Today’s letter to my bishop and stake president

Dear President_______ and Bishop_______,

Thanks for stopping by my house last Monday and visiting with my wife and daughter.  That means a lot to all of us.

Sorry, I missed you.  The Protect-The-Children movement is now taking more time than I can handle alone.  The night of your visit, I spent several hours on a conference call with a team spread across the country working out assignments.  These people are sharp and capable.  We are all committed to protecting the good name of the church by implementing policies that will protect our kids.

My wife recounted to me that your main message was one of love.  Multiple times you reiterated how much you love our family.  That’s a good thing to hear.

Your outreach of love causes me to make an outreach in return.  If you love our family, I would think you would be moved to action by the threat that has been made against us. 

Apparently, my wife told you that she isn’t really worried.  Well, she didn’t tell you everything.  Here’s what she told me after your visit.  “Sam, I don’t think that this person will attack me or the kids.  I’m concerned about the risk to the business.  What would happen to our income if he attacked your office and shut it down?”

As for me, my stomach turns with anxiety when I think about all this.  Likely, you cannot empathize unless you, your family and your livelihood have been threatened by an ominous and anonymous person going by the name of The Avenger.

Here’s more information about the person that MAY be behind this threat.  It looks like he may be here in Houston.  That’s scary to me.  It looks like he may work for the Church.  That should be scary to the Church.  

You tell me that you have an obligation to protect the good name of the Church.  I’m glad you told me that.  Because, I’m now totally on board with it. 

How crappy will the Church look if the following plays out?  

• A person who works for the church threatens me, a high profile member. 
• I notify the Church of the threat and where it may have come from.
• The Church ignores me. 
• It also ignores the threat coming from a person in it’s employ. 
• The Avenger, who works for the Church, follows through on his threat. 

This poses a huge problem to the Church.  The liability it incurs WILL be prosecuted. 

The Church has billions of dollars in assets.  It has a huge security department.  Huge IT department.  There is no excuse for them not to investigate and call out this threat.

You might be interested in how the possible suspect was located.  I have a friend who used to work at church headquarters.  Get this…part of his job was to……find the identities of anonymous threats to the Church, its leaders and its members.   The Church actually pays people in its employ to do this.

I wish that you had sent this information up the ladder when I first sent it to you.  You really ought to do it at this point.  My friend has gone ahead and alerted the Church’s information security department.  But, I would appreciate it if that notification also came from the men who love my family.

Please let me know what action you take to protect both the Church and my family.

Thanks, Sam

 P.S.  I love you guys.  My heart goes out to you.  Only you two have the task of figuring out how to deal with Sam Young.  We are all in the spotlight now.  None of us has a road map for this journey.  Wherever it leads, it will be historic.  I think we are all just trying to do our best to do good things.  My wish is that as we continue to travel, what seems like different tracks, they will all lead to a better and safer Church for our children.

Previous Letters to my local leaders

The Church Threatens…Member Follows Suit with Mal-Intent

Terroristic Threat