October 16, 2024 • 46 mins
A fanatical “priesthood holder” pressures young Mormon Caroline into marriage and motherhood. When the relationship descends into extreme abuse, Caroline is rescued by a church leader, but others up the ranks are not so supportive. Whose side are they really on?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Killed her.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Just a quick content warning. This episode contains references to
intimate partner violence and abuse, including sexual abuse. There's also
discussion around suicide. Please see our show notes for details
of support services and take care. This podcast is funded
by New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
On air, I had become so convinced that it was
my fault that we were constantly in poverty, and that
we were hungry, and that my kids were hungry. I
was so convinced that it was because of my rebellious,
disobedience nature that I decided the only honorable way out
(00:43):
of that was to end my life, because then my
husband would be free to marry somebody righteous.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
This is Caroline. She's one of the people who commented
online after I had published a series of articles about
the wealth of the Mormon Church in Alta Roa, New
Zealand a couple of years ago, and when I gave
her a call, she was the person who first made
me realize there was a whole other story to be
told about the lives of church members.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I taped myself off from everything I tried to predict myself.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Caroline's not her real name, and during our phone conversation
in mid twenty twenty two. We agreed I wouldn't use
this recording without her permission. I was interested in meeting
her face to face and getting a properly recorded interview.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I've made a good effort to be obedient to God.
I obviously am too rebellious and evil.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
But Caroline was unsure. She's been in therapy. She has
a lot of insight now about what happened to her
and the effects that linger. She was worried that talking
it through yet again might be a bad idea, retraumatizing.
Even so, she said I could tell her story, but
without actually using her voice and without a repeat interview.
(02:06):
But then, just recently, as I was wrapping up the
final bits of reporting for this podcast, I checked in
with Caroline and she'd had a change of heart. She
would do a face to face interview, though she'd bring
her therapist with her just in case. She felt the
stakes were too high not to do it, because if
making her story public would mean other women like her
(02:29):
wouldn't have to go through what she went through, it
would definitely be worth it.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Ding another warning sign.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
A commander to marry me.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
I told my bishop, I'll just tell the.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Helpline and they can make it all go away?
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Who was speaking to my?
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Name is Murray Jones and this is Heaven's Helpline, A
six part New Zealand Herald investigation into the Mormon Church
in Alter Roa and beyond. Episode two. This changes everything.
I met Caroline and her therapist in a community center
(03:06):
not far from her home. I started with my usual
mic check question. Okay, could I just ask you what
you had for breakfast?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I had an egg on toast in a pippermint tea
and a bundle of knaves.
Speaker 6 (03:20):
So is it working?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That's great? Yeah, you're coming through, nice and clude. Caroline's
journey through Mormon life starts pretty conventionally because as a rule,
you're usually born into the church, or it goes like this.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
I was five years old. The missionary is knocked on
the door. My parents lit them in. They liked what
they learned, and then they decided to join.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
After this visit from the missionaries, life in Caroline's family
changed dramatically, mostly for the better.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
My father was an alcoholic, and so then he stopped drinking.
We went from that sort of party drinking environment to
going to church and being very involved in all the meetings.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Caroline remembers it being a very social time.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
The missionaries were fun. They were young men, they playful,
they were like big brothers. They had a lot to
do with us because we were new members, and that's
how it works.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
There were lots of church activities for.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Kids, singing and playing games, and so church was fun
at that stage. Yeah, it was a good memory.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
You're doing great, Okay. Caroline's parents were New Zealanders, but
at the time of their conversion to the Olds Church,
they were living in Australia and back then there was
no temple in Australia.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
So it made sense to go back to New Zealand
where they could be married in the Temple.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
You'll remember from the first episode that for Mormons, the
temple is a huge deal. There are various rituals, ordinances
they're called, that can be done nowhere except at the Temple.
That includes baptisms, confirmations, priesthood ordinations, weekly sacraments, and the
temple weddings. So Caroline's family left Australia and relocated to
(05:17):
Temple View in Hamilton, and at thirteen Caroline went to
Church College, the secondary school in Temple View run by
the church. She kept herself to herself.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I was a painfully shy person, and I didn't mix
or interact much with other people.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
She had other things to worry about. Faith had helped
her father give up the drink, but things still weren't
exactly peaceful at home.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
My brothers and I would hear my dad whistling as
he came down the drive, and that would be our
warning to disappear. Dad's coming, and we're not safe now,
because he was a completely different person when he walked
through the door. So one minute he could be very
cheerful and happy and you could be his favorite child,
(06:04):
and the next it could suddenly switch, so you were
just constantly on the edge of your seat. His main
form of violence was to grab the nearest thing, which
was usually a glass of water, and throw it at
your head. I saw it and put my brother's heads
through the wall a couple of times.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
He was also disrespectful, even cruel, towards Caroline's mother. The
environment of fear created by her father wasn't something the
family ever discussed with anyone outside the home. In fact,
Caroline's dad was a really popular figure in the community,
so people would.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Say to me, oh, you must have been a great dad.
I would have loved of her dad like.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
That, which left Caroline pretty confused.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I would wonder why I was so unhappy and why
I wasn't grateful for what I had because other people
were wishing that they had it.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
At home, her father was the boss of everything.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Who could speak at the dinner table, where we would go,
who we hung out worth, to control.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
All the money, and he made no apology for that.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
The reasoning that he gave for his control was that
he was the priesthood leader, which is church teachings at
the father is the leader of the home. He knows
what's best for the family, and that's his role and
it mustn't be questioned.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
We'll come back to Caroline in a moment, but I
just want to explain what she means by priesthood leader,
because it's important. Caroline's father was well respected in the community,
but having a priesthood position in itself that was nothing special.
Because in the LDS Church almost anyone can become what's
known as a priesthood holder. Well by anyone, I mean
(07:58):
any man, of course, scratch that, any boy, because at
the age of twelve, every Mormon lad is eligible to
become a priesthood holder. Keep your nose clean spiritually speaking,
and you'll rattle through the ranks simply by getting older.
You're a deacon at twelve, a teacher at fourteen, a
priest at sixteen. Then as an adult, you graduate to
(08:20):
the second tier of priesthood positions. At eighteen, you're an elder,
and after elder there's a bunch more ranks and positions
to aspire to high priest, bishop and state president. Further
up the ladder, you can be a seventy an apostle,
and finally top dog, the president of the church, who
(08:40):
is considered a prophet. He's like the Mormon equivalent of
the pope, but relative to those further down the hierarchy
from you, you are a priesthood leader. And the hierarchy
also applies in the domestic realm. If you're a married woman,
your priesthood leader is your husband. For a girl or
any unmarried woman, it's your dad. For a teenage boy,
(09:04):
it's also your dad. And because only men have status
in this hierarchy, there can be some interesting outcomes. I
spoke to a guy called Mike Camick about growing up
in a Mormon congregation in christ Church in the nineteen nineties,
and he has a good example of how this can
play out.
Speaker 6 (09:22):
They would say stuff to you like, oh, you got
the priesthood. You know, if no men showed up a
church today and it was just us, woman, you would
be in charge.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And how old was Mike when he could be in charge? Thirteen?
Speaker 6 (09:37):
Right, And they'd say that to me in a room
of thirty forty fifty sixty year old woman with jobs
and professional careers and experience that my role as a man,
as a priesthood holder, which is gender specific, my position
as a thirteen year old man, puts me in a
position of superiority, in a position of leadership over at
(09:59):
above e any woman in the community.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Being a priesthood holder means you're considered a good, upstanding
man in the church and have the authority to act
for God.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
If you are a priesthood man, the assumption is that
Jesus is working through you.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
That's doctor Gina Colvin, the church member turned critic we
heard from briefly in the first episode. In short, if
you disagree with Dad, you are defying the priesthood authority,
which in some homes meant you might as well be
disagreeing with God. So back to Caroline, as she entered
(10:36):
her teens, it just seemed like things didn't add up
at home. Her father was a violent, cruel tyrant, but
according to church teachings, he was the boss. Yet at
the same time, she was hearing other church teachings which
insisted women were equal partners in marriage. Caroline didn't see
how that could work. How could women be subservient to
(10:58):
their priesthood leader husband and equal at the same time.
She took this question and others to her local church leaders.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
What I expected was that my leaders would answer the
questions and then it would be cleared up for me. Instead,
they found my questions very unsettling.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
And they visited her parents to talk to them about
their daughter who asks awkward questions. The message Caroline was
getting was that the problem lay not with the church
teachings or her father's controlling behavior, but with her.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Because I'm living in this community where everybody is accepting
and believing and fully on board with everything that's being taught,
and I'm having major difficulties with it. So I am
internally going what's wrong with me? Why is this a
struggle for me? Why do I not want to be.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
A mother, because that was part of the problem. The
path that was being laid out for Caroline didn't seem
very appealing.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
I wanted to have a career, I wanted to have
a job, and I wanted to be educated.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
To be clear, the LDS Church is definitely supportive of girls' education.
Working hard and applying yourself at school, regardless of gender,
is central to their ethos, but Caroline says the messaging
she received emphasized that for girls it was somewhat secondary.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
We're taught from a very young age that our purpose
and our role in life is to be a mother
and to raise children, and that's our first and highest priority.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Caroline set her sights on higher education. She loved art
and literature and was offered a scholarship to Brigham Young
University in Hawaii, named after the Mormon leader who succeeded
Joseph Smith in the eighteen forties. But before she could
take up that offer, something happened.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
There was an incident at home where my father punched me,
and I turned around and punched him.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Back, so he kicked her out.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I had a couple of hours to pack, and I
was on the street with no clue at all how
to take care of myself and terrified.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Caroline briefly stayed with acquaintances in Temple View, but then
her aunt in Australia invited her to live with her.
Eighteen months later, her father had cooled down and she
came back, but byu Hawaii a degree, that opportunity had passed.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
All my plans to study kind of went out the window.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Caroline, now twenty one, is reunited with her family back
at the Temple, but she still has those frustratingly familiar
doubts about the church, and this time round, she wants
to figure it out.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
I was reading a lot of scripture. I was doing
a lot of study to try and figure out whether
I was really going to stay in this or not.
Those questions I had kit private, I wasn't sharing them.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
So she was startled when in church one day a
young man approached her and asked, are.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
You having questions about the church? And I thought the
Holy Ghost had led him to me to answer my questions,
because how could he have known? And I said yes,
And he set himself up as a teacher of me,
and he started teaching me and instructing me. And I
took that as an answer to my prayers that yes,
(14:16):
I am supposed to stay in the church, and God
has sent me somebody who can answer my questions.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Caroline was blown away by this guy's encyclopedic knowledge of
Mormon theology.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
A huge scriptural knowledge, and ability to recall facts and
information and quotes from leaders. That was just extraordinary. And
I received a lot of instruction from him.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
But this was not your typical Bible study group. This
guy demanded a lot of Caroline.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
I was memorizing huge quantities of scripture as per his instructions.
He was keeping me up late at night with scripture study,
you know, waking me up in the earliest hours of
the morning to continue with the scripture study, getting me
to fast and pray. And it was intense, it was
full on. I was very distressed at the intensity of it.
(15:14):
I would ask him to stop, but he would just
sho up again the next day. And I was too
well trained to be polite and to be obedient to men,
and so I didn't assert myself any more than that.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Weeks passed in a blur. Caroline was short of sleep,
she was hungry. She was reading the same parts of
scripture again and again, attempting to humble herself in the
service of God. Then three months after they had first met,
this man had a new command for Caroline.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I want you to go to the temple. I want
you to fast for this period of time, and I
want you to pray about whether or not we should
be married. And I'm like, what because we weren't dating
and it wasn't romance. It was scripture instructure. But I thought, okay,
I need to be humble. You know, this isn't what
I want, but I need to do what God wants,
(16:10):
you know, lose myself in the service of God. All
this stuff that my head was being filled with. So
I went to the temple, I followed those instructions. I
prayed about it. I went back and met with this
young man. I didn't tell him what the answer was.
(16:33):
And I can't really explain this, but I felt this
wave of spiritual energy and he said to me, did
you feel that? And I said yes, And he said
that was the Holy Ghost telling you that you are
commanded to marry me, which I believed. I didn't like it.
(16:57):
I wasn't happy about it. He knew that I didn't
love he knew that I was just marrying her out
of commanment to God. So that was the end of
any leaving the church or getting a career or studying.
I started on down the road of marriage and children.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
It's been just three months since Caroline was first approached
by this guy, and this conversation about marriage seems to
have been done and dusted in a matter of days.
But in the Mormon community, that kind of speed is
not unusual. The courtships of people in their early twenties
sometimes last just a few weeks. After all, why would
(17:45):
you wait? There are loads of incentives to tie the knock.
Marrying in the temple meant a couple were sealed so
that the whole family could end up together for eternity
in the afterlife, and it's a vital step in your
faith journey. Only those who are married in the temple
can reach what's called the highest degree of glory in heaven.
(18:07):
As Gina explains.
Speaker 5 (18:08):
That's the only way that you realize your divine potential
is to be sealed.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
It's just what you do, and it sort of means
the rest of your life is laid out for you
and your future partner.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
If I marry a returned missionary, who's a worthy priest
or a holder. It would be white picket fencers for
the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Married men get the white picket fences too, but for them,
getting married also opens up doors to leadership positions within
the church. Gayleen, the woman who learned about chastity with
the help of a white cake and a handful of dirt,
remembers there was a saying you'd hear in the church.
Speaker 7 (18:41):
That any boy that was twenty eight years old and
still single as a menace to society. That is a
quote from the prophet.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
The line is often attributed to Brigham Young, and depending
which Mormon website you're reading, he actually said over the
age of twenty one or twenty five ory and in
fact it may not have even been Brigham Young who
said it. Apocryphal or not, this line still does its work,
adding to the pressure to find your mate as quickly
as possible, but it's not always easy finding the perfect
(19:14):
match right.
Speaker 7 (19:15):
The other idea that encouraged you to get married was
that any two people living the Gospel could have a
happy marriage, so you didn't have to be particularly careful
with your choys.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
And even if you were getting the jitters about rushing
into a marriage. Many Mormons believed that the Holy Ghost
would guide them. I heard several stories where divine inspiration
was central to a courtship, like when Gina's husband proposed
to her.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
You know, I really feel the spirit telling you that
we're supposed to be togither and you're my angel, blah
blah blah blahlah blah, and am I hit I'm going, Oh,
get off the grass boy. And I said to him
a lot, you're just infatuated. You'll get over it. Everybody does.
But there was still the element of maybe he's right.
Maybe as talking to God.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Whatever was going on, Gina and her husband didn't muck around.
He got home from his mission in June.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
We got together in August, we were married in September.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
And of course, when it comes to the urgency behind
some marriages, we can't ignore the elephant in the room,
the rule of chastity.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
Mormon's are pretty horny, you know, and you can't have six.
It's like it's just good at damn. I mean, no
horny than everybody else. But I think the untouchability of
it sort of escalates, you know, the fervors.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
So Caroline wasn't an outlier, really, Plenty of Mormon women
were marrying young, marrying fast, feeling some doubts, but trusting
in divine revelation, trusting in the Church's traditions about the
value and the nature of a marriage. Sure, she didn't
actually like her husband to be at all. He reminded
(20:56):
her of her father, but she believed him when he
said the Holy Ghost had instructed them to be wed,
so they got on with it. Before she could be
married in the temple, though, Caroline had one other important
thing to do, the endowment. The endowment is one of
the most significant things you do as a Mormon. It's
(21:20):
a ceremony reserve for temple worthy adults that takes two
or three hours all up. The actual rituals used to
be pretty secret. That's no longer true in the Internet age.
But when Caroline turned up for the endowment, she didn't
have a clue what to expect, and she found it
totally weird.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
The men all go off to one side of the
temple which is just for the men, and the women
go off to one side which is just for the women.
You are to remove all your clothing and you put
on a gown that covers you, but it's open at
the sides.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
You then pass through a series of sections divided by curtains,
and in each section a church worker male for the men,
female for the women, recites some scripture and performs a
particular ritual, washing the head with water, dotting Holy O
Eil on various points of the body, the sternum, the hip,
the lower back. He or she also provides special white
(22:14):
full body undergarments marked with some sacred symbols, which as
a Mormon, you're supposed to wear for the rest of
your adult life.
Speaker 8 (22:23):
You were informed that it will be a shield and
a protection to you inasmuch as you do not defile it.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
After the washing and anointing and dressing, you watch a video.
As I said, endowment isn't so secret now it's on
the internet. This audio is from a hidden recording someone's
posted on YouTube.
Speaker 8 (22:41):
Adam, here's a woman whom we have formed and whom
we give under you to be a companion and help
me for you. What will you call her?
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Eve?
Speaker 8 (22:51):
We will place you in the garden, and will there
command you to multiply and replenish the earth.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
That video Caroline watched, which shows in all almost all
the Mormon temples in the world depicts, as you just heard,
the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, then explains
the commitments you need to make to live a good
Mormon life.
Speaker 8 (23:11):
To sacrifice all that we possess, even our own lives,
if necessary, in sustaining and defending the Kingdom of God.
Each of you bow your head and say yes, yes,
that will do.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
One commitment Caroline especially remembers was called the Law of
Obedience and sacrifice.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Will you make covenance and promises to obey your husband
and follow him and be obedient and be submissive.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Endowment was meant to prepare Caroline for life as a
Mormon and to make her ready for marriage, but the
ceremony left her feeling quite uncertain about both.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
I really remember thinking this is really really weird. The
rituals that are waving your hands, the taking clothes on
and off, it just went up another level of weird.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
After the ceremony, I sat on the grass on the
top of the hill at the temple and thought, what
do I belong to?
Speaker 3 (24:13):
What is this organization I'm involved in? Is this what
I believe? Is this? Is this for real?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Aside from these spiritual doubts. She was also still having
doubts about her husband to be, so she did what
you're meant to do if you have a problem. She
asked to see her ward bishop.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
The bishop quite a few times met with me and said,
you need to talk to your mother. You need to
talk to your mother. And I said, what do you mean?
What are you talking about? What about? So I'd have
some half hearted conversations with my mother. I had no
idea what it was I was supposed to be asking
her or talking about. She had no idea either. I
think she she shared some recipes with me, like we
(25:02):
were just completely clueless what their construction meant. It was
too vague.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Much later Caroline would figure out what the bishop had
been trying to convey with his cryptic and frankly useless
marital advice. It turned out the bishops suspected even then
that her husband to be really was a menace to society.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
He had a reputation, and he'd practiced with a few
women before he got.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
To me that intense, controlling connection he'd made with Caroline.
He'd done it before to other women, but they'd managed
to push back. One young woman had even taken out
a protection order against this guy.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
I was easy pray.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Caroline doesn't know if her bishop was aware of that
protection order specifically, but still, when she talked to him
many years later, he.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Said, oh, I knew he was trouble. Who never told me.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Caroline and her suitor got married, and with astonishing speed,
she found herself inside a claustrophobic nightmare. Her new husband
was a passionate scholar of scripture, but he wasn't so
useful as a breadwinner. He didn't seem to hang on
to jobs for long, and every few months he'd received
divine inspiration telling him they needed to move house, move town,
(26:22):
and eventually move country.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
We were constantly on the move. We were sometimes homeless.
We were living in an absolute abject poverty.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Sometimes there was no furniture and they'd be sleeping on
the floor.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
We often didn't have enough food.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Caroline had fallen pregnant soon after the marriage, and over
the following three years she had two children, but also
two miscarriages.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
I was almost always in a state of pregnancy without
medical care, or almost medical care.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Caroline believes the constant moves were partly designed to separate
her from her support networks.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
I was completely segregated from all of my relatives, from family,
from any friends that I may have had. All of
those relationships were damaged or destroyed or ended under his instruction.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
When letters arrived from friends and family for Caroline, he
would open them. Some he would read to her. Others
he'd destroy, saying they'd only upset her. A year and
a half into the marriage, without any notice, men came
to the house in Hamilton and took all their possessions,
including a treasured quilt from her mother. Caroline's husband announced
(27:46):
that he'd given everything away to a charity shop and
they were shortly to be flying to Sydney. They arrived
with no money and nowhere to live. Caroline was able
to collect a benefit because of her upbringing, but it
didn't stretch far, and in any case, her husband controlled
all the money, and the constant moving continued. Sometimes they
(28:10):
do a runner without paying the landlord. Often Caroline had
little more than the clothes on her back. The suitcase
that they took from new home to new home was
instead filled with her husband's books to sate his obsessive
interest in psychology. Yet the material deprivation wasn't even the
(28:33):
worst of it.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
He was intensely controlling, to a level beyond my father,
beyond anything that I even knew was possible to exist.
I was never out of his sight for a moment.
He's always accompanied me.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
On the very rare occasions they were apart, like for
gender specific church groups.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
I had to relate to him verbatim ire conversation that
I'd had that he was not therefore, and it got
to a point where I couldn't recall accurately or sufficiently
enough those conversations. So I would stop talking to people
because it was too difficult to remember everything, and I
(29:17):
would be grilled for hours afterwards. We caught a taxi.
Once I said thank you to the taxi driver, I
was in trouble for hours because I did not have
his permission to say thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
There were so many different ways Caroline could anger her.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Husband, disobedience, having an independent thought, questioning him, even if
it was done humbly or respectfully. He mustn't be questioned.
He's suppressed a leader, So when I disobeyed him, there
were punishments.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Just a quick content warning here for sexual assault Skip
forward about a minute.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
If you he had this idea that if I was
not submissive, A way to make me submissive would be
to rape me. He felt that the less I wanted
to sleep with him, the more important it was that
he did so that I would learn to submit and obey,
(30:20):
and that it would bring us closer together, and he
would use various scriptures to back up that behavior. The
very first time he attacked me, I went and was
(30:41):
completely detached and didn't really feel anything. Most of the
time that I was there. There are big gaps of
memory that had just gone.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Carolina had just given birth to their second child when
her husband got some good news. An old Hamilton's school friend,
now living in Western Australia, offered him a job. That
old friend, another man in his mid twenties, was John Campbell,
who he heard from very briefly in the previous episode.
John was a return missionary, a married man, a father,
(31:20):
and he was in Western Australia to earn a bit
of money.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
Quite a significant mining and district going on over there,
lots of jobs, lots of good paying jobs.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
John had quickly connected with the local LDS church and
to his surprise.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
I became the branch president.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
So a branch is a congregation that's too small to
be a ward. So a branch president is like a
scaled down bishop for a scaled down congregation. So when
Caroline's family arrived, John pulled them into local church life
as well, and he was struck by how this old
school friend had become an absolute master of Mormon theology.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
He knew his scriptures could speak extremely well on the subject,
on any subject, no notice whatsoever, so he was almost
the prototype Mormon.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
But once John met Caroline, he noticed someone not doing
so well.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
It was something off about her.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Immediately John asked his friend what was going on with
his wife, but he brushed it off as postnatal depression.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Sounded reasonable. You could look at that and say, hey, okay,
I can see that's what you're suffering from. Post antal depression.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
John arranged for families to drop off a few meals
at Caroline's door.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
This is a pretty standard thing that Mormons do as
someone feeling a bit offu whatnot, meals can be lined
up at their door and with one phone call.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
But he was still watchful. John asked his sister, who
was head of the church women's group, the Relief Society,
to check in on Caroline, and he dropped in on
the couple himself. During one of those visits, John got
the strong impression that Caroline wanted to say something to him,
but was actually too scared to say it.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
And they just sent alarm bells ringing.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Next move was he now realizes a bad one.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
Being young and dumb stupid. Later on I spoke to
him about that.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
John suggested to Caroline's husband that he should pay for
her to do some art classes to cheer her up.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
He says, no, money's not going to fix this. Got
to fix her ding ding, another warning sign.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
John's instincts were absolutely right. Though Caroline was profoundly unhappy
throughout this time in Western Australia. Her husband's actions towards
her were as extreme as ever. He was controlling her sleeping,
She wasn't allowed to touch the food on the plate
in front of her until he'd given permission. She wasn't
(33:44):
allowed out of the house alone. This was when she
got the two hour lecture for saying thank you to
a taxi driver. One mind blowing detail I learned was
that Caroline's husband developed a series of signals little winks
and nods and clicks, and he'd use them to give
her permission to do certain things when they were in company,
such as talk or eat or move. And all this time,
(34:09):
when she got things wrong, rape was a routine punishment.
Food and money were still scarce. Sometimes she was weak
with hunger, but she noticed her husband seemed to be
full of energy. At the time, she put it down
to his extraordinary spiritual strength, but later realized he had
(34:29):
simply been eating when he went out. So yeah, while
John was thinking an art class might cheer her up,
Caroline was on the brink.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
I had gotten to the end of my strength. I
was so convinced that it was because of my rebellious,
disobedient nature that I was always struggling to control these
thoughts I had where I would question or doubt because
I wasn't winning that battle with those thoughts. I decided
(35:03):
that it was my fault that my kids were suffering,
and the only honorable way out of that that seemed
logical to me at the time was to end my life,
because then my husband would be free to marry somebody righteous,
and then the children wouldn't suffer anymore. They'd have food,
(35:23):
and they'd have what they needed, and they wouldn't be
constantly living in this desperate state of survival, so I
attempted suicide a couple of times.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
It was during this period of hopelessness and desperation that
Caroline remembers seeing a TV documentary about women during the
Second World War.
Speaker 8 (35:46):
A thousand acres of being replanted with various treats, and
the girls can handle a spade with the best hats off.
Speaker 6 (35:51):
Then lads to the girls and the British backwards.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
It was black and white, and I saw these women
with shorts on, short shorts and blouses, and they were
driving trucks and tractors and farm machinery. And I thought,
these women have more independence and freedom than I have.
That impacted me so much. It just sort of struck me,
(36:15):
and I thought, what you know, that was so long ago,
and I started to feel angry at my husband. I thought, right,
I'm going to go talk to the branch president, which
was John Campbell. It was very, very unusual for me
to be let out of my husband's site.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
But she made it to the church and sat in
John's office.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
He said, why have you come? And I said, well,
I came to complain about my husband. But now I
think maybe thinking better of it, that maybe I shouldn't be.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Doing that, but John said, wait no, He and the
other local leaders suspected she was being abused by her husband.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
That just blew me away. I can't explain to you
the impact of that on me. It was enormous and
I just knew what he said was true, and it
was a shock and I'm like, wow, what a relief.
I now don't have to stay in this situation, like
the possibilities just who was amazing, And he said, whatever
(37:24):
you decide to do, we will support you.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Caroline didn't leave immediately, but when the opportunity arose a
couple of days later, her husband had left the house
for longer than usual, she rang John's sister and asked
her to take her and the children to a woman's refuge.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
It gave me the opportunity to pack, and that it
was terrifying because at any moment he could have walked
back in the door. So I was moving very quickly.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
She made it to the refuge just a few streets away,
and for the first time in three years, she was free,
free to make her own decision big and small.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I remember going to the supermarket on my own and
choosing for myself what I was going to buy to
eat At that point, it was the happiest day of
my life. Yeah, funny to say now, yeah, freedom, freedom
from prison.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
John reconnected Caroline with her parents and organized a flight
for her and the children to get home to New Zealand.
He booked the tickets using a fake name so her
husband couldn't track her down. John remembers being both impressed
that the airline had this service in place and saddened
that they needed it. They'd done it, They'd got Caroline
(38:45):
and her children out of a terrifying and dangerous situation.
From what I can tell, John is a pretty humble guy.
In his words, he's just some big clown. But his
interventions helped save Caroline. And not that he went round bragging,
(39:07):
but when people found out, he could expect a big
pat on the back right well. Once word got around
about what John had done, he did get a call
from the Perth Suits his term for the Western Australia
Senior Church Leaders, but they weren't calling to praise John.
(39:29):
Quite the opposite.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
What I did was just way outside of a church policy,
way outside of anything that would be acceptable to any
of the suits in the church. So I broke that
family up because I got her out of there physically
when I drove them to the woman's refuge and drove
them to the airport. And I encouraged you to get out.
And you're not supposed to do that. It is not
(39:50):
official policy, but you're certainly trained and encouraged it. There
is nothing that you weren't breaking up a family.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
While John is getting it in the neck, Caroline is
back in New Zealand and has a crucial decision to make.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
I had the choice between being on the run because
I was frightened that my first husband would come after me,
or to remain in one spot and create a support
network around me and wait for him.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Thinking it would be better for the children, She chose
to stop running and settle in Auckland. She also decided
to stay in the church.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Because I was helped by a church leader, and because
my first thousand behavior was so extreme and not I
think the norm for most Mormons. I drew the conclusion
that this was just a wicked man twisting the scriptures
to his own ends. It doesn't mean the church isn't true.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
She informed her church leaders in Auckland about what had happened.
She told them she expected that one day her ex
husband would find her, so they could be prepared for
when that day came. She was super cautious about her
own safety and the safety of her children. And then,
a year after her escape from Western Australia, just like
(41:15):
she expected, her ex husband worked out where she was.
Fortunately for her, he got the address wrong and turned
up at her parents' house day locked the doors and
told him to go away. So he tried another way
to find her.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
He got hold of the church leaders for the war
that I was in at the time and organized for
me to meet with him. I told them that I
didn't want to meet with him, and they said that
I needed to. So it was two members of the
(41:52):
bishopric and myself and my first husband in this little
off this. My first husband was just so smug.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
He was just.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Laid back and all relaxed. His whole body language was
I had the power to make this happen, and you
had to obey. And he said that he was sorry
for the mistakes that he had made. He didn't go
into what they were. Those leaders knew what those mistakes
(42:30):
were because I had informed them, but they said that
they appreciated his apology and that I needed to forgive him.
I didn't want to, and I didn't, and they kept insisting,
and I didn't feel that i'd be allowed to leave
that room until I had said that I forgave him,
so id and I said that I forgave him so
(42:53):
that the meeting could be over and so that I
could leave, And I left. I didn't have a car
at the time, so I had to walk a long way,
and I was so frightened that I was going to
be followed, but I wasn't. I think that he'd got
what he wanted, which was basically the message that he
was in control. So at that stage I went to
the police and got a protection order. A couple of
(43:15):
times he showed up and followed me, but I went
to the community police or to the police station, and
so he disappeared.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
The story Caroline told me as we sat with her
therapist at that slightly noisy community center moment for moment,
it's almost exactly the same story she told me in
our very first phone call, the time when I rang
up expecting to hear I don't know, some minor anecdote
about struggling to pay the bills because of church tithes
(43:48):
or something. But instead I heard this devastating account of
monstrous domestic violence and coercive control. And look, I've actually
left doubt some of the more harrowing details. Caroline's husband
was clearly some kind of psychopath, hyper intelligent and manipulative
(44:11):
with absolutely zero empathy, and that's on him, not the
Mormon Church. But the thing that really left me reading
was the church's response those Perth suits, scolding John, the
guy who Caroline believes literally saved her life, and Auckland
Church officials putting Caroline back in the same room as
(44:33):
her tormentor at his request, knowing the full context of
what he'd done to her to retraumatize her so carelessly
that I just couldn't compute. I wanted to understand more
about how this could have happened, so I started asking
people some different questions, less about the church's incredible wealth
(44:58):
or recruitment tactics and more about how the church responds
to people at their most vulnerable. And once I started
looking for that kind of story, the cases came flooding in.
Speaker 7 (45:10):
I really knew that it wasn't right, it was wrong.
Speaker 5 (45:13):
It had two sort of warning bells for me that
something's not quite right.
Speaker 7 (45:17):
Church has admitted sexually abusing boys over civil year.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Daughter was just two and a half when she was
sexually abused by a.
Speaker 6 (45:26):
Church elder who always done as we've moved you from
one area to another.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Heaven's Helpline was funded by New Zealand on Air and
the New Zealand Herald for endzed me and iHeartRadio. It
was researched, written and presented by me Murray Jones. My
producers were Adam Dudding who co wrote the series, and
Kirsten Johnston from Pop Sop Media, who edited and sound
designed it. Phil Brownlee is our sound engineer. Music was
(45:59):
by Thomas R and Anita Clark. Archival audio came from
TVNZED and RNZ. Ethan Sills is executive producer here at
New Zealand Herald. If you have a story you'd like
to share with me about the LDS church, or just
want to get in touch, email me securely at Murray
Reports at Proton dot M or dm me on X
(46:24):
at Murray Reports. And for more on this podcast, head
to nzedherld dot co dot nz slash Heaven's Helpline It's
time intensive doing investigations like this, so if you value
this kind of journalism, please support it by going to
your podcast platform and rating and reviewing the series.
Killed her.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Just a quick content warning. This episode contains references to
intimate partner violence and abuse, including sexual abuse. There's also
discussion around suicide. Please see our show notes for details
of support services and take care. This podcast is funded
by New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
On air, I had become so convinced that it was
my fault that we were constantly in poverty, and that
we were hungry, and that my kids were hungry. I
was so convinced that it was because of my rebellious,
disobedience nature that I decided the only honorable way out
(00:43):
of that was to end my life, because then my
husband would be free to marry somebody righteous.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
This is Caroline. She's one of the people who commented
online after I had published a series of articles about
the wealth of the Mormon Church in Alta Roa, New
Zealand a couple of years ago, and when I gave
her a call, she was the person who first made
me realize there was a whole other story to be
told about the lives of church members.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I taped myself off from everything I tried to predict myself.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Caroline's not her real name, and during our phone conversation
in mid twenty twenty two. We agreed I wouldn't use
this recording without her permission. I was interested in meeting
her face to face and getting a properly recorded interview.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I've made a good effort to be obedient to God.
I obviously am too rebellious and evil.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
But Caroline was unsure. She's been in therapy. She has
a lot of insight now about what happened to her
and the effects that linger. She was worried that talking
it through yet again might be a bad idea, retraumatizing.
Even so, she said I could tell her story, but
without actually using her voice and without a repeat interview.
(02:06):
But then, just recently, as I was wrapping up the
final bits of reporting for this podcast, I checked in
with Caroline and she'd had a change of heart. She
would do a face to face interview, though she'd bring
her therapist with her just in case. She felt the
stakes were too high not to do it, because if
making her story public would mean other women like her
(02:29):
wouldn't have to go through what she went through, it
would definitely be worth it.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Ding another warning sign.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
A commander to marry me.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
I told my bishop, I'll just tell the.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Helpline and they can make it all go away?
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Who was speaking to my?
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Name is Murray Jones and this is Heaven's Helpline, A
six part New Zealand Herald investigation into the Mormon Church
in Alter Roa and beyond. Episode two. This changes everything.
I met Caroline and her therapist in a community center
(03:06):
not far from her home. I started with my usual
mic check question. Okay, could I just ask you what
you had for breakfast?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I had an egg on toast in a pippermint tea
and a bundle of knaves.
Speaker 6 (03:20):
So is it working?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That's great? Yeah, you're coming through, nice and clude. Caroline's
journey through Mormon life starts pretty conventionally because as a rule,
you're usually born into the church, or it goes like this.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
I was five years old. The missionary is knocked on
the door. My parents lit them in. They liked what
they learned, and then they decided to join.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
After this visit from the missionaries, life in Caroline's family
changed dramatically, mostly for the better.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
My father was an alcoholic, and so then he stopped drinking.
We went from that sort of party drinking environment to
going to church and being very involved in all the meetings.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Caroline remembers it being a very social time.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
The missionaries were fun. They were young men, they playful,
they were like big brothers. They had a lot to
do with us because we were new members, and that's
how it works.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
There were lots of church activities for.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Kids, singing and playing games, and so church was fun
at that stage. Yeah, it was a good memory.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
You're doing great, Okay. Caroline's parents were New Zealanders, but
at the time of their conversion to the Olds Church,
they were living in Australia and back then there was
no temple in Australia.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
So it made sense to go back to New Zealand
where they could be married in the Temple.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
You'll remember from the first episode that for Mormons, the
temple is a huge deal. There are various rituals, ordinances
they're called, that can be done nowhere except at the Temple.
That includes baptisms, confirmations, priesthood ordinations, weekly sacraments, and the
temple weddings. So Caroline's family left Australia and relocated to
(05:17):
Temple View in Hamilton, and at thirteen Caroline went to
Church College, the secondary school in Temple View run by
the church. She kept herself to herself.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I was a painfully shy person, and I didn't mix
or interact much with other people.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
She had other things to worry about. Faith had helped
her father give up the drink, but things still weren't
exactly peaceful at home.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
My brothers and I would hear my dad whistling as
he came down the drive, and that would be our
warning to disappear. Dad's coming, and we're not safe now,
because he was a completely different person when he walked
through the door. So one minute he could be very
cheerful and happy and you could be his favorite child,
(06:04):
and the next it could suddenly switch, so you were
just constantly on the edge of your seat. His main
form of violence was to grab the nearest thing, which
was usually a glass of water, and throw it at
your head. I saw it and put my brother's heads
through the wall a couple of times.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
He was also disrespectful, even cruel, towards Caroline's mother. The
environment of fear created by her father wasn't something the
family ever discussed with anyone outside the home. In fact,
Caroline's dad was a really popular figure in the community,
so people would.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Say to me, oh, you must have been a great dad.
I would have loved of her dad like.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
That, which left Caroline pretty confused.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I would wonder why I was so unhappy and why
I wasn't grateful for what I had because other people
were wishing that they had it.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
At home, her father was the boss of everything.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Who could speak at the dinner table, where we would go,
who we hung out worth, to control.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
All the money, and he made no apology for that.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
The reasoning that he gave for his control was that
he was the priesthood leader, which is church teachings at
the father is the leader of the home. He knows
what's best for the family, and that's his role and
it mustn't be questioned.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
We'll come back to Caroline in a moment, but I
just want to explain what she means by priesthood leader,
because it's important. Caroline's father was well respected in the community,
but having a priesthood position in itself that was nothing special.
Because in the LDS Church almost anyone can become what's
known as a priesthood holder. Well by anyone, I mean
(07:58):
any man, of course, scratch that, any boy, because at
the age of twelve, every Mormon lad is eligible to
become a priesthood holder. Keep your nose clean spiritually speaking,
and you'll rattle through the ranks simply by getting older.
You're a deacon at twelve, a teacher at fourteen, a
priest at sixteen. Then as an adult, you graduate to
(08:20):
the second tier of priesthood positions. At eighteen, you're an elder,
and after elder there's a bunch more ranks and positions
to aspire to high priest, bishop and state president. Further
up the ladder, you can be a seventy an apostle,
and finally top dog, the president of the church, who
(08:40):
is considered a prophet. He's like the Mormon equivalent of
the pope, but relative to those further down the hierarchy
from you, you are a priesthood leader. And the hierarchy
also applies in the domestic realm. If you're a married woman,
your priesthood leader is your husband. For a girl or
any unmarried woman, it's your dad. For a teenage boy,
(09:04):
it's also your dad. And because only men have status
in this hierarchy, there can be some interesting outcomes. I
spoke to a guy called Mike Camick about growing up
in a Mormon congregation in christ Church in the nineteen nineties,
and he has a good example of how this can
play out.
Speaker 6 (09:22):
They would say stuff to you like, oh, you got
the priesthood. You know, if no men showed up a
church today and it was just us, woman, you would
be in charge.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And how old was Mike when he could be in charge? Thirteen?
Speaker 6 (09:37):
Right, And they'd say that to me in a room
of thirty forty fifty sixty year old woman with jobs
and professional careers and experience that my role as a man,
as a priesthood holder, which is gender specific, my position
as a thirteen year old man, puts me in a
position of superiority, in a position of leadership over at
(09:59):
above e any woman in the community.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Being a priesthood holder means you're considered a good, upstanding
man in the church and have the authority to act
for God.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
If you are a priesthood man, the assumption is that
Jesus is working through you.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
That's doctor Gina Colvin, the church member turned critic we
heard from briefly in the first episode. In short, if
you disagree with Dad, you are defying the priesthood authority,
which in some homes meant you might as well be
disagreeing with God. So back to Caroline, as she entered
(10:36):
her teens, it just seemed like things didn't add up
at home. Her father was a violent, cruel tyrant, but
according to church teachings, he was the boss. Yet at
the same time, she was hearing other church teachings which
insisted women were equal partners in marriage. Caroline didn't see
how that could work. How could women be subservient to
(10:58):
their priesthood leader husband and equal at the same time.
She took this question and others to her local church leaders.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
What I expected was that my leaders would answer the
questions and then it would be cleared up for me. Instead,
they found my questions very unsettling.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
And they visited her parents to talk to them about
their daughter who asks awkward questions. The message Caroline was
getting was that the problem lay not with the church
teachings or her father's controlling behavior, but with her.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Because I'm living in this community where everybody is accepting
and believing and fully on board with everything that's being taught,
and I'm having major difficulties with it. So I am
internally going what's wrong with me? Why is this a
struggle for me? Why do I not want to be.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
A mother, because that was part of the problem. The
path that was being laid out for Caroline didn't seem
very appealing.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
I wanted to have a career, I wanted to have
a job, and I wanted to be educated.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
To be clear, the LDS Church is definitely supportive of girls' education.
Working hard and applying yourself at school, regardless of gender,
is central to their ethos, but Caroline says the messaging
she received emphasized that for girls it was somewhat secondary.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
We're taught from a very young age that our purpose
and our role in life is to be a mother
and to raise children, and that's our first and highest priority.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Caroline set her sights on higher education. She loved art
and literature and was offered a scholarship to Brigham Young
University in Hawaii, named after the Mormon leader who succeeded
Joseph Smith in the eighteen forties. But before she could
take up that offer, something happened.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
There was an incident at home where my father punched me,
and I turned around and punched him.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Back, so he kicked her out.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I had a couple of hours to pack, and I
was on the street with no clue at all how
to take care of myself and terrified.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Caroline briefly stayed with acquaintances in Temple View, but then
her aunt in Australia invited her to live with her.
Eighteen months later, her father had cooled down and she
came back, but byu Hawaii a degree, that opportunity had passed.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
All my plans to study kind of went out the window.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Caroline, now twenty one, is reunited with her family back
at the Temple, but she still has those frustratingly familiar
doubts about the church, and this time round, she wants
to figure it out.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
I was reading a lot of scripture. I was doing
a lot of study to try and figure out whether
I was really going to stay in this or not.
Those questions I had kit private, I wasn't sharing them.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
So she was startled when in church one day a
young man approached her and asked, are.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
You having questions about the church? And I thought the
Holy Ghost had led him to me to answer my questions,
because how could he have known? And I said yes,
And he set himself up as a teacher of me,
and he started teaching me and instructing me. And I
took that as an answer to my prayers that yes,
(14:16):
I am supposed to stay in the church, and God
has sent me somebody who can answer my questions.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Caroline was blown away by this guy's encyclopedic knowledge of
Mormon theology.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
A huge scriptural knowledge, and ability to recall facts and
information and quotes from leaders. That was just extraordinary. And
I received a lot of instruction from him.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
But this was not your typical Bible study group. This
guy demanded a lot of Caroline.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
I was memorizing huge quantities of scripture as per his instructions.
He was keeping me up late at night with scripture study,
you know, waking me up in the earliest hours of
the morning to continue with the scripture study, getting me
to fast and pray. And it was intense, it was
full on. I was very distressed at the intensity of it.
(15:14):
I would ask him to stop, but he would just
sho up again the next day. And I was too
well trained to be polite and to be obedient to men,
and so I didn't assert myself any more than that.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Weeks passed in a blur. Caroline was short of sleep,
she was hungry. She was reading the same parts of
scripture again and again, attempting to humble herself in the
service of God. Then three months after they had first met,
this man had a new command for Caroline.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I want you to go to the temple. I want
you to fast for this period of time, and I
want you to pray about whether or not we should
be married. And I'm like, what because we weren't dating
and it wasn't romance. It was scripture instructure. But I thought, okay,
I need to be humble. You know, this isn't what
I want, but I need to do what God wants,
(16:10):
you know, lose myself in the service of God. All
this stuff that my head was being filled with. So
I went to the temple, I followed those instructions. I
prayed about it. I went back and met with this
young man. I didn't tell him what the answer was.
(16:33):
And I can't really explain this, but I felt this
wave of spiritual energy and he said to me, did
you feel that? And I said yes, And he said
that was the Holy Ghost telling you that you are
commanded to marry me, which I believed. I didn't like it.
(16:57):
I wasn't happy about it. He knew that I didn't
love he knew that I was just marrying her out
of commanment to God. So that was the end of
any leaving the church or getting a career or studying.
I started on down the road of marriage and children.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
It's been just three months since Caroline was first approached
by this guy, and this conversation about marriage seems to
have been done and dusted in a matter of days.
But in the Mormon community, that kind of speed is
not unusual. The courtships of people in their early twenties
sometimes last just a few weeks. After all, why would
(17:45):
you wait? There are loads of incentives to tie the knock.
Marrying in the temple meant a couple were sealed so
that the whole family could end up together for eternity
in the afterlife, and it's a vital step in your
faith journey. Only those who are married in the temple
can reach what's called the highest degree of glory in heaven.
(18:07):
As Gina explains.
Speaker 5 (18:08):
That's the only way that you realize your divine potential
is to be sealed.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
It's just what you do, and it sort of means
the rest of your life is laid out for you
and your future partner.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
If I marry a returned missionary, who's a worthy priest
or a holder. It would be white picket fencers for
the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Married men get the white picket fences too, but for them,
getting married also opens up doors to leadership positions within
the church. Gayleen, the woman who learned about chastity with
the help of a white cake and a handful of dirt,
remembers there was a saying you'd hear in the church.
Speaker 7 (18:41):
That any boy that was twenty eight years old and
still single as a menace to society. That is a
quote from the prophet.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
The line is often attributed to Brigham Young, and depending
which Mormon website you're reading, he actually said over the
age of twenty one or twenty five ory and in
fact it may not have even been Brigham Young who
said it. Apocryphal or not, this line still does its work,
adding to the pressure to find your mate as quickly
as possible, but it's not always easy finding the perfect
(19:14):
match right.
Speaker 7 (19:15):
The other idea that encouraged you to get married was
that any two people living the Gospel could have a
happy marriage, so you didn't have to be particularly careful
with your choys.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
And even if you were getting the jitters about rushing
into a marriage. Many Mormons believed that the Holy Ghost
would guide them. I heard several stories where divine inspiration
was central to a courtship, like when Gina's husband proposed
to her.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
You know, I really feel the spirit telling you that
we're supposed to be togither and you're my angel, blah
blah blah blahlah blah, and am I hit I'm going, Oh,
get off the grass boy. And I said to him
a lot, you're just infatuated. You'll get over it. Everybody does.
But there was still the element of maybe he's right.
Maybe as talking to God.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Whatever was going on, Gina and her husband didn't muck around.
He got home from his mission in June.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
We got together in August, we were married in September.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
And of course, when it comes to the urgency behind
some marriages, we can't ignore the elephant in the room,
the rule of chastity.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
Mormon's are pretty horny, you know, and you can't have six.
It's like it's just good at damn. I mean, no
horny than everybody else. But I think the untouchability of
it sort of escalates, you know, the fervors.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
So Caroline wasn't an outlier, really, Plenty of Mormon women
were marrying young, marrying fast, feeling some doubts, but trusting
in divine revelation, trusting in the Church's traditions about the
value and the nature of a marriage. Sure, she didn't
actually like her husband to be at all. He reminded
(20:56):
her of her father, but she believed him when he
said the Holy Ghost had instructed them to be wed,
so they got on with it. Before she could be
married in the temple, though, Caroline had one other important
thing to do, the endowment. The endowment is one of
the most significant things you do as a Mormon. It's
(21:20):
a ceremony reserve for temple worthy adults that takes two
or three hours all up. The actual rituals used to
be pretty secret. That's no longer true in the Internet age.
But when Caroline turned up for the endowment, she didn't
have a clue what to expect, and she found it
totally weird.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
The men all go off to one side of the
temple which is just for the men, and the women
go off to one side which is just for the women.
You are to remove all your clothing and you put
on a gown that covers you, but it's open at
the sides.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
You then pass through a series of sections divided by curtains,
and in each section a church worker male for the men,
female for the women, recites some scripture and performs a
particular ritual, washing the head with water, dotting Holy O
Eil on various points of the body, the sternum, the hip,
the lower back. He or she also provides special white
(22:14):
full body undergarments marked with some sacred symbols, which as
a Mormon, you're supposed to wear for the rest of
your adult life.
Speaker 8 (22:23):
You were informed that it will be a shield and
a protection to you inasmuch as you do not defile it.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
After the washing and anointing and dressing, you watch a video.
As I said, endowment isn't so secret now it's on
the internet. This audio is from a hidden recording someone's
posted on YouTube.
Speaker 8 (22:41):
Adam, here's a woman whom we have formed and whom
we give under you to be a companion and help
me for you. What will you call her?
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Eve?
Speaker 8 (22:51):
We will place you in the garden, and will there
command you to multiply and replenish the earth.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
That video Caroline watched, which shows in all almost all
the Mormon temples in the world depicts, as you just heard,
the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, then explains
the commitments you need to make to live a good
Mormon life.
Speaker 8 (23:11):
To sacrifice all that we possess, even our own lives,
if necessary, in sustaining and defending the Kingdom of God.
Each of you bow your head and say yes, yes,
that will do.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
One commitment Caroline especially remembers was called the Law of
Obedience and sacrifice.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Will you make covenance and promises to obey your husband
and follow him and be obedient and be submissive.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Endowment was meant to prepare Caroline for life as a
Mormon and to make her ready for marriage, but the
ceremony left her feeling quite uncertain about both.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
I really remember thinking this is really really weird. The
rituals that are waving your hands, the taking clothes on
and off, it just went up another level of weird.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
After the ceremony, I sat on the grass on the
top of the hill at the temple and thought, what
do I belong to?
Speaker 3 (24:13):
What is this organization I'm involved in? Is this what
I believe? Is this? Is this for real?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Aside from these spiritual doubts. She was also still having
doubts about her husband to be, so she did what
you're meant to do if you have a problem. She
asked to see her ward bishop.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
The bishop quite a few times met with me and said,
you need to talk to your mother. You need to
talk to your mother. And I said, what do you mean?
What are you talking about? What about? So I'd have
some half hearted conversations with my mother. I had no
idea what it was I was supposed to be asking
her or talking about. She had no idea either. I
think she she shared some recipes with me, like we
(25:02):
were just completely clueless what their construction meant. It was
too vague.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Much later Caroline would figure out what the bishop had
been trying to convey with his cryptic and frankly useless
marital advice. It turned out the bishops suspected even then
that her husband to be really was a menace to society.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
He had a reputation, and he'd practiced with a few
women before he got.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
To me that intense, controlling connection he'd made with Caroline.
He'd done it before to other women, but they'd managed
to push back. One young woman had even taken out
a protection order against this guy.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
I was easy pray.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Caroline doesn't know if her bishop was aware of that
protection order specifically, but still, when she talked to him
many years later, he.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Said, oh, I knew he was trouble. Who never told me.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Caroline and her suitor got married, and with astonishing speed,
she found herself inside a claustrophobic nightmare. Her new husband
was a passionate scholar of scripture, but he wasn't so
useful as a breadwinner. He didn't seem to hang on
to jobs for long, and every few months he'd received
divine inspiration telling him they needed to move house, move town,
(26:22):
and eventually move country.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
We were constantly on the move. We were sometimes homeless.
We were living in an absolute abject poverty.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Sometimes there was no furniture and they'd be sleeping on
the floor.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
We often didn't have enough food.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Caroline had fallen pregnant soon after the marriage, and over
the following three years she had two children, but also
two miscarriages.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
I was almost always in a state of pregnancy without
medical care, or almost medical care.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Caroline believes the constant moves were partly designed to separate
her from her support networks.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
I was completely segregated from all of my relatives, from family,
from any friends that I may have had. All of
those relationships were damaged or destroyed or ended under his instruction.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
When letters arrived from friends and family for Caroline, he
would open them. Some he would read to her. Others
he'd destroy, saying they'd only upset her. A year and
a half into the marriage, without any notice, men came
to the house in Hamilton and took all their possessions,
including a treasured quilt from her mother. Caroline's husband announced
(27:46):
that he'd given everything away to a charity shop and
they were shortly to be flying to Sydney. They arrived
with no money and nowhere to live. Caroline was able
to collect a benefit because of her upbringing, but it
didn't stretch far, and in any case, her husband controlled
all the money, and the constant moving continued. Sometimes they
(28:10):
do a runner without paying the landlord. Often Caroline had
little more than the clothes on her back. The suitcase
that they took from new home to new home was
instead filled with her husband's books to sate his obsessive
interest in psychology. Yet the material deprivation wasn't even the
(28:33):
worst of it.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
He was intensely controlling, to a level beyond my father,
beyond anything that I even knew was possible to exist.
I was never out of his sight for a moment.
He's always accompanied me.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
On the very rare occasions they were apart, like for
gender specific church groups.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
I had to relate to him verbatim ire conversation that
I'd had that he was not therefore, and it got
to a point where I couldn't recall accurately or sufficiently
enough those conversations. So I would stop talking to people
because it was too difficult to remember everything, and I
(29:17):
would be grilled for hours afterwards. We caught a taxi.
Once I said thank you to the taxi driver, I
was in trouble for hours because I did not have
his permission to say thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
There were so many different ways Caroline could anger her.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Husband, disobedience, having an independent thought, questioning him, even if
it was done humbly or respectfully. He mustn't be questioned.
He's suppressed a leader, So when I disobeyed him, there
were punishments.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Just a quick content warning here for sexual assault Skip
forward about a minute.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
If you he had this idea that if I was
not submissive, A way to make me submissive would be
to rape me. He felt that the less I wanted
to sleep with him, the more important it was that
he did so that I would learn to submit and obey,
(30:20):
and that it would bring us closer together, and he
would use various scriptures to back up that behavior. The
very first time he attacked me, I went and was
(30:41):
completely detached and didn't really feel anything. Most of the
time that I was there. There are big gaps of
memory that had just gone.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Carolina had just given birth to their second child when
her husband got some good news. An old Hamilton's school friend,
now living in Western Australia, offered him a job. That
old friend, another man in his mid twenties, was John Campbell,
who he heard from very briefly in the previous episode.
John was a return missionary, a married man, a father,
(31:20):
and he was in Western Australia to earn a bit
of money.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
Quite a significant mining and district going on over there,
lots of jobs, lots of good paying jobs.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
John had quickly connected with the local LDS church and
to his surprise.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
I became the branch president.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
So a branch is a congregation that's too small to
be a ward. So a branch president is like a
scaled down bishop for a scaled down congregation. So when
Caroline's family arrived, John pulled them into local church life
as well, and he was struck by how this old
school friend had become an absolute master of Mormon theology.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
He knew his scriptures could speak extremely well on the subject,
on any subject, no notice whatsoever, so he was almost
the prototype Mormon.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
But once John met Caroline, he noticed someone not doing
so well.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
It was something off about her.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Immediately John asked his friend what was going on with
his wife, but he brushed it off as postnatal depression.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Sounded reasonable. You could look at that and say, hey, okay,
I can see that's what you're suffering from. Post antal depression.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
John arranged for families to drop off a few meals
at Caroline's door.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
This is a pretty standard thing that Mormons do as
someone feeling a bit offu whatnot, meals can be lined
up at their door and with one phone call.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
But he was still watchful. John asked his sister, who
was head of the church women's group, the Relief Society,
to check in on Caroline, and he dropped in on
the couple himself. During one of those visits, John got
the strong impression that Caroline wanted to say something to him,
but was actually too scared to say it.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
And they just sent alarm bells ringing.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Next move was he now realizes a bad one.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
Being young and dumb stupid. Later on I spoke to
him about that.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
John suggested to Caroline's husband that he should pay for
her to do some art classes to cheer her up.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
He says, no, money's not going to fix this. Got
to fix her ding ding, another warning sign.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
John's instincts were absolutely right. Though Caroline was profoundly unhappy
throughout this time in Western Australia. Her husband's actions towards
her were as extreme as ever. He was controlling her sleeping,
She wasn't allowed to touch the food on the plate
in front of her until he'd given permission. She wasn't
(33:44):
allowed out of the house alone. This was when she
got the two hour lecture for saying thank you to
a taxi driver. One mind blowing detail I learned was
that Caroline's husband developed a series of signals little winks
and nods and clicks, and he'd use them to give
her permission to do certain things when they were in company,
such as talk or eat or move. And all this time,
(34:09):
when she got things wrong, rape was a routine punishment.
Food and money were still scarce. Sometimes she was weak
with hunger, but she noticed her husband seemed to be
full of energy. At the time, she put it down
to his extraordinary spiritual strength, but later realized he had
(34:29):
simply been eating when he went out. So yeah, while
John was thinking an art class might cheer her up,
Caroline was on the brink.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
I had gotten to the end of my strength. I
was so convinced that it was because of my rebellious,
disobedient nature that I was always struggling to control these
thoughts I had where I would question or doubt because
I wasn't winning that battle with those thoughts. I decided
(35:03):
that it was my fault that my kids were suffering,
and the only honorable way out of that that seemed
logical to me at the time was to end my life,
because then my husband would be free to marry somebody righteous,
and then the children wouldn't suffer anymore. They'd have food,
(35:23):
and they'd have what they needed, and they wouldn't be
constantly living in this desperate state of survival, so I
attempted suicide a couple of times.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
It was during this period of hopelessness and desperation that
Caroline remembers seeing a TV documentary about women during the
Second World War.
Speaker 8 (35:46):
A thousand acres of being replanted with various treats, and
the girls can handle a spade with the best hats off.
Speaker 6 (35:51):
Then lads to the girls and the British backwards.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
It was black and white, and I saw these women
with shorts on, short shorts and blouses, and they were
driving trucks and tractors and farm machinery. And I thought,
these women have more independence and freedom than I have.
That impacted me so much. It just sort of struck me,
(36:15):
and I thought, what you know, that was so long ago,
and I started to feel angry at my husband. I thought, right,
I'm going to go talk to the branch president, which
was John Campbell. It was very, very unusual for me
to be let out of my husband's site.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
But she made it to the church and sat in
John's office.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
He said, why have you come? And I said, well,
I came to complain about my husband. But now I
think maybe thinking better of it, that maybe I shouldn't be.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Doing that, but John said, wait no, He and the
other local leaders suspected she was being abused by her husband.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
That just blew me away. I can't explain to you
the impact of that on me. It was enormous and
I just knew what he said was true, and it
was a shock and I'm like, wow, what a relief.
I now don't have to stay in this situation, like
the possibilities just who was amazing, And he said, whatever
(37:24):
you decide to do, we will support you.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Caroline didn't leave immediately, but when the opportunity arose a
couple of days later, her husband had left the house
for longer than usual, she rang John's sister and asked
her to take her and the children to a woman's refuge.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
It gave me the opportunity to pack, and that it
was terrifying because at any moment he could have walked
back in the door. So I was moving very quickly.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
She made it to the refuge just a few streets away,
and for the first time in three years, she was free,
free to make her own decision big and small.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I remember going to the supermarket on my own and
choosing for myself what I was going to buy to
eat At that point, it was the happiest day of
my life. Yeah, funny to say now, yeah, freedom, freedom
from prison.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
John reconnected Caroline with her parents and organized a flight
for her and the children to get home to New Zealand.
He booked the tickets using a fake name so her
husband couldn't track her down. John remembers being both impressed
that the airline had this service in place and saddened
that they needed it. They'd done it, They'd got Caroline
(38:45):
and her children out of a terrifying and dangerous situation.
From what I can tell, John is a pretty humble guy.
In his words, he's just some big clown. But his
interventions helped save Caroline. And not that he went round bragging,
(39:07):
but when people found out, he could expect a big
pat on the back right well. Once word got around
about what John had done, he did get a call
from the Perth Suits his term for the Western Australia
Senior Church Leaders, but they weren't calling to praise John.
(39:29):
Quite the opposite.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
What I did was just way outside of a church policy,
way outside of anything that would be acceptable to any
of the suits in the church. So I broke that
family up because I got her out of there physically
when I drove them to the woman's refuge and drove
them to the airport. And I encouraged you to get out.
And you're not supposed to do that. It is not
(39:50):
official policy, but you're certainly trained and encouraged it. There
is nothing that you weren't breaking up a family.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
While John is getting it in the neck, Caroline is
back in New Zealand and has a crucial decision to make.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
I had the choice between being on the run because
I was frightened that my first husband would come after me,
or to remain in one spot and create a support
network around me and wait for him.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Thinking it would be better for the children, She chose
to stop running and settle in Auckland. She also decided
to stay in the church.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Because I was helped by a church leader, and because
my first thousand behavior was so extreme and not I
think the norm for most Mormons. I drew the conclusion
that this was just a wicked man twisting the scriptures
to his own ends. It doesn't mean the church isn't true.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
She informed her church leaders in Auckland about what had happened.
She told them she expected that one day her ex
husband would find her, so they could be prepared for
when that day came. She was super cautious about her
own safety and the safety of her children. And then,
a year after her escape from Western Australia, just like
(41:15):
she expected, her ex husband worked out where she was.
Fortunately for her, he got the address wrong and turned
up at her parents' house day locked the doors and
told him to go away. So he tried another way
to find her.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
He got hold of the church leaders for the war
that I was in at the time and organized for
me to meet with him. I told them that I
didn't want to meet with him, and they said that
I needed to. So it was two members of the
(41:52):
bishopric and myself and my first husband in this little
off this. My first husband was just so smug.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
He was just.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Laid back and all relaxed. His whole body language was
I had the power to make this happen, and you
had to obey. And he said that he was sorry
for the mistakes that he had made. He didn't go
into what they were. Those leaders knew what those mistakes
(42:30):
were because I had informed them, but they said that
they appreciated his apology and that I needed to forgive him.
I didn't want to, and I didn't, and they kept insisting,
and I didn't feel that i'd be allowed to leave
that room until I had said that I forgave him,
so id and I said that I forgave him so
(42:53):
that the meeting could be over and so that I
could leave, And I left. I didn't have a car
at the time, so I had to walk a long way,
and I was so frightened that I was going to
be followed, but I wasn't. I think that he'd got
what he wanted, which was basically the message that he
was in control. So at that stage I went to
the police and got a protection order. A couple of
(43:15):
times he showed up and followed me, but I went
to the community police or to the police station, and
so he disappeared.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
The story Caroline told me as we sat with her
therapist at that slightly noisy community center moment for moment,
it's almost exactly the same story she told me in
our very first phone call, the time when I rang
up expecting to hear I don't know, some minor anecdote
about struggling to pay the bills because of church tithes
(43:48):
or something. But instead I heard this devastating account of
monstrous domestic violence and coercive control. And look, I've actually
left doubt some of the more harrowing details. Caroline's husband
was clearly some kind of psychopath, hyper intelligent and manipulative
(44:11):
with absolutely zero empathy, and that's on him, not the
Mormon Church. But the thing that really left me reading
was the church's response those Perth suits, scolding John, the
guy who Caroline believes literally saved her life, and Auckland
Church officials putting Caroline back in the same room as
(44:33):
her tormentor at his request, knowing the full context of
what he'd done to her to retraumatize her so carelessly
that I just couldn't compute. I wanted to understand more
about how this could have happened, so I started asking
people some different questions, less about the church's incredible wealth
(44:58):
or recruitment tactics and more about how the church responds
to people at their most vulnerable. And once I started
looking for that kind of story, the cases came flooding in.
Speaker 7 (45:10):
I really knew that it wasn't right, it was wrong.
Speaker 5 (45:13):
It had two sort of warning bells for me that
something's not quite right.
Speaker 7 (45:17):
Church has admitted sexually abusing boys over civil year.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Daughter was just two and a half when she was
sexually abused by a.
Speaker 6 (45:26):
Church elder who always done as we've moved you from
one area to another.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Heaven's Helpline was funded by New Zealand on Air and
the New Zealand Herald for endzed me and iHeartRadio. It
was researched, written and presented by me Murray Jones. My
producers were Adam Dudding who co wrote the series, and
Kirsten Johnston from Pop Sop Media, who edited and sound
designed it. Phil Brownlee is our sound engineer. Music was
(45:59):
by Thomas R and Anita Clark. Archival audio came from
TVNZED and RNZ. Ethan Sills is executive producer here at
New Zealand Herald. If you have a story you'd like
to share with me about the LDS church, or just
want to get in touch, email me securely at Murray
Reports at Proton dot M or dm me on X
(46:24):
at Murray Reports. And for more on this podcast, head
to nzedherld dot co dot nz slash Heaven's Helpline It's
time intensive doing investigations like this, so if you value
this kind of journalism, please support it by going to
your podcast platform and rating and reviewing the series.
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