November 13, 2024 • 56 mins
Can the Mormon church be reformed? Murray meets campaigners inside and outside of the church who are pushing to change the way it handles sexual abusers. He asks: should the law be changed in New Zealand to force the church to do the right thing?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Curder Murray here. There's nothing specifically triggering in this episode,
specially compared to what you've heard in previous episodes. We
did want to let you know that we asked for
an interview with a church representative, but they declined. We
put all allegations in this series against the LDS Church
to them in writing, and they responded. As followers of
Jesus Christ, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of
(00:22):
Latter day Saints a poor abuse of any kind. As
a church, we invest heavily on prevention and response and
will continue to do so. When a lay leader of
one of our congregations learns of abuse, they are asked
to immediately call a helpline to assist them, to protect
the victim, and to ensure that perpetrators face the consequences
of their actions. The church claims that the helpline ensures
(00:45):
compliance with legal reporting obligations, encourages the victim or victim's
family to report the abuse to civil authorities, and helps
connect victims with professionals who can provide counseling assistance. The
church indicated it is published numerous online resources to help
lay leaders, members, victims, and their families, and that it
will study and implement review recommendations for churches from the
(01:07):
Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I am an ex Mormon, and I'm going to talk
about some of the thoughts and feelings I had going
through a Mormon temple endowment ceremony for the first time.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I am going to show some pictures.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Smith's had over thirty wives.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
Seven of those girls were under eighteen when he married.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
There then left the Mormon Church, And that is a
whole story that.
Speaker 6 (01:30):
Young Mormons, usually like teenage to college student.
Speaker 7 (01:34):
Kind of age, are very sexually repressed.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Go on TikTok or YouTube or Reddit or any number
of other social media sites, and man, there really is
a lot of Mormon content out there.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
The secret handshakes.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It was like if a nine year old had invented
a religion.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Sometimes it's someone talking about some entertainingly quirky aspect of
Mormon life.
Speaker 5 (01:57):
Have y'all heard of some because to wear special religious underwear.
Speaker 8 (02:02):
So you've never heard about the rock in the her
For goodness sake, are we.
Speaker 9 (02:06):
Talking about you?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
These are all real things. By the way, the rock
in a hat was the special stone. Joseph Smith apparently
used to translate the Book of Mormon. Caroline has already
talked about the special underwear she received during her temple
endowment ceremony and soaking. You know, if you really want
to know what soaking is, you can google it.
Speaker 10 (02:26):
Ye, Mormons have got workarounds.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
And of course, talking of workarounds, there's the trashy hit
reality show Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
Speaker 6 (02:38):
We were raised to be these housewives for the men,
serving every desired.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
The cast of which shot to fame after their admission
to soft swinging.
Speaker 11 (02:48):
No one was innocent.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
Everyone has hooked.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Up with like everyone.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
But a lot of the online conversations about Mormonism have
a much more serious purpose.
Speaker 12 (02:57):
And somehow the victim just gets shamed, blamed and shunned.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
And this is a clip from the Mormon Stories podcast.
The woman speaking, Chelsea Goodrich, alleges that she was sexually
assorted by her father, who was a bishop. She was
later offered a secret three hundred thousand dollars by the
church not to sue them. We discussed the case briefly
in episode four.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
When I think of my choice to run a TikTok
account dedicated to criticizing the church, I have to ask
the question, who does my silence benefit. I've never met
an ex Mormon who's not elated to be free.
Speaker 7 (03:36):
From the church.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
That was Alyssa Grenfell, a Utah woman who grew up
in the church but left in her mid twenties. She
presents an honest but lighthearted look at Mormonism. Her TikTok
tagline is I gave up eternal life for coffee made.
And then there's this ex Mormon influencer.
Speaker 13 (03:57):
One of the most startling aspects of the ELDS cultural
enterprise is the assumption that what's good for the church
in Utah must be good for everyone else.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
You might recognize that voice, No, my.
Speaker 9 (04:11):
Had am I welcome to a thoughtful faith podcast. I'm
your host, Gina Colvin.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
That's right, it's Gina, the Mormon expert who's popped up
occasionally through this podcast. Gina is a significant voice in
the international ex Mormon community. She blogged under the name
Kiwi Mormon, and later she hosted a podcast where she
talks with guests about her many ethical and spiritual questions
around the church. It's had millions of downloads. The point, though,
(04:39):
is that whether it's jokes about unusual undergarments and soaking
or brainy conversations about cultural neo colonialism. For the LDS Church,
the Internet has totally changed the game. An organization that
for almost two centuries managed to control what its members
read and heard and therefore believed, has been confronted with
(05:03):
this worldwide free for all of information. This Internet information
avalanche has sparked something that even the church is calling
a faith crisis. Back in twenty thirteen, a huge report
prepared for the church's top leadership tracked the spike in
people quitting the church and directly correlated it to the
(05:24):
growing speed of Internet access. That report, without a hint
of sarcasm, defined the faith crisis of individual Mormons as
being a state of intense emotional and spiritual distress resulting
from the discovery of church history facts that do not
align with the traditional LDS narrative history facts that do
(05:47):
not align. Some might say that's a particularly polite way
of admitting that maybe the church hasn't been telling the
truth to its members, But in fairness to the church,
around that time, they did start making efforts to talk
more openly about the subjects members were stumbling across online.
(06:07):
They began publishing a series of Gospel topics essays which
push back on some points and just conceded on others,
things like the fact that DNA evidence totally contradicts the
Book of Mormon, or that Joseph Smith really was a polygamist. Naturally,
the people I've met while making this podcast haven't been
(06:30):
immune to this faith crisis. But there's something I've found
really curious. This podcast, Heaven's Helpline, has been focused on
one particular and egregious failure of the LDS Church, the
way that victims of sexual and domestic violence have been
silenced or ignored, while offenders have been protected from legal
(06:51):
consequences and sometimes even elevated within the church. But for
many of the people I've talked to literal eyewitnesses to
abuse and abuse cover ups, that wasn't necessarily the thing
that finally undermined their religious conviction. Faith is a powerful force,
and sometimes you'd be surprised by what will and what
(07:14):
won't break it. So for the first part of this
final episode, we're going to dig into that a little
bit and find out from some of the people we've
already met what happened to their faith in the Olds Church.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
For Jesus had one hundred billion dollars areas spend it on.
Speaker 8 (07:31):
I remember opening the door thinking, fuck, he knows, he knows.
Speaker 13 (07:35):
I walked out of the temples that day and my
heart knowing I wouldn't go back.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I'm Murray Jones and this is the final episode of
Heaven's Helpline, a New Zealand Herald investigation into the Mormon
Church in Alter Roa and beyond. Episode six, Breaking the Shelf.
Speaker 9 (08:02):
An Egon toast and a pippermint tea and a bundle
of nerves.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Remember Caroline, we heard her story in the second episode,
and when we left her, she'd escaped her abusive husband
in Australia, returned to Auckland with the help of another Kiwi,
John Campbell, then had that awful experience where church leaders
pressured her into sitting down with her abuser and.
Speaker 9 (08:24):
I said that I forgave him so that the meeting
could be either and so that I could leave.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
That experience was extremely retraumatizing for Caroline, and she lost
some trust in those specific leaders, but she didn't exactly
blame it on the church.
Speaker 9 (08:38):
Because we are taught that we need to forgive all
people as usual, I thought I was the one with
the problem.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
She stayed in the church for years after that. Sadly,
there were more tough times to come for Caroline, including
an abusive marriage with a second man she met through
the church, though it was far less extreme this time round,
and always, just like in her teenage years, Caroline had
questions about the church's teachings.
Speaker 9 (09:05):
I had a lot of doubts.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Some were quite specific, like why did profit Brigham Young
ban black people from taking the priesthood? And why did
the band last all the way until nineteen seventy eight
and a biggie. Had the early Mormons really been polygamous
as outsiders kept claiming, because that's not what she was
hearing in church.
Speaker 9 (09:26):
We had been taught that Joseph Smith did not have
multiple wives.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Mostly, she brushed these doubts aside.
Speaker 9 (09:34):
We're encouraged to not look into anything unless it's from
the church source, So if ever I heard anything negative
about the church from another source, I would ignore.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
It until that is twenty thirteen. Remember, twenty thirteen was
the year of that big internal report about a global
faith crisis, and twenty thirteen was the year the church
started publishing those Gospel Topics essays.
Speaker 9 (09:57):
Thesis is we're on the official church website.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Which meant it was fun for Caroline to read them,
and some of the subjects covered.
Speaker 9 (10:03):
Were significant to me because they addressed issues that I
had with the church.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Caroline was shocked to learn that actually the founder of
the LDS Faith, Joseph Smith, did have multiple wives.
Speaker 9 (10:15):
The church admitted in these essays that yes he did.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
In another essay called Race and the Priesthood, about the
early ban on black priests.
Speaker 9 (10:23):
They admitted in their essay that basically it was just racism.
It wasn't because God had cursed all these men for
something that had happened in their lineage and their ancestry.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Caroline found it hard to process what she was learning.
Speaker 9 (10:39):
I read them over and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
And then all of a sudden, Caroline's entire Mormon faith
just fell.
Speaker 9 (10:48):
Apart, like, oh my God, I don't think this is
true anymore.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Actually following that up and leaving the church wasn't easy, though.
After a lifetime of being guided by her scripture and
church leaders, Caroline's decisions were now her own to make,
which was liberating but also scary.
Speaker 9 (11:11):
It's like suddenly becoming an adult from being a child.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
But with her faith gone, there was no going back
this experience. Caroline had a lifelong accumulation of doubts and
questions than a sudden collapse of faith at a particular
moment in time. This is such a common experience amongst
LDS leavers that they have a name for it. They
(11:39):
call it breaking the shelf.
Speaker 14 (11:42):
All of these things on my shelf a got to
be so heavy that.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
I things that should have broken my shelf.
Speaker 14 (11:47):
Part two.
Speaker 15 (11:47):
It was more of a shelf item than it was.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Why a shelf, Well, the shelf is the place where
you stack up all of your doubts and questions, all
the cognitive disc sinances, with the intention of some day
going back and figuring them out. But one day you're
carefully balancing just one more tricky question or inconvenient facts
on the top of the pile, and the whole shelf breaks,
(12:20):
and everything that's been piling up for years crashes to
the floor, and you've got to deal with all of
it then and there.
Speaker 8 (12:27):
We have so many things on our shelf as Mormons
that we just pack for Marlin.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Remember he's the guy who mastered the art of the
strategic pause when saving souls as a missionary. For Marlin,
there was a lot of stuff stacked up on his shelf.
He'd become really skeptical about those powers that senior church
leaders were supposed to possess. Inspiration where the Holy Spirit
guides your decisions, and the power of discernment, where the
(12:55):
Holy Ghost helps you distinguish truth from lies and good
for evil. Like the time well after his mission, when
Marlin's marriage was in trouble and he was having an affair.
He knew it was wrong. He felt guilty, and every
time he bumped into a leader with the power of discernment,
(13:15):
he felt certain that they could look right into his
heart and see the corruption there.
Speaker 8 (13:21):
I'm having this, Sofia, I'm being dishonest to the church,
to God, to my wife. Get a knock on the door.
It's the state president, the top leader in that part
of Auckland. I remember opening the door thinking, fuck, he knows,
he knows right, That's why he's not on my door.
I guess, can I see you and your wife?
Speaker 14 (13:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (13:39):
Come in.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
The state president comes in. They sit down, and he
tells Marlin the good news. The Lord has called him
to be the Ward's elder's quorum leader, quite an elevated position.
Speaker 8 (13:51):
Those is exact words, we know you are worthy because
your name came up. I'm sitting on the couch next
to my wife, going, fucking kidding me here. I was
that he was going to say, because he's inspired leader,
we know what you've been doing. You've been naughty boy.
But he didn't, and I'm thinking, holy shit, So what
(14:11):
do I do? I double down? I accept. That's when
I was starting unravel. So that's when I was starting
to get these guys aren't inspired. This is bullshit.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Bullshit maybe, but for now, Marlon just puts it on
the shelf, adds it to his fine collection of cognitive dissonances,
things that just don't add up. And it's not until
years later that Marlin's shelf breaks. He hears someone on
the radio talking about Joseph Smith's polygamy, and he's thinking
(14:43):
it's just the usual anti Mormon lies.
Speaker 8 (14:45):
But he gave references and then he said, go to
the church's own family history site, going to look at
the records.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Marlon went online, and sure enough.
Speaker 8 (14:53):
I couldn't believe what I was finding. So I felt
lied to, and I thought of they're lying about that?
What else? So they' lying? Then I and investigated everything
I could about the church. Within a week, I figured
it was not what it claimed to be. Within twenty
four hours, I was like, Holy moly, it was that quick. Yeah,
was that quick? Within twenty four hours, I was like,
(15:14):
I've been dooped. This is a cult.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Everyone's journey out of the faith is different. But again
and again I heard about a shelf breaking moment. Quentin,
the bishop we met in episode three. His shelf was
piled high with concerns like the practice of tithing and
what the church was actually doing with its extraordinary wealth.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
If Jesus had one hundred billion dollars, what he spend
it on. He would clothe the night kid, he would
feed the hungry, he'd liberate the captive, He'd administer relief
to the second the afflicted.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
But the church, with its hundreds of billions, didn't seem
to be doing very much of that at all. Also
on Quentin's shelf polygamy, the Black priests issue homophobic policies,
and the.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
Church started to release some academic essays.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Those essays, again and look, Quentin really wanted to believe.
He wanted to make it work. There was so much
he loved about being a member of the church, but
he just couldn't ignore this new information, so he sought reassurance.
One day in twenty seventeen, at a Sunday open forum discussion,
(16:31):
Quentin asked a question about the life of Joseph Smith.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
I see what about the other versions of this story?
And there was a bit of a chuckle from the teacher.
This is it, but we won't talk about it today.
And that was it, and I actually leaft the class,
stood in the hallway. I was thirty nine or fortieth time.
I just started crying. I broke down and I just cried,
and I realized that I wasn't going to get answers.
(16:55):
And too many things have been piled up on top
of each other.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
They actually, rather than a shell breaking, Quentin has a
way of describing it that I like even more, because
where else but in New Zealand would you get this
metaphor for the sudden catastrophic collapse of your faith in
your church.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Like a jar of Jeffers or a bag of lollies
at the Boovie Theater and that breaks up and all
scattered down under the seats and down the stairs, and
there's theretling and going every and you just know you're
not going to get all your lollies back. That's how
I felt. I just I could never pick them all up.
It was not going to work. That was it, and
I left the building. I went home, and I haven't
been to a church a service since.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
For Gayleen, she of the white Cake and the handful
of dirt, it was a book that did it. In
twenty eighteen, the church published a popular history called Saints.
It was part of that same wave of openness triggered
by the global faith crisis, and just like in the essays,
the book concedes that Joseph Smith was a polygamist and
(18:02):
actually he married a fourteen year old behind his first
wife's back.
Speaker 14 (18:07):
I was shocked.
Speaker 15 (18:09):
I couldn't put it together with all the doctrine.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
For the first time in her life, Gayleen started looking
at her faith with a critical eye. I just wanted
to know what was true.
Speaker 9 (18:19):
It was tough going empty nurse confusion.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
She made repeated visits to the Temple in search of
solace and inspiration. But finally, a couple of years after
first picking up that history book, she was done.
Speaker 13 (18:35):
I walked out of the temple that day, kind of
in my heart knowing I wouldn't go back.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
And then there's the leaving story of the person who's
probably in New Zealand's most famous ex Mormon ever, former
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardn. Ardurn declined my request for an
interview for this podcast, but she's talked before about why
she left the LDS Church in her early twenties. This
(19:04):
is from a twenty seventeen interview with New Zealand personality
Anika moa.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Family in politics.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
I was involved in campaigning for civil unions and one
of the things where I really departed from the church
was on their views around gay homosexuality.
Speaker 14 (19:20):
And you know, it was a bit.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Of a contradiction that hero was campaigning for this thing
over here in you I was in a church that
hadn't quite embraced diversity.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
In Ganesh, the other ex bishop we met in episode three,
he had a faith crisis too, triggered again by those
infamous essays. But even today he still goes to church
on Sundays. He still sees the community's potential for good,
even if he no longer believes or the doctrine as
(19:50):
it happens ganesh knew jes cinder Radun long before she
shot to fame in the Labour Party, and he says
oar Den's impressive career has been a challenge for Mormons.
Speaker 12 (20:00):
It's a real conflict for members of the church in
New Zealand of what you do with j Senda Adan
because she's obviously left the church and she's extremely productive
and amazing, but that's not the narrative that we have.
We have the narrative that people leave and they are
the least.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Then in twenty nineteen, Prime Minister ar Dern briefly met
the LDS Global President Russell Nelson when he visited New Zealand.
It was arranged by her uncle Ian Ardun, who was
the most senior church leader for the Pacific region. And
I think you can hear in this clip that President
Nelson was having trouble getting his head around the post
Mormon achievements of young Jacinda.
Speaker 16 (20:42):
It's an unlikely scenario or a young mother leading a
great nation. We're very impressed with her. She'll have a
great future.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
But even grudging praise is more than most ex Mormons
get when they leave the church. It can mean the
end of important lifelong relationships works. Marlin says when he
told his parents he'd stopped believing, they.
Speaker 8 (21:04):
Just ignored me, shut me off, and then told my
friends that I was an anti Mormon and I was Antichrist.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
It can mean falling out of sync with people you
thought you were close to.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
Here's Quentin, those relationships were not the types of relationships
I thought they were. There's a tune that's used in
the church lot about unconditional love, and I didn't feel
it like I felt it was extremely conditional, Like as
soon as I decided not to believe, they love us
turned off.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
And there's that leaving narrative. Ganesh mentioned that if you go,
your life will fall apart. When I interviewed Quentin, I
also met his wife, Sarah, who quit the church around
the same time as him. She said leaving was scary
because for years she'd been told.
Speaker 10 (21:50):
Your life is going to fall apart, your children will
run off and literally like become criminals, and you know
they will lose all moral.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
She's really not exaggerating. This message comes right from the top.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
You want to walk away from the church, walk away
from anything that lets anything in your life count.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
This is Brad Wilcox, a Brigham Young University lecturer and
senior youth leader, choking up with emotion when speaking at
a Mormon youth gathering in Utah a couple of years ago.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
I hope you realize that if you walk away from
this religion, you lose everything.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
So this LDS faith crisis has been simmering away inside
the church for more than a decade, But meanwhile, beyond
the world of its believers, the church has been fighting
other fires. In recent years, there have been scandals about
the church's investments.
Speaker 17 (22:54):
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saint san
It's investment arm will pay a fine totaling five million dollars, and.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
How it spends tithes they'd been led to believe would
be spent on humanitarian aid and other charitable causes. Now
instead they're accusing the church of investing the money.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
There's been public pushback at the church's attitude to gay people.
Speaker 7 (23:16):
Director insisted the faith does not support conversion therapy.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
But an outrage about sexual abuse inside the Boy Scouts America,
which in the US has especially close ties to the
LDS Church.
Speaker 16 (23:28):
The LDS Church has been hit with several lawsuits for
allegedly covering up decades of sexual abuse among Boy Scout troops.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
And of course there has been a huge reaction to
the kind of abuse and abuse cover ups that we
focused on in this podcast, including those two big associated
press stories about the helpline in the US.
Speaker 9 (23:48):
An abuse helpline used by lay leaders was used to
cover Upper Day Saints.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Trying to pay.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
We're going to look at how the church is reacting
to these scandals, these threats to its money and reputation.
But first I want you to hear just one more
leaving story. Neville Rocco was that high flying Australian lawyer
and high flying Mormon who got caught up in the
internal church court process after a young missionary complained that
(24:17):
he'd been raped by his mission companion. You'll remember from
episode three that it got complicated. Neville concluded the complaint
was legit, but when it seemed the offender would get
away with a slap on the wrist from the church,
Neville helped the victim take the case to police, but
getting so deeply involved in this case, sitting with the
(24:37):
victim as he told his story to police. Learning in
those interviews about additional rapes. All this sparked a trauma
response in Neville himself because.
Speaker 14 (24:48):
As emoting on behalf of this victum, I myself took
you on. I was diagnosed with PDSD and the advice
was you must stay away from all potential triggers.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Staying away from triggers meant a break from going to church.
Speaker 14 (25:05):
I think that was very good advice. Carl's able to
recover as a result of there. But it's during that
time that I decided I'd take a good look at
the church. I thought, well, I've had lots of questions
for years and years I haven't really had a chance
to check those things out. So I'm going to do that.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
And I think you can guess what happened next. With
all that time on his hands, Neville dug into those
gospel topics essays and started thinking more deeply about LDS
doctrine and truth claims, and.
Speaker 14 (25:41):
That led to my leaving the church overall.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Since leaving, Neville's also had time to think about how
the church handles complaints about abuse, and he's been thinking
about what it would take to make things better. The
fact is, the LDS Church has reformed itself more than
a few times. It abandoned polygamy. It reversed the ban
on black priests. Its stance on homosexuality, though still pretty hostile,
(26:10):
is less hostile than it was. Publishing the Gospel topic's
essays was essentially a reversal of a policy of suppressing
the church's true history. In twenty twenty, the Church in
New Zealand created a Terreo Maori speaking branch in Kaikohe, Northland,
the first one for seventy years after Thereo was banned
(26:32):
in the church in the nineteen fifties. Some of these
changes were a matter of adapt or die. The church
leader's revelation that it was time to pivot away from
polygamy in eighteen ninety came at a time when the
US federal government was passing increasingly harsh laws against the practice.
(26:52):
But change can also come from within, like what happened
to worthiness interviews in twenty eighteen. So remember worthiness interviews
are those one on one meetings where members have a
chat with their bishop, which means teenagers are being routinely
asked whether they're having sexual thoughts or have ever masturbated.
Remember too, that Quentin, the former bishop, thought they were
(27:15):
pretty problematic.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
You know, I'm an old man talking to these young
teens in the privacy of my office. It or a fiction,
is so gross.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Well, around twenty seventeen, a Utah Mormon in his mid sixties,
a former bishop called Sam Young, also decided that it
was so gross. He'd learned that bishops often asked really
explicit questions.
Speaker 7 (27:38):
I've got six daughters. I asked one of them, did
this happen to you? And she said, yeah, Dad. When
I was twelve, the bishop asked me, do you masturbate?
I'll tell you if I still get a little anger
in me to think this happened to my child behind
a closed door.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
So he started a campaign to reform the worthiness interviews.
On a website Young set up, hundreds of women shared
their experiences, ranging from the uncomfortable to the traumatic. They've
been asked questions like describe the sexual positions you engaged in,
or what were you thinking of while you masturbated? Or
(28:12):
how many fingers did you use? And Sam Young's campaign worked.
The rules were changed. Nowadays, a child can have another adult,
such as a parent, in the room with them. Teens
are still asked if they're following the law of chastity,
but the opportunity for the bishop to be a creepy
old man is somewhat reduced. But there's a twist. The
(28:39):
policy changed, but Sam Young was excommunicated, and Neville Rocco says,
that's not surprising. That's just the way things roll in
the Mormon Church.
Speaker 14 (28:51):
Is it reformable, Yes, but somebody is going to have
to put the hit above the characters. They will get shot.
They will get shot, and then what they'll do is,
I'll pick over the ecidavers and pick a few reforms
that they'll take you out of there to make it
look like they are listening. They only listen by shooting
first and asking questions later.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
There are other examples of this pattern. In two thousand
and four, Simon Southerton, an Australian Mormon and a geneticist,
published a book explaining how DNA evidence contradicted church dogma.
He was excommunicated, but a decade later the church conceded
that very thing in one of those Gospel topic essays.
(29:34):
Further back, in September nineteen ninety three, six quite senior
members of the church were kicked out at once because
they'd been calling for various reforms, greater transparency about church history,
more leadership positions for women, greater tolerance for gay church members.
Thirty years on, critics would say there's still a long
way to go, but there has without question been some
(29:57):
reform at least in all of those areas. And sometimes
a campaign for change succeeds and you don't even get
kicked out.
Speaker 11 (30:08):
There's been times throughout the campaign when Jane and I
thought we'd get excommunicated and have been quite surprised on
many occasions when it hasn't happened.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
This is Sarah Delaney. She's from Redditch in Worcestershire, that's
about half an hour south of Birmingham in the UK.
She's been in the church for forty seven years, since
joining at the age of twenty with her husband and
two small children. Sarah has worked as a probation officer
and social worker and has spent more than thirty years
working with sexual offenders and abuse victims, so she knows
(30:40):
a lot about what it takes to reduce risks to
children and she could see that there were serious problems
with the way the LDS Church viewed abuse.
Speaker 11 (30:50):
We have a culture that really does allow abuse to flourish.
We know the only thing necessary for sexual abuse to
flourish secrecy, and in the church we don't talk about it,
which makes it much easier to hide.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
From her professional life, Sarah knew that there was one
particularly effective tool for reducing risks to children, routine criminal
background checks on people who work with children and vulnerable adults.
In the UK, it's called a DBS. She talked to
her local leaders about doing this in the church and
(31:26):
she got nowhere.
Speaker 11 (31:27):
If you attempt to have conversations with leaders were shut
down very quickly. It was like, yeah, the priests are
dealing with this, We've got it, is nothing for you
to be concerned about. And I just couldn't break through
anybody listening and paying attention to the seriousness of the problems.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
So in twenty twenty one, she and another LDS member,
Jane Christy, launched a formal campaign, which became known as
twenty first Century Saints.
Speaker 11 (31:52):
I just randomly started asking bishops and leaders, if you
were concerned about sexual abuse or any form of abuse
of child, what would you do? Who would you report
it to? And apart from phone in the church helpline,
not one person could tell me yep.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Just like in the US and in New Zealand, the
UK church has an abuse helpline.
Speaker 11 (32:15):
And so that kind of raised alarms that they didn't
know what to do if there was an allegation of abuse.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
And what was happening when bishops reached out to the helpline.
Speaker 11 (32:23):
They've been advised by the church legal services and helpline
not to make a statement and not to be involved
in investigations, which is deeply alarming.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Sarah and Jane got to work. They wrote to MP's,
they launched a podcast.
Speaker 11 (32:41):
YouTube, shorts, tiktoks, just anything that was getting people talking.
Speaker 9 (32:45):
Really.
Speaker 11 (32:46):
I remember walking around my chapel one Sunday morning and
filming the first aid station, the IRSH station, the far extinguishers,
the Health and Safety book, the road and controlled traps
and kind of put a video on YouTube and said, hey,
we've got all this stuff in our chapel and nothing
about child abuse.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
They also wrote a letter to every bishop in the
country telling them that they should be using the DBS
background checks. The letter said the church was letting victims down.
It said the church was leaving abuses unsupervised and unsafe,
and crucially, the letter informed bishops that they could be
(33:26):
personally legally responsible if they appointed someone who went on
to abuse a child and they hadn't conducted a DBS.
Speaker 11 (33:34):
It was very effective because we actually even had bishop's
wives contact to us and say, you're telling me my
husband's responsible for this. So that got quite a reaction,
and we heard of state presidents that were forced to
gather all their bishops together and discuss it. The church
lawyers got very angry with us, so got Ever so
angry and Ever were upset with us and wrote quite
a strong worded letter to us about our actions, telling
(33:56):
us that we couldn't write to bishops, so I thought,
we'll write to anyone I like act.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Meanwhile, Sarah and Jane were getting messages from all over
the UK from people with stories of mishandled abuse cases.
They started collecting them one hundred and forty in total,
which is a pretty interesting number because just two years
earlier the church had come up with its own number.
It told a twenty nineteen inquiry into child sexual abuse
(34:24):
in the UK that it was aware of just sixteen
recorded allegations of abuse within the church over the past decade.
Sixteen to Sarah, that figure was absurd.
Speaker 11 (34:37):
So is it simply that the Church are only counting
those cases where there's been a conviction, Because they figures
sixteen in ten years. Jane and I know of more
than that sixteen in ten years. We can point them
to that many easily.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
But even while the church was seeming to deny it
had an abuse problem, Sarah and Jane's Tiktoks and pokes
asked random questions to bishops, and I think probably most
importantly that letter warning bishops about their own legal peril.
It had an impact. In June twenty twenty three, the
uk LDS Church suddenly announced mandatory background checks for anyone
(35:18):
working with children or vulnerable adults.
Speaker 11 (35:21):
And that was fantastic. There's nothing in legislation that said
they had to do it. The church voluntarily decided that
all the evidence and all the information they had showed
that that was the right way to go, and they
did it. Fantastic start, guys, But now we need dbs
for missionaries. We need a far better, more enhanced training program.
(35:44):
We need to move forward.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Like Sarah says, the UK Church deciding to use background checks,
that's a fantastic result, but it does beg the question,
right If it's good enough for the UK, why isn't
it church policy everywhere? This is an incredibly centralized organization.
Each Sunday, millions of church members in over one hundred
(36:13):
countries here a sermon on the same topic. Every team
gets exactly the same messages. In seminary school, every person
going through the Endowment ceremony watches the same video. There's
a handbook of instructions, and the same rules and procedures
apply to Mormon leaders all over the world. If anyone
can roll out a policy worldwide, it's the LDS Church.
(36:37):
But in New Zealand, for example, the church still isn't
doing background checks, and there are no laws here requiring
them to do so. It's just one of the ways
that our legal system makes it possible for the church
to do the things we've learned about in this podcast,
things like not reporting abuse and dealing with predators in house,
(36:58):
and pressuring bishops into silence via the helpline or without
even breaking the law. Here are some of the other
gaps in New Zealand law that make all this possible. Firstly,
we have no laws requiring mandatory reporting. This is the
idea that people in certain positions of responsibility who learn
(37:20):
of abuse are obliged to report it to the authorities.
In many jurisdictions, teachers, careers, doctors and sometimes clergy if
they learn of any child abuse, they are legally required
to report it to the authorities. In New Zealand they're not. Secondly,
(37:40):
Priest penitent privilege is a thing here. Remember, Priest penitent
privilege PPP is what keeps a confession confidential. Not every
country has laws recognizing PPP, but New Zealand does. It's
all there in section fifty eight of the Evidence Act
two thousand and six. It's one of the most strongly
written versions of PPP in law anywhere in the world. Thirdly,
(38:06):
in civil court, we have a short statute of limitations
for historic abuse. If you want to take a civil
case against an organization where you are sexually abused, well,
New Zealand has a six year limitation date, which is
kind of crazy when you consider that there's solid research
to show that it takes survivors of child abuse around
(38:27):
twenty five years on average before they're ready to report
what happened to them. So New Zealand could make some
big strides just by changing the law. After all, we
know from stories of the abuse helpline both here and overseas,
that the Mormon Church keeps a very close eye on
(38:48):
what's legal and what's not. But laws don't change overnight.
What could change, and honestly, it could really be quite
fast if the will were there is the church his
own policies. Some of the people I've talked to for
this podcast have really clear ideas of some in house
changes the church could make that really would make a difference.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
On a hero.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Herbert Graves said the church could simply make reporting mandatory
without waiting to be told for.
Speaker 18 (39:21):
There to be systemic change, and that's what is needed.
Our general authorities, which covers the whole world, they need
to mandate very clearly to all of our leaders. Any
allegation must first and foremost be taken to the police.
It's a crime. The church can deal with the sinner
(39:45):
aspect of it, but not in lieu of.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
An A hero. Has another suggestion, by the way, which
is also pretty hard to argue with.
Speaker 18 (39:53):
I really do want to see more and more notice
taken of women leaders in the church. I don't see
why we have to ask permission to blow the whistle
to speak out about these things publicly. You know these
are crimes.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Nevil Rocco has an idea too. The church could teach
its bishops a different playbook for when they hear a
shocking confession, even in places where a priest penitent privilege applies.
Speaker 19 (40:22):
If I were a bishop in the Mormon Church and
somebody came to me and said, look, I've been abusing
children or raped a person or killed somebody, I'd say, well,
what you've told me is covered by a confidentiality, at.
Speaker 14 (40:36):
Least within the church. But if you're truly penitent, you
will come with me to police and repeat the same
thing as a confessor to the police. If you won't
do that, then I can't accept that you're truly penitent,
and therefore I should be free to go to the
police myself. So that's the way I would solve it.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
See, with a bit of imagination, you can find ways
to do the right thing. And on that third law,
the statute of limitations, there's one new voice I'd like
you to hear from now. Remember that back in episode three,
we heard that awful story of Jenny who said that
in the nineteen sixties she was abused by an adult
(41:21):
church member and then abused again by her bishop when
she reported it to him. Like I said, Jenny's now
trying to sue the church and her lawyer in this
case is Mobina Hills.
Speaker 6 (41:33):
I've been working with abuse survivors for about thirteen years now.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
And one of the issues Mobina had to explain to
Jenny was that New Zealand had this surprisingly short statute
of limitations when it comes to civil law. For many
of Mobina's cases, the church involved has chosen not to
use that statute of limitations defense, even though it's available
to them. But with Jenny's case with the Mormon Church
(42:00):
the Gun, It's been a totally different story. Mabina says.
The Elders Church has stuck to the letter of the
law on the Statute of limitations and has generally been
far more aggressive in their language and tactics than other
religious institutions she's dealt with, to.
Speaker 6 (42:17):
The point where has been retraumatizing to our clients, which
is most unusual. In many cases churches and institutions survivor
focused and would seek to accept the allegations that the
survivor has put to the church. In this particular case,
we haven't seen that at all. The Church has been
(42:37):
utterly dismissive and really relying on the legal basis to
really defend the claim and not see Ginny as a
person at all.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
So look, the world could hold out for the LDS
Church to switch to mandatory reporting without waiting for a
law change, like Anahira just suggested. We could wait to
see if the Olds Church will advise its bishops to
set aside the protective shield of priest penitent privilege as
never recommends. But it seems much more likely that the
(43:06):
church will instead continue to take the kind of aggressive
legalistic approaches that Mabina talks about. There have been examples
all over the world. In its submission to the UK's
Child Abuse Inquiry, the LDS Church opposed the introduction of
mandatory reporting laws in the US. The church is still
(43:28):
leaning heavily on PPP. Late last year I saw there
was a depressing update to the case of Paul Adams's daughters. Remember,
they were suing the church because Mormon officials had known
that Paul Adams was abusing them and did nothing to
stop him for seven years. Well, in the end, the
(43:51):
daughter's case was dismissed.
Speaker 17 (43:53):
And Arizona judge has dismissed a high profile child sex
abuse lawsuit. Superior court judge said the state's clergy penitent
privilege excused two bishops from the state's child sex abuse
mandatory reporting law.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
The church lawyers successfully argued that because Paul Adams had
admitted to the abuse during confession, those two bishops Herod
and Mawsey, who'd called the abuse helpline and been advised
how to proceed, had no legal duty to let authorities
know about the child rapist in their midst, nor the
(44:30):
dozen or so other Mormon officials that were made aware
of his crimes during his church disciplinary council. The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints had won. There's
(44:53):
a hymn that the Mormon Tabernacle choir is especially famous for,
called Come, Come Ye Saints. It's a song composed in
(45:18):
eighteen forty six, just sixteen years after the foundation of
Joseph Smith's new religion. This was a time when the
members were being driven ever further west, from New York
to Ohio, from Ohio to Missouri, from Missouri up to Illinois,
then eventually all the way to Salt Lake Valley, Utah.
(45:42):
The song celebrates the faith and the perseverance of the
Mormon pioneers, and their determination to strive onwards despite persecution
and hardship. Gird up yours, says the second verse, and
(46:02):
fresh courage. Take one hundred and eighty years later, the
church has an investment portfolio worth two hundred and sixty
billion dollars US. It's easily one of the richest churches
in the world. It's not exactly the underdog anymore. Yet
Come Come Ye Saints is still the musical centerpiece of
(46:25):
major Mormon gatherings. There are still echoes deep in the
church's memory of being outsiders, of being persecuted, of having
to stand up for themselves and for John regardless. So,
despite its battles with financial regulators, with lawyers like Tim Kosnov,
(46:46):
with a faith crisis in its ranks, the church is
currently in an era of massive expansion, building temples all
over the world. Since President Russell M. Nelson took over
as the church's leader in twenty eighteen, he's announced at
least one hundred and thirty new temple builds, including in India, Guatemala,
(47:07):
and of course New Zealand.
Speaker 16 (47:09):
Now you've been wondering a little bit about is Brother
Nelson going to say anything about our temple.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
This is him in twenty nineteen speaking to twelve thousand
Mormons in Auckland.
Speaker 16 (47:20):
Today, I'm pleased to announce that the new temple will
be built in Auckland on Redoubt Road.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
One new temple, planned for the outskirts of Las Vegas,
was meant to have aspire sixty six meters high, but
designers shaved off six meters at the last minute because
otherwise they'd have had to put a flashing beacon on
the top for the safety of passing planes. More temples
doesn't necessarily mean more members, at least in the US,
(47:49):
where growth seems to have stagnated, but according to the Church,
membership is growing rapidly. In Africa.
Speaker 15 (47:56):
The groundbreaking for the Kinshasha Democratic Republic look of the
Carngo Temple is the most recent example of the steady
an impressive rise of the church in this exotic land.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
When President Nelson was in Nairobi in twenty eighteen, he
told his audience poor people could only break out of
the generational cycles of poverty when they pay their tithing.
So overall, the church's numbers are still growing The most
recent official church count put membership at seventeen point three
(48:30):
million people. People might be leaving because of the church's
attitude to LGBT rights, or the practice of tithing, or
the cover up of abuse, or because of some information
they found in a gospel topics essay online or even
on a TikTok, but new people are still joining. There
are still enthusiastic missionaries pounding the pavements worldwide. A couple
(48:55):
of years ago, just after I had finished my business
Desk series of article about the church's finances, there was
an open day at Temple View. I went along more
out of nosiness than anything else. It was a rare
chance for outsiders to get a glimpse of the inside
of the Mormon experience. Back then, I was fixated on
(49:17):
Mormon money. I was looking around at all the marble
and gold, thinking about the tithing and what it had
cost the members, the sacrifices made to grant this grand
monument to the Mormon faith. About the same time, in
South Auckland, in one of the poorest areas in the country,
you could see the beginnings of New Zealand's second Mormon
(49:40):
temple in Manuco. Every time I drive back to Auckland,
I see it getting bigger and bigger, and it's nearly done.
And Yeah, at the beginning, as the scaffolding went up
and the body of the temple began to fill out,
I was thinking about money, tithes, wealth, poverty, that never
(50:00):
seems to spend much of its wealth on helping the
homeless or feeding the hungry. But over the past two years,
the towering Auckland Temple has come to represent something quite
different for me. I see it and I think about
the worthiness tests, the power of the priesthood holders. I
(50:22):
think about the way those structures have allowed those abuses
to flourish in the church, and how so much of
that power revolves around the temple and whether you are
good enough to enter it. And I think about Caroline,
who thirty years ago sat on a hill next to
(50:43):
the temple in Hamilton. She just finished her endowment ceremony
so she could go ahead with the marriage that would
become a living nightmare. She sat there and thought about
the curious rituals she had just gone through and asked herself,
what the hell is this? Do I really believe in
(51:05):
this socially isolated yet surrounded by fellow churchgoers. She had
no one to validate her feelings, no one to tell
her to trust her instincts, and so, thinking the problem
lay with her, she didn't trust her own judgment. She
(51:28):
deferred to her male authority figures. Now though, the Internet
is letting the light in. People are sharing tiktoks about
temple rituals and YouTube essays about what Joseph Smith really
got up to. But perhaps most importantly, they are sharing
(51:48):
experiences about what has gone wrong in the past. They're
hearing from people like Caroline who have stories to tell.
Speaker 9 (51:58):
I think the church behaves a lot like an abuser
in encouraging guilt and gas ladding you in saying no,
that's not actually happening. It's you're the one with the problem.
You know you don't have enough faith.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
During that final interview with Caroline, I asked her, if
you were talking to a Mormon girl right now, to
a teenage girl, what would you say to her? What
advice would you give her?
Speaker 9 (52:32):
What would I tell them? There's so much that I
could tell them. I would tell them that if they're
not comfortable with something, to listen to that and to
trust themselves. The church will say that if you study
something out in your mind and you pray about it
and you feel confusion, and then it's not of God.
(52:53):
I would say to them, other people are feeling confused
to other people are not comfortable either. They're hiding it.
It's not socially acceptable to admit it. So I would say,
explore that confusion, and I would say, trust in your
own intelligence. God gave you a brain, God gave your mind.
(53:15):
I don't believe in God anymore. But if you still
believe in God, why did he give you this thinking
intelligence to reason and work things out. If you weren't
allowed to think for yourself, if you weren't allowed to
make decisions for yourself without passing it through a priest
leader first. So every major life decision, it's your decision.
(53:37):
No one else has a right to make those decisions
for you.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
Heaven's Helpline was funded by New Zealand on Air and
The New Zealand Herald for enzed 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 SoC Media, who edited and sound
designed it Phil Brownlee as our sound engineer. Music was
(54:44):
by Thomas Arbur and Anita Clark. Ethan Sills is executive
producer here at New Zealand Herald. An additional interview was
by Helen King. We had scripting advice from Melody Thomas
and Andrew Laxon. Artwork was done by Phil Johnson. News
clippings came from Fox News thirteen, Utah, twelve News, NBC
(55:05):
and ABC four Utah Special thanks to Victoria Young, Matt Martel,
Maggie Dudding, Christina Greentree and Alegrascales and all the voice
actors who pitched in Namihi Nui. To all those who
spoke to me for this podcast, I know it wasn't
easy for people to speak out. If you have a
(55:26):
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 or dm me
on x at Murray Reports. And for more on this podcast,
head to nzedherld dot co dot nzed slash Heaven's helpline.
(55:51):
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.
If you've been impacted by any of the issues in
this series, we have included details of support services in
the show notes.
Curder Murray here. There's nothing specifically triggering in this episode,
specially compared to what you've heard in previous episodes. We
did want to let you know that we asked for
an interview with a church representative, but they declined. We
put all allegations in this series against the LDS Church
to them in writing, and they responded. As followers of
Jesus Christ, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of
(00:22):
Latter day Saints a poor abuse of any kind. As
a church, we invest heavily on prevention and response and
will continue to do so. When a lay leader of
one of our congregations learns of abuse, they are asked
to immediately call a helpline to assist them, to protect
the victim, and to ensure that perpetrators face the consequences
of their actions. The church claims that the helpline ensures
(00:45):
compliance with legal reporting obligations, encourages the victim or victim's
family to report the abuse to civil authorities, and helps
connect victims with professionals who can provide counseling assistance. The
church indicated it is published numerous online resources to help
lay leaders, members, victims, and their families, and that it
will study and implement review recommendations for churches from the
(01:07):
Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I am an ex Mormon, and I'm going to talk
about some of the thoughts and feelings I had going
through a Mormon temple endowment ceremony for the first time.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I am going to show some pictures.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Smith's had over thirty wives.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
Seven of those girls were under eighteen when he married.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
There then left the Mormon Church, And that is a
whole story that.
Speaker 6 (01:30):
Young Mormons, usually like teenage to college student.
Speaker 7 (01:34):
Kind of age, are very sexually repressed.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Go on TikTok or YouTube or Reddit or any number
of other social media sites, and man, there really is
a lot of Mormon content out there.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
The secret handshakes.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It was like if a nine year old had invented
a religion.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Sometimes it's someone talking about some entertainingly quirky aspect of
Mormon life.
Speaker 5 (01:57):
Have y'all heard of some because to wear special religious underwear.
Speaker 8 (02:02):
So you've never heard about the rock in the her
For goodness sake, are we.
Speaker 9 (02:06):
Talking about you?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
These are all real things. By the way, the rock
in a hat was the special stone. Joseph Smith apparently
used to translate the Book of Mormon. Caroline has already
talked about the special underwear she received during her temple
endowment ceremony and soaking. You know, if you really want
to know what soaking is, you can google it.
Speaker 10 (02:26):
Ye, Mormons have got workarounds.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
And of course, talking of workarounds, there's the trashy hit
reality show Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
Speaker 6 (02:38):
We were raised to be these housewives for the men,
serving every desired.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
The cast of which shot to fame after their admission
to soft swinging.
Speaker 11 (02:48):
No one was innocent.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
Everyone has hooked.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Up with like everyone.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
But a lot of the online conversations about Mormonism have
a much more serious purpose.
Speaker 12 (02:57):
And somehow the victim just gets shamed, blamed and shunned.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
And this is a clip from the Mormon Stories podcast.
The woman speaking, Chelsea Goodrich, alleges that she was sexually
assorted by her father, who was a bishop. She was
later offered a secret three hundred thousand dollars by the
church not to sue them. We discussed the case briefly
in episode four.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
When I think of my choice to run a TikTok
account dedicated to criticizing the church, I have to ask
the question, who does my silence benefit. I've never met
an ex Mormon who's not elated to be free.
Speaker 7 (03:36):
From the church.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
That was Alyssa Grenfell, a Utah woman who grew up
in the church but left in her mid twenties. She
presents an honest but lighthearted look at Mormonism. Her TikTok
tagline is I gave up eternal life for coffee made.
And then there's this ex Mormon influencer.
Speaker 13 (03:57):
One of the most startling aspects of the ELDS cultural
enterprise is the assumption that what's good for the church
in Utah must be good for everyone else.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
You might recognize that voice, No, my.
Speaker 9 (04:11):
Had am I welcome to a thoughtful faith podcast. I'm
your host, Gina Colvin.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
That's right, it's Gina, the Mormon expert who's popped up
occasionally through this podcast. Gina is a significant voice in
the international ex Mormon community. She blogged under the name
Kiwi Mormon, and later she hosted a podcast where she
talks with guests about her many ethical and spiritual questions
around the church. It's had millions of downloads. The point, though,
(04:39):
is that whether it's jokes about unusual undergarments and soaking
or brainy conversations about cultural neo colonialism. For the LDS Church,
the Internet has totally changed the game. An organization that
for almost two centuries managed to control what its members
read and heard and therefore believed, has been confronted with
(05:03):
this worldwide free for all of information. This Internet information
avalanche has sparked something that even the church is calling
a faith crisis. Back in twenty thirteen, a huge report
prepared for the church's top leadership tracked the spike in
people quitting the church and directly correlated it to the
(05:24):
growing speed of Internet access. That report, without a hint
of sarcasm, defined the faith crisis of individual Mormons as
being a state of intense emotional and spiritual distress resulting
from the discovery of church history facts that do not
align with the traditional LDS narrative history facts that do
(05:47):
not align. Some might say that's a particularly polite way
of admitting that maybe the church hasn't been telling the
truth to its members, But in fairness to the church,
around that time, they did start making efforts to talk
more openly about the subjects members were stumbling across online.
(06:07):
They began publishing a series of Gospel topics essays which
push back on some points and just conceded on others,
things like the fact that DNA evidence totally contradicts the
Book of Mormon, or that Joseph Smith really was a polygamist. Naturally,
the people I've met while making this podcast haven't been
(06:30):
immune to this faith crisis. But there's something I've found
really curious. This podcast, Heaven's Helpline, has been focused on
one particular and egregious failure of the LDS Church, the
way that victims of sexual and domestic violence have been
silenced or ignored, while offenders have been protected from legal
(06:51):
consequences and sometimes even elevated within the church. But for
many of the people I've talked to literal eyewitnesses to
abuse and abuse cover ups, that wasn't necessarily the thing
that finally undermined their religious conviction. Faith is a powerful force,
and sometimes you'd be surprised by what will and what
(07:14):
won't break it. So for the first part of this
final episode, we're going to dig into that a little
bit and find out from some of the people we've
already met what happened to their faith in the Olds Church.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
For Jesus had one hundred billion dollars areas spend it on.
Speaker 8 (07:31):
I remember opening the door thinking, fuck, he knows, he knows.
Speaker 13 (07:35):
I walked out of the temples that day and my
heart knowing I wouldn't go back.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I'm Murray Jones and this is the final episode of
Heaven's Helpline, a New Zealand Herald investigation into the Mormon
Church in Alter Roa and beyond. Episode six, Breaking the Shelf.
Speaker 9 (08:02):
An Egon toast and a pippermint tea and a bundle
of nerves.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Remember Caroline, we heard her story in the second episode,
and when we left her, she'd escaped her abusive husband
in Australia, returned to Auckland with the help of another Kiwi,
John Campbell, then had that awful experience where church leaders
pressured her into sitting down with her abuser and.
Speaker 9 (08:24):
I said that I forgave him so that the meeting
could be either and so that I could leave.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
That experience was extremely retraumatizing for Caroline, and she lost
some trust in those specific leaders, but she didn't exactly
blame it on the church.
Speaker 9 (08:38):
Because we are taught that we need to forgive all
people as usual, I thought I was the one with
the problem.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
She stayed in the church for years after that. Sadly,
there were more tough times to come for Caroline, including
an abusive marriage with a second man she met through
the church, though it was far less extreme this time round,
and always, just like in her teenage years, Caroline had
questions about the church's teachings.
Speaker 9 (09:05):
I had a lot of doubts.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Some were quite specific, like why did profit Brigham Young
ban black people from taking the priesthood? And why did
the band last all the way until nineteen seventy eight
and a biggie. Had the early Mormons really been polygamous
as outsiders kept claiming, because that's not what she was
hearing in church.
Speaker 9 (09:26):
We had been taught that Joseph Smith did not have
multiple wives.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Mostly, she brushed these doubts aside.
Speaker 9 (09:34):
We're encouraged to not look into anything unless it's from
the church source, So if ever I heard anything negative
about the church from another source, I would ignore.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
It until that is twenty thirteen. Remember, twenty thirteen was
the year of that big internal report about a global
faith crisis, and twenty thirteen was the year the church
started publishing those Gospel Topics essays.
Speaker 9 (09:57):
Thesis is we're on the official church website.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Which meant it was fun for Caroline to read them,
and some of the subjects covered.
Speaker 9 (10:03):
Were significant to me because they addressed issues that I
had with the church.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Caroline was shocked to learn that actually the founder of
the LDS Faith, Joseph Smith, did have multiple wives.
Speaker 9 (10:15):
The church admitted in these essays that yes he did.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
In another essay called Race and the Priesthood, about the
early ban on black priests.
Speaker 9 (10:23):
They admitted in their essay that basically it was just racism.
It wasn't because God had cursed all these men for
something that had happened in their lineage and their ancestry.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Caroline found it hard to process what she was learning.
Speaker 9 (10:39):
I read them over and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
And then all of a sudden, Caroline's entire Mormon faith
just fell.
Speaker 9 (10:48):
Apart, like, oh my God, I don't think this is
true anymore.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Actually following that up and leaving the church wasn't easy, though.
After a lifetime of being guided by her scripture and
church leaders, Caroline's decisions were now her own to make,
which was liberating but also scary.
Speaker 9 (11:11):
It's like suddenly becoming an adult from being a child.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
But with her faith gone, there was no going back
this experience. Caroline had a lifelong accumulation of doubts and
questions than a sudden collapse of faith at a particular
moment in time. This is such a common experience amongst
LDS leavers that they have a name for it. They
(11:39):
call it breaking the shelf.
Speaker 14 (11:42):
All of these things on my shelf a got to
be so heavy that.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
I things that should have broken my shelf.
Speaker 14 (11:47):
Part two.
Speaker 15 (11:47):
It was more of a shelf item than it was.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Why a shelf, Well, the shelf is the place where
you stack up all of your doubts and questions, all
the cognitive disc sinances, with the intention of some day
going back and figuring them out. But one day you're
carefully balancing just one more tricky question or inconvenient facts
on the top of the pile, and the whole shelf breaks,
(12:20):
and everything that's been piling up for years crashes to
the floor, and you've got to deal with all of
it then and there.
Speaker 8 (12:27):
We have so many things on our shelf as Mormons
that we just pack for Marlin.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Remember he's the guy who mastered the art of the
strategic pause when saving souls as a missionary. For Marlin,
there was a lot of stuff stacked up on his shelf.
He'd become really skeptical about those powers that senior church
leaders were supposed to possess. Inspiration where the Holy Spirit
guides your decisions, and the power of discernment, where the
(12:55):
Holy Ghost helps you distinguish truth from lies and good
for evil. Like the time well after his mission, when
Marlin's marriage was in trouble and he was having an affair.
He knew it was wrong. He felt guilty, and every
time he bumped into a leader with the power of discernment,
(13:15):
he felt certain that they could look right into his
heart and see the corruption there.
Speaker 8 (13:21):
I'm having this, Sofia, I'm being dishonest to the church,
to God, to my wife. Get a knock on the door.
It's the state president, the top leader in that part
of Auckland. I remember opening the door thinking, fuck, he knows,
he knows right, That's why he's not on my door.
I guess, can I see you and your wife?
Speaker 14 (13:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (13:39):
Come in.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
The state president comes in. They sit down, and he
tells Marlin the good news. The Lord has called him
to be the Ward's elder's quorum leader, quite an elevated position.
Speaker 8 (13:51):
Those is exact words, we know you are worthy because
your name came up. I'm sitting on the couch next
to my wife, going, fucking kidding me here. I was
that he was going to say, because he's inspired leader,
we know what you've been doing. You've been naughty boy.
But he didn't, and I'm thinking, holy shit, So what
(14:11):
do I do? I double down? I accept. That's when
I was starting unravel. So that's when I was starting
to get these guys aren't inspired. This is bullshit.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Bullshit maybe, but for now, Marlon just puts it on
the shelf, adds it to his fine collection of cognitive dissonances,
things that just don't add up. And it's not until
years later that Marlin's shelf breaks. He hears someone on
the radio talking about Joseph Smith's polygamy, and he's thinking
(14:43):
it's just the usual anti Mormon lies.
Speaker 8 (14:45):
But he gave references and then he said, go to
the church's own family history site, going to look at
the records.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Marlon went online, and sure enough.
Speaker 8 (14:53):
I couldn't believe what I was finding. So I felt
lied to, and I thought of they're lying about that?
What else? So they' lying? Then I and investigated everything
I could about the church. Within a week, I figured
it was not what it claimed to be. Within twenty
four hours, I was like, Holy moly, it was that quick. Yeah,
was that quick? Within twenty four hours, I was like,
(15:14):
I've been dooped. This is a cult.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Everyone's journey out of the faith is different. But again
and again I heard about a shelf breaking moment. Quentin,
the bishop we met in episode three. His shelf was
piled high with concerns like the practice of tithing and
what the church was actually doing with its extraordinary wealth.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
If Jesus had one hundred billion dollars, what he spend
it on. He would clothe the night kid, he would
feed the hungry, he'd liberate the captive, He'd administer relief
to the second the afflicted.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
But the church, with its hundreds of billions, didn't seem
to be doing very much of that at all. Also
on Quentin's shelf polygamy, the Black priests issue homophobic policies,
and the.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
Church started to release some academic essays.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Those essays, again and look, Quentin really wanted to believe.
He wanted to make it work. There was so much
he loved about being a member of the church, but
he just couldn't ignore this new information, so he sought reassurance.
One day in twenty seventeen, at a Sunday open forum discussion,
(16:31):
Quentin asked a question about the life of Joseph Smith.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
I see what about the other versions of this story?
And there was a bit of a chuckle from the teacher.
This is it, but we won't talk about it today.
And that was it, and I actually leaft the class,
stood in the hallway. I was thirty nine or fortieth time.
I just started crying. I broke down and I just cried,
and I realized that I wasn't going to get answers.
(16:55):
And too many things have been piled up on top
of each other.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
They actually, rather than a shell breaking, Quentin has a
way of describing it that I like even more, because
where else but in New Zealand would you get this
metaphor for the sudden catastrophic collapse of your faith in
your church.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Like a jar of Jeffers or a bag of lollies
at the Boovie Theater and that breaks up and all
scattered down under the seats and down the stairs, and
there's theretling and going every and you just know you're
not going to get all your lollies back. That's how
I felt. I just I could never pick them all up.
It was not going to work. That was it, and
I left the building. I went home, and I haven't
been to a church a service since.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
For Gayleen, she of the white Cake and the handful
of dirt, it was a book that did it. In
twenty eighteen, the church published a popular history called Saints.
It was part of that same wave of openness triggered
by the global faith crisis, and just like in the essays,
the book concedes that Joseph Smith was a polygamist and
(18:02):
actually he married a fourteen year old behind his first
wife's back.
Speaker 14 (18:07):
I was shocked.
Speaker 15 (18:09):
I couldn't put it together with all the doctrine.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
For the first time in her life, Gayleen started looking
at her faith with a critical eye. I just wanted
to know what was true.
Speaker 9 (18:19):
It was tough going empty nurse confusion.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
She made repeated visits to the Temple in search of
solace and inspiration. But finally, a couple of years after
first picking up that history book, she was done.
Speaker 13 (18:35):
I walked out of the temple that day, kind of
in my heart knowing I wouldn't go back.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
And then there's the leaving story of the person who's
probably in New Zealand's most famous ex Mormon ever, former
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardn. Ardurn declined my request for an
interview for this podcast, but she's talked before about why
she left the LDS Church in her early twenties. This
(19:04):
is from a twenty seventeen interview with New Zealand personality
Anika moa.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Family in politics.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
I was involved in campaigning for civil unions and one
of the things where I really departed from the church
was on their views around gay homosexuality.
Speaker 14 (19:20):
And you know, it was a bit.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Of a contradiction that hero was campaigning for this thing
over here in you I was in a church that
hadn't quite embraced diversity.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
In Ganesh, the other ex bishop we met in episode three,
he had a faith crisis too, triggered again by those
infamous essays. But even today he still goes to church
on Sundays. He still sees the community's potential for good,
even if he no longer believes or the doctrine as
(19:50):
it happens ganesh knew jes cinder Radun long before she
shot to fame in the Labour Party, and he says
oar Den's impressive career has been a challenge for Mormons.
Speaker 12 (20:00):
It's a real conflict for members of the church in
New Zealand of what you do with j Senda Adan
because she's obviously left the church and she's extremely productive
and amazing, but that's not the narrative that we have.
We have the narrative that people leave and they are
the least.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Then in twenty nineteen, Prime Minister ar Dern briefly met
the LDS Global President Russell Nelson when he visited New Zealand.
It was arranged by her uncle Ian Ardun, who was
the most senior church leader for the Pacific region. And
I think you can hear in this clip that President
Nelson was having trouble getting his head around the post
Mormon achievements of young Jacinda.
Speaker 16 (20:42):
It's an unlikely scenario or a young mother leading a
great nation. We're very impressed with her. She'll have a
great future.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
But even grudging praise is more than most ex Mormons
get when they leave the church. It can mean the
end of important lifelong relationships works. Marlin says when he
told his parents he'd stopped believing, they.
Speaker 8 (21:04):
Just ignored me, shut me off, and then told my
friends that I was an anti Mormon and I was Antichrist.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
It can mean falling out of sync with people you
thought you were close to.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
Here's Quentin, those relationships were not the types of relationships
I thought they were. There's a tune that's used in
the church lot about unconditional love, and I didn't feel
it like I felt it was extremely conditional, Like as
soon as I decided not to believe, they love us
turned off.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
And there's that leaving narrative. Ganesh mentioned that if you go,
your life will fall apart. When I interviewed Quentin, I
also met his wife, Sarah, who quit the church around
the same time as him. She said leaving was scary
because for years she'd been told.
Speaker 10 (21:50):
Your life is going to fall apart, your children will
run off and literally like become criminals, and you know
they will lose all moral.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
She's really not exaggerating. This message comes right from the top.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
You want to walk away from the church, walk away
from anything that lets anything in your life count.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
This is Brad Wilcox, a Brigham Young University lecturer and
senior youth leader, choking up with emotion when speaking at
a Mormon youth gathering in Utah a couple of years ago.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
I hope you realize that if you walk away from
this religion, you lose everything.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
So this LDS faith crisis has been simmering away inside
the church for more than a decade, But meanwhile, beyond
the world of its believers, the church has been fighting
other fires. In recent years, there have been scandals about
the church's investments.
Speaker 17 (22:54):
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saint san
It's investment arm will pay a fine totaling five million dollars, and.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
How it spends tithes they'd been led to believe would
be spent on humanitarian aid and other charitable causes. Now
instead they're accusing the church of investing the money.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
There's been public pushback at the church's attitude to gay people.
Speaker 7 (23:16):
Director insisted the faith does not support conversion therapy.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
But an outrage about sexual abuse inside the Boy Scouts America,
which in the US has especially close ties to the
LDS Church.
Speaker 16 (23:28):
The LDS Church has been hit with several lawsuits for
allegedly covering up decades of sexual abuse among Boy Scout troops.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
And of course there has been a huge reaction to
the kind of abuse and abuse cover ups that we
focused on in this podcast, including those two big associated
press stories about the helpline in the US.
Speaker 9 (23:48):
An abuse helpline used by lay leaders was used to
cover Upper Day Saints.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Trying to pay.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
We're going to look at how the church is reacting
to these scandals, these threats to its money and reputation.
But first I want you to hear just one more
leaving story. Neville Rocco was that high flying Australian lawyer
and high flying Mormon who got caught up in the
internal church court process after a young missionary complained that
(24:17):
he'd been raped by his mission companion. You'll remember from
episode three that it got complicated. Neville concluded the complaint
was legit, but when it seemed the offender would get
away with a slap on the wrist from the church,
Neville helped the victim take the case to police, but
getting so deeply involved in this case, sitting with the
(24:37):
victim as he told his story to police. Learning in
those interviews about additional rapes. All this sparked a trauma
response in Neville himself because.
Speaker 14 (24:48):
As emoting on behalf of this victum, I myself took
you on. I was diagnosed with PDSD and the advice
was you must stay away from all potential triggers.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Staying away from triggers meant a break from going to church.
Speaker 14 (25:05):
I think that was very good advice. Carl's able to
recover as a result of there. But it's during that
time that I decided I'd take a good look at
the church. I thought, well, I've had lots of questions
for years and years I haven't really had a chance
to check those things out. So I'm going to do that.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
And I think you can guess what happened next. With
all that time on his hands, Neville dug into those
gospel topics essays and started thinking more deeply about LDS
doctrine and truth claims, and.
Speaker 14 (25:41):
That led to my leaving the church overall.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Since leaving, Neville's also had time to think about how
the church handles complaints about abuse, and he's been thinking
about what it would take to make things better. The
fact is, the LDS Church has reformed itself more than
a few times. It abandoned polygamy. It reversed the ban
on black priests. Its stance on homosexuality, though still pretty hostile,
(26:10):
is less hostile than it was. Publishing the Gospel topic's
essays was essentially a reversal of a policy of suppressing
the church's true history. In twenty twenty, the Church in
New Zealand created a Terreo Maori speaking branch in Kaikohe, Northland,
the first one for seventy years after Thereo was banned
(26:32):
in the church in the nineteen fifties. Some of these
changes were a matter of adapt or die. The church
leader's revelation that it was time to pivot away from
polygamy in eighteen ninety came at a time when the
US federal government was passing increasingly harsh laws against the practice.
(26:52):
But change can also come from within, like what happened
to worthiness interviews in twenty eighteen. So remember worthiness interviews
are those one on one meetings where members have a
chat with their bishop, which means teenagers are being routinely
asked whether they're having sexual thoughts or have ever masturbated.
Remember too, that Quentin, the former bishop, thought they were
(27:15):
pretty problematic.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
You know, I'm an old man talking to these young
teens in the privacy of my office. It or a fiction,
is so gross.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Well, around twenty seventeen, a Utah Mormon in his mid sixties,
a former bishop called Sam Young, also decided that it
was so gross. He'd learned that bishops often asked really
explicit questions.
Speaker 7 (27:38):
I've got six daughters. I asked one of them, did
this happen to you? And she said, yeah, Dad. When
I was twelve, the bishop asked me, do you masturbate?
I'll tell you if I still get a little anger
in me to think this happened to my child behind
a closed door.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
So he started a campaign to reform the worthiness interviews.
On a website Young set up, hundreds of women shared
their experiences, ranging from the uncomfortable to the traumatic. They've
been asked questions like describe the sexual positions you engaged in,
or what were you thinking of while you masturbated? Or
(28:12):
how many fingers did you use? And Sam Young's campaign worked.
The rules were changed. Nowadays, a child can have another adult,
such as a parent, in the room with them. Teens
are still asked if they're following the law of chastity,
but the opportunity for the bishop to be a creepy
old man is somewhat reduced. But there's a twist. The
(28:39):
policy changed, but Sam Young was excommunicated, and Neville Rocco says,
that's not surprising. That's just the way things roll in
the Mormon Church.
Speaker 14 (28:51):
Is it reformable, Yes, but somebody is going to have
to put the hit above the characters. They will get shot.
They will get shot, and then what they'll do is,
I'll pick over the ecidavers and pick a few reforms
that they'll take you out of there to make it
look like they are listening. They only listen by shooting
first and asking questions later.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
There are other examples of this pattern. In two thousand
and four, Simon Southerton, an Australian Mormon and a geneticist,
published a book explaining how DNA evidence contradicted church dogma.
He was excommunicated, but a decade later the church conceded
that very thing in one of those Gospel topic essays.
(29:34):
Further back, in September nineteen ninety three, six quite senior
members of the church were kicked out at once because
they'd been calling for various reforms, greater transparency about church history,
more leadership positions for women, greater tolerance for gay church members.
Thirty years on, critics would say there's still a long
way to go, but there has without question been some
(29:57):
reform at least in all of those areas. And sometimes
a campaign for change succeeds and you don't even get
kicked out.
Speaker 11 (30:08):
There's been times throughout the campaign when Jane and I
thought we'd get excommunicated and have been quite surprised on
many occasions when it hasn't happened.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
This is Sarah Delaney. She's from Redditch in Worcestershire, that's
about half an hour south of Birmingham in the UK.
She's been in the church for forty seven years, since
joining at the age of twenty with her husband and
two small children. Sarah has worked as a probation officer
and social worker and has spent more than thirty years
working with sexual offenders and abuse victims, so she knows
(30:40):
a lot about what it takes to reduce risks to
children and she could see that there were serious problems
with the way the LDS Church viewed abuse.
Speaker 11 (30:50):
We have a culture that really does allow abuse to flourish.
We know the only thing necessary for sexual abuse to
flourish secrecy, and in the church we don't talk about it,
which makes it much easier to hide.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
From her professional life, Sarah knew that there was one
particularly effective tool for reducing risks to children, routine criminal
background checks on people who work with children and vulnerable adults.
In the UK, it's called a DBS. She talked to
her local leaders about doing this in the church and
(31:26):
she got nowhere.
Speaker 11 (31:27):
If you attempt to have conversations with leaders were shut
down very quickly. It was like, yeah, the priests are
dealing with this, We've got it, is nothing for you
to be concerned about. And I just couldn't break through
anybody listening and paying attention to the seriousness of the problems.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
So in twenty twenty one, she and another LDS member,
Jane Christy, launched a formal campaign, which became known as
twenty first Century Saints.
Speaker 11 (31:52):
I just randomly started asking bishops and leaders, if you
were concerned about sexual abuse or any form of abuse
of child, what would you do? Who would you report
it to? And apart from phone in the church helpline,
not one person could tell me yep.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Just like in the US and in New Zealand, the
UK church has an abuse helpline.
Speaker 11 (32:15):
And so that kind of raised alarms that they didn't
know what to do if there was an allegation of abuse.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
And what was happening when bishops reached out to the helpline.
Speaker 11 (32:23):
They've been advised by the church legal services and helpline
not to make a statement and not to be involved
in investigations, which is deeply alarming.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Sarah and Jane got to work. They wrote to MP's,
they launched a podcast.
Speaker 11 (32:41):
YouTube, shorts, tiktoks, just anything that was getting people talking.
Speaker 9 (32:45):
Really.
Speaker 11 (32:46):
I remember walking around my chapel one Sunday morning and
filming the first aid station, the IRSH station, the far extinguishers,
the Health and Safety book, the road and controlled traps
and kind of put a video on YouTube and said, hey,
we've got all this stuff in our chapel and nothing
about child abuse.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
They also wrote a letter to every bishop in the
country telling them that they should be using the DBS
background checks. The letter said the church was letting victims down.
It said the church was leaving abuses unsupervised and unsafe,
and crucially, the letter informed bishops that they could be
(33:26):
personally legally responsible if they appointed someone who went on
to abuse a child and they hadn't conducted a DBS.
Speaker 11 (33:34):
It was very effective because we actually even had bishop's
wives contact to us and say, you're telling me my
husband's responsible for this. So that got quite a reaction,
and we heard of state presidents that were forced to
gather all their bishops together and discuss it. The church
lawyers got very angry with us, so got Ever so
angry and Ever were upset with us and wrote quite
a strong worded letter to us about our actions, telling
(33:56):
us that we couldn't write to bishops, so I thought,
we'll write to anyone I like act.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Meanwhile, Sarah and Jane were getting messages from all over
the UK from people with stories of mishandled abuse cases.
They started collecting them one hundred and forty in total,
which is a pretty interesting number because just two years
earlier the church had come up with its own number.
It told a twenty nineteen inquiry into child sexual abuse
(34:24):
in the UK that it was aware of just sixteen
recorded allegations of abuse within the church over the past decade.
Sixteen to Sarah, that figure was absurd.
Speaker 11 (34:37):
So is it simply that the Church are only counting
those cases where there's been a conviction, Because they figures
sixteen in ten years. Jane and I know of more
than that sixteen in ten years. We can point them
to that many easily.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
But even while the church was seeming to deny it
had an abuse problem, Sarah and Jane's Tiktoks and pokes
asked random questions to bishops, and I think probably most
importantly that letter warning bishops about their own legal peril.
It had an impact. In June twenty twenty three, the
uk LDS Church suddenly announced mandatory background checks for anyone
(35:18):
working with children or vulnerable adults.
Speaker 11 (35:21):
And that was fantastic. There's nothing in legislation that said
they had to do it. The church voluntarily decided that
all the evidence and all the information they had showed
that that was the right way to go, and they
did it. Fantastic start, guys, But now we need dbs
for missionaries. We need a far better, more enhanced training program.
(35:44):
We need to move forward.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Like Sarah says, the UK Church deciding to use background checks,
that's a fantastic result, but it does beg the question,
right If it's good enough for the UK, why isn't
it church policy everywhere? This is an incredibly centralized organization.
Each Sunday, millions of church members in over one hundred
(36:13):
countries here a sermon on the same topic. Every team
gets exactly the same messages. In seminary school, every person
going through the Endowment ceremony watches the same video. There's
a handbook of instructions, and the same rules and procedures
apply to Mormon leaders all over the world. If anyone
can roll out a policy worldwide, it's the LDS Church.
(36:37):
But in New Zealand, for example, the church still isn't
doing background checks, and there are no laws here requiring
them to do so. It's just one of the ways
that our legal system makes it possible for the church
to do the things we've learned about in this podcast,
things like not reporting abuse and dealing with predators in house,
(36:58):
and pressuring bishops into silence via the helpline or without
even breaking the law. Here are some of the other
gaps in New Zealand law that make all this possible. Firstly,
we have no laws requiring mandatory reporting. This is the
idea that people in certain positions of responsibility who learn
(37:20):
of abuse are obliged to report it to the authorities.
In many jurisdictions, teachers, careers, doctors and sometimes clergy if
they learn of any child abuse, they are legally required
to report it to the authorities. In New Zealand they're not. Secondly,
(37:40):
Priest penitent privilege is a thing here. Remember, Priest penitent
privilege PPP is what keeps a confession confidential. Not every
country has laws recognizing PPP, but New Zealand does. It's
all there in section fifty eight of the Evidence Act
two thousand and six. It's one of the most strongly
written versions of PPP in law anywhere in the world. Thirdly,
(38:06):
in civil court, we have a short statute of limitations
for historic abuse. If you want to take a civil
case against an organization where you are sexually abused, well,
New Zealand has a six year limitation date, which is
kind of crazy when you consider that there's solid research
to show that it takes survivors of child abuse around
(38:27):
twenty five years on average before they're ready to report
what happened to them. So New Zealand could make some
big strides just by changing the law. After all, we
know from stories of the abuse helpline both here and overseas,
that the Mormon Church keeps a very close eye on
(38:48):
what's legal and what's not. But laws don't change overnight.
What could change, and honestly, it could really be quite
fast if the will were there is the church his
own policies. Some of the people I've talked to for
this podcast have really clear ideas of some in house
changes the church could make that really would make a difference.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
On a hero.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Herbert Graves said the church could simply make reporting mandatory
without waiting to be told for.
Speaker 18 (39:21):
There to be systemic change, and that's what is needed.
Our general authorities, which covers the whole world, they need
to mandate very clearly to all of our leaders. Any
allegation must first and foremost be taken to the police.
It's a crime. The church can deal with the sinner
(39:45):
aspect of it, but not in lieu of.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
An A hero. Has another suggestion, by the way, which
is also pretty hard to argue with.
Speaker 18 (39:53):
I really do want to see more and more notice
taken of women leaders in the church. I don't see
why we have to ask permission to blow the whistle
to speak out about these things publicly. You know these
are crimes.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Nevil Rocco has an idea too. The church could teach
its bishops a different playbook for when they hear a
shocking confession, even in places where a priest penitent privilege applies.
Speaker 19 (40:22):
If I were a bishop in the Mormon Church and
somebody came to me and said, look, I've been abusing
children or raped a person or killed somebody, I'd say, well,
what you've told me is covered by a confidentiality, at.
Speaker 14 (40:36):
Least within the church. But if you're truly penitent, you
will come with me to police and repeat the same
thing as a confessor to the police. If you won't
do that, then I can't accept that you're truly penitent,
and therefore I should be free to go to the
police myself. So that's the way I would solve it.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
See, with a bit of imagination, you can find ways
to do the right thing. And on that third law,
the statute of limitations, there's one new voice I'd like
you to hear from now. Remember that back in episode three,
we heard that awful story of Jenny who said that
in the nineteen sixties she was abused by an adult
(41:21):
church member and then abused again by her bishop when
she reported it to him. Like I said, Jenny's now
trying to sue the church and her lawyer in this
case is Mobina Hills.
Speaker 6 (41:33):
I've been working with abuse survivors for about thirteen years now.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
And one of the issues Mobina had to explain to
Jenny was that New Zealand had this surprisingly short statute
of limitations when it comes to civil law. For many
of Mobina's cases, the church involved has chosen not to
use that statute of limitations defense, even though it's available
to them. But with Jenny's case with the Mormon Church
(42:00):
the Gun, It's been a totally different story. Mabina says.
The Elders Church has stuck to the letter of the
law on the Statute of limitations and has generally been
far more aggressive in their language and tactics than other
religious institutions she's dealt with, to.
Speaker 6 (42:17):
The point where has been retraumatizing to our clients, which
is most unusual. In many cases churches and institutions survivor
focused and would seek to accept the allegations that the
survivor has put to the church. In this particular case,
we haven't seen that at all. The Church has been
(42:37):
utterly dismissive and really relying on the legal basis to
really defend the claim and not see Ginny as a
person at all.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
So look, the world could hold out for the LDS
Church to switch to mandatory reporting without waiting for a
law change, like Anahira just suggested. We could wait to
see if the Olds Church will advise its bishops to
set aside the protective shield of priest penitent privilege as
never recommends. But it seems much more likely that the
(43:06):
church will instead continue to take the kind of aggressive
legalistic approaches that Mabina talks about. There have been examples
all over the world. In its submission to the UK's
Child Abuse Inquiry, the LDS Church opposed the introduction of
mandatory reporting laws in the US. The church is still
(43:28):
leaning heavily on PPP. Late last year I saw there
was a depressing update to the case of Paul Adams's daughters. Remember,
they were suing the church because Mormon officials had known
that Paul Adams was abusing them and did nothing to
stop him for seven years. Well, in the end, the
(43:51):
daughter's case was dismissed.
Speaker 17 (43:53):
And Arizona judge has dismissed a high profile child sex
abuse lawsuit. Superior court judge said the state's clergy penitent
privilege excused two bishops from the state's child sex abuse
mandatory reporting law.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
The church lawyers successfully argued that because Paul Adams had
admitted to the abuse during confession, those two bishops Herod
and Mawsey, who'd called the abuse helpline and been advised
how to proceed, had no legal duty to let authorities
know about the child rapist in their midst, nor the
(44:30):
dozen or so other Mormon officials that were made aware
of his crimes during his church disciplinary council. The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints had won. There's
(44:53):
a hymn that the Mormon Tabernacle choir is especially famous for,
called Come, Come Ye Saints. It's a song composed in
(45:18):
eighteen forty six, just sixteen years after the foundation of
Joseph Smith's new religion. This was a time when the
members were being driven ever further west, from New York
to Ohio, from Ohio to Missouri, from Missouri up to Illinois,
then eventually all the way to Salt Lake Valley, Utah.
(45:42):
The song celebrates the faith and the perseverance of the
Mormon pioneers, and their determination to strive onwards despite persecution
and hardship. Gird up yours, says the second verse, and
(46:02):
fresh courage. Take one hundred and eighty years later, the
church has an investment portfolio worth two hundred and sixty
billion dollars US. It's easily one of the richest churches
in the world. It's not exactly the underdog anymore. Yet
Come Come Ye Saints is still the musical centerpiece of
(46:25):
major Mormon gatherings. There are still echoes deep in the
church's memory of being outsiders, of being persecuted, of having
to stand up for themselves and for John regardless. So,
despite its battles with financial regulators, with lawyers like Tim Kosnov,
(46:46):
with a faith crisis in its ranks, the church is
currently in an era of massive expansion, building temples all
over the world. Since President Russell M. Nelson took over
as the church's leader in twenty eighteen, he's announced at
least one hundred and thirty new temple builds, including in India, Guatemala,
(47:07):
and of course New Zealand.
Speaker 16 (47:09):
Now you've been wondering a little bit about is Brother
Nelson going to say anything about our temple.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
This is him in twenty nineteen speaking to twelve thousand
Mormons in Auckland.
Speaker 16 (47:20):
Today, I'm pleased to announce that the new temple will
be built in Auckland on Redoubt Road.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
One new temple, planned for the outskirts of Las Vegas,
was meant to have aspire sixty six meters high, but
designers shaved off six meters at the last minute because
otherwise they'd have had to put a flashing beacon on
the top for the safety of passing planes. More temples
doesn't necessarily mean more members, at least in the US,
(47:49):
where growth seems to have stagnated, but according to the Church,
membership is growing rapidly. In Africa.
Speaker 15 (47:56):
The groundbreaking for the Kinshasha Democratic Republic look of the
Carngo Temple is the most recent example of the steady
an impressive rise of the church in this exotic land.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
When President Nelson was in Nairobi in twenty eighteen, he
told his audience poor people could only break out of
the generational cycles of poverty when they pay their tithing.
So overall, the church's numbers are still growing The most
recent official church count put membership at seventeen point three
(48:30):
million people. People might be leaving because of the church's
attitude to LGBT rights, or the practice of tithing, or
the cover up of abuse, or because of some information
they found in a gospel topics essay online or even
on a TikTok, but new people are still joining. There
are still enthusiastic missionaries pounding the pavements worldwide. A couple
(48:55):
of years ago, just after I had finished my business
Desk series of article about the church's finances, there was
an open day at Temple View. I went along more
out of nosiness than anything else. It was a rare
chance for outsiders to get a glimpse of the inside
of the Mormon experience. Back then, I was fixated on
(49:17):
Mormon money. I was looking around at all the marble
and gold, thinking about the tithing and what it had
cost the members, the sacrifices made to grant this grand
monument to the Mormon faith. About the same time, in
South Auckland, in one of the poorest areas in the country,
you could see the beginnings of New Zealand's second Mormon
(49:40):
temple in Manuco. Every time I drive back to Auckland,
I see it getting bigger and bigger, and it's nearly done.
And Yeah, at the beginning, as the scaffolding went up
and the body of the temple began to fill out,
I was thinking about money, tithes, wealth, poverty, that never
(50:00):
seems to spend much of its wealth on helping the
homeless or feeding the hungry. But over the past two years,
the towering Auckland Temple has come to represent something quite
different for me. I see it and I think about
the worthiness tests, the power of the priesthood holders. I
(50:22):
think about the way those structures have allowed those abuses
to flourish in the church, and how so much of
that power revolves around the temple and whether you are
good enough to enter it. And I think about Caroline,
who thirty years ago sat on a hill next to
(50:43):
the temple in Hamilton. She just finished her endowment ceremony
so she could go ahead with the marriage that would
become a living nightmare. She sat there and thought about
the curious rituals she had just gone through and asked herself,
what the hell is this? Do I really believe in
(51:05):
this socially isolated yet surrounded by fellow churchgoers. She had
no one to validate her feelings, no one to tell
her to trust her instincts, and so, thinking the problem
lay with her, she didn't trust her own judgment. She
(51:28):
deferred to her male authority figures. Now though, the Internet
is letting the light in. People are sharing tiktoks about
temple rituals and YouTube essays about what Joseph Smith really
got up to. But perhaps most importantly, they are sharing
(51:48):
experiences about what has gone wrong in the past. They're
hearing from people like Caroline who have stories to tell.
Speaker 9 (51:58):
I think the church behaves a lot like an abuser
in encouraging guilt and gas ladding you in saying no,
that's not actually happening. It's you're the one with the problem.
You know you don't have enough faith.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
During that final interview with Caroline, I asked her, if
you were talking to a Mormon girl right now, to
a teenage girl, what would you say to her? What
advice would you give her?
Speaker 9 (52:32):
What would I tell them? There's so much that I
could tell them. I would tell them that if they're
not comfortable with something, to listen to that and to
trust themselves. The church will say that if you study
something out in your mind and you pray about it
and you feel confusion, and then it's not of God.
(52:53):
I would say to them, other people are feeling confused
to other people are not comfortable either. They're hiding it.
It's not socially acceptable to admit it. So I would say,
explore that confusion, and I would say, trust in your
own intelligence. God gave you a brain, God gave your mind.
(53:15):
I don't believe in God anymore. But if you still
believe in God, why did he give you this thinking
intelligence to reason and work things out. If you weren't
allowed to think for yourself, if you weren't allowed to
make decisions for yourself without passing it through a priest
leader first. So every major life decision, it's your decision.
(53:37):
No one else has a right to make those decisions
for you.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
Heaven's Helpline was funded by New Zealand on Air and
The New Zealand Herald for enzed 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 SoC Media, who edited and sound
designed it Phil Brownlee as our sound engineer. Music was
(54:44):
by Thomas Arbur and Anita Clark. Ethan Sills is executive
producer here at New Zealand Herald. An additional interview was
by Helen King. We had scripting advice from Melody Thomas
and Andrew Laxon. Artwork was done by Phil Johnson. News
clippings came from Fox News thirteen, Utah, twelve News, NBC
(55:05):
and ABC four Utah Special thanks to Victoria Young, Matt Martel,
Maggie Dudding, Christina Greentree and Alegrascales and all the voice
actors who pitched in Namihi Nui. To all those who
spoke to me for this podcast, I know it wasn't
easy for people to speak out. If you have a
(55:26):
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 or dm me
on x at Murray Reports. And for more on this podcast,
head to nzedherld dot co dot nzed slash Heaven's helpline.
(55:51):
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.
If you've been impacted by any of the issues in
this series, we have included details of support services in
the show notes.
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