When I was a missionary in Chile many years ago, I was riding the train back to Tome’ from a visit to the mission office in Concepcion. While on the train I felt my bowels start to move, but figured I could make it pack to the pension (apartment). I was wrong. While walking from the train station, it hit hard. I told my companion to keep up, and I started to run. As I was entering the gate to our place, it let loose. I didn’t even enter the apartment, but ran to the back where there was a small stream, and stripped off my pants and garments (one piece at the time), and washed them in the water. My companion had a big mouth, and at the next district meeting everybody knew about it.
This only happened once in my two years there, so I feel lucky, considering we were not to drink the tap water due to contamination. I was listening to a podcast recently, and they were talking about a LDS mission where the missionaries wear adult diapers because the dysentery is so bad. The speaker learned this from a mission Facebook group where the mothers discussed what diapers were best, and the best way to mail them to their missionary. After listening to this, I now feel very lucky to have only had a problem once. (he did not name the mission)
Turns out the podcast I was listening to was an attorney named Frank Stucki that represents returned missionaries in civil suits against the church. Besides the podcast which you can listen to here, he also wrote an article about the subject on the web site Medium.
From the article he gave a long list of reasons a missionary may sue the Church, these coming from cases he represented, or was familiar with. He listed them in to categories, physical, and emotional abuse
Physical Abuse & Neglect That Triggers An Injury Case:
- Sexual Abuse by Companions, Leaders, or Locals
Ex. A smaller male missionary was assaulted by his larger male native missionary companion for six weeks, and was told by leadership to “forgive and forget” rather than report the crime.
2. Denial of Medical Care
Ex. A missionary with severe stomach pain was told by the missionaries who were out longer to rely on prayer instead of seeking medical care, leading to emergency appendectomy and five additional stomach surgeries over 4 years for the damage caused.
3. Malnutrition & Food Insecurity
Ex. A missionary in a high-cost area (La Jolla, CA) had to skip meals or live on ramen for a majority of their mission, leading to immense protein and iron inefficiencies. The missionary passed out on a hot day and was hospitalized for brain trauma.
4. Unsafe Housing
Ex. A missionary suffered chronic lung damage after prolonged exposure to black mold in their assigned housing.
5. Heatstroke, Hypothermia, and Exhaustion
Ex. A missionary in South America suffered from heatstroke and collapsed, only to be told to continue proselytizing the next day.
6. Bike & Pedestrian Accidents
Ex. A missionary biking without proper safety gear and without knowledge of local traffic laws and customs was struck by a vehicle, resulting in neck, low back, shoulder, ankle, and foot surgery.
7. Forced to Proselytize in High-Crime Areas
Ex. A missionary was robbed at gunpoint while knocking on doors and was later required to return to the same neighborhood where he was stabbed.
8. Lack of Emergency Planning
Ex. A Phoenix-based missionary was serving in Guatemala and caught in a hurricane. He and other were left stranded without access to his passport, money, food, water, or electricity for three weeks.
9. Forced to Work While Severely Ill
Ex. A missionary with pneumonia was required to continue walking miles daily, leading to hospitalization. The Church does not have health insurance for this type of thing. The bill is sent to the missionary’s family.
10. Denial of Hygiene Necessities
Ex. A female missionary in Mongolia had no access to tampons, clean laundry, or a shower for over a month, leading to severe skin and reproductive infections.
While some of these are unique to undeveloped countries, others are just plain old safety concerns that we all encounter day to day. Next is the emotional and psychological abuse. He list 16 items. I’ll just list them without his comments, but I recommend you go to the article and read the explanation for each, and the examples from court cases.
Extreme Guilt & Pressure to Baptize
Isolation from Family & Outside Support
Toxic Obedience Culture
Bullying & Manipulation from Companions
Forced Confessions
Gaslighting About Mental Health
Being Shamed for Wanting to Go Home
Emotional Coercion to Ignore Safety Concerns
Punishment for Questioning Doctrine
Companions Enforcing Strict Control
Unethical Conversion Tactics
Being Cut Off from Non-Members
Leaders Overstepping Personal Boundaries
Taught to Avoid “Unauthorized” Information
Told Their Families Weren’t Righteous Enough
Post-Mission Identity Crises
For those that have been reading my post for several years, you know I had a great mission. You can read my mission post here, here, here and here. My mission taught me how to study, and I came home an adult ready for the university, where I completed my engineering degree with a 4.0 GPA in my major. I do not regret my mission.
We had an EQP long ago that had a son that had medical problems on his mission. The EQP would not talk about it, and there was some deep resentment in the family towards the Church because of what happened, but they pushed it behind them and continued on. I never found out what happened.
For those of you that have been on a mission, what do you think of these lists above? How many can you identify with? Do you think any are worth a civil lawsuit?
Do you know anybody that has sued the Church for mission related issues?
Wheat & Tares 
😭 I wish the church corporation would use some of its vast wealth to keep their missionaries well, physically and mentally. The church in these cases is being neglectful and abusive in so many ways. I wish mission presidents were better trained to not be emotionally abusive or allow companions to be
And the toxic perfectionism needs desperately to stop (for everyone)! 😭😭
Upon my release, I never really spoke to my mission president again, even at reunions. I despised the despot. He was a trial attorney and missionaries were guilty until proven innocent. He had us read Grant von Harrison’s Drawing on the Power of Heaven, a book which which placed full blame for a missionary’s success (or lack thereof) on the obedience of the missionary. God’s blessings to missionaries (ie, convert baptisms) was completely contingent on the zealous missionary’s obedience. Think about how that played out in the minds of naive teenagers.
I have found that many missionaries suffer various forms of psychological abuse in the field, usually from their mission presidents, but also from companions and other mission leaders. Many do not realize what they experienced until later in life. I think we can often forgive the kids (young and naive teens), but the mission presidents?
i wish the church would stop calling business leaders into these sensitive leadership positions, who have little experience working with teens, have no background in mental health and exhibit tendencies to absolutist rule and model black-and-white thinking. And for heaven’s sake ban Grant von Harrison’s harsh interpretation on God’s justice and love.
I have stated this over the years on this blog, I naively thought it only was my mission that was abusive, due to a single rouge President. This was over 35+ years ago. My own gut was telling me it was wrong. “If only SLC knew what was going on here.” I almost grabbed a visiting general authority during a mission conference wanting to tell him, but I talked myself out of it. The internet has allowed all to share the mission stories and actual truth, with recognizing the pattern that SLC was the actual cause. I experienced everything on this list, except for #1. I still remain baffled of why the church creates this mental and physical harm and members accept it generation after generation. In many cases, I think it has gotten worse and more common in the recent decades. I experienced the restriction of a 20-minute lunch (when available), but now progressing to not eating without an investigator present is appalling. I experienced food insecurity frequently. What do the Q15 think missionaries are supposed to eat when the members are not home, forget or not have the funds? Do the Q15/MP skip meals or follow any rules they impose? My MP instituted 36-hour fasts to sacrifice for more baptisms, while he sat comfortably in his air-conditioned mansion. After 1 solid year of working in high crime areas and experiencing a near shooting, I told my mission president I was not going to work in the neighborhood of the crime for a quota. I was transferred the next week. I was in another area during a 7.2 and 6.9 earthquakes. Entire towns evacuated, except for us the missionaries. We were told to stay. I started to have a mental breakdown and was shamed for not being obedient.
The decision makers use platitudes of “The Lord will take care of it”. “You will receive blessings.” In the same breath the state “This is literally the Lord’s church.” If Q15/MP are the representatives of The Lord and they do not “take care of it” or “bless” the missionaries, who is going to? What hypocrites ! The Q15 are useless, just sitting in their red velvet patriarchal chairs.
I would be curious if any one who served a full time mission who did not experience at least 1 of the 10 categories. Any TBM, who was honest with themselves, has to admit the LDS mission has some benefits and some harms, and the institution keeps ignoring the harms. The church talks about how much they love the missionaries and pray for them. All of that rings hollow with their inaction and neglect.
With criticism should come solution proposals. However, when you break down all the solutions, the church would loose control and power. The purpose of an LDS mission is to indoctrinate and create a life long member through shame, sunk-costs, trauma-bonding, and rejection. The physical and emotional costs to the individual are less important than the institution and its “king-men”.
Today look at those “king-men” in conference with their smug smiles, ignoring the difficulties of the masses, for rules and a culture they have imposed; knowing that it is the source of physical and emotional harm. I wish that Mr. Stucki could question them all in a court of law, but the weasels would get out of it, just like Monson did in the UK in 2014.
My mission was an overall positive experience. I didn’t get sick. I only had a couple of mental health breakdowns (not bad considering how much was going undiagnosed and untreated at the time). The physical hardships were actually kind of fun – I freaked out my mom by writing home about sleeping wrapped in my wool coat because the government hadn’t turned on the heat due to cost-cutting measures (former Soviet Union country – the govt controlled the heating in residential apartment buildings).
But I can’t read my mission journal. Every page is my confession of weakness and lack of faith. I was definitely one of the most uptight and neurotic rule-following missionaries in the country. (Comment from a mission companion after we’d been together for four weeks: “Sister Janey, you’re not as bad as everyone says you are!”) And yet I constantly scolded myself for not working hard enough and blamed every single setback on my lack of faith. Yes, I read Grant von Harrison’s book in the MTC and believed every word of it.
Nothing to sue about, but also nothing I want to experience ever again. I wish I’d chilled out and broken a few rules just to prove to myself that the world wouldn’t end.
I believe every one of those stories and issues you described, BB. I can see how each of them could have happened and everyone involved would have just said that being willing to suffer and sacrifice is a sign of faith.
My husband has a worse story, because after sending to a “Doctor” who hadn’t updated practices since 1367, for hepatitis, he got sicker and sicker, and yes he complained. So transferred to the mission home so at least his companion could go tract, and he should have been in a hospital. Got sicker. Some wandering American GA who was a doctor saw him—just accidentally. Asked about his treatment was told about medieval practices and got him a real doctor. He eventually was sent home as a failure. But THE CHURCH sued the medieval doctor and pocketed the money for themselves, you know for my husband’s suffering and permanent liver damage, the church kept all the money from the lawsuit. Never gave my husband a penny of compensation after THEY refused to listen to him about the treatment he was getting and then sued as the injured party. So, the church prophetess from abusing my husband.
But he would never sue the church, because you just don’t sue God for mistreatment from God’s anointed.
In my mind, there are differing levels of propriety in church practices. Some seem genuinely controversial. Some seem clearly (im)proper to me, though I can see how a reasonable person would disagree. And others seem like no-brainers. Hopefully you can guess where I would place lack of health insurance and the practices listed here. Why is better medical care for missionaries not a higher priority? Who would possibly complain about an increase in standards? It’s a win-win situation.
(At the risk of pedantry: Bishop Bill, “phycology” is the study of algae. After years of grading student papers, I always get a kick out of finding it.)
The words of de Maistre are no less aplicable to religious institutions. Indeed, the words are directly applicable to mission presidents.
Unlike de Maistre, many modern mission presidents seek after their own power and glory. They are obsessed with statistics and how those statistics make them look, rather than being focused on helping others.
But this is not surprising. By selecting so-called Big Shots as mission presidents, the Church perpetuates this system. It would be far better for everyone if mission presidents were humble plumbers, bakers, and hod carriers. They would show love for all.
I can’t help but wonder what an improvement in missionary experience we would have if women were called as Mission Presidents.
LHCA: Odds are there would be some improvement, but then you’ve got your Ruby Franke types, so who knows.
I had a hard time seeing my mission as traumatic at the time, but as soon as my parents came at the end and I was stepping over heroin needles to take them into some of the areas I worked, I realized that maybe I had been in danger. I mean, duh, obviously I was. I had two companions that got mugged, one elder was almost abducted by a taxista, and another was stabbed in the butt by a street gang (honestly, his companion was partly to blame for that one), and a woman’s husband slit her throat in the apartment across the air shaft from some other elders. One set of elders couldn’t get their landlord to fix it when their toilet backed up, flooding the apartment with raw sewage, so they constructed their own toilet out of a kitchen chair and bottled their waste in the spare bedroom, fashioning some old water jugs into foot gondolas to navigate the flooded bathroom to get to the shower every day. And just to be clear, I was not in some third world country! I was in the Hawaii of Europe!
I imagine that people doing Peace Corps experience some of these same types of things, but unlike that experience, a lot of what missionaries go through is due to unforced errors and incompetence baked into the system. We defer based on priesthood “authority” which is granted without regard to actual skills or knowledge, usually based on being financially in a position to take the assignment and leave one’s work. Someone could be good or they could be terrible. Even if they are great, the system is not. The church is totally fine with the risks as they are. I think lawsuits are definitely in order as it’s the only way to get reforms that will improve the situation. However, not unlike the current POTUS and his cronies, the Church can almost certainly out-litigate just about everyone who tries.
My mission was in Guatemala in the mid 90s. At the time it was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere because of a decades long civil war. This OP resonates with me.
We often experienced a phenomenon we called BU! It’s an abbreviation for “butt urine” along with the lack of warning., which happened at least once a month from food poisoning. I had internal and external parasites. I developed a fondness for bread and pastries there that exists to this day because they were safer than any meat, fruit, or vegetable at the time. Soda was safer than water. I developed a severe cavity what was crazy painful the last 4 months of my mission that couldn’t be treated. I had an ear infection once that the mission nurse wouldn’t treat because the medicine had alcohol in it. This may sound unusual to list as a grievance, but noise pollution was a severe problem. Very common to hear loud music or construction noises all night long, thereby affecting sleep.
Medical and dental care was virtually non existent except for life threatening emergencies. Zero emotional or mental support. Working in La Limonada, a dangerous slum, was discouraged but not prohibited, more because the members wouldn’t go there than because it was dangerous. We hitchhiked frequently in *very* unsafe conditions. We often bathed twice a week., usually bucket / washcloth bathing.
My mission Pres didn’t tolerate the loose standards of the previous president, who used soccer as a lure to “convert” large groups of youth. I wouldn’t call him abusive but he definitely expected unflinching obedience.
The missionaries generally viewed all the negatives as a badge of honor. We thought the things described in the OP were normal and we mostly expected it because we knew how South and Central American missions were. We would receive blessing for our sacrifices. I’ve left the church since then but wouldn’t consider a lawsuit because it was the expectation and I signed up for it as an adult. Yeah it was semi-coerced but I played a part in the decision.