October 23, 2024 • 48 mins
Murray hears tale after tale of abuse within Mormon congregations and at the centre of every story, there’s a “bishop”. Who are these men? Why are they so involved in members’ lives? And do their actions help the church keep crimes secret?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kyodo Koto hints up that this episode of Heaven's Helpline
deals with domestic abuse and child abuse. There's nothing too graphic,
but it's still pretty disturbing, so take care when listening
and see the show notes for support services.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Okay, you're on air. As it were, it was mid
twenty twenty two, and I was still reeling from Caroline's story.
Quite apart from her horrific abuse, I couldn't get over
how the leaders of the Olds Church put her in
a small room with her abusive husband and demanded that
she forgive him.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Great.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Can you hear me? Okay, hear well? Caroline's story or
one off just beyond speaker on my new phone. I
wanted to understand more about how the church responds when
its members are in crisis, so I talked to more
Mormons and ex Mormons around the country.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
You have arrived.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
It became clear that Caroline's experience with the LDS Church
was far from unique. And as I heard all these
new stories, every single one, one way or another, involved
a bishop, and the bishop rocked up.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
That bishop was obviously righteous.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
The stories I was hearing were about financial struggles.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
You went to the bishop, you see I can't pay
my powerbill.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
And relationship troubles.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
I did eventually go to my bishop about feeling like
I had married the wrong person.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
But also more accounts of horrific abuse.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
I remember going to the bishop after he had hit
me of confessions.
Speaker 6 (01:36):
If they're truly penitent, they'll go to the.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Bishop and protection of the perpetrators.
Speaker 5 (01:41):
Giving him the power to feel like he hadn't done
anything wrong.
Speaker 6 (01:45):
All we've done is we've moved him from one area
to another.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
It surprised me how central bishops were to all these stories,
from the smallest problem to the most catastrophic. Mary Jones
and you're listening to Heaven's Helpline, episode three, the Bishop's Tale.
(02:12):
In the Mormon Church, there's a huge emphasis on service.
Nearly every active adult member has a calling, and everyone
knows their place in a complex hierarchy. There's so many layers,
from state presidents to relief Society general officers to the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. But I'm going to focus
here on the responsibilities of the bishop.
Speaker 7 (02:34):
Saturday essentially as the day that you have to get
ready for the most important other way Coature Sunday, and
then on Sunday was the busiest day.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
This is Quentin Howard, But.
Speaker 7 (02:44):
Try to leave Homer on five for three in the morning.
I've got meetings, running church services, going to classes, holding
interviews all day long.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
For two years in the early twenty tens, Quentin was
bishop of the Wellington Ward of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter day Saints.
Speaker 7 (03:04):
So from my early twenties I was in church leadership.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I first talked to Quentin when I was investigating the
finances of the Olds Church. But as I started researching
this podcast, I realized I really needed to talk to
Quentin again and ask him some more targeted questions about
what it meant to be a Mormon bishop, the motivation,
the challenges, and some of the heavy responsibilities.
Speaker 7 (03:29):
So these people would come to my office and we'll
talk about whether or not they're having success out of
marriage and whether or not they're in good space of
their relationships.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
So the basic unit of the Mormon congregation is called
a ward. In New Zealand, they average around one hundred
and fifty to two hundred active members. Each ward has
its own bishop. This man, always a man, remember, has
a couple of other chaps to help him out called
first counselor and second counselor, and the three of them
together are known as the ward bishopric. And being a
(04:00):
bishop is a big job. In Quentin's case, essentially it
was another forty hours a week, unpaid, on top of
his regular full time job. There was admin like dropping
tides off at the bank. There were youth activities to
run several nights a week.
Speaker 7 (04:17):
We try to keep them entertained in off the streets.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
There were lots of leadership meetings. There were events to
organize and run. Sometimes Quentin was part of a disciplinary council.
Speaker 7 (04:27):
If you do something really serious, you can go to
what's called a disciplinary council or sometimes as a church court,
but essentially about fifteen men in a room and you
have to confuse what you've done and they decide how
you'll be treated.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And perhaps the biggest time suck. As a bishop, Quentin
was expected to have direct one on one time with
just about all of the two hundred people in his ward.
As a Mormon, you're only allowed to go to the
temple if you've got something called a temple recommend which
is basically a small id document with a barcode to
say you're allowed in, but to receive your temple recommend
(05:02):
you have to have an annual interview with your bishop
where he assesses whether you're worthy. It's literally called a
worthiness interview, and they consume a lot of a bishop's time.
Speaker 7 (05:14):
I would be in my office at the church. It's
just a room with a desk in it, and it's
a couple of cheers and some books and scriptures and
things that come in. The door would be closed, and
it was best sally an opportunity to ask them questions
about how they were living their life and whether they
are worthy to go to the temple, whether they're worthy
to be baptized.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
It was a way of checking in with your congregation.
But there are also specific questions to be asked. Do
you believe in God? Are you following the word of wisdom?
Remember that's the rules around avoiding drinking and smoking and
tea and coffee and Coca cola. Break the word of
wisdom and you're not meant to be in the temple.
Speaker 7 (05:55):
Sometimes people come to me and say, look, I have
to confess it. You know, I work life long hours
and when I get up for my shift and wanting
to have a cup of coffee at work, so I'd
count them and help them find ways to change those behaviors.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Plus, you couldn't go to the temple if you were
straying sexually. This included cheating on your spouse, having impure thoughts,
watching pornography, or masturbating. Also, Quentin would be advising people
who confess to same sex attractions too well basically pull
themselves together.
Speaker 7 (06:27):
I was trying to help them find ways of suppressing
who they were attracted to, and essentially I was saying
to them, yes, I know that you feel deep love
for that person, be not allowed to feel dead, so
don't act on it.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
This is something he deeply regrets now.
Speaker 7 (06:42):
Two of those men I have reached out to you
since and apologized.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Conversations about sexuality had to happen, even with the younger
members of the ward.
Speaker 7 (06:52):
It was essential for me to ask them about the
law of chestity, and on some occasions that meant I
was asking them specific questions about whether they had sexu
relations with others, and also about whether they were masturbating.
And that on affection is so gross. You know, I'm
an old man talking to these young teens in the
(07:12):
privacy of my office. And I was trying to be
as kind and given the space to express how they
wanted to. But even then, it's still horrible to think
that there was what I did, and it's just part
of the expectations of a bishop.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Even to today, these things trouble him now, but back then,
Quentin just got on with his bishop duties, which for
better or for worse, included getting right inside the lives
of the people in his ward.
Speaker 8 (07:44):
A bishop is a very hands on calling in the church.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Ganesh Charrion was also a bishop in the Wellington Ward
for six years. He's still in the church now. Like Quentin,
he found the job a huge commitment of his time
and energy.
Speaker 8 (07:59):
If there was a christ I needed to front up
to that crisis, like somebody died, I'd go visit. Or
if I couldn't visit, I'd give a phone call.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Ganesh says being with people in their times of need
was a duty but also a privilege.
Speaker 8 (08:14):
I felt very fortunate to be in that kind of
a role. That's a very special one, a very sacred
one I think to change me and help me be
very empathetic. But there are things that I feel like
I did badly and.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Like Quentin Ganesh found the long hours and the heavy
responsibilities tough going.
Speaker 8 (08:33):
If you're an empathetic person, burnout as a really big
problem because the buckstops with you.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
So about a year into Ganesh's time as a bishop.
Speaker 8 (08:43):
I started to get panic attacks. You know, the phone
would ring or I'd get a text, and literally heartwood race.
It was the first time I'd ever had panic attacks
the way you've.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Described it, did you see your role at the time
as a sort of social worker.
Speaker 8 (08:58):
I mean, I haven't trained and social working, so I
didn't feel like I should take that role. But where
I thought I could be really useful was being a
listening ear, validating people's trauma or hurt.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
It's such an important job that there must be some
really rigorous criteria for picking a bishop, right, Not exactly,
Ganesh explains.
Speaker 8 (09:22):
You have to be married, You've probably got children, You've
probably had a long standing in the church, in church leadership.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Which means that when it comes to the bishop who
ends up running your ward, the bishop who's keeping an
eye on your temple worthiness, the bishop who's right up
in your face asking about your tithes and your sex
life and your Coca Cola consumption. Well, you never know
exactly which type of bishop you're going to get.
Speaker 8 (09:50):
Some bishops might be very prescriptive and very authoritarian. Some
might be extremely kind and pastoral and far so Gosh,
it's a mixed bag.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Even though I'm sure he was on the kind and
pastoral end of the bishop spectrum, Sometimes Ganesh felt seriously
out of his depth.
Speaker 8 (10:13):
If somebody came and said that the spouse had abused them,
that was very difficult. Yeah, those were beyond my experience
and depth. You know, now, years later, I still think
about Gosh, I was thirty something, and sometimes when somebody
twenty years older than used talking about really hard stuff
like marital rape. I mean, it's beyond your comprehension, let
(10:38):
alone your ability to kind of address. So yeah, tough.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Quentin put it like this. As a bishop, he had an.
Speaker 7 (10:46):
Awful lot of authority, power, responsibility.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
But despite that responsibility, he says, there.
Speaker 7 (10:53):
Was an awful lack of instruction and training, almost zero training.
Right in, I'm a lay clergy member. I don't get
paid for my time. I'm not a professional in the
sense I'm a transport planner at work. Why am I
trying to counsel people on the relationships and spousal abuse
and why is it even part of my world? But
it's the reality for Mormon bishops across the country.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Actually, just after saying he'd been offered almost zero training
around relationship counseling, Quentin clarified he did get instruction on
one specific point.
Speaker 7 (11:26):
We needed to keep couples together. You literally can't go
to the Sister Kingdom unless you're seeored or married, and
so to separate a couple max in vulnerable to not
having that opportunity, So we try and find ways to
get together.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Despite the fact that the criteria for becoming a bishop
is basically being a bloke with kids who put his
hand up over the years, and despite the fact that
they're not trained for the de facto social work and
counseling you end up doing. Eldest members are told their
bishops have one advantage over your average social worker or counselor.
Basically it's this the Holy Spirit will see them right.
Speaker 7 (12:08):
The understanding is that because you're working for God, you'll
rely on the Spirit and it will teach you what
you do and give you guidance. So whenever there was
a void, I'd rely on the Holy Ghost.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Quentin says, the Holy Ghost would let himself be known
by way of feelings.
Speaker 7 (12:28):
So good positive feelings or negative feelings indicative of the
Holy Ghost working in you. So for me, when I
was in that space and I didn't know what to do,
I'd rely on as feelings.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
This idea that a priesthood holders feelings are evidence of
the guidance of the Holy Spirit is a powerful brew.
John Campbell, who we met in the previous episode, the
guy who helped Caroline escape her abusive marriage. John says
there's one important manifestation of this divine guidance.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Bishops and branch presents are supposed to have this thing
called the power of discernment. You're supposed to be endowed
with this magical power to be able to tell when
someone's telling the truth and when they're not.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
That's a handy skill, especially, say, if you're a bishop
and someone in your ward has been accused of doing
something terrible and you've hauled them into your office to
try to figure out the truth of the matter.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
So when you're speaking to these people that have committed
some pretty serious stuff and they want to get back
into the church, you're supposed to be able to tell.
You can't let you tell you know you think you do,
because you you know you might feel something or think
you've felt something. It could be nothing more than you
know the temperature. Well, you've taken your jacket off, so
(13:44):
you feel a little bit light, and there's that power
of discernment acting on me.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
So I was learning that Mormon bishops men who'd been
given huge responsibility for the people in their ward, but
who'd received very little training in handling the serious issues
that would come their way, aside from an imperative to
keep marriages together and to trust in their divine powers
of discernment. And starting with that first interview with Caroline,
(14:20):
it was becoming obvious to me that some of the
issues coming up in LDS communities were really, really serious.
I've just got off the phone with a lady who
had horrible story to tell her daughter was sexually abused
by a man. Some people, understandably didn't want to speak
(14:45):
on the record, and I didn't always record the conversation,
but i'd usually take a quick voice memo once it
was done. Yeah, it's nearly ten o'clock now on Monday evening,
and I've just spent the best of an hour with
her on the phone. This one was after an off
the record chat with a current church member in Hamilton. Okay,
(15:05):
I've just left the Sources house and wow, look at
the time, it's been six straight hours that we've been talking.
The stories I was hearing were complicated and spanned decades,
sometimes generations, and frankly sometimes they were pretty distressing to hear.
(15:26):
It's unbelievable what she personally has been through, what members
of her family have been through. The stories I was
hearing were about domestic abuse and coercion, violence and the
sexual abuse of children, just so so much pain and
but resilience. As we know, these things happen in many communities,
(15:50):
in many families, in many institutions. But the particular thread
I was following, the claim I kept hearing repeated was
that when these terrible things were reported to the bishop,
which is what you're repeatedly told to do as a
member of the Mormon Church, the process seemed to be
mishandled again and again. When she was helping women who
(16:14):
were being abused, silently abused by their husbands, those coming
from Temple View were saying that their bishop had told
them to not seek protection orders not to go to court.
Some of these people I found because, like Caroline, they'd
commented online. I also went back to contacts from my
earlier money articles, and sure enough they also knew of
(16:37):
examples of mishandled abuse complaints. And from there it seemed
every new person I talked to would lead me to
even more cases. Often someone would just have a couple
of examples when I first asked them, but then a
week later they'd get back in touch saying, oh my god,
I've just remembered two or three others. The net just
(16:58):
kept getting why and wider. I also look through past
media reports.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
A former Mormon Church elder who sexually abused girls as
young as six has been sent to prison for twenty years.
Speaker 9 (17:13):
A prominent Kaitier businessman and elder of the Mormon Church
has admitted sexually abusing boys over several years.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
I didn't find a lot of cases involving Mormon offenders
that had gone all the way through the courts and
been spotted by reporters. But in the Kaitia case referenced
in that second clip, the scenario closely fitted the stories
I was hearing. It was clear that in this case,
church officials had missed opportunities to stop the abuser within
their ward.
Speaker 9 (17:40):
Mormon says she warned church leaders about Taylor and twenty
ten about his suspicious behavior.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
We'll hear more about that in a later episode. In
another case that made headlines, a Southland lawyer and church member,
Raphael Cacciopoli.
Speaker 10 (17:55):
Was sentenced by Judge Robert Wolf to five years jail
after earlier admitting thirteen charges, including sexual violation, performing indecent
acts on two boys aged ten and twelve, in decent
assault performing an indecent act on a dog.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Again with Catiopoly, there had been opportunities to stop his
offending earlier. Some church officials had known about his offending
seven years before the complaint that put him in jail.
The trial judge, in his summary said that the church
is in effectiveness kept the door open for continued offending.
Speaker 11 (18:29):
I'm reluctant to criticizing such institution, but in the present case,
I'd like to encourage churches in these circumstances to not
attempt to deal with things in house. They're ill equipped
to do so, and there are bitter and wiser courses
to follow.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
So yeah, starting with that first phone call with Caroline
two years ago. It really felt I was inundated with
these cases where someone within the LDS community did something
awful and a bishop was informed, but then one way
or another, the problem was not dealt with. There are
(19:03):
simply too many of these stories to share them all
in this series. All the same, I want to dive
in deeper to a few of them because I think
together they start to paint a picture. That's after the break.
Just a quick heads up. It's in this part of
the episode that inevitably there is some discussion of child
(19:27):
sexual abuse and of sexual assault. The first story I
want you to hear is from a woman who we
are going to call Jade. For legal and privacy reasons,
we're not using Jade's real name. She also didn't want
her voice to be recognized by anyone she knew, so
(19:50):
the voice you hear is an actor revoicing her words.
Jade had what she'd consider a pretty ordinary and pretty
positive childhood.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
I really enjoyed being a Mormon as a child. Everything
seemed good, Everything seemed right, you know, going to church
on Sundays seemed right. Getting baptized at eight was an
exciting thing to do.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Jade enjoyed school in her teenage years. She has a
lot of similar stories to the ones we heard in
the first episode, fun youth activities, and lots of basketball.
After school, she considered taking up a scholarship in Utah
for university, but decided against it. And then she got
married to an RM.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
Of course, this guy had been on a mission. He'd
done everything according to the church that was right. So
I kind of thought, oh, well, I guess I should
marry him, and so we did. We got married quite quickly.
I was twenty. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Child number one arrived soon after. Jade felt she was
on a good path. She'd married an RM in the temple.
Baby was healthy and happy, and Jade had Faro around
supporting her.
Speaker 5 (21:05):
My younger sister spent a lot of time with us
because she really loved being an auntie and being around
a little baby, so she'd sleep the night at our
house a lot.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
But Jade's husband was becoming distant from her and the church.
He wasn't going to the temple, wasn't praying, and this
became a source of frustration for Jade because he was
meant to be the spiritual leader in the home.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
And those were sort of warning bells for me that
something's not quite right.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
A couple of years into the marriage, Jade's husband became
physically abusive towards her.
Speaker 5 (21:44):
I remember going to the bishop after he had hit me,
because that's what you do, you report to the bishop
when things aren't going right.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
But nothing much came of it.
Speaker 5 (21:58):
My bishop told me that the shoot in our marriage
isn't the violence. He said, there's something else going on,
but he didn't know what it was.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Turns out the bishop's instinct, or maybe his power of discernment,
was right. About six years into the marriage, just after
the birth of her second baby, Jade learnt through a
complicated chain of secrets shared and spilled that for that
entire time.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
He had been abusing my sister.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
This was Jade's much younger sister, the one who loved
being an auntie and who'd been just eight years old
when Jade and her husband had married.
Speaker 5 (22:41):
From the time we got married up until I found
out he'd been sort of sneaking around and doing things to.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Her, Jade made arrangements to move out of the house
with her children, but also she and her husband made
an emergency appointment with that bishop.
Speaker 5 (23:01):
That night, I called our bishop and we had a
meeting with him straight away about that. What he counseled
me in the meeting was a little bit confusing for me.
He said that because we were married in the temple,
it's my responsibility to stay with my husband. He didn't
say I had to stay, but it was his council
(23:23):
because of the covenants we took out in the temple.
Along the lines, you can get over this. It's more
important to focus on sort of eternal life. But he
also told my husband that he needed to go to
the police and confess what he had done.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
That second bit of advice from the bishop sounds pretty
solid to me. But then Jade thought it would be
good to get her husband away for a bit, so
they contacted his family, who lived back in the city
where he'd grown up, and the family came to pick
him up and take him home. That the husband was
now resident in a different ward, one where his relations
(24:04):
were key members of the congregation. So the church leaders
did a bit of a handover of the whole mess,
giving the bishop in the other city.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
The responsibility of dealing with the situation.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Now, remember how Ganesh said that bishops can be a
mixed bag. Well, the hometown bishop who took over, he
offered some very different advice to Jade's husband.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
They advised him not to go to the police and
that they would look after him. I know people who
have been excommunicated for doing things like that, but I
feel because he was amongst his own, they were a
lot more lenient.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
So no police involvement. The church will look after things
in house, meaning that the husband will be punished directly
by the church. Child sexual abuse is considered serious enough
that it's had by a disciplinary council, the church court
of fifteen men that Quentin mentioned earlier. It's worth noting
(25:07):
here these church courts aren't just in house and totally
unconnected to the country's justice system. They're also really very secretive.
Here's how the church puts it in the LDS General Handbook,
May twenty twenty four.
Speaker 12 (25:22):
Edition, Bishops state, presidents and their counselors have a sacred
duty to protect all confidential information shared with them.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
All communication within interviews, counseling, confessions, and disciplinary councils are
considered confidential by the church. According to the handbook. This
is because.
Speaker 12 (25:42):
Members may not confess sins or seek guidance if what
they share will not be kept confidential.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
So what was the punishment for Jade's husband for six
years of sexual abuse of a child, starting when she
was just eight years old?
Speaker 5 (25:57):
In terms of discipline, he got three months probation for
what he'd done.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Probation means that for the allotted time, you can't participate
in a bunch of church activities, including worshiping in the temple.
To be crystal clear here, there is no doubt whatsoever
in Jade's mind that her husband was guilty of what
he'd been accused of.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
He pretty much told me everything. I think it was
a bit of a relief for him to to sort
of be found out. So he confessed everything he did
to my sister, which was really hard. And then I
had a conversation with my sister and she confirmed that
that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Jade was still strong in her faith. She trusted that
the church leadership knew the best course to take.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
But I did start to feel that the process was
very unfair. It was very one sided, a little bit
what would you call it, male dominant?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah, In any case, she kept consulting her bishop about
what to do next.
Speaker 5 (27:08):
Their council was consistent around our eternal family and working
towards going back.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
So she tried. She followed her husband to his home
city and attempted to reconcile. It was pretty grim, according
to Jade. The bishop there appeared to have given her
husband a total pass for all he'd confessed to the
bishop even promoted Jade's husband to new senior church callings.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
I look at it now from a tell Mary point
of view, and they were really pumping his manner, you know,
giving him the power to feel like he hadn't done
anything wrong.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
And when Jade challenged him about it, he became violent again.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
Probably the worst decision I made was going back.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
You might be asking, as I was, where was Jade's
younger sister in all this. Well, her suffering wasn't just ignored.
She was actively blamed for what had happened.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
She was eight years old, and his family said it
was her fault.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Jade recalls one specific conversation with a member of his family.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
She was just adamant that it was my sister's fault. Oh,
little girls like that sort of thing. This is what
they want, you know, And I'm like, she's.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Eight, there's actually a lot more to Jade's story that
we don't have space to tell, but I'm going to
jump to just one more moment because it puts the
spotlight on that internal court process that gave her husband
a three month probation for his years of sexually abusing
a young girl. After struggling to pull her fractured Marria
(29:00):
marriage back together, Jade ended up having an affair pretty
early on. She told her husband.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
I told him straight away because I felt really bad,
and he took it really hard, sort of like he
couldn't believe.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
I'd do that, having an affair. That's a clear breach
of the rules, of course. So her husband gave Jade
the standard advice for what she should do.
Speaker 5 (29:22):
He made me go and see the bishop, and I
told the bishop what it happened.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
This was actually a different bishop again. Jade and her
husband had moved town, and this bishop took Jade's misdeed
very seriously, like her husband before her. Jade was called
to a hearing of the church court. She took a
female relative in as a support person, but apart from.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Her, I was in a rome, surrounded by mean It
was really really intimidating. It was quite horrible actually, and
then you have to talk about rale sensitive things, and
then you have to explain why you do this. And
these are men that I went to high school with,
and it was really one of the worst experiences I've
(30:08):
had with the church.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Once Jade had admitted what she'd done and explained why
she'd done it, the court past judgment, like her husband,
she received a period of probation.
Speaker 5 (30:21):
Yeah, so he got three months probation and I got
six months.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
You received a worse punishment, yeah, than your husband for
abusing a child over many years.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
What do you think of a church or a system
that delivers that kind of outcome?
Speaker 5 (30:42):
At the time, I just took it. It started to
get a few thoughts moving in my head around what
is this? You know, I've spent my whole life trying
to do the right thing in the eyes of the church,
and this just doesn't line up for me. That was
the very first time most to Christ the church. I've
never done it before because I've been raised well, you
(31:06):
don't question, you just have to have faith.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
The second story I want you to hear is from
a high flying Australian lawyer, Nivill.
Speaker 6 (31:21):
Rocco is my name. I'm King's counsel here in Australia
and I've been practicing at Bath for over thirty years.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
He's an academic and.
Speaker 6 (31:32):
A judge associated professor at the Adelaide.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Law School, with degrees up to his ears.
Speaker 6 (31:37):
The master's degrees in law and PhD as will.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
He's also a former Mormon, having converted to the faith
in his teens and back when he was in the church,
he was a high flyer there too. He did his
mission in Germany then rocketed up the leadership ranks.
Speaker 6 (31:54):
I was in the oldest Quorn presidency. Then I was
made as.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
It's totally fine if you're not following all the levels
of seniority.
Speaker 6 (32:03):
Here was a high county.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Just understand that Neville got pretty high up the Mormon ladder.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
I was a councer in the state Presidency Leisure and
I became a counselor.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
One of the highlights of his time in the church
was that from twenty fifteen to twenty seventeen, Neville and
his wife were ambassadors of sorts representing the LDS Church
to the European Union.
Speaker 6 (32:27):
We spent two years working in Brussels with the European
Parliament and working on matters relating to religious freedom and
related areas of human rights.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
The hierarchy and status stuff matters because it means Neville
was able to see the stories of people like Jade
from the other end of the telescope. In particular, he
was involved at a high level in the church's management
of a serious sexual abuse case. And it's a story
that begins, like so many important Mormon stories, with a mission.
(33:04):
After his return to Australia from Europe, Neville was called
to be one of the two counselors assisting a mission president. Together,
the three of them were responsible for a cohort of
new missionaries.
Speaker 6 (33:16):
That mission prisident looks after the activities day to day,
keeps them in discipline.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
A number of the young Mormons in their care were
New Zealanders serving their mission abroad in Australia, just like Marlin,
the smooth talking missionary from the first episode. So the
first major disciplinary matter across Nevill's desk was really serious.
The mission president asked Neville to look into an accusation
that had been made by one of the missionaries, a
(33:44):
guy originally from New Zealand, about his companion an Australian.
Remember your companion is the person you're assigned to be with.
Twenty four to seven.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
It was alleged that he had ainly raped his companion.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Figuring out what had happened was challenging. At first, the
alleged defender denied it, and the victim was so mortified
by the incident that he was reluctant to go into
detail about what had gone on. But after interviewing both
parties and taking it through the internal church court, Neville
and the other mission leaders were pretty confident that the
(34:24):
complaint was valid, that the rape really had taken place, and.
Speaker 6 (34:29):
We adjourned, We conferred. We came to the conclusion there
was nothing else to do other than to find him guilty,
to excommunicating with the church, and to send him home.
So that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Problem solved right well, apart from the total lack of
acknowledgment that an allegation of a serious crime that might
warrant and arrest, a trial and a conviction had been
quietly brushed over in house. In fact, it was even
worse than that, because after the offending missionary was excommunicated
(35:05):
and sent back home.
Speaker 6 (35:07):
When he went back to his home stake, his stake
prison and asked him about it, and then he denied everything.
A French, and his stake prison said well, I'll take
your word for it, and essentially annulled the excommunication and
set him loose. So he got to hang up his shingle.
(35:30):
As an ordinary returned missionary as they are called, you know,
just the best of people that you could imagine.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Never felt he had to do something more.
Speaker 6 (35:41):
After he was sent home, I said to the mission president,
we can't leave it there. All we've done is.
Speaker 12 (35:52):
We've moved him from one area to another.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
As it happened, there had been a very recent scandal
in the Australian Catholic Church where an archbishop hadcome under
fire for covering up crimes committed by priests.
Speaker 6 (36:06):
I said, will be guilty of the same thing if
we just send this guy off and do nothing more.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Never wanted to fix things, but he was bound to
silence about what he'd heard in that church court.
Speaker 6 (36:18):
We can't say anything about what he's told us because
the church mores and rules prevent us from doing so.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
And at this time Never was still deep in the
church culture.
Speaker 6 (36:32):
What they call church broke. That's a term that they.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Use church broke, you know, like breaking in a horse.
Speaker 6 (36:40):
And I was church broken, and I was absolutely obedient
to leaders. When it came to things where there was
a direction, I just did what it was supposed to do.
I just followed the council we'd been given and I obeyed.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
So Neville couldn't simply rock up to the police and
alert them to a crime he knew all about. But
at the same time, for things where there wasn't an
explicit direction from the church, Neville had always been willing
to be a little bit creative.
Speaker 6 (37:11):
Oh it's a little bit of a rebel in some things.
Not really to rebuild, but to see what the parameters
were and see if we could be more creative and
more modern than some things.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Now, at this point, the victim was still at the mission,
and after discussing the case with a lawyer friend, Neverll
realized he could encourage the victim to make a complaint
directly to police. That way, Neville wouldn't be breaching the
church's policy of confidentiality. So that's what happened. Neville supported
(37:40):
the victim as he made a complaint to the police.
The police took it seriously and put together a case.
Speaker 6 (37:47):
The police handled it absolutely perfectly. They were very very good.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
But then around about here things went sideways. Yes, the
police got involved and they were very very good.
Speaker 6 (38:01):
They used to worry for his arrest. He was and
arrougned before court here.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
But then the case fell apart. The family of the
victim put huge pressure on him not to pursue the
complaint and sent him back to New Zealand, well out
of the reach of the Australian police who were putting
his case together. The whole thing died for want of
ability to prosecute because the principal.
Speaker 6 (38:26):
Witness was not going to testify.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Neville says there were some cultural reasons why the victim's
family didn't want the case to go ahead, but he
also says all this happened with the full knowledge of
the local bishop and the state president back in the
perpetrator's ward. They were, says Neville, very happy the thing just.
Speaker 12 (38:48):
To die away.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
After speaking to Neville, I was feeling conflicted. On one hand,
it was church leaders, Neville and the mission president who
would help the victim to go to the police to
report the alleged crime. On the other hand, it seems
that the bishops elsewhere were more than happy to accept
that an alleged perpetrator at face value and allow him
(39:15):
back in his homeward to act like he had done
nothing wrong, allowing him unfettered access to potential new victims
who would have no idea of his previous alleged offending.
I want to tell you about just one more case.
(39:36):
This is the story of all women called Jenny. She's
in her sixties now and what happened to her dates
back to the nineteen sixties. A few years ago, she
began a process seeking acknowledgment and financial compensation from the Church,
which hasn't been easy for Jenny.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
I've needed to retill and retell my story, which is okay,
but your opening up a can of Williams for yourself.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
She agreed to speak to us on the record, with
the condition that she didn't want to talk about the
abuse itself, but as part of Jenny's case against the church,
she made a formal statement to her lawyer, and all
the specific details here come from that statement. Jenny was
an adopted child raised in Auckland in the mid fifties
(40:30):
in an LDS family.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
We grew up in the church and that was their
life pretty much from day dot.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
And when she was about ten, so this is nineteen
sixty four, Jenny says she was instructed by her mother
that she needed to start visiting the home of an
elderly man from the church on her way home from
school to do some cleaning.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
Probably shouldn't say it, but kids used to make fun
of him because he was on walking sticks.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Jenny says the first time she visited rewarded with a
bag of lollies for cleaning up the man's kitchen. On
her second visit, though, the man groped her and forced
her to touch his penis. He then told her she
had to keep coming back or she would be in
great trouble and he would tell the bishop about what
(41:18):
she had done. The severity of the offending escalated with
every visit. Jenny told her mother she didn't want to
do the cleaning, but her mother, who had no idea
about the molestation, insisted she carry on because the bishop
had asked her to help this old man. One time,
(41:42):
Jenny asked a friend to come with her, hoping it
would provide some sort of protection, but instead, the man
molested both her and the friend.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
I really knew that it wasn't right, it was wrong,
it hit to stop.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Okay, horrific, grim story, But here's the part that's really
mind blowing. When Jenny finally told her mother what was happening.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
She and two and took me to the bishop to
let him know what had happened.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
And according to Jenny, the bishop asked Jenny's mother to
leave the room and the door was locked from the inside,
and then the bishop instructed her to tell him what
had happened at the man's house, but to make it
crystal clear, she needed to demonstrate it on him the bishop. Afterwards,
(42:41):
the bishop told Jenny to forget it all and that
she'd lied about the abuse at the hands of the
elderly man. After that, Jenny's story only gets worse. She
sent to a psychologist for a few sessions to quote
sort out her lying.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
It's pretty much brained and a liar.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
She attempts suicide. Her previously excellent school grades fall off
a cliff, and she leaves school early. She becomes sexually
active from age thirteen. Her relationship with her mother breaks
down and never really recovers. She leaves the church, and
at seventeen she gets married she and her husband end
(43:27):
up with eight children, and whilst it's a happy marriage,
Jenny's childhood sexual abuse totally derailed the life she thinks
she might have otherwise had back when she was still
getting good grades. She had ambitions to be a doctor.
To the best of Jenny's knowledge, the original offender and
the bishop who made things so much worse are both
(43:48):
now dead. But Jenny did say this about why she
was now trying to sue the church.
Speaker 4 (43:56):
My motivation has been the thin that it needs to
be brought out in the open. The Mormon Church, the
Older years church. They hide behind so much they really do.
It's wrong. I can't be the only one. It's heven
two within the church.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
And of course she's dead, right, she absolutely isn't the
only one. So many stories Caroline's and Jades and Neville's
and Jenny's and all of those people I can't name
(44:36):
who talk to me off the record. The additional reports
that everyone had about other cases they knew about or
had seen out of the corner of their eye, about
failures to report crimes to the police, and of offenders
being given a pass while victims were ignored. Those media
(44:58):
headlines about pedophiles who could have been stopped years before
they were finally arrested. And in every one of those stories,
there's always a bishop in there somewhere, because they're the
first line of defense, right the guy you call whether
you're struggling with your taste for a morning coffee or
because you've just learned that your husband is a pedophile rapist. Clearly,
(45:23):
bishops aren't fit to deal with cases as complex as this.
So what I wanted to know was what was the
church doing about that? Did people high up in the
church bureaucracy realize there was a problem, Were they making
any effort to fix it or to give bishops better
guidance on how to manage problems on the front line?
Speaker 11 (45:46):
But then disturbing details coming to light tonight In the.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Case, one more story came my way.
Speaker 12 (45:51):
Physically and sexually abused by.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
That nothing to do with my reporting efforts. This one, rather,
this was a story out of the United States from Arizona.
Speaker 12 (46:00):
Two leaders of his church.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
It was a news report that revealed that, yes, the
church was doing something about its abuse reporting problem their
church hierarchy. In fact, church leaders had put a lot
of thought into the issue, and the whole world was
just about to learn the solution They came.
Speaker 8 (46:18):
Up with, call this one eight hundred number found the
Mormon Abu's Helpline was all.
Speaker 12 (46:23):
A church's helpline for guidance.
Speaker 4 (46:24):
A church lawyer instructed.
Speaker 5 (46:26):
Him, why do they do this?
Speaker 6 (46:28):
Why does a church do this?
Speaker 2 (46:34):
We saw comment from the church in response to the
allegations discussed in this episode. The church did not address
the allegations directly, but in a statement said, as followers
of Jesus Christ, members of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter day Saints, a poor abuse of any kind.
As a church, we invest heavily on prevention and response
(46:55):
and will continue to do so. Our priority is the
welfare of the victim and following the law of the
land with respect to the abuser facing the consequences of
their actions. Heaven's Helpline was funded by New Zealand on
Air and The New Zealand Herald for enzed Me and iHeartRadio.
(47:17):
It was researched, written and presented by me Murray Jones.
My producers were Adam Dudding, who co wrote the series,
and Kirsten Johnston from Potsop Media, who edited and sound
designed it. Phil Brownlee is our sound engineer. Music was
by Thomas Arbur and Anita Clark. Archival audio came from
(47:38):
TVNZED and RNZ. Jade was voiced by Erina Daniels. Ethan
Sills is executive producer here at New Zealand Herald. If
you have a story you'd like to share with me
about the Olds Church, or just want to get in touch,
email me securely at Murray Reports at Proton dot m
(47:59):
E or DM me on X at Murray Reports. And
for more on this podcast, head to enzedherld dot co
dot nz slash Heaven's helpline. It's time intensive doing investigations
like this, so if you value this kind of journalism,
(48:20):
please support it by going to your podcast platform and
rating and reviewing the series.
Kyodo Koto hints up that this episode of Heaven's Helpline
deals with domestic abuse and child abuse. There's nothing too graphic,
but it's still pretty disturbing, so take care when listening
and see the show notes for support services.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Okay, you're on air. As it were, it was mid
twenty twenty two, and I was still reeling from Caroline's story.
Quite apart from her horrific abuse, I couldn't get over
how the leaders of the Olds Church put her in
a small room with her abusive husband and demanded that
she forgive him.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Great.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Can you hear me? Okay, hear well? Caroline's story or
one off just beyond speaker on my new phone. I
wanted to understand more about how the church responds when
its members are in crisis, so I talked to more
Mormons and ex Mormons around the country.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
You have arrived.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
It became clear that Caroline's experience with the LDS Church
was far from unique. And as I heard all these
new stories, every single one, one way or another, involved
a bishop, and the bishop rocked up.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
That bishop was obviously righteous.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
The stories I was hearing were about financial struggles.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
You went to the bishop, you see I can't pay
my powerbill.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
And relationship troubles.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
I did eventually go to my bishop about feeling like
I had married the wrong person.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
But also more accounts of horrific abuse.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
I remember going to the bishop after he had hit
me of confessions.
Speaker 6 (01:36):
If they're truly penitent, they'll go to the.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Bishop and protection of the perpetrators.
Speaker 5 (01:41):
Giving him the power to feel like he hadn't done
anything wrong.
Speaker 6 (01:45):
All we've done is we've moved him from one area
to another.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
It surprised me how central bishops were to all these stories,
from the smallest problem to the most catastrophic. Mary Jones
and you're listening to Heaven's Helpline, episode three, the Bishop's Tale.
(02:12):
In the Mormon Church, there's a huge emphasis on service.
Nearly every active adult member has a calling, and everyone
knows their place in a complex hierarchy. There's so many layers,
from state presidents to relief Society general officers to the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. But I'm going to focus
here on the responsibilities of the bishop.
Speaker 7 (02:34):
Saturday essentially as the day that you have to get
ready for the most important other way Coature Sunday, and
then on Sunday was the busiest day.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
This is Quentin Howard, But.
Speaker 7 (02:44):
Try to leave Homer on five for three in the morning.
I've got meetings, running church services, going to classes, holding
interviews all day long.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
For two years in the early twenty tens, Quentin was
bishop of the Wellington Ward of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter day Saints.
Speaker 7 (03:04):
So from my early twenties I was in church leadership.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I first talked to Quentin when I was investigating the
finances of the Olds Church. But as I started researching
this podcast, I realized I really needed to talk to
Quentin again and ask him some more targeted questions about
what it meant to be a Mormon bishop, the motivation,
the challenges, and some of the heavy responsibilities.
Speaker 7 (03:29):
So these people would come to my office and we'll
talk about whether or not they're having success out of
marriage and whether or not they're in good space of
their relationships.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
So the basic unit of the Mormon congregation is called
a ward. In New Zealand, they average around one hundred
and fifty to two hundred active members. Each ward has
its own bishop. This man, always a man, remember, has
a couple of other chaps to help him out called
first counselor and second counselor, and the three of them
together are known as the ward bishopric. And being a
(04:00):
bishop is a big job. In Quentin's case, essentially it
was another forty hours a week, unpaid, on top of
his regular full time job. There was admin like dropping
tides off at the bank. There were youth activities to
run several nights a week.
Speaker 7 (04:17):
We try to keep them entertained in off the streets.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
There were lots of leadership meetings. There were events to
organize and run. Sometimes Quentin was part of a disciplinary council.
Speaker 7 (04:27):
If you do something really serious, you can go to
what's called a disciplinary council or sometimes as a church court,
but essentially about fifteen men in a room and you
have to confuse what you've done and they decide how
you'll be treated.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And perhaps the biggest time suck. As a bishop, Quentin
was expected to have direct one on one time with
just about all of the two hundred people in his ward.
As a Mormon, you're only allowed to go to the
temple if you've got something called a temple recommend which
is basically a small id document with a barcode to
say you're allowed in, but to receive your temple recommend
(05:02):
you have to have an annual interview with your bishop
where he assesses whether you're worthy. It's literally called a
worthiness interview, and they consume a lot of a bishop's time.
Speaker 7 (05:14):
I would be in my office at the church. It's
just a room with a desk in it, and it's
a couple of cheers and some books and scriptures and
things that come in. The door would be closed, and
it was best sally an opportunity to ask them questions
about how they were living their life and whether they
are worthy to go to the temple, whether they're worthy
to be baptized.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
It was a way of checking in with your congregation.
But there are also specific questions to be asked. Do
you believe in God? Are you following the word of wisdom?
Remember that's the rules around avoiding drinking and smoking and
tea and coffee and Coca cola. Break the word of
wisdom and you're not meant to be in the temple.
Speaker 7 (05:55):
Sometimes people come to me and say, look, I have
to confess it. You know, I work life long hours
and when I get up for my shift and wanting
to have a cup of coffee at work, so I'd
count them and help them find ways to change those behaviors.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Plus, you couldn't go to the temple if you were
straying sexually. This included cheating on your spouse, having impure thoughts,
watching pornography, or masturbating. Also, Quentin would be advising people
who confess to same sex attractions too well basically pull
themselves together.
Speaker 7 (06:27):
I was trying to help them find ways of suppressing
who they were attracted to, and essentially I was saying
to them, yes, I know that you feel deep love
for that person, be not allowed to feel dead, so
don't act on it.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
This is something he deeply regrets now.
Speaker 7 (06:42):
Two of those men I have reached out to you
since and apologized.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Conversations about sexuality had to happen, even with the younger
members of the ward.
Speaker 7 (06:52):
It was essential for me to ask them about the
law of chestity, and on some occasions that meant I
was asking them specific questions about whether they had sexu
relations with others, and also about whether they were masturbating.
And that on affection is so gross. You know, I'm
an old man talking to these young teens in the
(07:12):
privacy of my office. And I was trying to be
as kind and given the space to express how they
wanted to. But even then, it's still horrible to think
that there was what I did, and it's just part
of the expectations of a bishop.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Even to today, these things trouble him now, but back then,
Quentin just got on with his bishop duties, which for
better or for worse, included getting right inside the lives
of the people in his ward.
Speaker 8 (07:44):
A bishop is a very hands on calling in the church.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Ganesh Charrion was also a bishop in the Wellington Ward
for six years. He's still in the church now. Like Quentin,
he found the job a huge commitment of his time
and energy.
Speaker 8 (07:59):
If there was a christ I needed to front up
to that crisis, like somebody died, I'd go visit. Or
if I couldn't visit, I'd give a phone call.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Ganesh says being with people in their times of need
was a duty but also a privilege.
Speaker 8 (08:14):
I felt very fortunate to be in that kind of
a role. That's a very special one, a very sacred
one I think to change me and help me be
very empathetic. But there are things that I feel like
I did badly and.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Like Quentin Ganesh found the long hours and the heavy
responsibilities tough going.
Speaker 8 (08:33):
If you're an empathetic person, burnout as a really big
problem because the buckstops with you.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
So about a year into Ganesh's time as a bishop.
Speaker 8 (08:43):
I started to get panic attacks. You know, the phone
would ring or I'd get a text, and literally heartwood race.
It was the first time I'd ever had panic attacks
the way you've.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Described it, did you see your role at the time
as a sort of social worker.
Speaker 8 (08:58):
I mean, I haven't trained and social working, so I
didn't feel like I should take that role. But where
I thought I could be really useful was being a
listening ear, validating people's trauma or hurt.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
It's such an important job that there must be some
really rigorous criteria for picking a bishop, right, Not exactly,
Ganesh explains.
Speaker 8 (09:22):
You have to be married, You've probably got children, You've
probably had a long standing in the church, in church leadership.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Which means that when it comes to the bishop who
ends up running your ward, the bishop who's keeping an
eye on your temple worthiness, the bishop who's right up
in your face asking about your tithes and your sex
life and your Coca Cola consumption. Well, you never know
exactly which type of bishop you're going to get.
Speaker 8 (09:50):
Some bishops might be very prescriptive and very authoritarian. Some
might be extremely kind and pastoral and far so Gosh,
it's a mixed bag.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Even though I'm sure he was on the kind and
pastoral end of the bishop spectrum, Sometimes Ganesh felt seriously
out of his depth.
Speaker 8 (10:13):
If somebody came and said that the spouse had abused them,
that was very difficult. Yeah, those were beyond my experience
and depth. You know, now, years later, I still think
about Gosh, I was thirty something, and sometimes when somebody
twenty years older than used talking about really hard stuff
like marital rape. I mean, it's beyond your comprehension, let
(10:38):
alone your ability to kind of address. So yeah, tough.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Quentin put it like this. As a bishop, he had an.
Speaker 7 (10:46):
Awful lot of authority, power, responsibility.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
But despite that responsibility, he says, there.
Speaker 7 (10:53):
Was an awful lack of instruction and training, almost zero training.
Right in, I'm a lay clergy member. I don't get
paid for my time. I'm not a professional in the
sense I'm a transport planner at work. Why am I
trying to counsel people on the relationships and spousal abuse
and why is it even part of my world? But
it's the reality for Mormon bishops across the country.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Actually, just after saying he'd been offered almost zero training
around relationship counseling, Quentin clarified he did get instruction on
one specific point.
Speaker 7 (11:26):
We needed to keep couples together. You literally can't go
to the Sister Kingdom unless you're seeored or married, and
so to separate a couple max in vulnerable to not
having that opportunity, So we try and find ways to
get together.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Despite the fact that the criteria for becoming a bishop
is basically being a bloke with kids who put his
hand up over the years, and despite the fact that
they're not trained for the de facto social work and
counseling you end up doing. Eldest members are told their
bishops have one advantage over your average social worker or counselor.
Basically it's this the Holy Spirit will see them right.
Speaker 7 (12:08):
The understanding is that because you're working for God, you'll
rely on the Spirit and it will teach you what
you do and give you guidance. So whenever there was
a void, I'd rely on the Holy Ghost.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Quentin says, the Holy Ghost would let himself be known
by way of feelings.
Speaker 7 (12:28):
So good positive feelings or negative feelings indicative of the
Holy Ghost working in you. So for me, when I
was in that space and I didn't know what to do,
I'd rely on as feelings.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
This idea that a priesthood holders feelings are evidence of
the guidance of the Holy Spirit is a powerful brew.
John Campbell, who we met in the previous episode, the
guy who helped Caroline escape her abusive marriage. John says
there's one important manifestation of this divine guidance.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Bishops and branch presents are supposed to have this thing
called the power of discernment. You're supposed to be endowed
with this magical power to be able to tell when
someone's telling the truth and when they're not.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
That's a handy skill, especially, say, if you're a bishop
and someone in your ward has been accused of doing
something terrible and you've hauled them into your office to
try to figure out the truth of the matter.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
So when you're speaking to these people that have committed
some pretty serious stuff and they want to get back
into the church, you're supposed to be able to tell.
You can't let you tell you know you think you do,
because you you know you might feel something or think
you've felt something. It could be nothing more than you
know the temperature. Well, you've taken your jacket off, so
(13:44):
you feel a little bit light, and there's that power
of discernment acting on me.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
So I was learning that Mormon bishops men who'd been
given huge responsibility for the people in their ward, but
who'd received very little training in handling the serious issues
that would come their way, aside from an imperative to
keep marriages together and to trust in their divine powers
of discernment. And starting with that first interview with Caroline,
(14:20):
it was becoming obvious to me that some of the
issues coming up in LDS communities were really, really serious.
I've just got off the phone with a lady who
had horrible story to tell her daughter was sexually abused
by a man. Some people, understandably didn't want to speak
(14:45):
on the record, and I didn't always record the conversation,
but i'd usually take a quick voice memo once it
was done. Yeah, it's nearly ten o'clock now on Monday evening,
and I've just spent the best of an hour with
her on the phone. This one was after an off
the record chat with a current church member in Hamilton. Okay,
(15:05):
I've just left the Sources house and wow, look at
the time, it's been six straight hours that we've been talking.
The stories I was hearing were complicated and spanned decades,
sometimes generations, and frankly sometimes they were pretty distressing to hear.
(15:26):
It's unbelievable what she personally has been through, what members
of her family have been through. The stories I was
hearing were about domestic abuse and coercion, violence and the
sexual abuse of children, just so so much pain and
but resilience. As we know, these things happen in many communities,
(15:50):
in many families, in many institutions. But the particular thread
I was following, the claim I kept hearing repeated was
that when these terrible things were reported to the bishop,
which is what you're repeatedly told to do as a
member of the Mormon Church, the process seemed to be
mishandled again and again. When she was helping women who
(16:14):
were being abused, silently abused by their husbands, those coming
from Temple View were saying that their bishop had told
them to not seek protection orders not to go to court.
Some of these people I found because, like Caroline, they'd
commented online. I also went back to contacts from my
earlier money articles, and sure enough they also knew of
(16:37):
examples of mishandled abuse complaints. And from there it seemed
every new person I talked to would lead me to
even more cases. Often someone would just have a couple
of examples when I first asked them, but then a
week later they'd get back in touch saying, oh my god,
I've just remembered two or three others. The net just
(16:58):
kept getting why and wider. I also look through past
media reports.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
A former Mormon Church elder who sexually abused girls as
young as six has been sent to prison for twenty years.
Speaker 9 (17:13):
A prominent Kaitier businessman and elder of the Mormon Church
has admitted sexually abusing boys over several years.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
I didn't find a lot of cases involving Mormon offenders
that had gone all the way through the courts and
been spotted by reporters. But in the Kaitia case referenced
in that second clip, the scenario closely fitted the stories
I was hearing. It was clear that in this case,
church officials had missed opportunities to stop the abuser within
their ward.
Speaker 9 (17:40):
Mormon says she warned church leaders about Taylor and twenty
ten about his suspicious behavior.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
We'll hear more about that in a later episode. In
another case that made headlines, a Southland lawyer and church member,
Raphael Cacciopoli.
Speaker 10 (17:55):
Was sentenced by Judge Robert Wolf to five years jail
after earlier admitting thirteen charges, including sexual violation, performing indecent
acts on two boys aged ten and twelve, in decent
assault performing an indecent act on a dog.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Again with Catiopoly, there had been opportunities to stop his
offending earlier. Some church officials had known about his offending
seven years before the complaint that put him in jail.
The trial judge, in his summary said that the church
is in effectiveness kept the door open for continued offending.
Speaker 11 (18:29):
I'm reluctant to criticizing such institution, but in the present case,
I'd like to encourage churches in these circumstances to not
attempt to deal with things in house. They're ill equipped
to do so, and there are bitter and wiser courses
to follow.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
So yeah, starting with that first phone call with Caroline
two years ago. It really felt I was inundated with
these cases where someone within the LDS community did something
awful and a bishop was informed, but then one way
or another, the problem was not dealt with. There are
(19:03):
simply too many of these stories to share them all
in this series. All the same, I want to dive
in deeper to a few of them because I think
together they start to paint a picture. That's after the break.
Just a quick heads up. It's in this part of
the episode that inevitably there is some discussion of child
(19:27):
sexual abuse and of sexual assault. The first story I
want you to hear is from a woman who we
are going to call Jade. For legal and privacy reasons,
we're not using Jade's real name. She also didn't want
her voice to be recognized by anyone she knew, so
(19:50):
the voice you hear is an actor revoicing her words.
Jade had what she'd consider a pretty ordinary and pretty
positive childhood.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
I really enjoyed being a Mormon as a child. Everything
seemed good, Everything seemed right, you know, going to church
on Sundays seemed right. Getting baptized at eight was an
exciting thing to do.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Jade enjoyed school in her teenage years. She has a
lot of similar stories to the ones we heard in
the first episode, fun youth activities, and lots of basketball.
After school, she considered taking up a scholarship in Utah
for university, but decided against it. And then she got
married to an RM.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
Of course, this guy had been on a mission. He'd
done everything according to the church that was right. So
I kind of thought, oh, well, I guess I should
marry him, and so we did. We got married quite quickly.
I was twenty. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Child number one arrived soon after. Jade felt she was
on a good path. She'd married an RM in the temple.
Baby was healthy and happy, and Jade had Faro around
supporting her.
Speaker 5 (21:05):
My younger sister spent a lot of time with us
because she really loved being an auntie and being around
a little baby, so she'd sleep the night at our
house a lot.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
But Jade's husband was becoming distant from her and the church.
He wasn't going to the temple, wasn't praying, and this
became a source of frustration for Jade because he was
meant to be the spiritual leader in the home.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
And those were sort of warning bells for me that
something's not quite right.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
A couple of years into the marriage, Jade's husband became
physically abusive towards her.
Speaker 5 (21:44):
I remember going to the bishop after he had hit me,
because that's what you do, you report to the bishop
when things aren't going right.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
But nothing much came of it.
Speaker 5 (21:58):
My bishop told me that the shoot in our marriage
isn't the violence. He said, there's something else going on,
but he didn't know what it was.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Turns out the bishop's instinct, or maybe his power of discernment,
was right. About six years into the marriage, just after
the birth of her second baby, Jade learnt through a
complicated chain of secrets shared and spilled that for that
entire time.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
He had been abusing my sister.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
This was Jade's much younger sister, the one who loved
being an auntie and who'd been just eight years old
when Jade and her husband had married.
Speaker 5 (22:41):
From the time we got married up until I found
out he'd been sort of sneaking around and doing things to.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Her, Jade made arrangements to move out of the house
with her children, but also she and her husband made
an emergency appointment with that bishop.
Speaker 5 (23:01):
That night, I called our bishop and we had a
meeting with him straight away about that. What he counseled
me in the meeting was a little bit confusing for me.
He said that because we were married in the temple,
it's my responsibility to stay with my husband. He didn't
say I had to stay, but it was his council
(23:23):
because of the covenants we took out in the temple.
Along the lines, you can get over this. It's more
important to focus on sort of eternal life. But he
also told my husband that he needed to go to
the police and confess what he had done.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
That second bit of advice from the bishop sounds pretty
solid to me. But then Jade thought it would be
good to get her husband away for a bit, so
they contacted his family, who lived back in the city
where he'd grown up, and the family came to pick
him up and take him home. That the husband was
now resident in a different ward, one where his relations
(24:04):
were key members of the congregation. So the church leaders
did a bit of a handover of the whole mess,
giving the bishop in the other city.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
The responsibility of dealing with the situation.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Now, remember how Ganesh said that bishops can be a
mixed bag. Well, the hometown bishop who took over, he
offered some very different advice to Jade's husband.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
They advised him not to go to the police and
that they would look after him. I know people who
have been excommunicated for doing things like that, but I
feel because he was amongst his own, they were a
lot more lenient.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
So no police involvement. The church will look after things
in house, meaning that the husband will be punished directly
by the church. Child sexual abuse is considered serious enough
that it's had by a disciplinary council, the church court
of fifteen men that Quentin mentioned earlier. It's worth noting
(25:07):
here these church courts aren't just in house and totally
unconnected to the country's justice system. They're also really very secretive.
Here's how the church puts it in the LDS General Handbook,
May twenty twenty four.
Speaker 12 (25:22):
Edition, Bishops state, presidents and their counselors have a sacred
duty to protect all confidential information shared with them.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
All communication within interviews, counseling, confessions, and disciplinary councils are
considered confidential by the church. According to the handbook. This
is because.
Speaker 12 (25:42):
Members may not confess sins or seek guidance if what
they share will not be kept confidential.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
So what was the punishment for Jade's husband for six
years of sexual abuse of a child, starting when she
was just eight years old?
Speaker 5 (25:57):
In terms of discipline, he got three months probation for
what he'd done.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Probation means that for the allotted time, you can't participate
in a bunch of church activities, including worshiping in the temple.
To be crystal clear here, there is no doubt whatsoever
in Jade's mind that her husband was guilty of what
he'd been accused of.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
He pretty much told me everything. I think it was
a bit of a relief for him to to sort
of be found out. So he confessed everything he did
to my sister, which was really hard. And then I
had a conversation with my sister and she confirmed that
that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Jade was still strong in her faith. She trusted that
the church leadership knew the best course to take.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
But I did start to feel that the process was
very unfair. It was very one sided, a little bit
what would you call it, male dominant?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah, In any case, she kept consulting her bishop about
what to do next.
Speaker 5 (27:08):
Their council was consistent around our eternal family and working
towards going back.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
So she tried. She followed her husband to his home
city and attempted to reconcile. It was pretty grim, according
to Jade. The bishop there appeared to have given her
husband a total pass for all he'd confessed to the
bishop even promoted Jade's husband to new senior church callings.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
I look at it now from a tell Mary point
of view, and they were really pumping his manner, you know,
giving him the power to feel like he hadn't done
anything wrong.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
And when Jade challenged him about it, he became violent again.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
Probably the worst decision I made was going back.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
You might be asking, as I was, where was Jade's
younger sister in all this. Well, her suffering wasn't just ignored.
She was actively blamed for what had happened.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
She was eight years old, and his family said it
was her fault.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Jade recalls one specific conversation with a member of his family.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
She was just adamant that it was my sister's fault. Oh,
little girls like that sort of thing. This is what
they want, you know, And I'm like, she's.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Eight, there's actually a lot more to Jade's story that
we don't have space to tell, but I'm going to
jump to just one more moment because it puts the
spotlight on that internal court process that gave her husband
a three month probation for his years of sexually abusing
a young girl. After struggling to pull her fractured Marria
(29:00):
marriage back together, Jade ended up having an affair pretty
early on. She told her husband.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
I told him straight away because I felt really bad,
and he took it really hard, sort of like he
couldn't believe.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
I'd do that, having an affair. That's a clear breach
of the rules, of course. So her husband gave Jade
the standard advice for what she should do.
Speaker 5 (29:22):
He made me go and see the bishop, and I
told the bishop what it happened.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
This was actually a different bishop again. Jade and her
husband had moved town, and this bishop took Jade's misdeed
very seriously, like her husband before her. Jade was called
to a hearing of the church court. She took a
female relative in as a support person, but apart from.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Her, I was in a rome, surrounded by mean It
was really really intimidating. It was quite horrible actually, and
then you have to talk about rale sensitive things, and
then you have to explain why you do this. And
these are men that I went to high school with,
and it was really one of the worst experiences I've
(30:08):
had with the church.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Once Jade had admitted what she'd done and explained why
she'd done it, the court past judgment, like her husband,
she received a period of probation.
Speaker 5 (30:21):
Yeah, so he got three months probation and I got
six months.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
You received a worse punishment, yeah, than your husband for
abusing a child over many years.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
What do you think of a church or a system
that delivers that kind of outcome?
Speaker 5 (30:42):
At the time, I just took it. It started to
get a few thoughts moving in my head around what
is this? You know, I've spent my whole life trying
to do the right thing in the eyes of the church,
and this just doesn't line up for me. That was
the very first time most to Christ the church. I've
never done it before because I've been raised well, you
(31:06):
don't question, you just have to have faith.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
The second story I want you to hear is from
a high flying Australian lawyer, Nivill.
Speaker 6 (31:21):
Rocco is my name. I'm King's counsel here in Australia
and I've been practicing at Bath for over thirty years.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
He's an academic and.
Speaker 6 (31:32):
A judge associated professor at the Adelaide.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Law School, with degrees up to his ears.
Speaker 6 (31:37):
The master's degrees in law and PhD as will.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
He's also a former Mormon, having converted to the faith
in his teens and back when he was in the church,
he was a high flyer there too. He did his
mission in Germany then rocketed up the leadership ranks.
Speaker 6 (31:54):
I was in the oldest Quorn presidency. Then I was
made as.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
It's totally fine if you're not following all the levels
of seniority.
Speaker 6 (32:03):
Here was a high county.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Just understand that Neville got pretty high up the Mormon ladder.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
I was a councer in the state Presidency Leisure and
I became a counselor.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
One of the highlights of his time in the church
was that from twenty fifteen to twenty seventeen, Neville and
his wife were ambassadors of sorts representing the LDS Church
to the European Union.
Speaker 6 (32:27):
We spent two years working in Brussels with the European
Parliament and working on matters relating to religious freedom and
related areas of human rights.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
The hierarchy and status stuff matters because it means Neville
was able to see the stories of people like Jade
from the other end of the telescope. In particular, he
was involved at a high level in the church's management
of a serious sexual abuse case. And it's a story
that begins, like so many important Mormon stories, with a mission.
(33:04):
After his return to Australia from Europe, Neville was called
to be one of the two counselors assisting a mission president. Together,
the three of them were responsible for a cohort of
new missionaries.
Speaker 6 (33:16):
That mission prisident looks after the activities day to day,
keeps them in discipline.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
A number of the young Mormons in their care were
New Zealanders serving their mission abroad in Australia, just like Marlin,
the smooth talking missionary from the first episode. So the
first major disciplinary matter across Nevill's desk was really serious.
The mission president asked Neville to look into an accusation
that had been made by one of the missionaries, a
(33:44):
guy originally from New Zealand, about his companion an Australian.
Remember your companion is the person you're assigned to be with.
Twenty four to seven.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
It was alleged that he had ainly raped his companion.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Figuring out what had happened was challenging. At first, the
alleged defender denied it, and the victim was so mortified
by the incident that he was reluctant to go into
detail about what had gone on. But after interviewing both
parties and taking it through the internal church court, Neville
and the other mission leaders were pretty confident that the
(34:24):
complaint was valid, that the rape really had taken place, and.
Speaker 6 (34:29):
We adjourned, We conferred. We came to the conclusion there
was nothing else to do other than to find him guilty,
to excommunicating with the church, and to send him home.
So that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Problem solved right well, apart from the total lack of
acknowledgment that an allegation of a serious crime that might
warrant and arrest, a trial and a conviction had been
quietly brushed over in house. In fact, it was even
worse than that, because after the offending missionary was excommunicated
(35:05):
and sent back home.
Speaker 6 (35:07):
When he went back to his home stake, his stake
prison and asked him about it, and then he denied everything.
A French, and his stake prison said well, I'll take
your word for it, and essentially annulled the excommunication and
set him loose. So he got to hang up his shingle.
(35:30):
As an ordinary returned missionary as they are called, you know,
just the best of people that you could imagine.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Never felt he had to do something more.
Speaker 6 (35:41):
After he was sent home, I said to the mission president,
we can't leave it there. All we've done is.
Speaker 12 (35:52):
We've moved him from one area to another.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
As it happened, there had been a very recent scandal
in the Australian Catholic Church where an archbishop hadcome under
fire for covering up crimes committed by priests.
Speaker 6 (36:06):
I said, will be guilty of the same thing if
we just send this guy off and do nothing more.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Never wanted to fix things, but he was bound to
silence about what he'd heard in that church court.
Speaker 6 (36:18):
We can't say anything about what he's told us because
the church mores and rules prevent us from doing so.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
And at this time Never was still deep in the
church culture.
Speaker 6 (36:32):
What they call church broke. That's a term that they.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Use church broke, you know, like breaking in a horse.
Speaker 6 (36:40):
And I was church broken, and I was absolutely obedient
to leaders. When it came to things where there was
a direction, I just did what it was supposed to do.
I just followed the council we'd been given and I obeyed.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
So Neville couldn't simply rock up to the police and
alert them to a crime he knew all about. But
at the same time, for things where there wasn't an
explicit direction from the church, Neville had always been willing
to be a little bit creative.
Speaker 6 (37:11):
Oh it's a little bit of a rebel in some things.
Not really to rebuild, but to see what the parameters
were and see if we could be more creative and
more modern than some things.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Now, at this point, the victim was still at the mission,
and after discussing the case with a lawyer friend, Neverll
realized he could encourage the victim to make a complaint
directly to police. That way, Neville wouldn't be breaching the
church's policy of confidentiality. So that's what happened. Neville supported
(37:40):
the victim as he made a complaint to the police.
The police took it seriously and put together a case.
Speaker 6 (37:47):
The police handled it absolutely perfectly. They were very very good.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
But then around about here things went sideways. Yes, the
police got involved and they were very very good.
Speaker 6 (38:01):
They used to worry for his arrest. He was and
arrougned before court here.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
But then the case fell apart. The family of the
victim put huge pressure on him not to pursue the
complaint and sent him back to New Zealand, well out
of the reach of the Australian police who were putting
his case together. The whole thing died for want of
ability to prosecute because the principal.
Speaker 6 (38:26):
Witness was not going to testify.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Neville says there were some cultural reasons why the victim's
family didn't want the case to go ahead, but he
also says all this happened with the full knowledge of
the local bishop and the state president back in the
perpetrator's ward. They were, says Neville, very happy the thing just.
Speaker 12 (38:48):
To die away.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
After speaking to Neville, I was feeling conflicted. On one hand,
it was church leaders, Neville and the mission president who
would help the victim to go to the police to
report the alleged crime. On the other hand, it seems
that the bishops elsewhere were more than happy to accept
that an alleged perpetrator at face value and allow him
(39:15):
back in his homeward to act like he had done
nothing wrong, allowing him unfettered access to potential new victims
who would have no idea of his previous alleged offending.
I want to tell you about just one more case.
(39:36):
This is the story of all women called Jenny. She's
in her sixties now and what happened to her dates
back to the nineteen sixties. A few years ago, she
began a process seeking acknowledgment and financial compensation from the Church,
which hasn't been easy for Jenny.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
I've needed to retill and retell my story, which is okay,
but your opening up a can of Williams for yourself.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
She agreed to speak to us on the record, with
the condition that she didn't want to talk about the
abuse itself, but as part of Jenny's case against the church,
she made a formal statement to her lawyer, and all
the specific details here come from that statement. Jenny was
an adopted child raised in Auckland in the mid fifties
(40:30):
in an LDS family.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
We grew up in the church and that was their
life pretty much from day dot.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
And when she was about ten, so this is nineteen
sixty four, Jenny says she was instructed by her mother
that she needed to start visiting the home of an
elderly man from the church on her way home from
school to do some cleaning.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
Probably shouldn't say it, but kids used to make fun
of him because he was on walking sticks.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Jenny says the first time she visited rewarded with a
bag of lollies for cleaning up the man's kitchen. On
her second visit, though, the man groped her and forced
her to touch his penis. He then told her she
had to keep coming back or she would be in
great trouble and he would tell the bishop about what
(41:18):
she had done. The severity of the offending escalated with
every visit. Jenny told her mother she didn't want to
do the cleaning, but her mother, who had no idea
about the molestation, insisted she carry on because the bishop
had asked her to help this old man. One time,
(41:42):
Jenny asked a friend to come with her, hoping it
would provide some sort of protection, but instead, the man
molested both her and the friend.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
I really knew that it wasn't right, it was wrong,
it hit to stop.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Okay, horrific, grim story, But here's the part that's really
mind blowing. When Jenny finally told her mother what was happening.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
She and two and took me to the bishop to
let him know what had happened.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
And according to Jenny, the bishop asked Jenny's mother to
leave the room and the door was locked from the inside,
and then the bishop instructed her to tell him what
had happened at the man's house, but to make it
crystal clear, she needed to demonstrate it on him the bishop. Afterwards,
(42:41):
the bishop told Jenny to forget it all and that
she'd lied about the abuse at the hands of the
elderly man. After that, Jenny's story only gets worse. She
sent to a psychologist for a few sessions to quote
sort out her lying.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
It's pretty much brained and a liar.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
She attempts suicide. Her previously excellent school grades fall off
a cliff, and she leaves school early. She becomes sexually
active from age thirteen. Her relationship with her mother breaks
down and never really recovers. She leaves the church, and
at seventeen she gets married she and her husband end
(43:27):
up with eight children, and whilst it's a happy marriage,
Jenny's childhood sexual abuse totally derailed the life she thinks
she might have otherwise had back when she was still
getting good grades. She had ambitions to be a doctor.
To the best of Jenny's knowledge, the original offender and
the bishop who made things so much worse are both
(43:48):
now dead. But Jenny did say this about why she
was now trying to sue the church.
Speaker 4 (43:56):
My motivation has been the thin that it needs to
be brought out in the open. The Mormon Church, the
Older years church. They hide behind so much they really do.
It's wrong. I can't be the only one. It's heven
two within the church.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
And of course she's dead, right, she absolutely isn't the
only one. So many stories Caroline's and Jades and Neville's
and Jenny's and all of those people I can't name
(44:36):
who talk to me off the record. The additional reports
that everyone had about other cases they knew about or
had seen out of the corner of their eye, about
failures to report crimes to the police, and of offenders
being given a pass while victims were ignored. Those media
(44:58):
headlines about pedophiles who could have been stopped years before
they were finally arrested. And in every one of those stories,
there's always a bishop in there somewhere, because they're the
first line of defense, right the guy you call whether
you're struggling with your taste for a morning coffee or
because you've just learned that your husband is a pedophile rapist. Clearly,
(45:23):
bishops aren't fit to deal with cases as complex as this.
So what I wanted to know was what was the
church doing about that? Did people high up in the
church bureaucracy realize there was a problem, Were they making
any effort to fix it or to give bishops better
guidance on how to manage problems on the front line?
Speaker 11 (45:46):
But then disturbing details coming to light tonight In the.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Case, one more story came my way.
Speaker 12 (45:51):
Physically and sexually abused by.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
That nothing to do with my reporting efforts. This one, rather,
this was a story out of the United States from Arizona.
Speaker 12 (46:00):
Two leaders of his church.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
It was a news report that revealed that, yes, the
church was doing something about its abuse reporting problem their
church hierarchy. In fact, church leaders had put a lot
of thought into the issue, and the whole world was
just about to learn the solution They came.
Speaker 8 (46:18):
Up with, call this one eight hundred number found the
Mormon Abu's Helpline was all.
Speaker 12 (46:23):
A church's helpline for guidance.
Speaker 4 (46:24):
A church lawyer instructed.
Speaker 5 (46:26):
Him, why do they do this?
Speaker 6 (46:28):
Why does a church do this?
Speaker 2 (46:34):
We saw comment from the church in response to the
allegations discussed in this episode. The church did not address
the allegations directly, but in a statement said, as followers
of Jesus Christ, members of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter day Saints, a poor abuse of any kind.
As a church, we invest heavily on prevention and response
(46:55):
and will continue to do so. Our priority is the
welfare of the victim and following the law of the
land with respect to the abuser facing the consequences of
their actions. Heaven's Helpline was funded by New Zealand on
Air and The New Zealand Herald for enzed Me and iHeartRadio.
(47:17):
It was researched, written and presented by me Murray Jones.
My producers were Adam Dudding, who co wrote the series,
and Kirsten Johnston from Potsop Media, who edited and sound
designed it. Phil Brownlee is our sound engineer. Music was
by Thomas Arbur and Anita Clark. Archival audio came from
(47:38):
TVNZED and RNZ. Jade was voiced by Erina Daniels. Ethan
Sills is executive producer here at New Zealand Herald. If
you have a story you'd like to share with me
about the Olds Church, or just want to get in touch,
email me securely at Murray Reports at Proton dot m
(47:59):
E or DM me on X at Murray Reports. And
for more on this podcast, head to enzedherld dot co
dot nz slash Heaven's helpline. It's time intensive doing investigations
like this, so if you value this kind of journalism,
(48:20):
please support it by going to your podcast platform and
rating and reviewing the series.
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