Yep. That’s right. You can’t find masturbation interviews for your children anywhere else.
“No other reputable institutional church, private or public school, sports group, youth serving organization, or community center allows one-on-one meetings between adults and children. It’s an invitation for sexual abuse. Why is the LDS church endorsing this horrible practice?” –Statement by Joelle Casteix, SNAP Western Regional Leader
SNAP is a prominent support group that helped expose widespread sexual abuse by Catholic priests. The acronym stands for Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.
In no uncertain terms, SNAP condemns what has become an LDS institutional hallmark, masturbation interviews. According to Ms. Casteix, “The ramifications of these meetings are horrific.”
My Fellow Mormons
I’m ashamed that these closed-door-interviews are still part of our culture. They certainly are not doctrine. We are condoning the shame and self-loathing that our children are experiencing.
The rest of the world has already made changes to protect the kids. Every institutional church and youth serving organization have eliminated behind-closed -doors-all-alone meetings with children…..except us.
We were forced by the Federal Government to abandon polygamy. We lagged years behind the civil rights movement in finally ditching our embarrassing racism. We are now years behind society again. If you allow our “horrific” practice to continue….the harm to our children is on you!!!
***My Non-Mormon Friends***
You, your relatives, your neighbors or friends may be considering joining my Mormon Church. If so, be aware that we are the ONLY church in America that conducts sexually oriented interviews with children, all alone, behind closed doors.
I’m giving you a heads up. Your children WILL regularly be called into private one-on-one meetings with a leader of your congregation. Often without your knowledge or consent. It is very likely that those interviews will be sexually oriented with sexually probing questions. Always behind closed doors and without a parent in the room.
The Church offers many good things. I encourage you to seriously weigh the good against the severe risks that your children will be exposed to.
Additional Resources
Join us by adding your thundering voice to the PETITION
Tocubit Is Invisible's Cubit 
Confession is not designed to be probing questions. It’s a voluntary confession of sins. Furthermore, the teaching from the church regarding masturbation needs to stop anyway. Sin next to murder?? Gimme a break. Sign the petition and help protect the kids that are stuck in this practice. Make this known worldwide!! When it hits the news they’ll be forced to deal with this legally!
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Sam,
Has the LDS Church Public Relations Department contacted you with a lucrative job offer yet?
If I were The Brethren, I would offer you a few million bucks a year of Tithing Money “living stipend” to just STFU. Plus an Unlimited Gift Certificate good anywhere in the City Creek Mall.
Congratulations to you; 1) for discovering this heinous practice you did not even know had happened to your own daughters; and 2) for possessing the kind of core values that resulted in your immediate response of Anger; and 3) for having the courage and ability to shout your discovery from the rooftops on your blog; and 4) for figuring out that an online petition would be an ideal method to gather support from thousands of others who care; and 5) for having the kahunas and initiative to travel to SLC with placards and literature “in their face”; and 6) for attracting media attention and hitting The Brethren in their Achilles Heel; and 7} for eliciting their trademark, non-responsive, issue-dodging, mind-numbing, wordsmithery obfuscation; and 8) for you-ain’t-seen-nothing-yet what’s about to happen in January!
I feel proud to know you, Sam.
My Planet Earth is becoming a kinder, gentler place because of . . . Sam Young.
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Sam, you know that I agree with your stand on this kind of interviews. The Church has made public their stance on these kinds of questions in their recent statement. I believe this is a problem that needs to be handled at the stake level. Parents should be present in these interviews or a trusted adult. I believe that your condemnation of the Church as a whole is wrong. You invite people to weigh the good and the bad and choose whether this is bad enough to keep them from joining the church. Yet, you have have made this your “title of liberty” for the time being. You have stayed while picking the church apart. Is this not a contradiction? As a parent of 3 grown children, and 7 grandchildren, I have told my kids to insist on being there for their children’s interviews. The buck stops with the parent. The brethren oversee a world wide church. This is a matter that needs to be handled locally first like the recent case in Utah where the Bishop turned in his counselor for sexual child abuse. If a parent or a child feels they have been physically or verbally abused, they need to go to local law enforcement and report it. Parents need to tell their children this and that they will support them. You have reported many cases of these interviews and most are in the way past. It would be interesting to know if there are current cases.
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The buck stops with the church, not the parent. If a staunch believer like you can see that this is bad, why can’t the church make a public decree to stop the interviews? The church should want to protect the children and the leaders who put themselves at risk by asking these questions. With all that we see in the media with news anchors, politicians, celebrities, etc being called out for inappropriate actions, how can the church be blind to the need to change? Where is the the power of discernment of LDS leadership when it’s most needed? There are millions of members who are not aware of what is happening or of the petition. How can those parents know to participate in the interviews unless the church makes a change? It’s time for the church to own this and fix it before it gets worse.
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Roy, Are you in a position of local leadership? How do you know that the GA’s haven’t counseled the local leadership in more details on interviews. Sam mentioned one seventy who back in Oct advised a bishop or stake president to ask all the ultimate question. There have been no other statements to that effect. Sam did not say where this was from or who the seventy was….something that should be made known especially if the info is being shared to just one area. I did here from Bednar recently that not everything spoken by GA’s in state or regional meetings is meant for the entire church. Some areas of the church have different problems. We are then commanded to go home and pray about what we heard or read. The parents or parent are the first line of defense in my opinion because the children were given to us by the Lord.
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Dear Janice,
You post postures you as an unquestioning defender of The Brethren.
I totally agree with Roy, Angela and jan028.
Hmmm . . . Lemme see what you are defending, Janice.
“It is wrong to criticize the leaders of the Church, even if the criticisms are true.” -Dallin Oaks (paraphrasing)
“Not everything that is true is useful.” – Boyd K. Packer (paraphrasing)
Knock! Knock! Knock!
Anyone home there?
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Janice, this is just the tip of the iceberg of what is bad in Mormonism.
Signed, a multi-generational Mormon, Utah original, born in the covenant, return missionary, sealed-in-the-temple mother of not one but TWO amazing gay children. There’s more than just the masturbation interviews that can abuse and scar a child who is being raised Mormon. Getting my own four children completely out of that organization was the best thing I’ve ever done for them as their mother.
For those keeping record, I was asked if I masturbated more than once in bishop interviews growing up in Utah county in the 80s, and also by my mission presidents while on my mission. I was really shocked to find there were those who hadn’t been asked. I thought it was just the norm. Those interviews and the fact that the church STILL doesn’t run routine background checks on those called to work with children frightened me as a mother (and an aunt of several still-LDS children) even when I was a true believer. They should concern ALL parents in the church.
The condemnation over an adult man asking questions of a sexual nature to any child should come from the very head of the church as absolute policy, not kept at a “local level”. The man who baptized me when I was eight was later caught molesting little girls. That was kept at a “local level” in the church and kept quiet in the family so he could “repent”. Less than a decade later he was called as a bishop in another state, none of his congregation knowing his past. There is no divine discernment in the church, and the way the LDS leadership is called and placed in positions of power is all a scary game of Russian Roulette.
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I am working towards withdrawing myself from Mormonism, but I find myself strongly drawn to this plight. It’s a difficult extraction, as I have dedicated believers in my family; including my husband. I’m fairly certain one never completely rids oneself of guilt and shame imposed on them at the hands of others. I know of far too many incidents in my stake, involving either actions by “leaders” or decisions made by “leaders,” that have caused irreparable damage to individuals and families. I have been asked grossly inappropriate questions as an adult. I still wonder what in the world I was thinking to sit there and feel compelled to answer them!
Sam, you are a hero for many, young and old, those on the earth and those to come. You are making a difference. Thank you.
Gary, I don’t know what you’re referencing with your you- ain’t-seen-nothing-yet comment, but I look forward to finding out in January!
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why didn’t you mention the purpose for them asking about masturbation? obviously you are against the church and wrote a biased article, even though i don’t necessarily disagree with the point you brought up. it seems like the purpose of this article was to make the church look as bad as possible. so already in your mind, the mormon church is bad.
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Hi Spencer,
Thanks very much for your comment. We badly need discussion around this topic. So, I appreciate your point of view.
Here are my thoughts.
1) To me, it doesn’t matter why a bishop took my 12 year old daughter behind closed doors and asked if she engaged in masturbation. That was a violation of the trust I had in my ward leader. It was a violation of my tender and immature child. It is disgusting that it happened and still happens throughout the church.
2) The church is making itself look bad by condoning what bishops are doing. If the this is proud to be the only church in America to allow a child to be taken behind closed doors, all alone, and asked about masturbation and many other explicit questions, then be proud my friend.
3) You have made an interesting assumption, “In my mind, the church is bad.” That is NOT in my mind. The church does much good. I am still active. My wife is active. My children and grandchildren are active. I fully support them in their church participation. If I thought the church was bad, I would be working by butt off to the get them all away from it. Instead, I’m working my butt off to eliminate this horrible practice before it damages my grandkids. The church will be better and look better when they make the change.
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Hi, Sam,
Well, lemme help you understand, in case your self-image is lagging behind current events . . .
You, my friend, are in the process of becoming a literal, genuine, fully authentic, real-life HERO among your fellow human beings in general and among decent members of the Only True Church in particular . . . and not just here in this country, but also worldwide. You have crafted yourself and your Life into serving and rescuing the defenseless and abused as their Defender and Champion Warrior . . . with the courage, kahunas and tactical savvy to . . . to do what?
Here is what you are doing, Sam.
You are calling out The Brethren . . . out of their shadowy hole and into a very PUBLIC DUEL . . . where instead of pistols or swords, the weapons are core-values, Truth and strategical and tactical wit and cunning.
And at the same time, you are becoming a clear-and-present-danger, aka an enemy of The Brethren and their self-serving agenda. You are messing with one of their most effective mind-control tools . . . heaps and bunches of sexual guilt and shame instilled during childhood and adolescence and renewed annually if not more often for the rest of your life.
Without the weighty distraction and over-the-top stress load of guilt and shame to consume waking thoughts and feelings, Mormons (young and old and in between) will have more life energy (and more time) to invest in learning, growing, discovering . . . figuring out who they are and what their passions are, and . . . drum roll . . . also figuring out that The Brethren have only the well-being of . . . another drum roll . . . The Brethren . . . on their short list of priorities.
You are going to win, Sam, on behalf of thousands and thousands of lives you will be affecting and improving for the better.
I truly feel blessed to not only know you and have met you, but to be considered a friend by you, and vice-versa.
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Hi Gary,
“You, my friend, are in the process of becoming a literal, genuine, fully authentic, real-life HERO.” What a mighty complimentary that is. I hate to burst the hero bubble, but, over the last couple of weeks, things have changed in a big way. I am no longer going to be a “real-life HERO.”
And what has changed? Well, I am no longer alone. The thundering voices of 10,000 other human beings have now joined together, side by side and signature by signature. These thousands, of which I’m a part, are becoming the real life heroes. Saving future generations of LDS youth from behind-closed-door sexually oriented interviews that continue to harm our innocent children.
You have mentioned “the brethren.” They are not my concern. It’s our precious children who we are fighting to protect.
WE are going to win. And that will be a big win for our kids.
Thanks for being a significant part in all this, my good friend.
All my best, Sam
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I support background checks, inviting parents to participate in interviews, better training for bishoprics and inviting a Young women’s advisor to participate when a male interviews a young woman.
All good stuff.
What I don’t appreciate is the blatant exaggeration about masterbation interviews. There is no such thing. Nor are they viewed as such or titled as such. Just a false attention grabber like Trumps claims of Hilary Clinton using a DC restarting for sex trafficking. Only the already stewing, angry, hole pokers fall for that tactic. Masterbation is not a priority topic for any bishop and rarely asked outright. Sam himself as a bishop asked dozens of times to youth and young woman if they had challenges or “kept the law of chastity”. If they said there were no issues, bishops move on. If they said there were challenges then the bishop stops and helps them through it. Rarely asking detailed questions.
Can’t stop every pervert but can have very frank conversations with our youth about sexual abuse so they can act to protect themselves. Bishops work their tales off and stay up at night concerned and thinking how they can help youth be happier, more confident, healthy individuals who make good choices and this blog is painting them in a light that feeds the angry mobs and their hurt feelings and blame shifting where rights are demanded but rarely take responsibility for the reason behind their anger.
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Dear B.T.
First, if you are going to write about “masterbation” . . . the red underline should be a headzup that what you are writing about does not appear in the English lexicon . . at least spelled your way.
I will apologize in advance for the following 7 paragraphs to Sam’s other readers. This is for B.T. eyes only:
Spelling reality however you like it should not be a problem for many or most TBMs . . . whose cherished belief system was founded on “historical” personages and people who don’t exist doing things that never happened. Or if the people actually did exist, the “good stories” are made up fairy tales, and the bad stuff they actually DID do . . . well, that’s all swept under the carpet and denied, denied, denied until the truth eventually leaks out. Then the denials turn into obfuscate, obfuscate, obfuscate with expert wordsmithery intended to technically tell some of the truth, but without stating it clearly enough for confirmation-biased TBMs to figure anything out,
The Brethren are transitioning from telling outright falsehoods they know are lies, to so proficiently obfuscating the truth into what I call Technically True Lies. The Brethren have been caught lying to the world, but because they are Congenital Liars, they refuse to tell the clear and unvarnished truth.
Boyd summed it up in 1981 talking to Church employees: “Not everything that’s true is useful.”
Dallin Oaks made it even clearer: “It’s wrong to criticize Church leaders, even if the criticism is true.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is owned and operated by professional liars and obfuscators running a spectacularly profitable, worldwide Mind Control Cult.
That’s another topic. Please check out http://www.cesletter.org for details on what I’m talking about here.
Sorry for the detour into the ditch there, B.T. . . . back on point . . .
========== end of 7 paragraphs for B.T.’s eyes only =============
Regarding your amazing claim that Sam’s accounts of masturbation interviews are blatant exaggerations, you are confusing your hip-shot opinion (based on your own pro-Church bias) with Sam’s documented research of personal experiences of real people who were nontrivially damaged and harmed by sexually probing interrogations by their Bishops.
Based on early returns, my guess is that a Polling Professional with experience in the statistical performance of polls would be able to estimate just how widespread the invasive sexual interview issue is throughout the Church.
Oh, wait. Looks like you have already got it all dialed in.
“Masterbation is not a priority topic for any bishop and rarely asked outright.”
B.T., maybe you should see if the Church will hire you to help them write Correlated Lesson Manuals that continue to spoon feed a whitewashed version of reality to clueless TBMs, not so unlike yourself, who see the Church only through the wrong end of Rose Colored Binoculars . . . where facts are reduced and minimized into invisibility, and what’s still visible is painted in glowing colors.
Part of me feels bad being to hard on you, B.T. But it it were left up to your personal “discernment”, there is no problem with sexually invasive and abusive worthiness interviews in the Mormon Church. People who report having their lives altered dramatically for the worse are crybabies, or lying, or both.
And . . . drum roll . . . The Church is True.
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Oh no!! Not the CES letter!! Or altered quotes from actual GA’s!! Or the merry-go-round approach argument that that says “what about horses, chariots, steal, 13 versions of the first vision, or 14 yr old wife’s?” And if any answer is given (which it has over and over) it’s just replaced with, “oh yeah, what about this?” And on we go spinning.
This topic is about “Masturbation (thanks for the spelling correction :)) interviews.
Almost all the petition signers are merry-go-rounders same with “key witnesses”. This is a broad claim I know and that is why I said “almost”. Abuse happens and there are things we can do, but don’t spin this into something that it is not. Sam had oodles of healthy conversations with young girls about chastity (and helped them through very challenging experiences) and the grand majority of bishops are doing the same. Stopping masterbation interviews doesn’t stop abuse. Starting healthy conversations about sexuality, having a strong voice, recognizing when abuse is happening with our kids will.
Your approach with this is like thinking your teen isn’t looking at porn because he/she turns their phone in before bed.
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Dear B.T.
First, I want to apologize for the sharp tone of my previous reply to you. I failed to defang my passion regarding how The Brethren treat their hosts aka Church members. Please forgive me if you are so willing. I will attempt to be more civil to you this time.
You just wrote:
“Oh no!! Not the CES letter!! Or altered quotes from actual GA’s!! Or the merry-go-round approach argument that that says “what about horses, chariots, steal, 13 versions of the first vision, or 14 yr old wife’s?” And if any answer is given (which it has over and over) it’s just replaced with, “oh yeah, what about this?” And on we go spinning.”
Are you summarily dismissing the CES Letter, B.T.? Have you actually read it? Just the other day, I read it front to back. It is meticulously documented by author Jeremy with references to source material and copious links to supporting information. Jeremy makes no claims not supported by LDS Church publications, or by research discoveries of credible historians.
In my opinion, you are well-justified in dismissing the entire CES Letter . . . in tried-and-true, shoot-the- messenger style.
Why do I support you to shoot-the-messenger when it comes to the CES Letter? Simple answer, B.T. If you actually read, comprehend, understand, and let-it-into-your-personal-psyche what Jeremy discloses regarding the history and truth claims of the LDS Church, your personal testimony of Joseph Smith and the Truthfulness of the Restored Gospel will be burned to a charred, smoking crisp by the time you get to the last page.
The only way your testimony can possibly survive the CES Letter is for you to do one or more of the following:
1) Just refuse to READ it. Do not actually READ the words. Just skim it, determine it to be anti-Mormon garbage without scrutinizing its actual facts, content and source references. Reach your conclusion based on your emotional reaction to “anti-Mormon” lies. You already KNOW the Church is True, so therefore, anything that claims otherwise cannot be anything but misinformation; or
2) Read the words (sounds like you did read some of it, B.T.) and then come to a different conclusion than Jeremy did about what the facts and history strongly suggest. Jeremy displayed impressive intellectual honesty repeatedly in the Letter when he wrote “Does the foregoing prove such-and-such? No.” It is usually impossible to prove a negative. It is not impossible, however, to assemble a preponderance of irrefutable evidence to strongly suggest to an impartial, rational observer that such-and-such has an ice-cubes-chance-in-hell of not being a made-up lie intended to deceive and manipulate; or
3) Repeat a valid argument, even cite specific evidence from the argument, but in a mocking tone, as if your mocking tone (calling the argument a merry-go-round) somehow invalidates the evidence and the conclusion; or
4) Accept the lds.org Gospel Topics essays as settling the issues and answering the questions raised in the CES Letter and elsewhere. This is the opposite of shoot-the-messenger. Let’s call it embrace-the-messenger. The Gospel Topics essays have been throughly dissected, line by line, and exposed to be cleverly obfuscated skirtings of the core issues. Lemme see if I can find a link for you on this. I won’t spend much time because you will not want to read an expose’ of the Church’s best rebuttal to the CES Letter.
http://www.mormonthink.com/essays-responses-intro.htm
Regarding the rest of your response, B.T., I will assert that there is simply no such thing as healthy sexuality taught by or encouraged within the Mormon Church. When your archetypal role model is Joseph Smith, the rest is history . . . if we’re talking actual history and not the whitewashed Joseph Smith cartoon painted by The Brethren for 8-year-old intellects.
=======
Done! I think I did a fair job of keeping it reasonably civil this time. What do you think, B.T.?
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Addendum for B.T.
If you take this link for responsible counterpoint to the lds.org Gospel Topics essays . . .
http://www.mormonthink.com/essays-responses-intro.htm
. . . do pay close attention to this sentence in red font about halfway down the home page:
To see MormonThink’s responses to these essays, use the menu bar above under “Church Essays”
That “Church Essays” link is at the rightmost link on the menu bar at the top of the home page above the photo of the statue with his head in his hands.
There is a link for each of the lds.org essays.
If you want to continue believing that the lds.org Gospel Topics essays settle the issues raised in the CES Letter, then DO NOT read the responsive revelations on MormonThink.
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