LDS Scout Leader charged with several counts of criminal sexual conduct.

[Moksha]

Listening to the Mormon Stories podcasts makes me realize that sexual dysfunction is one of the side effects of chastity training.

[malkie]

But let me ask you, would it be "inadvertent grooming" for a branch president (who is single and wants to get married in the temple) to flirt with a woman (who is also single and a member of the same branch)? Assume the branch president works overtime in his private life, and assume there is no coercion or sexual harassment.

I would like to know your opinion.

With the benefit of experience, if I were that branch president and seriously interested in the woman, I would ask to be released.

That way I could pursue the relationship without the complication of the inequality of power, and without interfering with the duty of care that I would owe the woman, and other branch members.

Otherwise it's a bit like a single boss flirting with one of his employees, and allowing the flirting to compromise his ability to do his job.

I don't know if I would have been of the same opinion when I was a 25-year-old branch president, even though I was married.

[doubtingthomas]

I don't know if I would have been of the same opinion when I was a 25-year-old branch president, even though I was married.

It makes sense.

[Marcus]

I wonder how much of the resistance to change the bishop interview is due to the idea being pushed by “apostates.” And they’re continuing this practice purely out of spite now.

They can’t implement the idea, even if they agree with it, until they find a way to spin it in such a way that *they* were the ones who discovered this great new idea through the power of priesthood revelation…

I’m sure that’s getting harder and harder to do. After the priesthood ban change, after the kids of gay parents reversal, it starts to seem like revelation is taking a back seat to public outrage.

Good point. The stubbornness is costing them, but then, taking this path has been overwhelmingly expensive for a long time.

[Moksha]

A point that has been made over and over in this discussion is the continual - and possibly progressive - placing of a vulnerable person in a situation in which an untrained and not properly vetted authority figure asks them, one-on-one, ...

Oh yeah? What about the Reverend Cotton Mather? He got to do all sorts of things. Why not LDS bishops?
Is this some sort of double standard?

What about Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and his interviews with Hester Prynne? They were not even LDS. Would you condemn that?

Did not Joseph Smith recommend to Church leaders that they should gather the rosebuds while they may?

[IHAQ]

A point that has been made over and over in this discussion is that the continual - and possibly progressive - placing of a vulnerable person in a situation in which an untrained and not properly vetted authority figure asks them, one-on-one, about intimate matters is problematic for at least three reasons

1. It makes it possible, and progressively easier, for the authority figure to take advantage of the person.
2. It desensitizes the person to inappropriate advances, and makes it easier for someone else to take advantage of them.
3. It makes it possible for the authority figure to be unjustly accused of trying to take advantage of the person.

I agree with you that most Bishops are not trying to harm anyone. I don't think that anyone in this discussion has suggested that they are. But this process facilitates the harm for the few who are intent on harm.

What I do not understand is why, when there is known to be potential for harm, and when there are alternatives, does the church still want Bishops to conduct one-on-one closed-door interviews.

That’s an excellent summation malkie. And an excellent final question to which I’m yet to hear a reasonable answer from anyone in church authority, nor anyone attempting to justify it.

[Chap]

...

What I do not understand is why, when there is known to be potential for harm, and when there are alternatives, does the church still want Bishops to conduct one-on-one closed-door interviews.

That’s an excellent summation malkie. And an excellent final question to which I’m yet to hear a reasonable answer from anyone in church authority, nor anyone attempting to justify it.

The answer is obvious, isn't it?

If the CoJCoLDS were to end the "one-on-one closed-door interviews" in which bishops can privately question teenagers about their sexual feelings and practices, they would be admitting that they had, for a very very long time, been doing something seriously wrong.

And that is next to impossible for them to do. Because The Church Is True, and is guided by a Living Prophet.

[IHAQ]

If the CoJCoLDS were to end the "one-on-one closed-door interviews" in which bishops can privately question teenagers about their sexual feelings and practices, they would be admitting that they had, for a very very long time, been doing something seriously wrong.

Sadly the Church would rather continue to do something seriously wrong, than apply some very simple, and easy to implement, procedural changes that would dramatically reduce the risk.

[IHAQ]

Older people can also be victims of sexual abuse and sex trafficking, does it mean that older people can be groomed?

Yes, older people can be groomed. Here’s an article about it.

What is Adult Grooming?
It’s a gradual process. The abuser picks their target, build up trust, and the actual abuse, which is usually sexual or financial, doesn’t come until much later.

It often starts with friendship. The groomer will look for ways to gain their target’s trust, often with gifts or promises. Eventually they’ll start to ask for something in return, and this eventually leads to abuse. Because groomers work to befriend their victims, some organisations refer to it as “mate crime”.

Grooming can happen in person, or it can happen online. Online grooming might be referred to as “catfishing”, where the groomer pretends to be someone they’re not in order to gain trust. Read our guide to staying safe online here.

Grooming can also take the form of predatory marriage. This is where someone exploits an adult at risk, often with dementia. They isolate them from their family and coerce them into marriage.

https://www.anncrafttrust.org/signs-of- ... h-out-for/

I’ll give you another church-related example. Affinity Fraud. Church members are conditioned from a very early age to implicitly trust only two things - their Church Leaders and some indescribable feeling in their tummies after praying. So of course nefarious people holding Church callings can use that conditioning to their advantage in order to con those members out of their cash. There’s a reason Utah/Mormonism is such a notoriously rich feeding ground for affinity fraudsters. Members have become desensitised to the risks of affinity fraudsters by the unintentional grooming (desensitising if you prefer) that they can trust the Church leader who’s asking them to invest their life savings into a money making scheme, and they can trust the good feeling they got when they prayed about it.

[Marcus]

….Do you know what trust is? It's an emotion like signal that something in your brain sends to that part that think's it's you. And that part that thinks it's you believes the other part, just like an LDS person trusts the Holy Ghost. Mormons just have a fancy label for the signal and attribute it to the divine. But you place as much "blind faith" in that signal from some part of your brain as the LDS person puts in theirs. Even when you think you are being "rational" when you trust that signal, the idea that you are being rational is just another signal from another part of your brain that you are placing the same kind of blind faith in that the LDS person does.

I strongly disagree with this, and I don’t think you are using “trust” in this section as most in this conversation have implied. There is a huge difference between the kind of trust developed by observing behavior, investigating a situation, evaluating repeated encounters, etc.; and the kind of trust that comes from believing in a supernatural power, and deciding that a person expressing a similar belief can therefore be trusted solely on that basis, or because the Holy Ghost “told” you so.

I’m sure there is plenty of overlap, and plenty of emotion involved, and no one is all one way or the other, so I’m not arguing that, but on average, it is not reasonable to suggest that a person using the first type of trust can be stated to be behaving in a manner “just like an LDS person trusts the Holy Ghost.”

…Mormons just have a fancy label for the signal and attribute it to the divine. But you place as much "blind faith" in that signal from some part of your brain as the LDS person puts in theirs.

By virtue of how that trust can be developed, again I disagree. The reason Utah is the affinity fraud capital of the world is because there is a quantifiable difference how the two types of trust, defined as supernatural-based or not, are exercised.