https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxmee94T560

Watch the first few minutes and your mouth will jaw drop! Just amazing!

WOW

The Mormon church that I grew up in was not much different than this pastor. I was never physically jammed on like that, but my brain was constantly being reinforced with "...the thinking has been done...you must comply...thinking for yourself is a sin..."

Eventually I bought into it, and the escape from it took many many years. Some of the tentacles of Mormonism will never be removed from my brain, unfortunately.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/13/2015 01:44PM by darksparks.

I had a my wife's college bishop poke me in the chest hard with his finger in the hall way once. Told me I better not mess around with her before marriage.

He was and is a complete ass! He also lived in my wife's ward growing up.

That bish had the hots for her.

Never got poked...but I was 6' tall when I was 12...

RB

"He was a bright kid... made him more dangerous." So religion favors dimness in it's members. They don't want people thinking for themselves.

This guy should be up on assault of a minor charges. If he isn't and the kids parents are okay with that, they should be too.

It isn't only Mormons who are brainwashed.

A little more on this story... Basically, now that he's been caught, he has apologized... From the church's Facebook page:

"I deeply regret my actions of 13 years ago. I do not condone abuse in any form. I chose a very poor example from my past and very poor wording to describe it and deeply regret using it. By viewing the clip it is certainly understandable how outraged people are. I acted out in one moment many years ago, it is not how I believe people especially a pastor should act. My actions were not reflective of Christ and the teachings of the bible. I was wrong, there are no excuses to be made. I was forgiven by Ben many years ago and can only ask the same from my church, community and the world.
Sincerely,
Pastor Eric Dammann"

For more on the story see:
The original story breaking:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/01/10/pastor-brags-about-punching-a-bright-kid-in-the-chest-because-he-didnt-take-the-lord-seriously/

A little more on the appology:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/01/12/pastor-who-bragged-about-punching-a-kid-in-the-chest-apologizes-after-removing-all-sermon-videos-from-vimeo/

The male leaders in the ward I grew up in had this attitude also. Not as extreme as to hit a 13 year old "as hard as they could" in the chest and "crumple" him to the ground. That is beyond what I can imagine most men doing...but the mindset of hurting someone who does not follow the group was always present. Hurting emotionally or verbally threatening to do something physical was always part of the conversations.

How ironic that the Pastor's name is DAMMANN! LOL!

Mormon priesthood leaders broke into our house, and pulled my sleeping 12-year-old son out of his bed, and he fell onto the floor. My son was sound asleep, and he didn't know these men who were shouting at him, because we were fairly new in the ward. When my son was on the floor, the men prodded him with their feet, towards the closet, to get some clothes. They lifted him up, and forced clothes onto him, without allowing him to even comb his hair or wash up. They shoved him up the stairs, and kicked him in the butt several times as he was going up. They forced him into a car, and into the church building. My son was embarrassed, so he walked in quietly. The other kids teased him, and called him "bed-head" and "lazy slacker". My son had fallen back to sleep, after two early morning paper routes, on his bicycle, on steep streets, with heavy Sunday papers.

The leaders threatened my son not to tell me, because they said I would be angry at him for missing church. (I had to be at church early, so I wasn't home when this happened.) One morning,a few years later, I asked my children why they hated church so much, and my son told us about this. Shocker--the priesthood leaders had done the same thing with my other son--butt-kicking and all!

I told all of my children, that morning, that they never had to go to the Mormon church again. I still believed, but I knew God would never have wanted my children to be bullied in His church. In that instant, I knew that the Mormon church was not God's church.

Every one of those abusers has since been promoted up the Mormon ranks, and rewarded with higher "leadership" positions, to wield authority over more victims.