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2011 01:13PM by anon123.

"Especially For Youth". Some ginned-up excuse for morgkids to get together and "have fun". Usually during the summer. My kids went to the BYZoo for it.

Ron

It is a program that the church runs for youth around the country, "Especially for Youth", it lasts about 5 days, my daughters went when they were teens, and the older daughter later was hired as a counselor. The whole purpose is to pump the youth up spiritually.Yuck!

Except the one I went to was a dance. Four hours of talk. Dinner inbetween the four hours of talks(was wrong the first time I described), then a dance.

Do they still have Youth Conference or that what EFY is now? We did youth conference at BYU once, it sucked.

They have both in my stake. Around here (in NJ), EFY is a 2 week (ish?), coed summer camp for the youth, held at one of the colleges. Youth Conference is usually held at a member's house in some neighboring stake, and only the kids who are called into the youth conference group (the technical terms are not coming into my head this morning!) attend those meetings. I was in YC once, it did nothing for me and I was released.There is also the Priests/Laurels Conference that is like a little weekend EFY hosted at another stake, where the kids stay in members' homes.

There's alllll kinds of different things. It's hard to keep 'em straight sometimes!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/22/2011 07:26AM by givemethismoment.

Yes, there was such a situation in my own home, not growing up , but as a wife. My ex was in the bishopric twice, and I know he would have been a bishop except for my being a bit outspoken at times (You cannot have that kind of wife for the bishop!)

Anyway, through the first 10 years of our marriage he beat me physically 3 or 4, not really sure, times per year, until my 10 and 6 year old saw it, and I took off for a while and threatened to leave, which I should have done. Once he choked me nearly to death, and once he cracked my entire breastplate into hairline fractures. The Dr. asked after the x-ray if I was being abused and I lied. I know, stupid. I felt ashamed that he beat me, go figure.

When that finally stopped the verbal and emotional abuse began and , IMO, it was even worse. I was married almost 39 years, and leaving the church is what finally got me out. He , at long last, wanted me gone, could no longer love me, though I look back now and realize he most likely never did.

+1!

You deserved a whole lot better than that. At least you have freedom from abuse right now.

I've always said, there are far worse things in life for a woman than being on your own.

I LOVED growing up in the Church because all the hypocritical bullshit allowed us to put on a righteous front no matter what horrors we were perpetrating behind closed doors.

I have to admit that in 30 years of belonging to the church (mostly in the Midwest) I didn't notice anything strange among the members in my wards. Is it something that happens more in Utah than in the rest of the country?

Exmembers were nostagic for the good times they'd had in the church and never knew about extremely abusive situations happening around them until many years after leaving.

There are all sorts of dark secrets in my family, as well as my husbands. Sexual, physical and/or emotional abuse, neglect, racism, violent homophobia, closet alcoholism, hidden mental illnesses and pain killer abuse...who would ever guess, though? On the outside we're all great! Heck, my father works for the church, and one of my uncles is a 70, so we're social climbing our way right on up there...

Glad you've escaped much of that. Good job!

That's kind of you to say...I'm still in the touch-and-go early stages in a lot of ways, so it helps to hear support, especially on a holiday.

A man like that is incapable of love. I am so sorry you went through that. Being with him so long had to be extremely painful emotionally and physically. And he was a so called leader. He only loved power- that's all.

when my parents suddenly dragged me to church at 14, after being inactive my entire life before that. I knew something was wrong, even if I couldn't have told you exactly what. It gave me a queasy feeling that I still get reading here, watching Big Love, basically whenever the subject of Mormonism comes up. I have a hard time believing people don't notice something's off. I think most of them do notice.

I mean c'mon--a bunch of old men?! Hello.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2011 05:47PM by munchybotaz.

"...I and some others had, for a long time, no idea of the depravity that was going on. This was simply the result of a very smart system adopted by the prophet and his intimate friends like Brigham Young, Kimball and others. They first tried a man to see whether they could make a criminal tool out of him. When they felt that he would not be the stuff to make a criminal of, they kept him outside the inner circle and used him to show him up as an example of their religion, as a good, virtuous, universally respected brother."

The William Law Interview
The Daily Tribune, Salt Lake City, July 31, 1887.

My brother and I were beaten throughout our childhood. We had one those fathers who doesn't stop hitting until you're big enough to hit back. After that he tells you you're under the influence of Satan. My brother once asked me: Did anyone in all of the wards that we attended ever ask you about your welfare? I had to say no.

Unless there was evidence of it, in normal society people wouldn't even think to ask the question. So unless you told someone (and I'm not blaming you for the fact that you didn't) everyone would assume everything was o.k. The question is whether the kind of beatings you were receiving was the norm in other LDS families. If this were the 1950s or 1960s corporal punishment was kind of normal. Beating would have been a far different story. I continue to wonder if people in RFM were more likely to receive bad treatment from the church and their families than those who have not left the LDS Church. It would be an interesting research topic -- how did your treatment as a child influence your feelings about the LDS Church? I was an adult convert to Mormonism so I've not experienced what others have.

If Don's experience was at all like my own, any attempt to reach out would have been immediately brought back to the parents.

For example, my parents homeschooled so that our only contact with anyone outside the home was church. Once, at 14, I broke down bawling with a YW leader, talking about how I couldn't take the screaming and yelling anymore...the tip of the iceberg, if she'd asked any questions. Did she? Nope.

She ran right to my mother and asked "if everything was ok", because "based on what X said (she) was worried they were getting a divorce".

You can imagine the hell I went through for that.

when the child has limited outside contacts. All of this makes it almost impossible for a kid to see other alternatives or get help if they're in pain or trouble.

So hard for kids growing up in cult controlled homes!

Wish there were easy answers for diffucult complicated problems.

I think homeschooling has the potential to be a great experience in the right situation(including parents that are willing to recognize when they make a mistake, or something isn't working, and get some training to teach)...I will not be doing with my own children at this point.

to watch for signs of abuse. This kind of training has long been standard for educators, health care workers, law enforcement and others since the 1950s or so. My school principal called me in and asked about it and that was in the mid-1950s.

Cheryl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> My school principal called
> me in and asked about it and that was in the
> mid-1950s.

Holy smokes Cheryl, you're an old lady! Somehow I pictured you younger.

Is it more likely that those of us who are ex-Mo experienced these things more than the average Mormon does and that is part of the reason we have become ex-Mo? I know that is a variant on the "we were offended" excuse for us becoming ex-Mormons, but I'm hearing more of these stories at RFM than I did when I was a church member. I didn't really have any unusual bad experiences as a member (at least nothing like what is being described here) -- I left because it became clear to me the Book of Mormon was false. Any organization is going to have some rotten people in it.

She and many of us might have been more insightful or attuned to seeing the signs.

Perhaps the brainwashing didn't happen to take for us as much as it did for most and they closed their eyes to what we sensed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/22/2011 05:48AM by Cheryl.

Will outside forces modify what is happening within the church? Will the younger members be less likely to be engaged in such behavior than the previous generation? It seems a lot of this might be more likely to be the World War II generation -- any chance the Mormon baby boomers and their children are better because modern society is less likely to accept such behavior?

I don't think that it's that they missed this sort of behavior, Boilermaker...

Of course, like any group of people, some families will be worse then others. I know, too, that a lot of the problems in my family would have been there no matter what religion the were. There were self-medicating alcoholics in my dad's family long before the church, and my mother's people seem to have been hard-core Calvinists, who passed down their outlook and values anyway--that's going to make a mess. The difference is the influence that certain poisonous behaviors in the church have, such as "tattling" (which often means that you grow up with no expectation of privacy), and the "if there's a problem, it's with you" stance. Those are already common in dysfunctional families, but given church sanction? It becomes vicious.

I'm seeing many families in their late 20's/early 30's with small children trying to compensate for their upbringing by going too far the other way right now. A lot of the children I see have no consistent parenting. They will be getting ready to enter school, and their mother is still handling them like one would a baby: staying in the same room at all times, and saying "no, no, no...don't do that", and moving something they're not supposed to touch. No chores. No punishments or rewards. Whatever they want to eat on demand. One mother in my last ward was almost crying at the park talking to the other mothers because she was so tired of sitting in a room and picking up after her four year old, and having him turn down the meals she made, and so having to get back up and make him mac and cheese or chicken nuggets every night while her husband ate.

I taught a 5 year old who demanded to be first at every turn and tried to force the issue with screamming tantrums on the floor.

I had conferences with the mom almost every day that year. Once she told me that she got so tired of lying in bed with the child for hours and sneaking away when the kid dropped off to sleep, sometimes after midnight. Can you believe it?!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/22/2011 07:17AM by Cheryl.

I'm a baby boomer. I see a lot of this secrecy with my age group. I found out a lot more about it once I went inactive. I thought our family was the exception because my dad did physically abuse my brothers--but I found out the abuse in my family was mild compared to many others. I didn't know that as a child. I thought everyone else had the "perfect" family.

Once I left the church, then I started hearing more and more--and it seems more rampant in leaders' families--the ones who put on the perfect facade. My dad NEVER put on a facade.

AND the kids of my daughter's generation--she is 25. Their happy faces are plastered on more than anyone's. Since my daughter went back, you can see the stress in her face, trying to live up to the image. You can see it in pictures--and she would like us to go back to living up to the image and we refuse.

Go to Utah County. My older sister won't live in Utah because of the "stepford wives" mentality--though my sister still believes. We went to a craft sale on our way home from New Mexico some years ago--and we were appalled by the look. All the women looked exactly alike, dressed alike, wore their hair alike, drove mini vans or suburbans. And then you can post on facebook about how happy you all are and how perfect your lives are--

I totally agree with the fake happiness...you have to be like Mary not Martha(a complainer)...the FB statuses irritate me to no end! You are not allowed to have real feelings in the church PERIOD.

When I,as a 57-FIFTY-SEVEN!!,year old went to my bishop and laid it all on the table,in graphic details,what my dh was doing to me,he did nothing. I told him everything-and he did nothing. I told the SP a lot,and he did nothing. NOTHING!! Refused to even believe. So even when you go in and BEG for help,they turn a blind eye and blame you. I certainly can see why no one would ever want to "report" a thing to the bishop. Maybe tattling stuff,but nothing personal.