"The Cavalry" - Teenage Mormon Stormtroopers attack RFM/Consig

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Our own Consig/RFM has a lengthy video on the whole debacle:

Remember how Mormon men feel at liberty to cross boundaries, get into your personal space, and never, ever, apologize for their missteps?

This kind of thing is what women in the exmo community talk about sometimes, that exmo men have, consciously or subconsciously, the right to do things most people would know is crossing a line. A normal person just closes the door and perhaps mentions to them what they saw and did, and to double check that the door latches.

Me? I would’ve just closed the door and forgotten about it.

[drumdude]

Our own Consig/RFM has a lengthy video on the whole debacle:

Remember how Mormon men feel at liberty to cross boundaries, get into your personal space, and never, ever, apologize for their missteps?

It does feel a bit like that. However if RFM is correct about them being something approaching friends, then that context changes it too.

I wonder if the sister missionaries would be willing to give a statement if it came to that.

[Kishkumen]

Young and dumb and full of . . .

good intentions?

[malkie]

Young and dumb and full of . . .

good intentions?

I wouldn't have said young or dumb, though I agree on being full of good intentions.

You were talking about RFM, right?

[Kishkumen]

I wouldn't have said young or dumb, though I agree on being full of good intentions.

You were talking about RFM, right?

I was referring to “The Cavalry.”

[Dwight]

I think The Calvary is interesting cause from what I can tell it does fall outside of mission rules, but since Facebook is allowed it is a way to sidestep things. There are adult apologists that are admin/moderators who should know better. I'd even argue it falls into a secret combination. Which I find very ironic.

As to the incident, I don't know that I would have pulled the prank, but I had members feed me green dinner like it was St. Paddy's Day. Another set it up that he was an investigator and just gave me full barrels of anti stuff, until it was revealed he was actually a member. Sister missionaries broke into elders apartments and pulled pranks, sisters got pranks pulled on them. Wendy went over with some homemade muffins the next day to explain and the sisters reportedly told her they didn't even notice. People have said "oh they are programmed to laugh it off", but they laughed it off to an AP who was contacted and inquired of the sister missionaries and the text message reply where they responded "Oh ya we're fine, we didn't even really notice the neighbors wife came over and explained the situation".

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This was part of what got sent from the bar complainants to the bar so it isn't even anything RFM knew, but there we have one of the sisters candidly making it clear no white knighting is necessary. They didn't report it to their mission leadership, it was a nothing burger. It wasn't them laughing and defusing the situation cause RFM asked them about it, or even that it was Wendy. I don't know why (ex)Mormons like to infantilize missionaries as kids. I think it actually showed RFM was looking out for them cause he didn't just shut the door, he tried to ascertain if anyone was there (without doing a search of the apartment, but going in and calling out to see if he could hear anyone). I'm willing to bet that if it were elders RFM would've done something similar. I'm not saying there is definitely a bit of patriarchal male American that is correlated with Mormonism, but exists well beyond Mormonism, that I think he could recognize and keep himself from valid criticism or things that make people feel a bit ick, but to make a bar complaint with the screenshot of that conversation just shows the blind idiocy.

[drumdude]

Mormon apologetics would be nothing without blind idiocy!

Bill Hamblin and DCP set the bar high and it’s great to see the next generation of Mopologists achieving even greater feats of stupor.

[Kishkumen]

The general view of contacting employers or outside authorities should be dim on both sides. Don’t threaten the livelihood of apologists or critics. Basta!

[Equality]

They are two *women* not "girls."

Ok. I'll change that one word in the first paragraph.


"This is the apartment of two teenage Mormon women with an adult male neighbor who joked online that he entered their home without them knowing it, and decided to leave a prank he called 'mild'.

Mormon women are taught to be nice and tolerate way more than they should, regardless of how they really feel about it.

My take is that people should not enter someone else's home without their permission. End of story. Pull the door shut so it locks if safety is an issue, and then reach out to the occupants or landlord with the information, but don't enter someone else's home without their knowledge and permission."

I agree with you that he should not have done it. I don't like pranks, personally. I hate April Fool's Day, for example. I think he should have just shut the door. He was out of line.

At the same time, the people reporting him to the State Bar are way more out of line. The "punishment" of being reported and having to answer a bar complaint, regardless of whether the bar issues discipline against RfM (can't imagine they would), is way out of proportion to the "crime" of a silly prank. This is especially the case here, given that the people reporting him were not the targets of the mild prank.

[I Have Questions]

RFM's response to the complaint includes:

RFM lives in a triplex. Two sets of sister missionaries for the Mormon Church live in one of the other two units. The front doors of all three units face a busy two-way road frequently foot trafficked by homeless people. RFM often greets the sister missionaries when their paths cross in the morning or evening, either leaving or coming back to the triplex. RFM has never talked to the sister missionaries about religion, nor has he ever attempted to dissuade them from their beliefs.

RFM's girlfriend has baked the sister missionaries muffins before and RFM and she have delivered them. On one memorable occasion, the sister missionaries came to RFM's door to ask for help as they had locked themselves out of their apartment as well as their car. (If memory serves, they had somehow managed to lock their car keys in their apartment, and their apartment keys in their car). Anywa, RFM and his girlfriend stayed outside with them for an hour or so waiting for the other missionaries with duplicate keys to arrive and let them in. The sun was going down and it was getting chilly so RFM and his girlfriend made sure to bring out coats for the sisters to keep them warm while RFM and his girlfriend waited with them the entire time.

In short, RFM is on good relations with his neighbors, the sister missionaries.

One late afternoon in October, RFM was driving home with his girlfriend and as he was pulling into the small parking area, noticed that the door to the sisters' apartment was wide open and their vehicle was not present.

After parking, RFM and girlfriend walked the short distance over to the sister missionaries' door, which was still wide open. It had been a windy day and it seemed likely that is what had blown the door open. RFM was concerned that, if the sisters were not home, anybody could have walked into their apartment from off the street and been waiting inside.

RFM stepped into the front of their apartment, which feeds directly into the living room, and called out loudly several times "Is anybody home?" With nobody answering, and the apartment appearing to be unoccupied, RFM checked the open door and found it to be in a locked position. This led RFM to conclude the sisters had probably locked the door when they left but failed to pull it all the way closed, leaving it only blown open by the wind.

Before closing the door, RFM took a pumpkin with a large hairy decorative black sider on top, from the sisters' porch just outside their door, and moved them inside their door into the living room area as a Halloween prank between friendly neighbors. RFM's girlfriend was present the entire time.

RFM's girlfriend Wendy has submitted a statement of what happened that day.

Nowhere do I see any complaint from the sister missionaries themselves, which presumably would be the ones to judge if the prank was in good taste or not.

So he thought it would be a good prank to place the sisters Pumpkin inside their apartment so that when they, the sisters got home, they’d a. Wonder where their pumpkin had gone, and b. Get scared when they opened their locked door and found it inside, immediately assuming there had been or still was a home invasion in progress. At the very least RFM is guilty of being a thoughtless imbecile who has a lack of understanding about how young women feel about personal safety when away from home for nearly two years in a strange city. He’s either a pervy creep testing boundaries, or he’s a thoughtless jerk. The female missionaries reaction is retrospective and does not in any way mitigate RFM’s stupidity. Had an Apostle’s brother played that same prank on some sister missionaries, and their reaction been negative. RFM would have produced a long-winded podcast going into forensic detail about why and how it was completely wrong. I’ve zero sympathy for the guy, if he’d done that to my daughter on her mission he’d have met me in person.