Mormon churches are not an exceptionally dangerous place for children

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drumdude
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Mormon churches are not an exceptionally dangerous place for children

Post by drumdude »

“DP” wrote: Now — please — don’t try to twist my supplying those three links into a pretense that I’m minimizing the gravity of sexual abuse by clergy or members of any religious organization. (Some, I know, will do precisely that, nonetheless. I could almost write their comments for them, they’re so tiresomely predictable.). Sexual abuse is a horrific evil and a crime, no matter who the abuser is, whether he or she is or is not a Latter-day Saint. I simply do not find the claim persuasive, though, that Latter-day Saint churches are exceptionally dangerous places for children. So far as I can see, there seems to be little or no actual evidence to support such an accusation.
How much child abuse would you expect to occur in God’s true church on earth? Less than average? More than average? The same as average?

Is the amount of child abuse in the church any reflection on the truth of that church? These are the really difficult questions that it seems Dan is flippantly ignoring.
Philo Sofee
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Re: Mormon churches are not an exceptionally dangerous place for children

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And Dan imagines his clever rhetoric gets him out of calling the LEADERS (who are the problem, not the flippin church buildings with people in them - good Gawd can he take his eye off the problem or what?!) to account for THEIR SINS. Once again, he so very predictably misdirects the entire point and issue, AND HE KNOWS HE IS DOING THIS. It's time to CALL LEADERS to account for what Daniel calls "a horrific evil and a crime, no matter who the abuser is," Yes it is, and just pray tell in this instance and many many dozens more WHO IS THE ABUSERS and ENABLERS of this heinous crime Daniel? Two words, two simple words you gag on and so misdirect our attention to a mere trivial thing compared to the gravity of this issue, THE LEADERS. I see cowardice and no real intent to get on the right moral side here in Daniel whatsoever, again predictably. The issue is THE LEADERS lack of moral fortitude and backbone to do the right thing. And it begins there by getting them out. And then doing the 2nd right thing, CHANGING THE GOD DAMN RIDICULOUS CHURCH POLICIES ABOUT PUTTING CHILDREN INTO DANGER FOR SEXUAL ABUSE. (is there anyway Daniel can miss this this time?).
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Dr Moore
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Re: Mormon churches are not an exceptionally dangerous place for children

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The claim we should be able to hear is that LDS churches are by far the safest places for children. So far I have not heard convincing evidence that this is the case.

This issue is not like divorce, where church stats run similar to geographic averages (last I heard anyway). On the topic of child safety, it is entirely controllable with the right priorities and system structure. Given the church’s claims regarding truth, Jesus, and duty to children, failure to demonstrably trounce the averages is abject failure period.
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Kishkumen
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Re: Mormon churches are not an exceptionally dangerous place for children

Post by Kishkumen »

Dr Moore wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 3:05 am
The claim we should be able to hear is that LDS churches are by far the safest places for children. So far I have not heard convincing evidence that this is the case.

This issue is not like divorce, where church stats run similar to geographic averages (last I heard anyway). On the topic of child safety, it is entirely controllable with the right priorities and system structure. Given the church’s claims regarding truth, Jesus, and duty to children, failure to demonstrably trounce the averages is abject failure period.
Indeed. Here is one area, if ever there was one, where being average is completely unacceptable.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Kishkumen
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Re: Mormon churches are not an exceptionally dangerous place for children

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It boggles my mind that there are so many places where parents will knowingly send their minor children into a closed, windowless room with a full grown man who will ask those little children whether they touch themselves “inappropriately.” And then, when the child is honest, those full grown men will teach them to be ashamed of themselves.

It is completely awful, and it is a recipe both for creating risk of abuse and also for damaging kids psychologically.

It should have never happened in the first place, and it should stop right away. No ifs, ands, or buts. No excuses.
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Father Francis
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Re: Mormon churches are not an exceptionally dangerous place for children

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Not dangerous?

In what other setting would parents leave a child alone in a room with a man asking them questions about masturbation and sex?
drumdude
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Re: Mormon churches are not an exceptionally dangerous place for children

Post by drumdude »

A few comments from faithful Mormons on reddit:
I'm very confused on why background checks are still not required among everyone that works with children in the church
I’m in California and the state now requires everyone working In youth to undergo background checks now. I’m quite happy with it. Church paid for everyone
I was at an event with the KM attorney who is in change of abuse cases and oversees the hotline and he was asked this very question. He made two points:

First he claimed that in all of the cases that he was aware of of a church leader/teacher/etc abusing a child, only one would have failed a background check.

His second point was that the church has its own background processes, which he believes are more effective. He mentioned two that I can remember.

The first is annotation. Annotation is a process where leaders are supposed to put an asterisk on any member's record who has ever confessed to or been credibly accused of child abuse or anything like it. Even if the person fully repents in the eyes of the church, the asterisk remains. With an asterisk, you are not allowed to serve in any calling where you work with children or youth. In fact, the church MLS computer system will not let you even input a member for such callings if they have an asterisk. The church also has an automated program the combs the sex offender registries of all 50 states and annotates any record that matches a church member.

The other one is the sustaining process. He argued that the public sustaining process provides for any members who are aware of a problem to object or privately explain it to local leaders.
I wish the Church had FAQs on this or something. We shouldn’t have to attend events with KM attorneys to know why a universal background check isn’t used - a reasonable question I’ve heard from many members over the years.
From my own personal life experience I know of two instances from my home stake where 2 different registered sex offenders were able to "gain access" to youth events. Both of them would have asterisks on their records and would have been flagged and not been called with youth. What they did was go to events and volunteer to help on the scene to lower level leaders that did not have access to membership records.
This is crazy to me that it’s not Church-wide. Anybody in PA that works with children is required to get a federal and state background check. We’ve been doing this for over 10 years now and I’m surprised more states (and the church as a whole) haven’t caught up. It’s now just become part of our process in terms of filling callings and it should be implemented at least domestically but probably worldwide.
Yet it (the astrisk) doesn't apply for those in positions of trust, EQP, etc. There was just recently a case down in Spanish fork where an EQP was caught abusing minors after previous convictions.
I found this to be a cop out answer, which is so disappointing. It was deflective of what is obviously a systemic issue within the church’s hotline and handling a very real and scary problem among our membership.

The church needs to stop focusing on protecting its reputation and more time focusing on protecting its members.
https://www.reddit.com/r/latterdaysaint ... and_abuse/
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Moksha
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Mormon churches are an exceptionally dangerous place for children

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Mormon churches are not an exceptionally dangerous place for children
As long as the Church's legal response represents depraved indifference, it is a dangerous place for these victims.
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Dr Exiled
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Re: Mormon churches are not an exceptionally dangerous place for children

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I don't get this one. Dr. Peterson posts three articles about how schools are more dangerous than catholic churches as far as child abuse and then in the next sentence claims the obvious conclusion as to why he did it is somehow twisting his purposes.

What's going on here Dr. Peterson? No one is buying this nonsense and stop defending this already through minimizing it while accusing your readers of something malevolent. It's obvious what you did. This attitude is what brought the church to this point in the first place. It's time it stopped.

Look at what Dr. Moore posted above. Let's try and make the LDS Church the safest place for children and not just a little better than schools, shall we?

Your church can still be super-duper in your eyes but let's clean this up already and not minimize the problem by comparing it to what is going on in schools, supposedly.
Last edited by Dr Exiled on Sun Aug 07, 2022 3:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Gadianton
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Re: Mormon churches are not an exceptionally dangerous place for children

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Dr. Moore wrote: On the topic of child safety, it is entirely controllable with the right priorities and system structure.
It doesn't matter about the aggregate numbers or where the Church falls on the curve, if it's happening at all, and it's an entirely controllable, but instead the leaders are covering it up, then I think we know where the leaders are at on the scale of evil. And we also know something about the ethics of those who are apologists for the leaders. Among other things, the cover-up means that the average member doesn't know the risks. Sure, life has risks, but I can look up registered offenders in my area and find out information. Members are dupes for the most part and are biased towards their leaders incapable of doing wrong, so that makes it even worse. As long as it doesn't affect the apologist in question, who cares, right? Same as anti-vaxxers as long as it's other people and not them.

I don't think at the war in heaven, that when Jesus gave his plan, that the risks of agency were hidden from the plan participants. God didn't withhold the truth for the greater good, did he?
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