Last night at close of business, the Church announced some changes to how cases of abuse are handled and to youth interviews to allow those being interviewed to have another adult present in the room if requested, and another adult or parent in an adjacent room. You can read about these changes here and here. Carolyn at BCC does a great recap here, with a recommendation that readers share these updates in an email to ward auxilliary leaders who are not provided copies of the church’s letter or the Handbook 1 revisions (which only go to priesthood leadership, branch presidents and above) so that women and youth are aware. This is a great suggestion that I encourage everyone to do.
In making this change, the church is demonstrating publicly that this clarified approach is more closely aligned with their intentions. The Handbook gives local leaders a lot of leeway to make mistakes as outlined here, and this action is designed to curb some of those worse impulses that we’ve heard stories about:
- discouraging victims from reporting abuse to law enforcement.
- discouraging victims from leaving an abusive situation.
- bishops preventing parents from sitting in on youth interviews.
- bishops with a skeevy vibe having access to vulnerable victims in an isolated one-to-one setting.
OK, so that last one can still totally happen, but if said vulnerable potential victim gets said skeevy vibe, she or he can request a second adult to be present or in an adjacent room. Critics of this change will note some of the following issues:
- The most vulnerable among us are always going to be those who are conflict-averse (and therefore less likely to push the matter or second guess their skeevy vibe-o-meter), those who don’t have a support network to rely on to join the interview, or those who are just more naive and trusting and easily impressed by authority. They won’t be helped by a policy that relies on them taking initiative.
- Pervy leaders who want to abuse others can still key into the vulnerable ones and groom them or convince them to overlook their feelings of reservation.
- Only male leaders are being told about this change–not the people who are being given the options, and not their direct leaders (in the case of Young Women & Relief Society). So if they have the options, how will they know they have the options? If their leader is the abuser, then that leader would never tell them. There’s no letter being read in sacrament meeting. That seems like a pretty big hole in this plan.
The change seems to be in response to several things: the recent MTC sexual assault scandal, and also Sam Young’s petition to prevent isolated youth interviews which has resulted in threats of disciplinary action from his local leaders. He has been organizing a march to raise awareness and present this petition this weekend during the General Conference coverage. Given the church’s response, clearly there’s more alignment for his cause than his local leaders were acknowledging. Given how little the Church likes marches and other liberal tactics by church members, proceeding with the march may not be the wisest course of action.
What do you think of this new change? Is it:
- a first step in a genuine attempt to improve local leaders’ ability to help abuse victims and prevent abuses in private interviews with local leaders?
- a PR stunt to do the minimum possible to appear responsive to a bout of bad publicity?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
My take is it probably both a PR stunt and a first step, just as the Joseph Smith Papers were both a PR stunt and a first step. Though the church could do more with transparency, JSPP was a first of many small steps, and I’m guessing the same will be with this. (Though I admit I can’t see the future so perhaps this is wishful thinking).
I’m going to disagree Sam Young’s march. Certainly there are many ways the march could be counterproductive, such as using it asa time to focus on how strange the church is or attack people or the church itself. Sam has done a good job at focusing that what he wants is a change of policy. If he can hit the message right, which I think he can, he can reach people who are both pro church, but would also like to see a policy change.
First I think it has to be said that Sam’s local leaders where telling him if he didn’t stop he would be excommunicated. Of course local leaders NEVER get any direction/suggestion from SLC, no no no -that never happens. This could have been done weeks ago when Sam was just starting to really makes some noise. But then again, Sam’s efforts have been consistently building steam and didn’t look like they were going to back down. I would have to assume there is a portion of PR and a portion of trying to change things for the better. I personally lean towards PR being the larger part.
One of the reasons I lean towards “majority PR” is that the PR pressure right now isn’t just on this one issue. The Bishop recording seems like it might be starting a #MormonMeToo wave (focused more on abuse from church leadership). I think they needed something to point to to show they were working to make things better.
Issuing these new policies is a nice step forward. But changing the culture and practices of a large institution like the LDS Church takes years of steady effort. They need to make the new policies generally accessible (not hide them in Handbook 1), they need to regularly teach the new approach to local leaders, and they need to correct local leaders who don’t get with the new program. [I’m assuming that the leadership is sincere in issuing the new policies rather than just doing PR damage control and hoping nothing really changes at the local level.]
It’s worth remembering that the President of the Church, Pres. Hinckley, spoke forcefully against abuse within the Church about ten years ago in Conference. And basically nothing changed. So let’s see if the leadership has learned anything about how to create institutional change.
Angela C: Just a small correction: The First Presidency has instructed local leaders, in the letter, to discuss these policies with the Ward Counsel, so female leaders of auxiliaries will be informed. If I were a bishop, I would also announce the policies over the pulpit (because the people on the Ward Counsel are most certainly not the direct beneficiaries of the changes), but that’s not being directed at this point. But the changes are to be discussed with female leadership at a minimum.
Also, read the “Resource Document” here: https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/multimedia/file/Preventing-and-Responding-to-Abuse-attachment-final.pdf
That document is encouraging to me, not because of the actual policy changes it contains, but because it looks like the start of a more vigorous, open, continuous line of institutional discussion about the abuse problem in the Church. As many have rightly observed, we’ve had policies aimed at this problem for decades, but I think the conversation is going to get much louder, with broad participation. And that’s what’s really needed here.
The church’s change about allowing parents or another adult is not really a change because, legally as parent they have a legal right to be in with any interview. So, all along if a minor said they wanted a parent in the room, the bishop is not allowed to have an interview with minors and exclude the parent. So, the church is “giving up” something it never had a legal right to do in the first place. So, they have acknowledged that they have zero right to demand to be alone with a minor, wow ….so impressed
And second, Sam’s petition and march are to make having an extra adult mandatory, not optional.
As for taking accusations of abuse seriously and not telling women to stay with an abusive husband when it is unsafe, well those are “that should not have to be even said” kind of common sense things that should have been promoted all along, so I refuse to give the church brownie points for doing a bare minimum that should have been done 100 years ago.
The church is not going near far enough with this. They need to give bishops as much training in how to help in abuse situations as they give for more mundane and actually less common things. In Utah, estimates are that 1 girl in 3 will have some unwanted sexual contact with an adult before she turns 18. This may be as small as a forced kiss, but it is still unwanted and still forced by an adult and includes all the way to rape. So shouldn’t bishops be trained in handling this common situation. 1in 4 Utah women are hit by a partner, so shouldn’t bishops be trained in dealing with this. They need some way of reporting unrighteous dominion that is not to the very person who is abusive. They need to offer help to victims that is not as expensive as LDS FS like they do for addiction, self help groups led by people who have been through it, where it is not all reported back to the bishop.
So, this is cover your ass PR.
It’s not to help a use victims or pull a pr stunt.
The purpose of the new policy is to protect the church from liability.
Anna: I hear you about bishops not having the right to refuse parents entry to the interviews, but there are in fact many people online who have shared that their bishops did just that.
Let’s clarify who gets the final say here: It’s the parents, NOT the minor! But the materials (linked in the post) say: ” If the person being interviewed desires, another adult may be invited to participate in the interview.” This echoes a claim I heard from an LDS source early in the discussion (a few weeks ago), as if the interview was to protect minors from their parents, so a one-on-one interview was needed to facilitate disclosure of any abuse.
WRONG! The problem is not with the parents, it is with the leaders. Yes, if a minor wants a parent present, then that request should be honored (and concerned parents can so advise their kids if that is their wish). But the minor doesn’t have the final say here — if the PARENT says no interview without a parent present, that trumps anything the minor says. That is to protect the minor from the LEADER. I’m afraid that the policy as written will be misread by bishops to mean that if the minor says okay to a one-on-one interview, then that is all they need. Once again, this LDS policy plays right into the hands of corrupt leaders who use the interview culture for their own personal ends or sincere leaders who will unwittingly inflict harm on their interviewees.
And if any minor wants to disclose an abuse situation to a responsible adult, do it to law enforcement, a state social worker, a therapist, or a teacher, NOT TO A BISHOP! Bishops aren’t trained, don’t know what to do with a disclosure, may not even recognize a disclosure if it is made, and will get little or no help from the LDS advice line.
I was encouraged to see the Church move on this based, seemingly, on the discontent among rank and file members. Sort of the Emma Smith/School of Prophets/Word of Wisdom mode of recognizing and addressing a problem. Unfortunately, the Church’s first instincts are to excommunicate or threaten excommunication when member discontent gets aired. The Church needs to check that reflex.
Off topic. I would like to add that this needs to be expanded into so many areas of where the LDS church takes control of OUR own kids. Example, you have to wake up at 5 AM for early morning seminary. There are no other choices. Or you can only speak to your own missionary 2x/year. The LDS institution is a control freak. We are taking our children back or no longer participating in the institution.
Faith, I just regret I can only give you a single thumbs up!
Faith– your remark is not off topic at all. I think a major LDS cultural shift is underway, in which many rank-and-file members are questioning their relationship with the institutional church, and examining how much control of their lives they are willing to give to the organization. I’ll wager it’s much less now than in previous generations, and continuing to decrease. The case of Joseph Bishop and the collective outrage that followed illustrates this point. I am aware of many lifelong members who applaud the policy change as a step in the right direction, but six months ago these same people would have had no reservations about letting their kids have one-on-one bishopric interviews. Mormons are gradually realizing that for generations we have been outsourcing a lot of our moral agency and decision-making authority to the organization, but are now beginning to take it back, piece by piece. The church leaders also realize this, and they are awkwardly trying to respond to it, but can’t seem to do it fast enough to be anything but reactionary.
I’d call it a PR move.
Who can/should be in the room during interviews is just part of San Young’s concern. But I thought that the real meat of it was to put an end to probing, intrusive, inappropriate sexual questions, period.
Well..I did stand up..I refused to make my kids go to early morning seminary. They need sleep. I asked for home study. Denied. We have paid the consequences now. My son with higher than byu average ACT and GPA was denied to BYU provi…only because of seminary. Same with another in the stake. Kids with inferior GPA and act were accepted. The clique protects their own.
Why do I care…now have to pay out of state tuition.
Effect….now they want tithing…when it’s going to the out of state school. My tithing to support the bishops kid who has inferior scholastic but gets glowing recommendations from the clique.
Oh the church is so broken.
They are such hippocritates in denial.
I feel the pain out there and they refuse to see it. They love their rules more than individual.
Go marry your handbook !!!
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While I am glad of the change, I am concerned that psychology has basically replaced theology as a moral arbiter in our culture. Years ago, communities turned to the pastors for guidance. Due to abuse and secularization, pastors have lost that moral authory. The church has taken a few years longer, but that change is coming now. Bishops, untrained, no longer have the same moral authority they once did, and people turn toward psychology as the moral antithesis to clergy abuse (John Dehlin for example). Yet this is also a field that can be abused. Look at the cases where children are provided birth control or even abortions without parental notification. In California, disussions and counseling of a sexual nature with children over the age of 14 are considered protected and clasified information that cannot be shared with parents. There are abuses of power in both religion and secularism. I don’t have answers, but I do have doubts.
For an example of schools have secret counseling, see…
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/teen-abortion-high-school/story?id=10189694.
Faith stated “Well..I did stand up..I refused to make my kids go to early morning seminary. They need sleep. I asked for home study.”
I think that is great that you stood up and I’m sorry (but unfortunately not surprised) they denied the home study option.
When we moved to Utah we had been homeschooling our kids. We registered them in Utah public schools so they could take some of the classes and participate in sports. In a twist, however, the school system enrolled my son as a Sophomore instead of as a Freshman as he should have been. Turns out for transfer home school students the school determined grade placement by birthday, not by last grade completed (i.e. if he’d been registered in a school prior to our move, Utah would have enrolled him in 9th grade). That left him with only three years eligibility for High School programs. We pushed back a bit, but lost.
When we enrolled him in Seminary, guess what? The same thing happened; CES would not allow him to take four years of seminary because the High School had shorted him a year. That was unbelievable. Our Bishop somehow got a home study course and had him go through it one summer so he’d be eligible for seminary graduation.
To suggest that a Bishop should not be in the same category of “trusted adult” as a teacher or police officer is, frankly, ridiculous. There are plenty of legitimate reasons a child would trust a Bishop more than a non-parent in another setting, starting with the fact that, for kids in the “mission field,” church leaders are likely the only adults other than parents who share the child’s fundamental beliefs, values, standards, and worldview. Of course, there are bad men who are Bishops, who might take advantage of the child, but there are also bad teachers and police officers (and, by the way, I’d love to see a comparison of the rates of offense as between those three categories). Bishops should be trained more than they are (which isn’t “none,” btw), but they also have access to spiritual gifts, doctrines, and principles that other adults may lack, no matter the amount of training. I, for one, have not become so progressive in my mormonism that I write those gifts of as having no weight in the calculus.
Gadfly, the difference is that the teacher/police is not calling them in to discuss sexual issues. The minor is choosing who they trust to go to them. Big difference. I taught my children that if they ever got lost, they were not to go with anyone who approached them and asked if they were lost. (Lots of kidnappings happen that way) But that my child should look around and find a mother or father with children, or police officer, or store clerk, that they felt they could trust and approach them and tell that person they were lost. The child should get to choose who to trust among the various adults.
Those of us advocating for change are not saying that a minor should never trust the bishop, but that the bishop should not be trusted out of obligation or automatically trusted because of his position. The child should choose who to trust.
The LDS church may be looking out for its legal interests at the corporate executive level, but they are throwing their local bishops under the wagon.
Lets get real ! Youth today know how to use their phones. They have access to the entire worlds erotic “literature” and they look at it, don’t kid yourselves. They can record anything. They can cut and paste and distort and destroy context. They live in a hyper sexual culture. They are naturally mischievous. They are bored by their constant digital activity. Increasing numbers of them suffer from abuse and exploitation which fuels anger. Many of them have mental illness and personality disorders. Accusations of abuse need to be taken seriously, but I can tell you that many teenagers are messing around and saying “smack” all the time. A bishop who actually understands contemporary youth culture would have to be CRAZY to sit in a room alone with youth repeatedly and talk about their sexual conduct. C.R.A.Z.Y!
Let us conduct a little thought experiment. Assume for argument sake only, that Joseph Bishop is in the early stages of dementia and is gullible to being manipulated into confessing to things he never did. (Assume he was innocent). His son believes this. Many orthodox members want to believe it. Or they want to minimize it as some minor peep show instead of rape as the victims have said. Then explain to me why any decent bishop could not likewise be falsely accused? Explain why the bishops of the church are not demanding that they be protected from similar false accusation by additional witnesses?
The bishop should be allowed to have a second witness for his own protection in these interviews. Why they do not demand it is perplexing. Help me out here, the only explanation for them to persist in this dangerous activity I can image is that they do get some kind of cheap thrills asking little girls about their sexual experiences or lack thereof. The fact that bishops are not marching around temple square instead of Sam Young is disturbing to me. Bishops, it is time for you to crawl out from under the wagon and your own little verbal Pornoramas to stop.
Anna, I’m not arguing against what you’re proposing (voluntary thirty parties in bishop’s interviews). I am arguing against proposals by others that no Bishop be *permitted* to speak to a child alone. And my argument is that there’s no good reason for the latter policy that isn’t also a good reason for prohibiting children from speaking with *any* adult alone. I’m just saying that, when it comes to risks and benefits for the child, you shouldn’t exclude entire categories of adults based merely on their social role. To do so will certainly harm children who are looking for protection from abuse, and who trust their church leaders above others (as many LDS children do).
Mike – “Why they [bishops] do not demand it [extra person in the room] is perplexing”? Answer – the bishops are of the most “church broke” and know the culture is, “don’t make waves.” And I have heard of some bishops that were adopting this even before the church made their baby step.
Mike—I’m the wife of a man who served for 6 years as bishop in Salt Lake. We are both marching on Friday for the exact reason you mention, in addition to wanting our granddaughters to be protected by new policies. Halfway thru his service there was a local news story of a former scout leader in Harrisville, UT being accused of sexual abuse that was to have taken place 20 years before. I realized then that my husband—and every other bishop—had been placed in a very vulnerable position and I was scared for him and our family. I want to protect LDS Children and leaders put in these positions.
Someone here said that bishops are trained. There’s very little training—quarterly meetings with SP and other bishops in the stake, and PPI’s which do not qualify as training—and none of it prior to taking office. A man can literally be called, sustained and set apart within the span of 24 hrs as was the case with my husband. He had served twice as a counselor and fortunately the men he served under were kind and mild mannered and not abusive.They and his father were the examples he followed. This was also before counselors could conduct TR and other interivews so he had none of that experience prior to his bishop call. A ward member with a serious issue could literally have walked into the bishop’s office 15 minutes after he was set apart—members did but hopefully not with grave issues—and he would have been expected to assist, counsel, etc. With ZERO training. Fortunately he never asked anyone about their sexual practices and always invited a child’s parents in for baptismal interviews. But he now wishes he’d never interviewed a youth alone. Unless the youth asked for it as a way to confess a problematic or hurtful action on their part—I refuse to use the word “sin.”
Mike: To answer your question “Then explain to me why any decent bishop could not likewise be falsely accused?” It is because FALSE ACCUSATIONS ARE NEARLY NONEXISTENT. I guess you’ve been living under a rock the past week or so to have missed the statistic that only 3% of sexual molestation charges are false. Bishops needing extra witnesses to protect themselves is simply unnecessary. Plus, it is obvious that when push comes to shove, an LDS man’s story will be believed above that of any woman or child. Over and over and over. You’re barking up the wrong person’s vulnerability with your line of thinking.
The guidance to not remain in an abusive situation and to not counsel to not report criminal activity is likely a response to the treatment of Rob Porter’s exwives by their bishops, not necessarily the J.Bishop tape. Although I’m sure the extra publicity has prompted the release now.
It’s totally a PR move. As usual, the church makes no meaningful change, yet would like to give the impression it has with its grandiose press release. Really, were supposed to be awestruck with how enlightened LDS leaders are because they officially allow a second adult may be present when a middle-age man asks sexual details of a teenager, or bishops shouldn’t counsel women to remain in abusive relationships nor should they discourage them from reporting abuse because it may hurt the man’s future prospects? That’s the low bar we’ve come to expect.
Gadflown-professionals whose job is on the line the moment an allegation is made are far less likely to act abusively than lay clergy who have accountability only to God, and whose parents are cowed by their religion. There are neither checks nor balances.
Whilst my children were never sexually abused by clergy, there was an abuse of power and gratification on the part of the Bishop that was inappropriate, and I rue the day we allowed this situation to continue. It has blurred the boundaries for my children throughout their lives.
Alysa:
We all live under rocks, just different ones.
I am a leader in a non-LDS scout troop known for its extreme boy leadership (translation- chaos and pranks) and hang out with rowdy teenage boys on selected weekends when they are far from the influence of their mothers and fathers. These rascals joke around about making false accusations constantly. Sometimes they get carried away and angry and start little feuds that are difficult to sort out. False accusations of sexual assaults are not the first choice but they can be made, especially in a third person. I can believe that only 3% of accusations of sexual molestation BY MATURE ADULTS might be false. But not teenagers. They can’t get anything right 97% of the time. Young people often go through a stupid stage and do unpredictable things that give their parents something parallel to extreme “buyer’s remorse.” I don’t know how you can measure something as a false accusation versus a true but not provable accusation. Even confessions are not fool proof. Some fools get a twisted satisfaction confessing to things they never did.
But I WILL AGREE THAT ACCUSATIONS SHOULD BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY.
Barking up the wrong person’s vulnerability? I will bark up as many trees as I can. I admit I am not barking up a tree of real vulnerability, but a tree of perceived vulnerability based on false but common beliefs. This one did work once, not for me personally. One event shaped up one bishop real quick. I have related this story on a few blogs, most recently to this audience on March 21 at 12:36. At the risk of quoting myself:
“..She went into a bishops interview without a chaperone after her phone privileges had been restored some months later. She had her phone turned on in her pocket and she dramatically confessed to several outrageous moral transgressions. Then she began to fake the bishop attacking her, screaming and briefly describing vile acts. Then she fled in crocodile tears. Outside the door her little posse of friends were listening to it and laughing themselves silly.
The trouble with this stunt was that it was recorded and played over and over for numerous friends at the high school which is less than 1% LDS. So what, everyone knew the Mormons are strange. But a school counselor heard of the recording and called the parents and the police. The bishop found himself under investigation. But for the immediate willingness of the sassy 15 year old to admit that it was all in fun (and the police quickly lost interest), he might have been arrested….”.
https://wheatandtares.org/2018/03/21/were-incriminating-mtc-mission-president-statements-a-factor-in-lds-push-for-two-party-consent/