Wow I didn't get through all the comments because they're just too sad. So many people hurt and confused as children. How is this still going on?! One of the second commenters in named glen tried to shame the op. Telling her she wasn't praying or reading her scriptures enough. Or that if she was really that hurt by it, why did t she tell anyone? What in the actual f*ck?! They all pretty much tore him a new one.
I just hope this starts to spread. I feel as exmo's there's only so much we can do or say. It need to come from the inside. Sickening. I hope we see an end to this digusting practice soon.
I guess its a good thing. Really though, I wish these people would pull their heads out of the sand and say, "If 'the one and only true church on the face of the earth' isn't operating how a church should operate, then maybe its not actually true!"
One of the worst moments in my life occurred in a Mormon bishop's office. I was thirteen and alone with a middle-aged man I'd just met. Behind closed doors he grilled me about how I handled my genitals. He wanted details. How I despised my father for putting me through that!
Maybe it was the quality of men I had as bishop, and there were several very good men among them, but I never encountered the question at any of the times when I was being ordained up the priesthood ladder. Or maybe it's because I lived in Lethbridge and not Raymond or other towns in the Moridor...a different mindset away from 24/7/365 Mormonism such as you find there.
I had a bishop that never once asked this question in any of the interviews with the youth. (This of course based on conversations with other people I grew up with in the Church).
When he was released, and a new Bishop appointed, the trend changed. When I was about 16, I had my 'priest' interview with the new Bishop, (One of those overzealous types that I'm sure many people here are familiar with) and WHAM. 1st question out of the gate. Of course, I interpreted this as God telling me to stop spanking it, and then the guilt and the fear haunted me for years to come. Every interview, the question was asked. Even worse, the YM usually did their Sunday school sessions in the Bishop's office and that subject came up there on a regular basis as well.
Often the Bishop would chime in and discuss masturbation, and specifically to disregard contemporary medical research and cultural observation that masturbation is actually completely normal, and if any of us had any problems with it, to stay after the meeting or set up a time to meet with him so it could be discussed in private and addressed. This was not only inappropriate because of the topic and the involvement of minors, but it was also inappropriate in that it was a borderline public shaming event.
While I don't think the Bishop was intending to be malicious, it was still very traumatic. In fact, my exmo friends that I grew up with always cite those interviews and class discussions as something that also made them extremely uncomfortable and how later they realized that it was absolutely unacceptable that a middle-aged man was talking alone with minors regularly, and in significant detail, about the minors' sexual behaviors. Just a big No-No. Pure and simple. Glad to see a movement to put a stop to it, and I hope a big change is made to these policies.
I never went church after the age of ten and until I married someonewho converted. Didn't get an interview until went to temple, Had bad experience as an adult at one, should never happen to children.
Could there be any laws that could be applied to these interviews?
I was a divorced TBM single adult, and all of my bishops were very curious about my sex life. They actually did not believe me, when I told them I had not ever had sex out of wedlock. One bishop kept pressing the subject, and I said, "Take a good look at the Mormon men. Being celibate is a no-brainer for me."
I was putting my whole life into raising and supporting my children, on my own. I was a good Mormon, and honest and moral besides--yet all I got were accusations! These interviews made me feel like I was nothing. I felt like going home, pulling the covers over my head, and just giving up on life. I would actually do this, for a while. I would help my children evade these interviews, but the bishop and his secretary were relentless in trapping my children. They pulled them out of class for an interview, when I wasn't around. My children hated church. (Yet, they loved school, enjoyed their jobs, sports, were happy at home--go figure.)