That is the subtitle in an article carried today by the Daily Beast. The title, too cumbersome for a thread title, is

"The Brave Teen Who Helped Expose the Boy Scouts’ Child-Abuse Epidemic, and the Mormon Church’s Cover-Up"

It is a great article, detailing the way the Boy Scouts and the LDS church worked together to destroy a Mormon teenager. Sometimes it takes a poignant personal story to bring sterile facts to life. In that sense this may be the most devastating article I have ever seen on Mormonism and molestation.


https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-teen-who-helped-expose-the-boy-scouts-child-abuse-epidemic-and-the-mormon-churchs-cover-up

The guy who filmed our wedding reception molested scouts. He is still in prison. Just when he was supposed to get out, someone else came forward.

The thing that was so shocking is that the parents of these boys came to court in support of the scout leader. He is a very charismatic guy, though I never liked him. His name is Jay Toombs. I'm pretty sure if you look him up on Google, you'll find info. Looks like there are 2 Jay Toombs in Utah who have molested children. The one I'm talking about is from Cache Valley.

You really have to wonder HOW MANY MORE of them are out there?

Oh, and then they tried to keep him from marrying in the temple. So he is still mormon. I hope he finds his way out. It is quite shocking when you run into the evil underbelly of mormonism.

https://www.deseret.com/2000/12/21/19545616/logan-man-gets-5-to-life-for-sexually-abusing-child

The above article says 3 bishops knew and never reported it to police.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/2020 12:30PM by cl2.

"How many more?" indeed.

The details of these stories indicate that the coverup is not just formal but cultural. This is where the LDS church starts to resemble the RCC, so cavalier toward children and so reflexively dishonest. Kids will never be safe there.

Yes, the protagonist is still Mormon. I am reasonably confident he won't be for long, particularly after the publication of this article. He won't be excommunicated, but he--and any children he and his wife produce--will pay a very high price.

A member of my former ward who died in an airplane crash last week was a registered sex offender. He plead guilty to molesting his granddaughter. He served minimum jail time (less than 30 days). There was no mention of it because the news focused more on another victim of the crash (the son was a police officer). I believe the church disciplined him and excommunicated him. The family had been trying to pressure the current stake president to restore his priesthood/blessings.

I had previously written about this former high priest group leader and high councilor hanging around the foyer while his wife served as early morning seminary teacher. A family rightfully complained and removed their daughters from seminary. They went straight to the stake president because their ward's bishop thought it was an over-reaction [not a big deal].

It is rumored that the molester's family got their feelings hurt and requested to attend a different ward.

This is indeed terribly shocking. He clearly describes the chain of "authority" and the awful philosophy of blind obedience.

But... But...

He's still in the "church".

Eurgh... (if I had Ziller's skills, I'd be making a clever picture of someone vomiting here)

That was a hard read.

My scoutmaster went to jail too.

But I understood the culture. While I was a silent victim braver souls than me ratted on my perp. Their pain was probably so much more than mine because I was ostensibly a part of the people thinking that the scoutmaster got a bad rap and knowing that he really got off (literally) so easy.

I lied to my parents when asked if I was ever touched. And it was better than way because I was told that if I had been I needed to keep my mouth shut about it and forget those things ever happened.

But then my mother was almost certainly sexually molested by her father and possibly a brother.

I remember reading the Scout's Honor articles in the Post Register.

Even as a kid, I kept thinking, "Why didn't they do something to stop the molester? Why did they go after Steed harder than they did after Stowell?"

And I heard nothing from the Morg or from scout masters about Stowell's crimes. They just kept pretending it never happened, ignoring the problem and hoping it would go away, the same tactic that let the bastard keep molesting kids.

That may have been one of my first shelf-cracks.

I can barely read the story the similiarities are really close to home to me besides replacing molestation to physical assault. About same age as i was. Same first name as me. And the scout leader last name is the same 'Stowell'. I know exactly how hard it is to go to the police in the kid's situation. Its eerie how his situation is pretty dang close to my own. Very very eerie. I know the pressure on that kid to just keep his mouth shut and be swept under the rug so the organization does not lose face to the public. It seems like i am definitely not the only kid that experienced traumatic things from a scout leader.

This is a horrible thing for a child to have to deal with and the LAST THING a child needs is for the family to not support them, not believe them, tell them to keep their mouth shut.

As in Jay Toombs' situation, the families came to court in support of Jay. Jay wrote some big thing about how God was going to save him that day in court. My "husband" got a copy of it. It was insane.

It took a lot of courage for this man to come forward. I do believe he'll find his way out. I kept going for about 12 years after I found out he is gay. Eventually, it just becomes too big of a burden to deal with and go listen to those talks and see all the supposedly happy people and KNOWING what you know.

The events will eat away at the kid for most of his life trust me. bad was good and good was bad in that operation. Just keep the mouth shut so you don't ruin everyone's fantasyland. No support and no backing for a young teenager in a situation like this is a hard road from that point forward. Your going against adults including parents and 'God's true church'. Hard battle to win at that age.

They took something that is hard to get back.