Original subtitles

Hey.

- Hi, Heather. How are you doing?

I'm doing good. Doing well.

Yeah.

It means so much to me that

you would say that because it meant

so much to me to be able to, like, share that with you.

I love you, and I will do whatever I can.

Thank you so much, Benny.

- OK, you too. - Bye.

Bye.

I mean, all I did was listen to his story, you know?

That's all I did.

I feel sad that I was part

of the problem for so long,

and I guess I know how devout I was

and what it would have taken for someone to make me

think or feel differently.

And I know deep down that that's what we're up against.

♪ ♪

I'm promising that I'll help carry the burden,

and I'll be an ally and an advocate.

But doesn't it like seem a little ridiculous

to you that it's me?

You know, I'm just like an idiot housewife,

and I'm the one that's taking the time to listen?

I just feel overwhelmed and horrified

and scared and...

stuck, and it didn't even happen to me.

I just want to do whatever I can.

And I'm scared that I'm not enough.

These stories should be enough.

They shouldn't even need me to bring attention to 'em.

I will never back away.

I just hope that more will join the fight.

- We grew up in the church and were abused by our dad,

and all of our bishops, stake presidents

for almost two decades

knew what was going on at home.

Nobody said or did anything to help.

- I personally could not look at the church as responsible,

or that they had a responsibility to me,

because of the way that I was indoctrinated.

- I get messages every day from survivors

of abuse that talk about the way

that the church had failed them.

I'm on my way to meet with these sisters.

They reached out to me.

Their story is... awful.

And it sounds like the church just really let them down.

And I don't understand how that could have happened

so many times in so many different situations.

The truth is, bad things are happening,

and they're not doing anything about it.

I want to find out who they talk to specifically,

like what was said,

and how they could have, you know, not only fallen

through the cracks, but just been deliberately,

you know, shuffled into a system that was abusing them.

- Hi. - Hi.

I'm Heather.

Hi, it's so good to meet you.

It's so nice to meet you too.

You guys both have septum piercings.

Yes, I wanted it since I was 16.

Yeah, how long have you had it?

I did not give myself permission

to get it until I was 36.

I mean, I totally understand that, like, not giving yourself

permission for it, and it's like,

I really think it's the biggest badass thing

you can do as a Mormon woman.

- You know what I mean? - Yeah.

I was scared to get a double pierce, you know?

Like I hid it from my family.

I am the older sister.

I'm the middle child, but I'm the older sister.

I am about 4 and 1/2 years older than Jennie.

When we were small children,

she was the annoying little sister.

When I was little, I had got a nickname of Mini Liz

because I would just follow her around everywhere,

and if she did something, I wanted to do it.

And if she liked something, I wanted to like it.

She was the person who I wanted to be

and my favorite person to be around.

She has always been my example.

- As we got a little bit older,

we definitely relied on each other a lot.

We became inseparable and really formed

a really special relationship.

We've lived in a lot of different places.

My dad was in the Navy, so I was born on Guam,

along with my older brother.

And then we moved to San Diego.

Jennie was born there.

We lived there until I was about ten.

Then we moved to this teeny-tiny little town

in northern Minnesota with a very small branch.

I often tell my husband, who grew up here in Utah,

that I had a much more staunch,

like, Mormon upbringing than he did.

♪ ♪

It's really hard to talk about it in terms of beliefs,

because it was more like my entire sense of reality.

I identified as a member of the Church

of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

And that really meant something to me.

What I found both disturbing and compelling about your story

is it just seemed like the church had so many

opportunities where it could have really helped you,

and instead it just- it didn't.

If you're comfortable, kind of-

can you kind of walk me through it?

- There was never a time that I remember not being abused.

My earliest memories are of abuse.

My dad himself told me he always knew

he would abuse his child if he had a daughter.

He never went for help,

knowing that he had that, you know, predilection.

He just hoped he would never have the opportunity.

So when the opportunity came along and he had a baby girl,

that's what he did.

Some of my earliest memories

are digital penetration,

oral stimulation.

As I got a little older, it did move

into a bit more violent, you know,

full-on rape penetration and anal penetration,

and I didn't recognize it as wrong.

I just recognized it that it hurt,

and I didn't like it,

and I wanted him to not do it, to stop.

The belief that

we can be an eternal family

and that that's what we strive to be,

that is drilled into you

from your earliest, earliest times.

He would say things like, we keep this between us.

This is the way that God wants us

to show that we love each other.

And so when he would frame it as...

these are the right things to be an eternal family,

I believed him.

He used the church's teachings as a way

to make the abuse normal.

My brother was the target for his worst physical abuse.

I was the target for his sexual abuse.

Jennie was the target for neglect.

- My dad abused all of us slightly differently

so that we would feel isolated so that we couldn't talk

to each other and we couldn't

relate to each other,

and we would put up with more

to keep everyone else from feeling what we were feeling.

Oh, like, I might need to like just take like one second.

Sorry.

♪ ♪

My sister is the strongest,

most beautiful soul

I have ever known in my whole life.

She is my hero.

I would not be here today on this Earth

if it were not for my sister.

- I've never met anyone more empathetic.

To have gone through what she's gone through,

and still want to even look anybody else in the face

let alone connect with them is wild.

Did you have any idea of what was happening to your sister?

I didn't know details until much later,

but I always knew that something was wrong.

When my mom found out that my dad was abusing me,

I was only five years old.

She discovered an act of abuse happening.

I didn't really know why she was so angry

or what was happening.

It had been something I'd been experiencing

my whole life up to that point,

and so I didn't know it wasn't normal.

And so she, you know, starts screaming,

and I run and hide 'cause I thought I was in trouble.

And her first instinct was not to go to the police.

You know, she didn't think this is a crime.

She thought this is a sin.

And so she went to her bishop.

♪ We thank Thee ♪

♪ O Lord, our God ♪

On my mom's side is extremely devout generations back.

- The church was so important to my grandparents

that that passed down to my mom.

That was her frame of reference for life basically.

Anything outside of the church is of the world,

and being worldly was a sin.

And so she went straight to the bishop.

To a believing Mormon, the bishop's word

is the word of God.

When you have access to a resource like the power of God,

you know, you run to your bishop.

We were pretty open with discussing it in our family,

like, throughout the years.

So, you know, and I kind of heard later on from my mom

and my dad kind of what was discussed.

And what did that bishop say to her?

Essentially, you need to be a better wife.

You need to be a better member.

You need to read your scriptures more.

Make sure that you're doing family home evening.

Like be a more supportive wife,

does that mean have more sex with your husband?

The phrase that I remember hearing was

"to be more available" to him...

That is so gross.

So that he won't be tempted to abuse his daughter.

So you're the gatekeeper of his actions.

Yeah, like it was somehow her fault

- or mine for tempting him. - No, yeah, absolutely.

They're taking all the burden off of him,

and they're making it this, like, bodily function...

- Yes. - Rather than the crime it is.

Yes, he gave him, like, a slap on the wrist.

There wasn't any official disciplinary action taken.

No contact to law enforcement? Nothing?

Nope, it was like six months of unofficial probation.

Basically, don't take the sacrament.

You can't say prayers. But he wasn't-

Like they treated it like a-

- like he had drank wine and- - Yeah, yeah.

That's terrifying.

- Yeah. - Mm-hmm.

My understanding was that it was said

there's no need for an official report.

It was very much the message that,

'cause my mom reported it to the bishop,

that was all that needed to happen

and no further action necessary because

they were going to take care of it.

He told him to go to counseling through LDS Family Services.

He went to the office.

He told them why he was there, and they said, stop.

They warned him essentially.

If you continue with telling us what you're doing,

we will be obligated to report it.

So he stopped talking and then didn't go back.

Stop talking. Go home to your daughter.

Yeah, I think that that initial bishop,

he mostly was concerned about my dad's salvation.

You as the victim were kind of just collateral damage

and secondary to, like, getting this man

on the road to righteousness.

It's terrible.

I mean, there's not even a word.

I just- I don't have a word.

There is no word.

A bishop looking in the eyes of a five-year-old

who he knows is being raped, patting her on the head

and sending her home with her rapist.

And every bishop is called by divine inspiration.

Right.

If he was inspired by God,

why wasn't he inspired to get us out of that situation?

♪ Happy birthday to you ♪

- The abuse never stopped. It didn't even slow.

It just continued and then progressed,

you know, to become more violent.

♪ ♪

That has definitely been a...

♪ ♪

A source of rage

and even just a source

of confusion.

Like, how could this have happened?

The bishop had the opportunity,

obligation even, to report the abuse.

My mom had the obligation to report the abuse.

He was sent to counseling who had the obligation

to report the abuse.

And, you know, even going further,

if the stake president knew about it,

at that initial time, I was five years old.

Abuse had been happening to me for five years.

If it had been reported at that time,

there is the potential that it could have stopped there.

Because it wasn't, I was then subjected

to 13 more years of abuse.

Even more horrifying is to realize is it wasn't-

- it wasn't just that one bishop. - Mm-mm.

Because that was just the first time

that my mom went to her priesthood leader for help.

You've got a big day. That's right.

It's a big day.

I'm going to get baptized.

You're going to get baptized. By who?

My dad.

Well, isn't that nice.

After the very first time she found out

and he had that slap on the wrist,

he was just a full member again.

You keep saying slap on the wrist.

It's like I cannot believe

- that that's all he had. - Mm-hmm.

It was after his, you know, six months

of not taking the sacrament

then he just was a full member again.

He actually did my baptism.

Like he just- he was just a regular.

He baptized you?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And he was still abusing you?

Oh, yeah, mm-hmm.

The father's the priesthood leader of the family.

So he's doing the priesthood work for the family.

Well, we got our newest member

of the Bonita First Ward here, Elizabeth.

I'm proud of her.

I can't imagine how

that would change your reality,

especially when you've told people he's gotten caught

and no one's done anything about it.

- I really wish that I could go back

and hug that little girl

and just be like, it's OK to be happy

even though these really bad things are going on.

You're finding the joy in your life right now,

and that's OK because sometimes I feel shame for that.

Like, why didn't I act in a way that other people

could see that I was hurting?

But also I look back, and I think, wait a minute.

I didn't need to let people know in other subtle ways

because we fucking told them to their faces.

Yeah, in black and white words so they couldn't say,

well, she seems fine to me.

- Before the age of eight, you are incapable of sin.

Once you turn eight years old, you are now capable of sin,

and that's why you need baptism.

The idea of being capable of sin

made me question what he was doing.

Is it wrong?

But part of the reason why I complied sometimes

was so that he wouldn't look for the opportunity elsewhere.

I couldn't imagine him doing that to anyone else,

but especially not to my sister,

my little sister who was just little.

She was just so little.

I couldn't let that happen.

- The idea of a premortal existence

is a huge part of the doctrine.

The idea that we chose to come to our family,

we knew ahead of time as spirits

a general idea of what sort of things we would be faced with,

because I would have been, you know, watching my family

that I'm going to come into, and I still chose to come here.

I still chose this family.

And for a long time, I thought it was because I can handle it.

I must be really tough. I must be really valiant.

I must be really special because God's asking me

to do this really difficult thing.

And so if I don't do it well, I'm going to disappoint him.

He's expecting me to come back

and thank him for the opportunity

to have lived a mortal life.

♪ ♪

I'm assuming no one ever said take your kids and leave him?

No.

When my mom married my dad,

she was very explicitly told by my grandparents,

this is a forever thing.

You are being eternally sealed to this man.

You cannot come home.

- Not too long after she had found out

that my dad was abusing me, we went out to Minnesota

for a family reunion.

She was in turmoil the whole time,

considering, maybe I should stay here.

Maybe I don't have to go back.

But because of the way that my grandparents framed

this marriage to her, she felt it wasn't safe

to go to them and say, I really need your help.

I believe that my mom was a good Mormon,

and that meant obeying your priesthood leaders.

And the priesthood leaders

said that they would handle it.

Honestly, I think that she truly believed

that he's been caught.

He's not going to do it again

because that's what repentance is for.

You stop doing the thing that you are doing,

and you repent of it.

And because he had then completed

whatever this initial bishop's-

- His penance. - Yes.

In her mind, he wasn't going to do it again.

So she just for five years, just trusted him-

trusted my dad that he had stopped.

And then when I was ten, she discovered the abuse again.

- When I was ten, I have a very vivid memory

of the act of abuse that was happening

when my mom caught my dad again.

It was the middle of the day.

She had gone somewhere- I don't know-

grocery shopping, something.

Had come home earlier than he was expecting.

He had me in the bedroom

and was performing oral sex on me,

and my mom, you know, storms in the room.

I'm crying. I can't say anything.

And all I do is I lift my skirt to show

that I don't have any panties on.

My mom went to the priesthood again.

And this time, they took it a bit more seriously.

This time, he was excommunicated.

And if you're excommunicated in that fashion,

I'm assuming he had the 12-

a disciplinary council of 12 area representatives.

The whole stake presidency,

the entire disciplinary council.

All of those priesthood leaders knew.

Excommunication doesn't do anything.

It gives them plausible deniability of anything he does

and also some enmity so that they can say,

well, he wasn't a member of the church.

- No one called the police again. - Mm-mm, no.

And this time, so many more people knew.

The church views excommunication as part

of the repentance process.

When there is a serious enough sin

to require excommunication,

it has to happen so that they can fully repent

and then be rebaptized as a member.

With the excommunication, with all of those

priesthood leaders knowing, not one of them

went to law enforcement,

not one of them thought it might be a good idea

to maybe protect the other children

that he had access to

and warned the members of the church

that he was still actively attending.

All I'm hearing is, like, them saying,

whatever happened to Lizzie doesn't matter.

What matters is what happens to him...

- Yeah. - And we've taken care of him.

So, like, I can't imagine as a victim

feeling revictimized every time that it doesn't matter

that you're abused, doesn't matter what he did,

and it doesn't matter if you- it doesn't matter.

I think one of the issues is when bishops

only see themselves as the spiritual leaders,

because I think that once he'd been excommunicated,

they felt that was the end of their responsibility.

The church leadership, the top leadership,

as long as they were doing what they said,

then that's what they were supposed to be doing.

And there's no room left for your own moral-

there's no personal choice.

No personal responsibility attached to those decisions

because it comes from the top down.

I mean, that's how I felt growing up.

Like, I had already made that choice

when I got baptized.

So now every other choice was already made.

- Yeah. - Mm-hmm.

- Once my mom realized that he didn't stop

and wasn't going to stop,

but she was still counseled to stay,

she thought, OK, all I have to do

is just make sure that he's never alone with her.

It was her job to keep him in check.

It was her job to keep him away from Elizabeth.

And she spent years trying to do that

and failing because she was a human being

who needed to sleep.

I heard a story similar where that burden

was put on the wife, and so she just

started sleeping in front of her child's door

on the carpet.

How do you ask that of someone?

When we moved to Minnesota,

my mom took my dad and met with the bishop.

Just to say I'm working on coming back to church?

It was a front, you know-

I think it was to help him hide.

The veneer of perfection,

the perfect little Mormon family.

We couldn't have that without the father and husband.

I know all about that, yeah.

Nobody could know that he wasn't a member.

Only the leaders knew.

All the rest of the members of the Church didn't.

So you guys were going to church

every Sunday throughout all of this?

- Never missed a week. - Yes.

- So did your dad go to church with you guys?

- Yeah, he even wore certain undershirts

that would make him look like he was wearing garments.

- The people who he interacted with at church

had no idea of what he was doing at home,

but because the leadership knew

and didn't do anything about it,

he was able to form those bonds and friendships

- under false pretenses. - Yeah.

They had no idea that they were friends

with a pedophile who could potentially

harm their children.

Your dad's already excommunicated,

but you're not allowed to talk about it.

They reinforced to you as the victim and child

a code of silence to protect him.

Oh, absolutely, yes.

Which would make, I mean, if I were in your position,

like, more reluctant to say it hasn't stopped.

The excommunication didn't scare him straight.

It took her a long time,

but my mom started questioning that message.

There was a lot of shifts in dynamics in our family.

One of the times was when online chat rooms

became really popular.

My mom started chatting in these chat rooms,

and with that, you know, veil of anonymity,

she was able to talk about what was going on at home.

People were validating her, finally,

validating her thoughts of this is not right.

This is horrible.

And really being horrified by what she was saying,

and I don't know that she really expected that reaction.

But I don't give her a lot of grace

for this time period because she left us

alone with him so she could figure it out.

- So she left? - Yeah.

Our mom had left us there with my dad

and had gone to Ireland to meet someone

that she had met in one of the chat rooms.

At that time, she wasn't thinking

about how we had been feeling.

She only was reflecting on how she had been treated

and how she was feeling,

and so she kind of abandoned us.

That's the summer that Liz and I got really close

and protected each other to the best of our ability.

As a 13-year-old and a 17-year-old, yeah.

So how did it eventually stop?

As I got older, the abuse changed.

The risk of pregnancy was enough of a deterrent

to stop the rape.

My abuse turned to a more mental

and emotional sexual abuse.

And the abuse definitely changed for my sister.

I did have one instance of sexual abuse,

and it was that same summer that my mom left.

When my mom came back, the dynamic had shifted a lot.

I don't know what happened to her while she was gone,

but when she came back, she said, we're leaving.

She decided to take us to Utah because

she wanted to be around Mormons.

- Let's go where Mormons are... - Go to the motherland.

And they'll help us.

Even after years of being kind of dismissed

and told to put up, shut up, and do better,

she still went to the church for safety and support.

- Yeah. - It's her first call.

I understand that.

- I got pregnant with my son when I was 18,

and I was out here in Utah

trying to make it work with his dad.

It was a turning point for me.

I still had a communicative relationship with my dad.

Like we weren't friends.

Like I didn't-I-

But I still talked to him.

I still saw him as my dad.

When I had my son, and I felt so much joy and so much love,

I felt what a parent is supposed

to feel for their child.

And in that moment,

I knew I could never talk to him again.

The only time I ever talked to him again

after that was for my criminal case against him.

So how do you go about reporting something like that?

Well, I thought of all of the years of abuse,

the place where it happened the most

because we lived there the longest was California.

OK.

And so I called the San Diego Police Department,

and I made a report with a detective.

He asked me for some instances of abuse.

I gave him maybe, you know, three or four memories.

- I've got hundreds. - Yeah.

You know, just the tone of horror and anger that this man

who I'd never met before had for me and our family,

it was- um, it was very validating,

and it was a shock.

Like seeing through a clear lens for the first time.

Yeah, all these other men knew these exact same things.

How is this the first person who's showing any sense

of this isn't right and something needs to be done?

During the investigation, I had worked

with the police department to call him and record it.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

I basically got a recorded confession.

And from there, it went pretty quickly.

I made my report mid-August probably.

And by mid-December, he was arrested.

Are you serious?

Can you just put it right up here?

Oh, my gosh.

It took me becoming an adult to advocate for myself

and finally, you know, do what all of the priesthood leaders

and my mom didn't do.

For 21 years, people knew what this man was doing-

bishops, stake presidents, men that know better.

You told one detective, and he was arrested within six months.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

What was his sentence? And is he still in jail?

32 years.

But he was released after about 151/2 years.

He finished his parole in 2023,

and he was rearrested for child sexual abuse materials,

- a lot of them. - Shut up.

Yeah, so he's back in prison.

Mm-hmm.

I hope he dies there.

Because if he dies there, that means that

he won't be a danger-

To anyone else.

Is that when you started to look at the church's role

in protecting him?

That wasn't for many years.

♪ ♪

The criminal charges were filed against my dad in 2004.

I did not look into filing a civil lawsuit

against the church for their role until 2020.

I wouldn't even consider it for a very long time.

Like, no, the church was just doing

what they thought was right.

The church professes to have a direct line to God

and to know information and to have access to God

that members don't have.

What on earth could I possibly know more than these men?

As soon as you start to feel like maybe

the leaders of the church didn't do the right thing-

That critical, little bit critical-

Yeah, a little bit critical, exactly.

Then that instantly comes in.

Well, I can't criticize the church.

- Right, absolutely not. - That's because-

Well, it's the covenant we make

- in order to attend the temple. - Yeah.

And it's not even a conscious thing.

Yep.

It's instantly, you know, I would think,

shouldn't they have done more?

And then I would be like, I need to read

my scriptures more because I must be missing something...

- Yeah. - The way it is.

It's run by Jesus Christ.

So who wants to give notes to Jesus Christ?

Exactly, if you're Jesus, I'm not going to tell you

- you're wrong. - Yeah.

I'm not going to be like, hey,

man, that was a bad decision.

Like, go back and rethink that.

Are you sure? Are you sure?

- Absolutely not. - Yeah.

- No. - Exactly.

OK, and then you align yourself

to that decision no matter what it is.

And lean not unto our own understanding

but unto his and unto the Lord.

And I believe that was my mom's outlook.

Her outlook was they are direct conduits of God.

So whatever decision they make, that is the decision

- that God would make. - Mm-hmm.

Well, that was your mom's conduit because that's

what we were taught still today.

Yeah, yeah.

Never mind that he's, you know, abusive and, you know,

harming you and your children.

♪ ♪

She got to be in it today!

- There was a moment where I looked at myself as a child

as a separate entity.

I could recognize that what was done

to her was not right.

And so I thought, you know, I might not be able

to do anything about it.

I might not be able to make them take me seriously,

but I want to try.

So that's when I contacted a lawyer.

One of the things that I hoped to come out

of the lawsuit with the church was some accountability.

Even just an acknowledgment-

you know, we did have a responsibility,

and, you know, we didn't do the right thing.

Let's make sure we do the right thing from here on out.

That didn't happen, but we went through mediation

and came to a settlement.

It definitely felt very dehumanizing

and humiliating to hear my trauma

- being talked about in... - Terms of dollar amount.

In terms of money, but then also being haggled over.

The attorney from Kirton McConkie

that did my deposition had the most smug face.

Did they offer any explanation

for things that the church-

No, the church has no responsibility.

And that was their official statement.

- That was their whole point. - That was.

The church has no responsibility.

Mom should have done something. Why didn't she?

Yeah, they threw her under the bus.

- They really did. - Big time.

They really did.

But I don't think the thought ever

entered her mind that the church had done anything wrong.

- Yep. - She still grapples with it.

Yep.

We're trained to think this way.

This is what you're bred into.

It's conditioning.

I still struggle to deconstruct it right now.

Like, there has to be an explanation for this.

You know, the people that I went to church with

cared about children and would never turn a blind eye.

But the truth is, as much as they may care about children,

they care about the church more.

Yes.

And I think that's hard for people to understand.

Like our allegiance to the church,

which we also say is our allegiance to God,

is the strongest.

So any other directive is less important.

That's what it felt like.

And that's why I'm not going to shut up about it still.

Like, OK, cool. You gave me a settlement.

- That means jack shit to me. - Yeah.

Like my story, our story, is important.

Your role in our abuse is real,

and it needs to fucking change so that other children

are not hurt the same way that we were.

I have mixed feelings about the Church today.

There is a lot of good in the people of the church,

but the corporation of the Church

of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

is harmful, deceitful, and I do see it as evil.

I have removed the church's control

and influence from my life,

and it's taken a lot to get here.

But my life is actually beautiful.

- The Church has this very planned-out

future for everyone, and outside it's so much messier.

And I've preferred that, honestly.

We have wanted to talk about this publicly for years

and have not been able to find an avenue to do that.

It feels like a constant reminder of no one listened.

- And you're listening. - I am.

- I'm listening. - And that feels huge.

You're both remarkable.

I'm so glad you have each other.

As a mom of daughters,

your sisterly bond means a lot to me.

I know your story is going to change lives,

and I'm really grateful to you guys for sharing it with me.

I just- I feel really, like, heavy.

♪ ♪

Something shifted in my conversation

with Lizzie and Jennie.

♪ ♪

I'm terrified of the word cult.

If we could have a conversation

around cult techniques and cult behavior,

and if it didn't eradicate the beautiful parts

of my childhood and the wonderful things

my parents did for me, I would just say it easily.

You know, my parents were in a cult.

They raised our entire family in this cult,

and it's really, really, really hard to get out of.

And it doesn't mean that my childhood was tainted

or that my parents were bad people,

or that my family didn't have real love and real experiences.

But I was raised in a cult.

Final thoughts, take one A and B marker.

Oh, now I know what this scene is.

Well, no fucking pressure.

I'll tell you my final thoughts.

They're not going to be what you think

my final thoughts are.

- I've been really toying with this why me.

This whole time, you know, in every conversation,

I'm just thinking, why me?

The why me really made sense today,

and it kind of answered that question for me.

You can shine your light on stories

and create visibility for people,

and the effect of that change can be significant.

Change could happen.

I'm hearing these stories for the first time,

and they change the way that I view myself.

And I'm sorry.

You don't need to apologize.

- And definitely the church that I dedicated my life to.

Giving victims a platform and an opportunity

to tell their stories is, I think,

the biggest act of resistance that you could do.

These stories should be heard,

and the church is never going to hear them,

but the world can.

Can you just put it right up here?

- And that's who they should put their faith in now,

these victims put their faith into the church

and those institutions for years,

and now I think they should put their faith into humanity

and let their stories be heard.

And I hope the world responds with, like, kindness

and support and love and outrage.

For every story that's on FLOODLIT,

there are 1,000 others that have just never come forward.

This is the beginning of a reckoning.

This is the beginning of a movement where people

see that they can come forward,

and their abuse can be validated.

I feel like I've seen, and I trust myself

enough to know that, even if everyone around me

is saying that the sky is black, to me,

it's crystal blue,

and it's so clear what needs to be done.

♪ ♪

To all my

bad Mormons.

♪ ♪

I'm starting to gather personal stories

from people who would like to share them in some way.

We will use this platform to shine a light on things

that I, as a lifelong member of the church,

never knew existed.

My mission was one of the most damaging

experiences of my life.

There's so many effects from that that

I'm still trying to get over and work through.

I started getting dozens of, like, texts, calls.

We had a car follow us.

My dad would tell me, like, you need to go get your mom

and bring her home to us.

Our eternal family depends on it.

He took me to multiple polygamist settlements.

They wanted to give our son up for adoption

to a worthy temple.

- To my older brother. - Yeah.

It's crazy. And it goes so high up.

It goes into politics.

I mean, it's just a whole big thing.

I don't know where I'm supposed to go

or what I'm supposed to do.

I haven't really had many people to talk to.

♪ ♪

I just got this text from somebody

that wants to remain totally anonymous

and sent a different name, but that he's a

sex worker for Mormon leadership.

I'm a high-end gay escort.

A lot of the Mormon leadership who run the organization

are my clients.

I'm not just talking about bishops

or stake presidents, temple presidents,

and, yes, even general authorities.

I don't believe this.

A general authority of the church

using a high-end gay escort?

That's like an exposé.

That's "National Enquirer" shit, you know?

They come to me because I create a safe space

for the leaders to feel love and acceptance,

and then they go back to church

and teach homophobia from the pulpit.

They are causing great harm.

For me, it's an emergency.

Hearing all of these stories

from people all over the world,

If I get really angry about it,

the church is just not going to listen to me

and label me a heretic, apostate, crazy person.

So I have to follow their lead

in terms of the level of action.

I'm just going to say,

are you willing to meet with me?

I never thought I'd be in this position ever, ever.