The Rosebud MEGATHREAD

[Marcus]

...And I want the exMormon community to have leaders they can trust instead of leaders who lie to them...

I am an exmormon. But, this silliness about exmormons being a "community" that needs to "have leaders" is ridiculous. Just join the rest of the human race, rosebud, like so many of us have. Your insistence on needing a leader to help you leave an organization is nonsensical.

[Marcus]

...The power differences are so great that you not only have podcasts but laws and courtrooms on your side. The power differences are so great that the women have to rely on creating piles of documents and waiting years and years and years.

We even have to do ridiculous things like keep records on back-of-the Internet message boards.

That’s not equal power...

Sigh. No, us women don't. Only you.

[Marcus]

...No more covering up organized child sex abuse while seeking “hero” status for exposing one-offender one-child sex abuse...

This is a very serious accusation. Please provide details about the "organized child sex abuse" you are observing. You need to do this immediately, and you need to make every effort to communicate everything you know about every perpetrator to the authorities, immediately. Please do not delay. If children are being harmed it is incumbent on you to do everything you can to stop it.

Please let us know what the results are of your reports. This is not something you can delay. Please respond, asap.

[Rosebud]

You can’t release what is full of egregious dishonesty.

But it’ll all be on the public record soon enough, no doubt.

What then? A podcast of John sobbing as he lists his great accomplishments and begs for compassion? Will the public be subjected to the threats of his own death by suicide? Will the curtain be drawn that far back? (Or has he already done that stuff publicly? I guess I wouldn’t know.)

in my opinion, a calm and professional recognition of reality by the people who are legally responsible to be managing the situation alongside statements apologizing for the defamations and plans for what you’re going to do to right the wrongs would be preferable. The drama for donors is all too much.

Just solve it.

[Rosebud]

It’s all so Tim Ballard.

He and the attorney general go as far as filming a red herring movie pretending the worst organized abuse happens outside the country. All while the exMormon media does their part to help cover it up by pretending they’re the transparent people who do the exposing.

Enough.

[msnobody]

Why not go on to do more productive things with your time, Rosebud? Let God deal with John. He’s pretty good at dealing with sin. He is also pretty good at helping us get to the place of us forgiving others, so we can go on to living the life God intended for us. It is so freeing to get to the place of being able to forgive others, even when they don’t deserve forgiveness. Please try to surrender all of this and all of yourself to God. He is faithful. He is so very capable. Im going to now go and try to apply this same advice to myself.

[msnobody]

Why not go on to do more productive things with your time, Rosebud? Let God deal with John. He’s pretty good at dealing with sin. He is also pretty good at helping us get to the place of us forgiving others, so we can go on to living the life God intended for us. It is so freeing to get to the place of being able to forgive others, even when they don’t deserve forgiveness. Please try to surrender all of this and all of yourself to God. He is faithful. He is so very capable. Im going to now go and try to apply this same advice to myself.

[drumdude]

Jenn Kamp has sued John Dehlin, and was counter sued by him. RFM covered it on his podcast and Jenn and Rosebud both filed bar complaints against him.

Jenn and Rosebud have been completely discredited by the legal system, failing to meet their burden of proof. Quick judgements against them because their claims are basically just “John and RFM are jerks.” So here Rosebud is, making the same vague allegations and claims that documents will be released sometime in the next 1-100 years which will vindicate her.

It’s really hard to see all of that in Rosebuds posts because she frames her own personal battle now as some imagined wider struggle between the powerless exMormon women (Rosebud) and the evil powerful exMormon men(John Dehlin).

What kinds of proofs and evidences would you expect them to present in court to support the allegations of wrongdoing or actionable offenses against John Dehlin? Name a few, please.

I’ll do you one better and show you the evidence she gathered:

Mormonrosebud.wikidot.com

Anyone is welcome to read through Rosebud and Dehlin’s relationship and come to their own conclusion. It’s not surprising that she took this evidence down, since it’s clear to me after reading through it that a judge or jury would be very unlikely to see the relationship the way rosebud wants them to see it.


This article captures the Rosebud phenomenon quite well, in my opinion. John Dehlin is not the only man who has to deal with women making wild accusations with no evidence to support them:

When I was a young professional, I was raped by a co-worker and no one believed me.

I share that brutal piece of information because, over a decade later, when the #metoo movement happened, I was completely in favor of it.

But everything is about balance. And in the wake of the movement came stories of men who were afraid of what might happen if they were falsely accused.

Famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz is no stranger to controversy. In fact, he often invites it with open arms. But being accused of rape and being lumped in with Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein is a rare type of controversy that he finds himself uncomfortable with: “I welcome controversy about my ideas. I love having debates and controversy about my ideas. But having controversy about whether or not I’m a sex offender? That’s not what I bargained for in my life.”

Dershowitz recounts his side of the story in the book Guilt By Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #metoo. His case is particularly interesting because it started before the #metoo movement and continues today. When asked if he noticed a difference between perception before and after, he said it was very noticeable. “There’s no question. Before the #metoo movement, I had won. It had gone away. I had the submission, I had the tapes, the recording, the emails, I had a full investigation by the former head of the FBI who said it was false, I had a judge who struck it [down], the lawyers had withdrawn it...it was over! It was completely over. And then the #metoo movement came, and suddenly it was resurrected.”

He went on to describe the difficulty of making his case in the court of public opinion when the standard is to believe all women: “If you call a women a liar, even if you didn’t do [what you’re being accused of], you’re guilty of calling a woman a liar, so there’s no way out. “If you call a women a liar, even if you didn’t do [what you’re being accused of], you’re guilty of calling a woman a liar, so there’s no way out. If you don’t deny it, you’re thought to be guilty. If you do deny it, you’ve committed an additional political sin, so it’s a trap. And it feels just horrible...They either assume your guilt or they assume you shouldn’t be asserting your innocence. I had someone say to me at a public event, ‘I know you’re innocent, but why don’t you just fall on your sword in order to help the #metoo movement?’ I said I’m not going to do that. I support the #metoo movement when it’s right, when there are real accusations. But I’m not going to become a sacrificial lamb to the abuses of the movement.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlynbory ... 819249864d

The burden of proof is high because our legal system assumes innocence. If you want an idea of the evidence required, look at the Weinstein case or the Bill Cosby one.

Rosebud has realized her case isn’t strong enough for a court room, and is left with just smearing Dehlin online.

[yellowstone123]

And most of all:

No more covering up organized child sex abuse while seeking “hero” status for exposing one-offender one-child sex abuse.

I honestly get an upset stomach thinking about it. It’s disgusting. And we owe it to the children who still need protecting They’ll keep getting hurt. And they’ll grow up. And when they’re adults, they’ll know they weren’t able to count on the people who were supposed to be exposing problems. They’ll know that instead of really exposing them, they were involved in suppression of the truth.

The children who still need protecting will pay the most extreme costs.

I want exMormons to be better than all this.

Rosebud, it sounds as you believe you have been harmed. Welcome to the club. Being harmed by the Mormon church is normal and in 2024 one can say predictable. Look, this is Utah, a minor theocracy. The Mormon church and the legislature - who are likely Mormon work together to ensure that a man or woman who confesses to harming a child will have that confession remain confidential to public agencies with no risk to the person who fails to push 911 on his cell phone or call the Child Abuse Hot Line after the individual leaves his office.

And a lot of times in Utah you have individuals like the Attorneys’ General and that Ballard individual who believe they are called of God to go on crusade to protect children and make sure their efforts are filmed. That’s crazy. It’s all about money.

It also sounds like you might need to talk to your local assemblyman/woman and senator to express your frustration, but if you are in Utah, it’s not likely that your dreams are going to happen until the majority of Utah is not Mormon.

It seems you might want to either form or join other women who have experienced what you have experienced. I’m sorry for your pain. I never met John D. He seems to have had some remarkable guest of his platform/show. But I called him and Jeremy R. out one time because Jeremy wanted his court of love delayed because of a loved one in hospice. The next thing I see is that Jeremy R. and John D. on a Wednesday night doing a live stage show, laughing like one just pitched a perfect game. I thought what about the family member in hospice. I don’t know maybe the person passed on right after the request for a delay in the court and they then put together a live show where John D. interviewed Jeremy. I’m also not sure why those two were always trying to dodge a church court.

As someone has pointed out both you and Jen had your complaints dismissed quickly and it sounds like you lost in court through summary judgement. In my old job it was a government petition and if dismissed quickly, that’s not very good and if lots were dismissed there were other areas the person could work with the same title and pay but not doing investigations.

Your posts about your concern for children’s safety is admirable. I would say stay away Tim Ballard and his crazy friends and their crusades. Look up Cal State Long Beach’s Bachelor of Arts in Social Work, and if the old program is still going, during your senior year you will be an intern with Los Angeles County Department of Children Services, get paid for it, and start as trainee once graduated. That could lead to a master’s in social work which could lead to being a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and with that license in California you could write your own ticket and work in several places with young children who have been abused such as a hospital, a private agency or many other places. California prefers LCSW’s over those with a Ph.Ds. when working with abused children who are likely very angry and hurting others. You could direct your energy there. 2025 will be here soon and you can forget about 2024 and all the craziness of the things that happened the prior years, and the absurdity of Reyes, Ballard, the Mormon church, the legislature and governor. You get 3 billion heart beats and 700 million breaths during an average lifetime. Spend your time on earth where you can do the best you can do. I wish you luck.

[msnobody]

I’ve got this four inch binder at work that contains information about how to direct patient care on how to/who to contact for unique things patients need at times. I joke that it is my binder of things I learned the hard way. Believe me, many of the things in there took a great deal of time and research. One of my coworkers even asked that if I ever left my current position would I leave the binder for her.

We all have things in our personal lives that we have learned the hard way. I know I have, and still do. One of the things I learned the hard way (yes, very hard and painful way) was that my identity comes from who I am in Christ, and NOT from who the world tells me I am, or even sometimes who I tell myself I am.

When Hagar was in despair and had an encounter with God, she used a Hebrew name, El Roi, to refer to the Lord, “You are the God who sees me.” Drink deeply from Beer-lahai-roi, well of the Living One who sees me. He sees you and loves you, Rosebud. He sees you. It isn’t easy surrendering ourselves and our circumstances to the Lord, but in hindsight, it is always a sweet surrender to the only One whom we safely ensure ourselves.

I found this song as I was thinking on this earlier this morning.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sz81dIfwf4Y

I’m going to remind myself that indeed, He is the God who sees me.