As a young girl we often had to do these bishop interviews before going to do baptisms for the dead or any other "spiritual" event. i am haunted by these interviews. I remember being a young naive 12 year old and my bishop asking me if I masturbate. Not only that but he made me describe what masturbation is. Was that really necessary? Did anyone else feel creeped out? Now as a grown woman with children of my own I would knock out any man who asked my children such personal questions. I never confided in my parents how awkward these interviews were because I didn't want to seem disobedient or wicked.

I expect to see these kinds of intrusive sexual interviews by bishops in the LDS Church stopped completely. We all know they are totally in appropriate and out of order.

He even asked you to describe it?!!!!

I wouldn't have been able to. I hadn't a clue what it really was. I thought it just meant touching myself down there for any reason whatsoever like even scratching an itch.

My bishop asked me if I masturbate, too, from age 12 on up until he was released. The next bishop didn't. I was asked at birthday interviews, dance card interviews, and baptism for dead interviews.

It is a really sick practice and I can't believe it hasn't ended yet. (I'm 58.)

Yes, he asked me to describe. My answer was much like yours as I didn't have a full grasp of sexuality or the terms. I could tell he was disappointed by my answer and tried to get me to explain more, but I didn't know how. I truly wish parents would talk to their children(especially in the Mormon settings)and let them know that nobody has a right to request such personal information.

I also babysat for a couple and the father would always give me a ride home. He would always make offhand remarks about how I will make a great wife one day. Really creepy.

I was always driven home from babysitting by the husbands. We weren't supposed to be alone with someone of the opposite sex, but an older man could drive us home. Blows my mind.

Your bishop was a prevert, plain and simple. No man in his right mind would ask a young woman about her sexuality unless he was receiving some sort of sexual gratification from asking.

I've told my TBM sons that if a bishop or anyone else asks about their sexuality, including masturbation, they're to say that their father would like to be in the room wth them when personal questions are asked.

After describing the method..you should have asked him to stand up...and then point...what is that in your middle pocket...haaaa

Many here have pointed out that they learned what masturbation was from bishops during interviews...

Oh, the irony.

Boyd K. Packer was my teacher--something about "opening the release valve of the little factory."

("LITTLE factory?" Speak for yourself, Boyd!)

: )

Hi Nomorelies7997,

Am so sorry to hear that you endured that like many, if not all of us here growing up Mormon.

As a male i endured that travesty and psycho-sexual abuse from so-called "Authority" figures in the Church from the age of 12 up to and throughout my mission.

I had face-to-face PPI's with two (2) well-known names Regional GA's on my mission who couldn't answer my doctrinal and historical questions yet they proceeded to reduce the interview to a "masturbation" interview.

I will NEVER EVER EVER forgive those lying sacks-of-$hit bastards for their treatment of me during those "interviews".

Oh yeah...and while we're all talking about so-called "Bishop's Interviews" let's at least use the proper terminology of what they really are, intended for and what they really should be termed as...

"masturbation interviews".

Or so it seems to me...

My dad said that when he was going to BYU (late 70s I think?) some bishops and SPs started getting in legal trouble for voyeurism. I've heard stories from older folks who talked about the excruciating detail they'd have to go into (how many times, how many fingers, how deep, to climax or not, are some examples of the top of my head)

The bishop who interviewed me wasn't so bad although the experience was uncomfortable.

The dunkings in the SLC temple were scary and sexually inappropriate because the outfits turned to tissue when they were we and the boys made rude sounds and gaped at the girls. In fact the adult males doing the dunkings weren't much better.

Then after, and old lady made the girls strip naked in a cubicle and put the sopping outfit in a bucket before she would dole out a small towel to wear down the long hall to the dressing rooms.

Strange that a church which so worships modesty would treat young girls so badly. I think it was an initiation for the worse rites of washing and anointing that adults did back then. It was also to teach the girls that the church owned them body and soul.

I can tell you as a nevermo if I had a kid asked those sorts of questions by a priest (I'm Episcopalian) I would have the authorities involved as quickly as I could get them. There is no way on God's green earth that asking a kid if they masturbate would be anything even close to acceptable. Asking for details? HELL NO.

The same goes for me as an adult, but for children? Even more so.

Clergy, in general, are supposed to be reporters of abuse, not givers of it!

IMO, the bishop interviews are abusive on multiple levels, but only when the cult is hit in the gut with too many lawsuits draining their coffers will they give up this control they have over the members. Forced to stop is the only cease and desist they understand.

This is how the annointings came to be changed in the temple ceremony. The cult was sued. I wish I had been one of the people who had had the wherewithall to have sued as the annointings I went through in 1965 were invasive, humiliating and should never ever been allowed. I had no clue what any of the temple ceremony was going be about, except that it was going to be the most important and sacred thing to happen in my life. When the annointing part began my instinct was to shout at the lady to stop and for me to bolt out of the temple. I only wish I had done what my feelings told me to do.

If it wouldn't be too traumatic, could you describe what they did when you went through?

When I went through, they had us strip down, then cover ourselves with an open-sided poncho. We could close it around us on our way into the room with the old lady.

When she washed and anointed, she reached under the poncho and touched various parts of the body. And it made me quite uncomfortable, because I was worried where it was going as she worked her way down my body, unable to see what exactly she was touching. I wondered just how personal it was going to get, and if she was going to accidentally touch something I didn't want her to touch.

It wasn't traumatic for me, but is WAS invasive. It was a HUGE breach of boundaries, without prior permission, or explanation. And personally, it think that boundary crossing was part of the point of the temple. But for someone who might have suffered sexual abuse, this would have been horribly triggering.

But I've wondered if at some point, there was no poncho, and how extensive the 'washing' was.

When my bishop asked me to describe what masturbation was I replied with this answer, "It's where you touch yourself." He didn't say anything after that and moved on to the next question.

Imaworkinonit, my annointing experience was just as you described, including that I was also "...worried where it was going as she worked her way down my body..." I worried exactly what she was going to touch and as you described,..."I wondered how personal it was going to get..." I had no idea that anything like this was going to happen and it seemed so WRONG and here it was happening in the TEMPLE OF THE LORD.

I did have one very traumatic sexual abuse happen in my past that had been dismissed as merely my imagination when I divulged it happening. I think the memories just came flooding through my entire being with this annointing experience. I KNEW down deep I had been violated once again but made to feel with how this occurred, without any prior knowledge and consent on my part, that I nor my feelings failed to matter. I felt like I had been "tricked" into doing something THAT I NEVER WOULD HAVE CONSENTED TO. And, I never did go through the annointing ceremony again.

Thanks for sharing, presleynfactsrock.

I wish I had gotten the nerve to ask my parents, while they were alive, if the initiatory was different when THEY went through. Because I suspect we got a toned down version of it.

I wonder if they would have admitted to it, or if those who experienced it would repress or deny it, like some people apparently have with the death oaths.

washing and anointing experience on here before. I hope he reposts it or shares a link or someone else will.

I had heard from someone I worked with that a bunch of women she was in a play with were talking about getting naked in the temple. She was very upset and asked me. So I asked my sister, who had been through. I told her if she didn't tell me, I would be leaving the church, so she told me and so I was prepared. Otherwise, I don't know what I would have done or how I would have felt. But the temple was such a nice experience, I went back only a few times. I got married in 1985 and never went back after April 1990. I went about once a year average during those 5 years. HATED IT.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2016 11:17PM by cl2.

I have read the in the early days there was no poncho- they were naked with no covering. There even used to be bath tubs in the temple for the washings and annointings. Then they toweled off and put on the garments.

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!