Welcome and Introduction of Kelly Trust

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is July 30, 2021, and today we are super excited to. Hold on to your hat. You will be on the edge of your seat for today's podcast and I mean that. Today we are interviewing Kelly Trust, who I don't expect any of you to know who Kelly is. Hi, Helly Kelly. Welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Kelly Trust [00:00:23] Hi.

John Dehlin [00:00:24] It's good to have you.

Kelly Trust [00:00:25] It's good to be here. It's nerve wracking. But, yes, edge of your seat is a good way to describe that. I've been on the edge of my seat my whole life. Yeah, just kidding.

John Dehlin [00:00:36] Well, first thing, those of you who are watching visually through Facebook or YouTube are going to notice that I'm sitting in the co host chair today. We are joined by Carah Burrell. Hey, Carah, thanks for joining us.

Carah Burrell [00:00:47] Hey, John. Hey, Kelly.

John Dehlin [00:00:48] And the reason why I'm sitting in the co host chair today is because, Carah, this is Carah's debut as lead host on Mormon Stories podcast. How do you feel, Carah?

Carah Burrell [00:01:00] I feel good. Like, I'm really glad that it's Kelly. We were already joking and talking and I already feel very comfortable. I think this is going to be good. So John's playing kind of copilot today. We'll see how it goes. But everyone, don't click off just yet, but give me a couple minutes, see how it goes.

John Dehlin [00:01:17] Well, let me kind of explain what's going on. So basically, you know, I've been doing Mormon Stories podcast as the main host for, you know, eternity basically for almost half a century. And, you know, you are not the only one that's wanted to have more diversity from the main host. And so I'm just so grateful that we've received enough support over the past few years to be able to bring Carah on, who represents all sorts of different demographics that I don't. In addition to being obviously a woman, Carah's younger. Carah is funny. Carah brings her own insight and experience. And so one of the many reasons I brought Carah on is to be able to be the main Mormon Stories host. Sometimes I may want to take time off, sometimes I may want to go write a book. And then just sometimes it's just way better to have diversity of guests, of hosts as well as guests. And so one of the reasons I brought Carah on is to. Is to be able to take over and. And be the lead host. And so this is Kar's debut. I'm so excited for that. And today is a particularly, you know, particularly good interview and a particularly good topic for Carah to be the lead host on. Kelly's story is an epic story, and I'll just give you a super high overview. Raised in a very traditional orthodox Mormon family. Her. Her father was a mission president while she was in her formative years. So father as super orthodox Mormon mission president. This is kind of the daughter of the mission president kind of interview. But there will be heavy sexual content or heavy themes today. And it's not that I can't do those types of interviews, obviously I've done them before, but I just particularly like the idea where, whenever possible, of a woman, you know, leading the discussion with a woman if there's going to be heavy sexual content. So that's Carah. Another reason why I'm super glad you're here.

Carah Burrell [00:03:23] Yeah, I want to make this a really good interview and I have no doubt that John can make it a good interview as well. But I think with the subject matter we're doing today, why not. Why not make this the first one where me and Kelly can girl to girl talk about some of this heavy stuff?

John Dehlin [00:03:41] Yeah, I love it. And, and, you know, so we're not only going to be talking about sexual development as a child and as a teen, but also the typical law of chastity worthiness stuff in those teen years. And then what's kind of going to be potentially a little bit bombshell ish, I think, is to talk about Kelly's experience not only in her teen years, where her worthiness was a constant topic within the family and within the ward and, and her exchanges with her bishop. We're clearly going to get into worthiness interviews with the bishop kind of conversation, but Kelly goes on to BYU and dates at least one, if not several BYU athletes. And we're going to talk about what it's like to, I'll just say it, be sexually active with the BYU athlete and whether there's a double standard there, what that's like, how that affected Kelly and, and maybe we'll even get into the unhealthy situation that many BYU athletes are. Are put under or into, or put themselves into. Is that right, Kelly?

Kelly Trust [00:04:47] Yes, I. This is just a quick side note with that, that I have spoken with all members involved in this situation. There's certain names I'm just not going to share because I'm trying to respect people's feelings and emotions. And I have been told specific player that while he feels like I was mistreated by the school and that he was mistreated by the school, that it's his past and he doesn't want that to be his future. So I get that it's his own journey. And my journey is healing from this. And so talking about it is all I can really do. And I can only try and help people who've been in my same situation.

John Dehlin [00:05:31] Yeah, so. So before we launch in, let's just talk about intention a tiny bit more, Kelly, because, you know, obviously your parents are still orthodox believers. They're. They're probably semi high profile. If, if your dad's been a mission president and he's retired now, chances are he, if, if he wasn't considered for some type of area authority position, you know, anyway, there's just that whole high profile thing. Our, you know, my sense is our goal isn't to trash your parents. Our goal isn't to trash byu. It's not to trash any BYU athlete. Our goal isn't to drag anyone's name through the mud. So if those aren't the goals, let's just start out with intention. Why are you wanting to do this interview?

Growing Up in a Strict Mormon Household

Kelly Trust [00:06:16] So I read Leaving the Saints by Martha Beck, and at the end, which she talks about a lot of really difficult things that she's had to go through, it's her experience. That's her story. I cannot, I can't go and say that was true or that was not true. No one can technically go back to my story and say that was true or that was not true. But for me, that's not what is important. It's about moving forward. And she says in the end that forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past. I cannot change the past. And all I can do is try and heal from it and try and help others who have had a similar past. I'm not trying to cause pain. I'm not trying to hurt anybody. I am not trying to drag anybody's name through the mud. There are a few people whose names I might bring up that are spoken of enough that it's not me, you know, trashing them. But I have had some hard things happen in my life, and with that comes pain. And I understand that everything that I say, I'm not going to say perfectly. And I'm not going to be able to handle everybody's emotions in the world perfectly. But that's not really my job. My job is to try and stay true to me. Glennon Doyle says, I will not abandon myself, so I'm not going to abandon myself anymore.

Carah Burrell [00:07:44] Yeah, that's a Brave thing to do. Thank you so much for being vulnerable enough to, like, get out here and whatever come. Come what may. Whatever may come like that you're able to sit here and speak your truth, let's say. So should we get into it?

Kelly Trust [00:07:58] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:07:59] Okay. So, as John likes to say, where does your Mormon story begin? I need my own tagline. Start it with, tell me about the beginning of your Mormonism in story form.

Kelly Trust [00:08:10] Okay. So I was born in the church. We were. We lived in Houston. We actually. We're in the same word as same Sam Young back there. He bought our childhood home that we grew up in and lived there for a long time. So anytime we went over there, it was like, oh, this is our old house. And the Youngs were very close with his daughter Birdie. I think her last name is Ranger now. She was like, I babysat her kids and like, we were close enough with them. It's funny, though. I brought up to my parents, I was like, you know, Sam Young was trying to talk about the same things I'm talking about. He was your friend. Why are you. And they're like, he wasn't really our friend. Like, we knew him. And I'm like, oh, my goodness. You're just sacrificing that human because of where he is and who he is.

John Dehlin [00:08:58] But this is Sugar Land, right?

Kelly Trust [00:09:00] This is Sugar Land. So I grew up in Sugar Land. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:09:02] And I got to give a shout out to my. My friends, the Moore's, Lynn Moore, Bill Moore, Jason Moore, all my Moore friends. They're all dear friends in Sugarland. And so shout out to Sam and the Moore family.

Kelly Trust [00:09:12] I think I know that those moors as well, that they were friends with my other friends, anyway. They live like 10 minutes from me anyway. So I. Born in the church, raised in the church. When I was three and a half years old, my dad was 39, and he got called to be a mission president. So that's very young. In our church, 39 is a little bit on the younger end. Usually they're older people who have been bishops, stake presidents, things like that. He was in the bishopric down there, but for the most part, he was. He was very well to do. He's been in commercial real estate for a long time, and he's very good at it. And he was planning on retiring and moving to Utah to become a seminary teacher. That's what he wanted to do in life. And then he got called to be a mission president in Paraguay, in Asuncion, Paraguay. He had five kids. The youngest was six months old. My younger sister when we moved there. So I moved there when I was

Carah Burrell [00:10:10] four

Kelly Trust [00:10:12] and we lived there for three years. And that was an amazing experience. But let me kind of with this. I'll tell you. My part of my story is that I was born with basically an extra thick hymen. Okay. And all of my parts were female parts. Everything was working correctly. But with that being said, I had to have a surgery to get that high. It's a hymenectomy, is what they call

John Dehlin [00:10:37] it, for those who don't know.

Kelly Trust [00:10:39] Yes. So it's a layer of skin covering my vagina, basically. And in order for me to be able to menstruate correctly, like, it would have killed me if I started menstruating and it didn't have anywhere to go, basically. But having the mission in there, I think kind of threw off the timing of when I should have had the surgery because I had to sit there with doctors and was instructed by my mother to hold still while an older man examined me. And how many times did I have to do that over the years? One too many. This was 25 years ago. We don't have the same kind of knowledge about how things like that can affect children like we do today. My mom did not know how to handle that situation any better than any other mom on the planet.

Carah Burrell [00:11:26] And how old were you when they discovered that?

Kelly Trust [00:11:29] So when I was 1, they discovered it. So pretty much from ages 1 to 9 I or 9 or 10, I had multiple doctors visits to try and make sure that everything was growing right, everything was working correctly. And that is really hard for a child to process. I didn't know how to process it. And my mom did her best. I really believe she tried. But the thing that she didn't try was to seek help elsewhere. Because in this church, anything sexual, anything that has to do with those things, are not talked about. They're hidden and kept quiet. And what this did was. It kind of. It drove my curiosity for those things. I also had other things happen to me as a child as early as age 4 that involved family members. And since I haven't finished processing that and healing from that, I'm not going to speak on that. But there were some things that happened that shouldn't have happened that also contributed to my curiosity. I say, because we talk about the difference between, in children, sexual abuse and sexual reactivity, um, and I'm actually going to read those definitions so I don't ruin that. Um, so sexual reactivity is when a child reacts in a sexual manner to Things that happen. It can also identify developmental steps the child missed and dysfunctional coping behaviors. Um, these things are usually significantly different than society's norms. Whereas, like, sexual abuse means using sexual behaviors to control, threaten, harass, exploit, or intimidate. I don't believe I was abused necessarily, but I was put in situations that were sexual in manner, and that did not. That weren't good for me. And unfortunately, I think that that came out later in life with other family members, with me, with reacting to things and my own things that I'm dealing with, too, that I've said or done with other people that, you know, I kind of. I hold heavy on my heart because I love those people. And so it's not about what happened. It's about going forward and healing from those things, but having that happen so early in life, like. And this is very personal, but I guess we're going there pretty much a lifetime masturbator. Okay. And as a child, you just think that it's just curiosity. It's just touching a part of your body that makes you feel good. Right. But my mom would tell me, this is bad. This is wrong. This desire is not something that you should ever put attention on and just shut it away, lock it away, hide it, don't talk about it. So I just learned how to hide things better and how to lie better and how to sneak around better.

Carah Burrell [00:14:39] Because you were gonna do it regardless.

Kelly Trust [00:14:40] I was gonna do it regardless. But also, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have someone explain to me what it was and. And how it can be a good thing and how I can. It was just. It was just anything sexual was bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And so I just thought I. I am bad. You know, because if you're told enough times that you are something, you start to believe it. So, like, I remember one time I was in Paraguay, and like I said, these are. These are young memories, you know? But I was caught by a sibling, and they dragged me into the kitchen in front of my mom and said, look what I caught Kelly doing. And it's like the shame I felt from that situation. I was five. I didn't know what I was doing.

Carah Burrell [00:15:28] Yeah, there's babies in utero who. You can find them masturbating.

John Dehlin [00:15:31] Right, Right.

Kelly Trust [00:15:32] And it's. It's our own bodies. We should be able to touch our own bodies. And if that's. That's a whole different topic that I won't go into. But we shouldn't teach kids that they're bad. For exploring that side of themselves.

Carah Burrell [00:15:47] Yeah. And it sounds like. From what's. What's like the. The clinical term for needing the hymenctomy.

Kelly Trust [00:15:55] Honestly, I don't know if there was a term for needing it, but it was just that I just needed to have a hymenctomy in order to. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:16:02] So between that and then just, like, young curiosity, what were the messages then? That you were just constantly bombarded with shame about your own body?

Kelly Trust [00:16:11] Yes, shame with my own body. I. We didn't talk about that area of our bodies. It was just private. That was the main message is this. These are private, sacred things that are only for marriage. That doesn't help a child who has no idea how to handle her sexuality and her sexual feelings. And then to have it just shut down and repressed my whole life. Like, honestly, that's how I acted out. Anytime I acted out, I was usually sexually. And it was. That's terrible. You know, I could have had the therapy at that time to maybe help me understand what I was working through, because it's very normal to want to have sex. It's very normal to want to eat food. It's very normal to want to sleep. Those are all things that we deal with. But we don't just fall asleep in random places, because that's not what we do. That's not proper. There's a time and a place for it. Okay. There's a time and a place for sex. There's a time and a place for food. I didn't really. It was. There's no time or place for sex and. Or for those feelings or emotions. And that was damaging to me growing up because I just felt like. Because I had those urges, I was bad, I was wrong, I was damaged.

Carah Burrell [00:17:35] So I was in a real strong shame spiral.

Kelly Trust [00:17:39] Shame spiral.

Carah Burrell [00:17:40] Probably your earliest memories.

Kelly Trust [00:17:41] Oh, my earliest memories. And, you know, I also. I realize that my parents were trying their best with the information that they had. It is not anybody's fault that I'm in the situation I'm in. Not even my fault. Even though I sometimes would like to think. Throw myself under the bus. It's a combination of a bunch of things that put me in this situation, but I had. I had two parents that loved me. I had a wonderful set of siblings that did their very best to be there for me.

Family Life, Mission, and Early Faith Experiences

Carah Burrell [00:18:20] So what was kind of like the tone of your home? It sounds like they were very orthodox.

Kelly Trust [00:18:24] They were very orthodox. I was raised on the purest form of Mormonism there was. And because my dad was Mission president. We were expected to be better. We were mission president's daughters. We were supposed to be example of the believers. We were chosen to, to be these amazing people. My dad was always wealthy, so we never had to want for anything. That's amazing. That's a blessing. I, I look back and I think if, you know, I have so many opportunities because of the family that I grew up in. You know, my, my three years in Paraguay, I was around missionaries all the time and they were great, great missionaries. You know, I was around the office elders more than anything. They were, they were wonderful missionaries. And there's some that are still involved in our lives, some that still call us on our birthdays because they saw us grow up. They saw me from age 4, but because I was this cute little girl and anytime these missionaries would get homesick, my mom would kind of bring them over into our home and say, here's, here's family that you miss. Here is this experience that you are missing out on and homesick. But she kind of would have me go in and play with them and I didn't like at the time. She was just trying to help missionaries and she knew I was a cute little girl who loved to play games. But I almost felt like it was my responsibility to make those boys feel better. And that's a very heavy weight on a five year old, six year old, seven year old thinking that it's my job to make them stop crying, it's my job to make them not miss their family. And I just have to be wonderful, cute little Kelly to do that.

John Dehlin [00:20:18] Because the missionaries were struggling.

Kelly Trust [00:20:19] Sometimes, you know, everybody struggles when you leave for two years. You can't talk to about that was back when you couldn't talk to your family except through letters. You couldn't communicate. We had a couple of missionaries, I remember that literally went insane, you know, and we had to keep them in our home eventually had to send them home. Like my mom was the doctor for them in most senses. And she, I think, believed she was an emotional and a physical doctor to them and she was their mother and she was that role for all of them. While she was being a mom of five children, while she was being a mission president's wife, while she was giving up her whole life in America and all of her family and all of those things to go and to support a man who was gone all the time. I.

John Dehlin [00:21:07] In a developing country, in a developing

Kelly Trust [00:21:09] country where she didn't speak the language, that would be so incredibly difficult, you know, with her five kids who she's trying to give enough attention to. We had a couple of maids in our home provided by the church. This whole home, our cars, our maids, our everything, of course, is all provided by the church. So when we talk about not paid clergy, what do we define as not paid? Anyway, side note, but I. I was raised by a maid. I had drivers to go to school. I, um. Which, mind you, most of the time they were missionaries, so. Good thing we're using their skills for driving your kids to school. Honestly, I. I loved those missionaries, though. I had a fun time. I learned a different language. I speak Spanish now because of living there. So do most of my siblings. My mom's Spanish. She's still working on it. But again, she moved there when she was much older, and so it was harder for her. I soaked up the language. I soaked up the experiences. I lived in a different country. I got to go to so many different places. I got to sit next to Elder Scott and play a game of. He would start to draw a picture, and you had to guess what it was before you're done drawing it. Pictionary, I guess, is kind of. That's the.

Carah Burrell [00:22:25] That's the name of that game.

Kelly Trust [00:22:27] But that was an honor for us. It was a privilege. It was an experience given to us that we were supposed to cherish for our whole lives. I look back on that with good memories. I look back on that, that time in Paraguay, with pride. How did the.

Carah Burrell [00:22:48] Your father being a mission president influence, like, your testimony and like, the truthfulness of the gospel? Did it feel like you had just an extra responsibility to never, you know, make any bad choices as well, that you had an extra pressure heaped upon you?

Kelly Trust [00:23:05] For sure. I felt the weight of that role because we would travel places in Paraguay, and he had his whole family there, these beautiful white children in a third world country, people that don't have anything. They loved us, they soaked up our energy. They praised us and said, you guys are so incredible for the things that you're doing. And we thought we were. I believed I was.

Carah Burrell [00:23:35] And, like, psychologically, that can, like, get the wires crossed in your brain, right?

Kelly Trust [00:23:39] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:23:39] Like, those good feelings of being adored and praised can, like, translate those things exactly. Into wanting to continue in the church despite, you know, maybe having. I guess, as we'll find out, like, the way that your testimony develops, what is it actually based on? And sometimes those younger childhood experiences can. Can, I don't know, fray the wires a little bit?

Kelly Trust [00:24:00] I'm guessing they can. Well, because I believed wholeheartedly in every Single bit of it. Because it was what my family, my whole family devoted our lives to was the church service of the church and constantly being a missionary from. I've. I've been a missionary since age 4.

Carah Burrell [00:24:20] Right? And people, they say, like, you know, people wouldn't have crossed the plains if it wasn't true. People wouldn't have, you know, walked with blood in their shoes to get to Salt Lake if it wasn't true. I'm sure you probably thought, like, well, my family wouldn't give up their life in America if this wasn't true. Are these, like, those types of thoughts are coming through your brain and developing? Yeah, I've always thought that testimony. I don't know.

Kelly Trust [00:24:41] No, that's. That's right. I always thought that my dad was a very smart man and a very spiritual man. He's my spiritual guide. He is my. That He. He taught me to be good and be strong and to be a critical thinker. Might have screwed the pooch on that one, but he taught me to have the brain that I have and to seek to understand things and read your scriptures, share your prayers, go to church, family home, evening. Every Monday. We don't go out and shop on Sundays. We don't play sports on Sundays. Wednesdays were for mutual, you know, the weekends. Friday our curfew was midnight and Saturday it was 11, so that we weren't out on Sunday. Um, Sunday was a very sacred day. We stayed in our church clothes all day on Sunday because my father believed that it would help us to do activities that would keep us close to the Lord.

Carah Burrell [00:25:43] Oh, you had to stay in your church clothes on Sunday? Oh, gosh.

Kelly Trust [00:25:47] So one of those family. Well, as a kid that was hard because you want to go play. And if we were ever with cousins or having fun, I was always in my dress and my cousins were in play clothes. And so I was like, whatever, I'll go climb trees in my dress. Honestly, it didn't really stop me from being who I was, which was always kind of this rebellious child who. Who wanted to do her own thing, but was told to. To sit down and be quiet and be reverent. And you're too much, you're too loud, you're too everything one. I guess too sexual. It's like, okay, yeah, I was dealing with a lot of stuff, so probably I was probably for my age, not. I didn't have healthy feelings surrounding that. And so it was. I was always too much and always told to tone it down, even from being a child.

Carah Burrell [00:26:40] That's why I'm glad I'm interviewing you right now. Cause I was like, oh, that sounds so familiar. Oh man, take me back. Yeah, we turned out all right though, anyway.

Kelly Trust [00:26:47] Yeah, right.

Carah Burrell [00:26:48] I was like, I know the wild child syndrome of people telling you always that you don't fit into this Mormon mold. Constantly, constantly, constantly. And then having to figure things out on your own. So did you feel like you had a, an actual testimony, testimony like of the principles of the gospel, that you were able to like feel the spirit? And I'm assuming you got baptized then. Were you still in Paraguay at the time?

Moving to Provo and Life in a Utah Ward

Kelly Trust [00:27:11] So right after we moved back to the States, we moved to Provo because my dad still kind of had this plan of being a seminary teacher. But so we were in Paraguay from 98 to 2001 and that's when the economy crashed. And so he said, nope, I gotta go back to work essentially. But we had planned on moving to Utah. We'd sold our house to Sam Young. That's when we sold our house to them. That's when we moved to Paraguay. And so we lived in a house in Provo for a year that was just down the road from his parents. And that's where I was baptized. And I remember I was so happy to be baptized because again, I already had this thought in my head of I'm unclean because of masturbation, you know, and that's a very heavy weight for an eight year old kid because mind you, my eight year old nephews have no idea what they just got themselves into. And I thought I did, I thought I knew because my dad said he sat me down and taught and gave me the baptismal interview on his own and said, these are the questions that your bishop's going to ask you. And, and looking back, it could have been training me for a bishop meeting. But maybe he was just saying like, here's what to expect and, and helping me. But then I go in with the bishop and I know the right answers to give because they say, do you know why you're here? Do you know why you're getting baptized? Do you know what this is? And I knew the answers because I had been raised in a very missionary minded home, which obviously surrounds baptism and why to get baptized and challenging people to get baptized. And I was always trying to convert my friends. And so when I did get baptized, I thought, oh thank heavens, okay, I'm clean now and I'm never going to make another mistake in my entire life because I am strong enough and I can do this. So then every Time I sinned, I felt like, oh, my gosh, God is just keeping tick marks here, and he's just keeping track of all of the bad things that I'm doing. I know it because. Because when I was 8, I was clean. But now I remember all the bad things I do from here on out.

Carah Burrell [00:29:18] Yeah. Enormous weight to be carrying as well. So did your parents. Sorry, this is, like, too personal. We're probably gonna get too personal a thousand times.

Kelly Trust [00:29:27] We're too personal all over the place.

Carah Burrell [00:29:29] So from the time that you were younger and they realized that you had a problem, quote unquote, with masturbating from a young age, did they have an explicit discussion with you before your baptism about that you're going to have to, like, kick this habit or, like, what was the discussion around that?

Kelly Trust [00:29:45] I remember one conversation with my mom when we first moved to Provo. This is the first time I remember her talking to me about my surgery. So I was eight at this point, so I don't really. I mean, I know that I need to have a surgery, but I don't know anything else besides that. And then I'm 8 years old, and she's trying to give me the talk on some level, but. But it wasn't explained well enough still, because I know that I didn't get it still, even then. But she just tried to say, like, look, you have an issue that we need to fix with surgery, and it has to do with your ability to have babies and to develop normally. And I keep thinking, like, I wasn't normal. Like, I just. You know, I didn't know that. I didn't know that I didn't have something that was. That needed to be fixed, which, in the end, like, everything was fine. It was literally just like, cut, fold, right? Okay, cut, fold, stitch, done. But it was not ever explained to me the way that I wish it was. But again, forgiveness, giving up all hope of having a different past. I didn't have it happen that way. So I don't sit here holding my mom accountable for not being able to handle this situation. If it was my child, I wouldn't know what to do either. I mean, I might know, but the regular mom doesn't know what to do with that sort of situation. So that's fine. I get that. So then. Sorry, question. Redirect me. Focus me again.

Carah Burrell [00:31:18] You were talking about how the talks around the surgery that was going to need to happen at the time you were eight. And then I was curious if your dad or whoever else, maybe your bishop, did they have to ask you about you kicking a masturbation habit as well.

Kelly Trust [00:31:34] So then we moved to, we moved to Sandy, Utah into a wonderful neighborhood, into a Stepford ward is what someone described it as one time. And they said that's so good.

Carah Burrell [00:31:47] Not to be confused with Stepford wives, not Stepford. Totally different. Literally couldn't. Completely different aspects. Right.

Kelly Trust [00:31:55] But it's just, it's just meaning that it's. You have to put on this perfect image and this is the perfect example of what a perfect ward is with perfectly wealthy people that dress perfectly and they have all their kids matching and clothes in their on time to sacrament meeting and have perfect relief society table arrangements with glass figurines and flowers that were freshly picked from their yard. Like that's how I felt. Is that like you were the perfect Mormon family in this ward or shame or hide it. Hide your stuff. Hide your shit. Sorry. I'll just say it. Anyway, so we moved into this ward. This is when I am about to have this surgery. So again, I'm still feeling out of place with my, with people my age because I think, oh, I have something wrong with me. And I'm more hyper aware to this situation. I knew that I was different than other kids. The other kids didn't waste their time thinking about these things. They were thinking about playing with friends and climbing trees and all that stuff. And I had that stuff too. I was given so many opportunities growing up. I always did well in school. I was smart. Okay, so then I get to this other ward, I have this surgery, I have a wonderful bishop there who's great. And I talked to my mom about these masturbating things. When we were talking about actually doing the surgery, which is when I moved into this ward, having that discussion with my mom, I said I don't really understand it. But she explained to me that it was bad and it was wrong and that I shouldn't do that and that if I kept doing it, I would need to go talk to the bishop.

Carah Burrell [00:33:35] As an 8 year old, potentially I

Kelly Trust [00:33:38] was probably 9 or 10 when we had this talk. But yes, 9 or 10 to go in and talk to the bishop alone. Alone. I told my mom, I don't feel comfortable doing. I don't want to do it, please, I'll just, I'll never do it again. And she said, if you don't go tell him I will. So of course I wanted to take that from me and I wanted to be the one telling my story, not having my mom tattle on me to the bishop. So I think at age 10 or 11 was the first time I went and had an interview that I was encouraged by my mother to go and speak with the bishop about my sexual

Carah Burrell [00:34:19] habits and have him ask you one on one questions alone.

Kelly Trust [00:34:24] One on one questions alone in a place that, where my mom's just sitting outside the door waiting for me. She's no, she knows what I'm talking about in that room alone with an older man. And she's okay with it because she's told that's what I need to do in order to repent of my sins. And I believed that's what I needed to do in order to repent of my sins. Because my parents told me this is the way that we repent and when it comes to sexual sins, we need that extra help from Bishop to repent. And I believe that's the way that it was and that's what I had to do. And that there was no other option. Because I don't think I was ever presented with another option or even, even I thought if, if I didn't want to go, my faith wasn't strong enough, I wasn't willing enough to give myself over to the Lord and make myself uncomfortable for Him.

John Dehlin [00:35:23] Yeah, it's just, it's occurring to me just how much of a setup this is in, a tragic setup, because you know the church, all the church wants is people to be, quote, sexually pure. That's the church's perspective. They want to have as little sexual activity going on before marriage as possible. But because they make your mom worried about it, your dad worried about it, then your parents are going to be worried about it and then they're going to talk to you about it way too early. So now you're thinking about it all the time when you should be just having a normal childhood, but instead you're like, oh my gosh, it's dirty down there, I shouldn't be touching myself down there. And then you're talking to the bishop about it and all of this. And so the bishop's a victim because you know what, what, hopefully, what healthy Mormon human or man would ever want to be Talking to a 10 year old girl about her sexual behaviors? Hopefully no one would. But, but so in that sense, if it is a good, healthy bishop, he's a victim too. And, but, but the tragic irony of all of this is the more obsession, the more talking about it, the more focus on it. You're just being set up to where you can't help but think about that all the time. Now it's associated with your bap. Now it's associated with the bishop. Now it's associated with worthiness. And you as a child, the biggest victim of all. You're being set up for, you know, at least another decade plus of shame and guilt and remorse, because now you can't help but think about that all the time. And so your mom's not getting what she wants, your dad's not getting what he wants. You're being shamed and. And made to obsess about this stuff. The bishop and the church aren't getting what they want. Everybody's losing from this hyper obsession about sex. And that's the biggest tragedy of all, is that the church is literally generating the behavior it says it doesn't want most. And of course, again, you're the biggest victim. Victim of all.

Kelly Trust [00:37:21] Yeah, I think with that, I have definitely realized the effect that I might have had on bishops. I don't believe that any of the. There's. There's a couple bishops that I'm like, that was probably, you know, that wasn't a necessary question.

John Dehlin [00:37:43] But we can talk about that.

Kelly Trust [00:37:45] We can.

John Dehlin [00:37:45] In the chronology.

Kelly Trust [00:37:46] We can. But for the most part, I think that I had bishops that wanted to help me and didn't know how to, because they are not sex therapists, and they don't know how to deal with a child in that situation. And mind you, this is. I. I read a journal of when I was a kid, and it said I did the bad thing again, and I don't want to feel this way ever again. I feel so terrible, and I just don't want to sin ever again. It was a journal I wrote when I was in Paraguay.

Sexual Shame and Purity Culture in the Church

Carah Burrell [00:38:17] That's crushing.

Kelly Trust [00:38:19] Yeah, I was. I felt guilt and shame from as far back as I can remember surrounding sex. Yeah, that's it. It was a setup. It was a very difficult setup. But then I get into this room with this man, and he's asking me questions about where I touch myself and how does it make me feel. That was another one that they asked that. I was like, looking back, I'm like,

Carah Burrell [00:38:49] is that necessary?

Kelly Trust [00:38:50] Is. Was that necessary, or how many times do you do it? And mind you, I was a little kid. It was like. And I'm actively trying to not do this once every couple of weeks. I don't know. I don't keep track of that. But honestly, I felt like it was way like. Like, I look back now, I'm like, it's probably not that much, but at the time, I felt like, oh, my gosh I'm just this terrible, consistently consistent failure to my, to myself because I didn't want to do that, because I wasn't supposed to do that, because that was bad and that was wrong. And I believed that I was bad. I believed myself that I was bad because I was told that the things that I was doing was bad. And I understand that that's what my parents were trying to say is like this isn't appropriate right now. But that's not how they phrased it. They said don't. Wrong, bad. Those were the words that they used. And so then I just believed that I was broken essentially that I was just this broken human that didn't know how to handle those situations.

Carah Burrell [00:39:56] Yeah. And for all of the things that I, I do love about religion and Mormonism in general, it's unfortunate that there is this framework put in place by a high demand fundamentalist religion like Mormonism where you can have beautiful spiritual experiences within the church. But then the flip side is then you're also being told what will drive the spirit away, what will put you in, you know, timeout with God, where you're not able to feel his spirit. And sometimes it's basic things that are out of your control, whether it's, you know, somebody being queer and they physically are not capable of being on the covenant path and being falling in line with the church the way that they want it to be. And there is a box that Mormonism puts a lot of people into and if you don't fit within that box, you can't align yourself. You will drive your yourself crazy. You will literally go insane trying to figure out from the time you're a child trying to figure out how you fit into a box you were never meant to fit into. So that is, that's absolutely crushing that that was put on you from the time you're a child. And again, I have tons of grace for people like your parents. And my parents were put in similar. I have a very similar story to that as well. I have my own four hour Mormon stories interview we don't need to talk about. But anyway, I dodged all of these questions that John asked me because there wasn't another female in the room. I didn't feel comfortable. So that's why I'm here. And we're gonna be able to rap about this kind of stuff. Just kidding.

John Dehlin [00:41:14] But anyway, you can interview self dental.

Kelly Trust [00:41:16] Yes.

Carah Burrell [00:41:17] Carah, how did you feel about your masturbation growing up? I'll tell you all about it. No, but these, these, these parts of life that are quite honestly super normal, but within a religious context. Yes. Like I was saying, putting, putting yourself in a box that you're not meant to put into, while also it sounds like you don't have any, you don't have the, the, the free agency, the free will as a child. Where else are you going to go? This is, this is the place that the universe spit you out to. And you're going to have to deal with the parents with their conditioning and their ideas around sexuality, their ideas about what makes a good, upstanding little girl. What does a little girl do? Like having tons of grace and compassion for the, the, the, the attitudes that were put into their mind to put them to put you into that box. And so like everything in its proper context, like makes sense. And so I think what's healthy about this discussion that we're going to keep like unpeeling the onion layers here of like, what do we do so that anyone who listens to this, if they relate to this or understand it, can go into the system and get to work to fix it so that people don't have to go through this anymore. So, so from that point forward, what was the, what was the, like cultural attitudes then that you had to deal with that were different from, I guess being raised pretty much in a third world country and then going into this, this well to do ward in Sandy, what was like the cultural shift for you?

Kelly Trust [00:42:47] So it was a very, it was a very perfectionist culture that I lived in. And you know, I believed that if I was doing all of the other things right, that maybe those would outweigh my sexual sins. And so the culture that I grew up in was that we, you know, the. I was supposed to hide my real self and present a beautiful picture to the world. I mean, our image was everything in that church.

Carah Burrell [00:43:29] Do you have like specific stories or anything that. That solidified? That was the attitude that you were just supposed to present?

Kelly Trust [00:43:36] I mean, I, I talk about like all the kids matching in their clothes and things like that. Like our, our ward, because it was well to do. We would go for our girls camps. We would go like in. Actually, let's talk about their trek really quick. They had Cafe Rio served to them one night, catered to trek.

Carah Burrell [00:43:59] Just like the pioneers.

Kelly Trust [00:44:00] Just like the pioneers. Just like that. They got their sweet pork too. Anyway, I'm just saying, like this word has always been extra about everything. So if you weren't at church on Sunday, someone noticed. If you weren't at mutual, someone noticed. If you weren't Wherever. I mean, I was there for three years and then I moved back to Texas. So I remember in those three years I was like, these people are so fake. So fake. That's what I felt. I don't think that everybody in that ward was fake and didn't have loving good intentions and weren't good members trying to do their best too. But the side of people that I saw versus the side of people that I knew were two different things. It was very conflicting. And for me, I thought, oh, I just need to put on the same face because that is how people like you is if you talk about how good of a Mormon you are, if you talk about all of the things that you did. The, the, the. Here's, here's the worst part for me is that we were in a ward of well to do men with women supporting them. So those women were at home, they were wonderful moms, they were wonderful wives. They had dinner on the table, the house was clean, everything was amazing when they got home for their husbands. And that is how you supported your man? Is that you were. I say slave now, but maybe that's a little harsh, but you, you did everything you could to please your husband. I've had people who have told me the stories that their mothers have told them about how to please your husband and the nasty, like, oh, well, if you don't want to have sex and you just feel like you just give him a blow job, you know, like, are you kidding me? But that's the attitude that I was raised on is do whatever makes. It doesn't matter if you are uncomfortable or if you don't want to do it, you're going to do it anyway because your husband wants that and because you are expected to support your husband and to follow your husband as he follows God.

Carah Burrell [00:46:07] And these are messages you were getting just kind of like, just through culture, explicitly through just. You were a child. Yeah, okay.

Kelly Trust [00:46:14] So that was just, that was my whole role in life was to train to become the perfect wife and the perfect mother and to. Of being temple worthy, perfect life. So when I moved to Texas, that's when I kind of reached a dating age. Right. I had a boy in school that I liked and I remember I wanted to kiss him and he said to me, he was Mormon and he said, if I kiss you before age 16, I can't go on a mission. But he also put it on me, saying that it was my fault for even wanting that is what he said. And he said, I can't do that because then I Can't go on a mission. And I was like, first of all, that's BS because I've never been taught that. And second of all, why is this my fault? Are you my boyfriend? Ish.

Carah Burrell [00:47:01] Per.

Kelly Trust [00:47:01] Anyway, so very early on, I took responsibility for having boys be attracted to me, which I've never had an issue with growing up. It's. That sounds really conceited. But like, boys have liked me. I've also been a tomboy too. So I do all of the things that they do, but then I'm a girl with boobs and so they want to hang out with me, right? And I felt the need to be man's best friend is really what I've. I felt growing up is this is my job, this is my role. And if I'm not doing this, I'm not doing something right or I'm not preparing myself to be the best wife. I'm not doing the things that I need to do in order to be an eternal companion. And part of that guilt is. Was still around masturbation and stuff like that. So when, when I did that, I thought, oh my gosh, no man is ever going to want me. So I think that made me try harder to seek guy's approval, you know, So I was always like, I was always that boy crazy girl, you know. And thinking back, I think, no, I just didn't know how to process things. And these. And this was how it came out. This is, this is what all of those things growing up, this is how it got spit out, is just being obsessed with this, with being the perfect wife eventually. But it's sad to think back now. So when I say it out loud, it's like, you know, and, and I've said it out loud a few times because I go back and I think, okay, so there was just a pattern of trying to put aside my discomfort for the comfort and pleasure of men because that was ultimately my role was to support men. So then I'm. I'm in Houston again. We moved back down there. I'm starting to date. There's only so many boys in our stake, right. Or we had kind of these three words that hung out. So we all dated the same people. But mind you, those people all wanted to kind of date me at one point or another, but then thought I was too sinful and too dirty and too much of a temptation, too much of a problem. Why? Because they were tempted to do things with me. And I was told that it was my actions that led to these situations, which, sure, but also Theirs. And can we take responsibility for our own thoughts and actions? I was not taught that it was their responsibility. They're just men with hormones. But I'm the heathen, the harlot, the. The slut. I had. I had a couple of friends that I had a best friend growing up in Houston. We hung out all the time. We spent every single day together. We got into trouble together all the time. We talked about boys. We talked about school. We talked about church. We shared our testimonies with each other. We were best friends at girls camp.

John Dehlin [00:50:22] We were.

Kelly Trust [00:50:22] You know, we were everywhere together. And then this mission president moved into our ward, and he had a daughter our age. She's awesome. She kind of joined our little friend group, and the three of us were gonna take over the world. And then this girl, liked the mission president's daughter, liked a boy at one point, and then she was like, I'm not really interested. And then he was going to West Point and leaving, and so I was like. He wanted to take me on a date, and I said, okay. And I asked her. I was like, hey, I know you liked him at one point or another. Like, is this okay that he takes me on a d. He just wants to kind of send me off. We've always kind of flirted, whatever. And I'm just like, I just want to make sure it's okay with you. So I go out on this date with him, and we end up making out, right? And I told her about it that same day, because I was like, I just want you to know, like, this is not. I'm not trying to step on your toes. I'm not trying to cause problems here. And I told her that, and she kind of got a little emotional about it, but she was with the other friend at the time. Those two made some pact that Kelly was not a good influence. She was not someone to hang out with. She didn't have same standards, so she was not worth our time or friendship. And then continued to share that message with other people in my little three wards. And guess who didn't want to hang out with Kelly ever. My entire social circle, they all knew that Kelly was the one who did the bad things with boys, and Kelly was the one who would cave when they came to that. And mind you, these boys didn't mind exploiting that. These girls thought that I was not worthy enough for their friendship. So I didn't belong in my family, and I didn't belong with my friends. I've had this. You know, we talk about, what are two Things that children want growing up is love and belonging to. I think I had love in the way that my family did their best to offer to me. Belonging. No, I never felt like I belonged in my own family and then with my friends. And I was 16 at the time there. And all along this way, anytime something would happen with a boy, I would get to the point where I'd feel so shameful and so guilty about my actions that I would go talk to the bishop, you know, and let me pull up my list of questions since I kind of. I don't like to think about them all the time. But the. The pattern that happened is my parents would catch me, whether through my phone or through whatever, or I would feel guilty enough that I would go tell them because I felt so terrible about it. And I was like, my parents are going to help me with this, you know, and they already know that I'm having troubles with this, so I'm just going to go talk to them and they're going to help. And their answer was always, go talk to the bishop. And so I played bishop roulette, is what I call it, because we are either getting a good bishop or we're getting a terrible bishop, or we're getting a bishop that has no idea what the fuck to do. And so it is bishop roulette that we're playing there. And if we accidentally get the wrong one, that poor child. And unfortunately, it's happened so many times. I mean, Sam Young has how many stories and examples of females and. And who knows how many males that just don't want to talk up about it because that's more shameful for them to have felt sexual shame from a bishop. But let me tell you, same number of men who have talked to me since then that said, oh, I got the same questions. I got the same stuff that just wasn't to the same extent because they didn't probe. So list of. List of questions.

Bishop Interviews and Accountability for Young Women

John Dehlin [00:54:23] So you're sitting alone with the bishop.

Kelly Trust [00:54:25] Sitting alone.

John Dehlin [00:54:26] Age 16, age 17.

Kelly Trust [00:54:28] Well, from. From. We're talking from age 10 to 17, but really we have to go up to, like, before I got married at 10 to 19, having maybe 50 different encounters with bishops in interviews because I felt like that was the way that I needed to heal. That's the only way that I can repent, because that's what I was taught. And did I feel better after confessing my sins? I think I felt like I didn't need to feel guilty for it anymore, But I don't ever think I felt Like I was clean or like I repented fully because I think the desire to mess around with boys was still there, which, mind you, is very normal and wonderful and something that people should explore as teenagers in a safe, wonderful environment where you can talk about things and talk about consent and safety and things like that. But I didn't get those talks because, again, my mom's not going to teach me about condoms because then she thinks that that knowledge. I'm going to put that knowledge to use. She's not going to teach me how birth control, because then she's going to know that I know that I can't get pregnant. She's not going to talk to me about STDs, because she doesn't know anything about them. So she wasn't talking to me about those things. She just said, sex is for marriage. Penis, vagina, baby. That was the message I got. And so it's like, that's not very much to go on because there's so much more to it than that and so many more emotions and the emotional security that you need there. And I wasn't taught you have to be emotionally safe to have sex. It's just you need to be married, which, mind you, are two very different things that I found out later, you know.

Carah Burrell [00:56:08] Yeah, we just had an interview last week with Brinley Young, and she talked about becoming sexually active as a teenager, leaving Mormonism and the emotional intimacy that you were also. That's another part of just like, sex education that you're missing. Like, the thing that matters to a lot of Mormon parents is, like, if the. The ring is on the finger and the temple ceiling is complete, that means that now you're able to enter into this sexual relationship with your partner. Like, emotional intimacy, that's an afterthought sometimes. And maybe you could be 50 years old and still not be ready to get married and have a sexual relationship. There's so many other, like, themes and ideas around sexuality that are. That need to be talked about. So, yeah, go ahead and read your list. So this is a list of.

Kelly Trust [00:56:48] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:56:49] The questions that bishops.

Kelly Trust [00:56:51] Yes. Have asked me at one point or another. Where did he touch you? Show me. So I had to point on my body where he touched me. How many times did he touch you or did you touch him? Do you ever touch yourself? Do you know what that means? Let me explain to make sure that I know. So I was taught about masturbation by bishops, which, mind you, I explained to them, and then they're like, well, here's more detail. About it. I'm like, thank you. Anyway, sorry, I laugh now. It's not cool. Did you keep all of your clothing on or was clothing removed? Which articles of clothing were removed? Oh, this isn't. I got asked this a lot. Did you have an orgasm? I don't know why that's so important, but did he? Are you sure? That was another one. Are you sure? Like, I don't know stuff about sex at this point. Clearly, Bishop, you know, how knowledgeable.

Carah Burrell [00:57:44] Sorry.

Kelly Trust [00:57:47] I said one time this was good. I said I did everything but sex. And this was a bishop I had talked to before about what that meant to me. And he knew what that meant, but he said, I need you to tell me. And I was like, I did everything but sex. Everything but penis and vagina. And then I had to then explain again and it was just like, okay. And every time it was like, I need further details. And then what happened? And then what happened? And then what happened? Are you sure that that's all of the information? Have you given me all the details? Who was it that you did it with? I had someone ask one time about who the guy was so that he could go talk. And this was, mind you, this was like he lived in like bountiful or something. And he's like, I just need to know what ward he is so I can talk to his bishop because he can't go on a mission until we address this. Trying to seek out the male counterpart. Yeah, just they always wanted to know who it was done with, how many times, and. And there was just always these questions. And one particular bishop eventually told me that I was addicted to sex. And I go home and I tell my parents and they said, oh, yeah, that makes sense.

Carah Burrell [00:59:09] I was in a position to diagnose that.

Kelly Trust [00:59:11] He's in a position to diagnose that.

Carah Burrell [00:59:15] Give you a complex. Have you didn't already have one?

Kelly Trust [00:59:17] Well, this, this was my bishop when I was 17, when I finally caved and actually had sex for the first time. Oh, what a sinner. That poor 17 year old girl.

Carah Burrell [00:59:28] Well, that means that we have to back up then because we have to talk about the surgery that you probably at some point would have had to have, right?

Kelly Trust [00:59:34] Yes. So that was, that was at age 10 when I started to meet with bishops and talk about masturbation and stuff like that. So that surgery, I had that surgery, I was explained a little bit better by doctors, like what, what the point was behind that. But the point that they told me was so that I would have a period, not what that hole was meant for later. But, like, I never got taught about. Like. Like my mom always said sex would be painful. And for me, because I had the surgery, I didn't have any of those problems or whatever. And so it was never. There was never pain associated. There was never whatever. But. But having that surgery, I had to, at age 10, for two weeks after that, my mom had to apply this ointment to me every single day after I showered to make sure the hole didn't close back up right. And so I had to, again, no matter how uncomfortable I was, sit there and have someone else touch my private parts. And it was for my own good, and I knew it was for my own good, but it didn't make me any less uncomfortable. It didn't hurt any less. It was the whole. The whole experience around it was very emotionally traumatizing. And I didn't feel like I could share those emotions because I knew I had to do this. So again, anytime I felt like I had to do something, it didn't matter how uncomfortable it made me. I did it anyway because that was my job, was to do, Just obey, just do what I was supposed to do. And that's a really terrible pattern to establish that. And, and mind you, on top of that, I'm doing what my father's telling me I'm supposed to do. I'm doing what my bishops are telling me I'm supposed to do. I'm doing what older men in my life, doctors are telling me supposed to do. I'm. I must obey an older male, especially if they have authority, have authority issues because of it, because I can't handle that anymore. But sure, I. But I always kind of challenged people. Like, I remember I told the bishops that told me I had an addiction to sex when I eventually did have sex, which thank heavens, the parts all work great. I have a beautiful kid now, by the way, so it's all there I am.

Carah Burrell [01:01:58] The baby came out.

Kelly Trust [01:01:59] Baby came out. Baby came out okay. The parts all worked. So thank heavens that I had that surgery. Thank heavens that I had modern medicine that could teach us and that could make sure that everything worked and that I didn't have worse problems than that. Because there are people who have all sorts of other, you know, genetic things that happens when they're born with their sexual organs that are confusing, that are. Are surrounded with shame, and that they're not talked about. You know, if there's. That's, you know, that's something that I talk about now is, why am I talking about this? So openly is because if there is any other child out there or parents who are hearing this, like one, you're not alone and two, seek help there. It's. Nobody knows how to handle this situation. It is very personal, it's very uncomfortable, it's very awkward to talk about. But if you don't talk about it, you end up traumatized like me. And I don't think that that's the right path. I don't think that's the healthiest path. I'll say that, because it was my path and I'm only here because of that path and I'm only able to talk about it because I'm processing it and healing from it. But anyway, so, so I eventually get to the point where I cave and I do the deed with my high school boyfriend and my. My bishop convinces me that I am a sex addict. And I talked to my parents about it and I said, yep, I. Because I got caught first. Because again, it was. I always got caught and I was caught by my parents and then they would send me the bishop and then I would repent and whatever and then something would happen and I would get caught by my parents. I learned how to be better at lying, but I still wasn't very good at it because I believed in honesty. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:03:51] Ultimately a question though.

Kelly Trust [01:03:52] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:03:53] I don't mean this, this is not to be sarcastic or funny for you. Was there an element of it, it made it more enticing because you knew that it was trouble for sure and that you knew you're going to get caught. Like there is a spicy element to that, right? For sure.

Kelly Trust [01:04:06] There's an excitement to that of doing something wrong, doing something bad. But also it was enjoyable. So like, I'm not gonna say that I didn't like any of these things that I was doing with boys. I've always been a very. I've always kind of embraced my sexuality even when I thought it was my biggest weakness. With boys, I've been confident, I have been. I've had fun. That's a, that's a light hearted way to say it.

John Dehlin [01:04:39] And there's also some power, maybe some good power. Right?

Kelly Trust [01:04:42] Good power. Good power. It is empowering. Yes. To know that you're wanted. Right?

Carah Burrell [01:04:47] Yeah.

Kelly Trust [01:04:48] And I was, that's the key phrase to know. I was seeking out belonging and seeking out being wanted. And guess who wanted me? Boys. Okay. So I sought it out where I could and I did my best to keep it in the church because that was what I was told was I was only allowed to date Mormon boys. That was interesting.

Carah Burrell [01:05:08] And then. Then that.

Kelly Trust [01:05:11] Oh, but I was always problems for

Carah Burrell [01:05:12] them and their mission and everything. Yeah, there's a whole other, like, hotbed of, like, problems then with, like you said, their bishop finding out them and all this intertwining. If you would have, like, messed around with non Mormon boys, that's a totally different. You know. But I guess if you were you in Utah at this time, Are you back in Texas?

Kelly Trust [01:05:33] Texas. Okay, we're in Texas.

John Dehlin [01:05:34] Again, I just say no to Mormon bishops. If you want to keep your Mormon boys pure, let your Mormon girls date non Mormon boys for real. Then you can keep your Mormon boy missioners. Pier, this is sick. I'm kidding. But.

Kelly Trust [01:05:48] But that's a good method. It works.

Carah Burrell [01:05:50] It works. And while we're on sarcastic. Not that that's sarcastic, but this is also tmi. But I asked that question because for somebody who did not have sex before marriage. Mormons, the greatest role play in the bedroom you could ever ask for is just pretend that you're teenagers and that you're breaking the law of chastity. And things go spice goes through the roof.

Kelly Trust [01:06:11] So does.

Carah Burrell [01:06:13] So I. We're talking about all the things that I was never able to do. But anyway, back to you, Kelly. Okay.

Kelly Trust [01:06:21] I knew I wasn't supposed to, but it was kind of like I did it anyway because it was fun and that's where I was wanted and I enjoyed it, honestly. And that was another complex that I had to get past was realizing that it was okay for me to enjoy those things and that it was okay for me to have had fun. I always looked at those experiences as a stain on my life and. And now I'm kind of like, you know what? Maybe not a stain. Maybe that was how I processed my sexual desires. Mind you, I'm not going around fucking the whole world. Like, I'm doing my best to be a good Mormon girl. I'm trying my hardest not to do these things. And then I'm dating, and naturally things would progress that way. And then we'd break up because we did too much or I was too tempting or. I've gotten that before. I've actually gotten that I was too much of a problem. I was too much of a temptation for them so they just couldn't be around me.

John Dehlin [01:07:17] Can I ask you. Can I ask you a favor?

Kelly Trust [01:07:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:19] Can you explain to our audience just these. We have a lot of non Mormons that listen to the show. What's the burden or the responsibility that a Mormon girl carries? In terms of how she dresses, in terms of how she behaves. And then with the law of chastity, you know what their role as guardian is for the sexuality of Mormon teens. What, what, what is put on the girl for that? And then if you want to end by how that's harmful, just spell that out, if you don't mind, just to make that really explicit.

Kelly Trust [01:07:50] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:07:51] Do you mind?

Kelly Trust [01:07:52] This is. Oh, this is my favorite topic because I was told that the way that I dress, the way that I speak and what I do affects men and gives them bad thoughts. So if I'm not doing my part to cover. We call these our, our porn shoulders. Now that's, that's, you know, the best way to describe them. If I don't cover myself, then I am not doing my part to contribute to their holiness, to their purity priesthood ought to honor their priesthood. Exactly how do I help them honor their priesthood? By not being a temptation to them and not being part of the problem. Which, mind you, I was the whole ass problem. So I just, it was like, okay, so I am 100 responsible for their thoughts and feelings and emotions. And if I am turning someone on, I am doing something wrong. Like, I felt that weight. And that is, I mean, my, my brother wasn't taught about how to treat girls in a respectful, proper, wonderful way. He was taught how to date them. And we were taught how to be prepared for men. Like, that's, it's almost like we were, we were, we were just groomed into. And grooming is a wonderful word because that's a real thing that happens. But groomed these perfect wives, you know, and my, I think my dad considered it a success if we got married in the temple, you know, like, oh, check, we got her there with a man, so go off, live your life. But that's, that was the expectation in the church was that if, if a boy is having bad thoughts about you, you are responsible, if not wholly in part mostly for that. It's, it's this sickening, it's sickening to me culture of how men shouldn't take responsibility for the decisions that they make and the actions that they make. You know, just, just the bishops alone not taking responsibility for asking those questions and, and my parents actually saying that they believed those things were for my own good, that being asked those questions were for my repentance process, that it wasn't. That while it may have hurt me and they understand there were certain situations that were really not good, They believe that overall it was still the right path for me. To take that is hard. That hurts. My own parents encouraged that concept in my head that I was responsible for men's actions.

Carah Burrell [01:11:01] Yeah. And going back to like the box analogy of like, you're obviously somebody who like has a sexual drive, as most people do, that the church and the leadership are trying to put you into something that you don't fit within. And I think in a Mormon's mind, in the best case scenario, they, if everything went according to plan, if you didn't show your shoulders and you had your shorts exactly where they're supposed to be and you were the perfect, you know, young woman's medallion wearing woman, I think in their mind they think that there's some magical formula that if you check these boxes that will cause men to act in a certain upstanding way that just doesn't, doesn't actually work in the real world. That if it all comes kind of back to like, you know, the gospel can heal anything, Any problems that you have can be, can, can be solved through the atonement that like a man will not. A man's erection will never happen if you are following exactly what you should be doing, right? And so, but in the real world, that doesn't translate like that literally just doesn't happen. That box cannot be contained. People are going to break out of that. Even if you do the things, quote unquote, the right things.

Kelly Trust [01:12:21] Even when I did all of the right things, boys still right wanted to do those things. And furthermore, I feel like, I feel like I would challenge those boys almost to be like, are you really going to tell me that it's me, that I'm the problem? Like, are you really going to do that? And they would, and every time I was like, but, but when they would cave though, because it takes two to tango, right? But like, I almost felt validated that they were doing these things because I could be like, no, no, you wanted to do that just as bad as I wanted to admit that, admit that you wanted it just as bad and that you, that was that you take your responsibility for this half of the equation and oftentimes they didn't or they would just avoid me or whatever because I would, I was right and I would be like, no, this is, this is you and me. But mind you, those boys were never punished like I was. Which usual punishment. And the church for sexual sin, if correct me if I'm wrong, is taking away the ability to take the sacrament or not go to the temple, you know, And I remember one time we had a temple trip in Texas. And I didn't want to talk to my bishop about whatever it was that was going on because I didn't want my parents to find out and whatever. And I faked sick and waited in the waiting room at the Houston Temple while everybody else went in because I didn't want to. I didn't want to have my sins affect the ordinances that I was doing there because I felt like if I wasn't pure enough that those ordinances wouldn't be valid. Almost. Yeah, that's a.

Carah Burrell [01:14:03] That's a real thing on a lot of people's minds.

Kelly Trust [01:14:05] Right.

Carah Burrell [01:14:05] I used to go through that as well. Like that I don't know whether that a young man is blessing the sacrament or whatever ordinance that you are doing for somebody else in the church. You have to make sure that your worthiness is in check to make sure that that goes through. And that's a whole other mind f. Right. Of like, okay, God, does this actually go through for this person? If I haven't confessed of X, Y and Z and like, especially on a developing teenage mind, the amount of anxiety and stress that is just really unnecessary in the system. Right.

Kelly Trust [01:14:35] Yeah. It was my fault if that sacrament wasn't actually healing everybody today because me and that boy yesterday did things to make it so he shouldn't be right there. Right. And so I felt responsibility for that at one point because that's not a rational thought, and I know that now. But I truly felt the weight of that. I felt the responsibility for. Because I wasn't supporting priesthood by doing that. And the way that I could support the priesthood was through being my most pure self. And this whole time I'm trying. I did get my young women's recognition. I did go through the whole program. I went to Mutual every Wednesday. I had family meeting with my family every Monday through this whole time, through this whole part of my life, because it wasn't an option, but also because I believe that's what I was supposed to be doing, that, you know, if I checked enough box, if I showed up to church, if I was reading my scriptures, if I was saying my prayers, if I was doing all of these things, that it would get easier to resist that temptation.

Confessing Sexual Behavior as a Teenager

Carah Burrell [01:15:42] So when you mentioned, like, you not taking the sacrament, I'm assuming that's like a literal thing you had to do where the tray would come by and people are looking at you that you're not actually partaking in it.

Kelly Trust [01:15:53] I'm not partaking, especially in my family and them not even knowing what it was that happened. With me and not understanding. They just were like, oh my gosh, what did Kelly do that was so bad that she couldn't take the sacrament? I remember at one point I had a sister that that happened to. And when she wasn't taking the sacrament, I didn't understand and I just said, what was the bad thing so bad that she couldn't take the sacrament? That was hard because I was judging her. And then I was thinking, oh my goodness, who's judging me that same way right now? Who's thinking those same thoughts? Thoughts about me and who thinks I'm unclean and unpure and not even worthy to take the sacrament, which is a weekly reminder and promise to God that I'm going to keep trying.

Carah Burrell [01:16:45] Yeah. And it seems like a really easy fix for the church of like. I know deep down that Mormons, they don't want people to feel this shame heaped upon them. And as much as the system isn't perfect, I wish that there were, you know, if the next time a young woman or man goes in to talk to their bishop, that that's not even an option. That, that public shaming is really irrelevant to the repentance process. That's completely unnecessary that you had to go through that and that anyone has to be judged or shamed in that way. I don't think that lives up to the best ideals of what it means to be a Christ follower. And that seems like a really easy fix that they could do in the church. And then along those same lines, was there like actual double standards that you saw between the way that you were treated and then maybe a boy that you had had some interactions with that you were treated completely different than they were when you did the same thing together? The repentance process afterwards.

Kelly Trust [01:17:42] Yes, but that didn't happen until a little bit later, a little older. Those were, those were things that happened where it's like boys that were going on missions, that I was like that person definitely not worthy to be there. And that's maybe judgmental of me, but I was just kind of like, either my bishop is handling things differently or they haven't been fully honest with their bishop. Those were my options. So either this boy is not an honest human or my bishops are meaner. That's what I'm dealing with there. Those are my options. In my head, when maybe they said everything and the bishops didn't treat them as well because the men are expected to go on missions and that that's their job. Whereas the age change happened the October before I turned 19.

Carah Burrell [01:18:41] So, like, 2012. Yeah, change.

Kelly Trust [01:18:43] 2012, which. The age change where you could be. You could be 19 as a female, though, to go on a mission. The age change happened. And I remember I was. This is. I'm raised on missionary work, right. My dad was a mission president. My brother served a full mission. My siblings did these little mini missions while we were in the mission to go. And they worked with people, but I was always too young to do that. So my entire life I kind of wanted to serve a mission. And that was also a complex for me because I thought if I don't get rid of this sexual stuff, I can't go on a mission because I'll just keep messing up. And missionaries have to be perfect. You know, that's kind of what I thought in my head. But I went in with an interview with my bishop, one that I had been working with already. He was. This was when I was at byu, just starting at byu, and I said that I would love to do this. I know we're working through some things and I know that we're. Whatever. And then at first he said, remind me what it is that we're working through, which, mind you, I had to tell him everything all over again because he simply didn't remember me because he had who knows how many college students in there telling him who knows how many different things. But I had to remind my bishop of my story. And then he goes, oh, like, you know, like he's remembering. I'll. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he did remember. Okay, because you're trying.

Carah Burrell [01:20:14] Are you saying that because you don't want to just make an assumption that he was doing it to be kind of a dirty old man?

Kelly Trust [01:20:20] Yes. I was trying to say, like, oh, you already know these things, but you're making me say them again just to

Carah Burrell [01:20:27] humiliate you, to put you on the

Kelly Trust [01:20:28] spot, either to humiliate me or to remind me that what he eventually told me is I had too much sexual sin in my past to go on a mission. And that I so. And in my head I thought, ah, I'm a liability for you guys, because if I go out there and I'm representing the church, I sure as hell better not be screwing around with boys, because that would be so shameful for the church. And mind you, this is me saying I want to put aside all of my wants, needs, desires, career, life, so that I can go preach the gospel to people. Because I believed so strongly that it was true and it was Everything. And that everybody in the world needed to hear this story and that I could be a. A huge part in that and. And finally go and serve my own mission. And how proud would my family be of me if I could do this? Because I had had. My older sisters had already been married, so it's like, oh, it's my turn to do my big thing. So being told that I had too much sexual sin to go on a mission broke me. Big time.

Carah Burrell [01:21:44] Did he say it in those direct terms and as well?

Kelly Trust [01:21:46] He said, you have too many instances in your past to. For me to feel comfortable recommending your name.

Carah Burrell [01:21:55] And what was. I only just found out two years ago. I used to think that if somebody had sex, they could not serve a mission. And then I had a friend of mine who. She's like, no. Me and my current husband, we were going at it every single day, and we both served a mission. And it was. She's like, no, it wasn't an issue. I had never heard that before. Is that part of bishop roulette that literally it just comes down to the bishop deciding the. On his terms of what? How much sex is too much before somebody serves a mission?

Kelly Trust [01:22:25] If I've learned anything from my bishop roulette is that there is not a set pattern of how to handle these situations. That it is 100% up to the bishop on how to punish, like, what our punishment is, what our penance, if you will, is our time served, not taking the sacrament. There were some bishops that it was a hard one year from when you had sex rule for me. I never went a full year because I showed my faith in repenting. Strong enough to be able to start

Carah Burrell [01:22:57] to sacrifice whatever metric was inside that bishop's head.

Kelly Trust [01:23:00] That metric. And that is horrible that there's, you know, if we're. If we're gonna have bishops handling this, have a, A, B, C question and XYZ answer. Because there's. You can't. I mean, for me, it's get rid of confession altogether because my relationship is between me and God and not another human on the planet. But if that's there, have a plan. Because these men are human. Yes, they are human. They have things that they fail into. They make mistakes as well. I don't sit here and say these bishops were terrible people, but have they damaged children? Yeah. The one that told me that I was addicted to sex also told this other girl in my ward for being lesbian that she was addicted to sex. So it wasn't just me that he convinced of these things. And it ultimately damaged her, and she left the church way before me, and she's happily married to wonderful woman, and they're so happy. And she. She sent me the story and said, wait, was it that Bishop? Because he told me that too when I posted something about it. And I was like, oh, goodness, it wasn't just me. And that was so validating, but also made me so sad that this one bishop, like, who knows how many other teenagers that he talked to that he convinced that they were bad addicted people. So let me stop really quick and say that. When I was told that I was addicted to sex, I told my parents, and they agreed that the best thing for me was for me to move from Houston to Utah to get away from the situation and to start therapy with a sex addiction therapist.

Carah Burrell [01:24:50] At what age?

Kelly Trust [01:24:52] 17. And I'd had sex with two people at that point. It was like maybe a handful of times. It's not like I was. Like I said I wasn't out the world like my parents thought I was. Maybe I. I had all of my friends, all of my social structure ripped out from underneath me. Was told that I was broken and I needed to repair. And the only way I could do that was being in a different environment. And I could not be trusted to be left alone at the time. I was given a cell phone with X number of calls that it could make out. I could only text certain individuals if I wanted to hang out with a friend. I had to call my mom and say, can you add this person's number to the list of people that I can call because they could limit it through the phone number. I was never given enough gas money to get farther than I needed to go because of the fear that I would run away or something. I don't know. I lived with my sister who tried very hard to fix me because she loved me, because she wanted to be there for me. But she had gone through some similar things in her life. And so she was like, I've. I've been there. I know what it's like, so I can help her. I can. I can fix this. Caused a lot of conflict between me and her because she's trying to be my mom, and she wasn't my mom.

John Dehlin [01:26:36] She's trying to police your.

Kelly Trust [01:26:37] Yeah, she's trying to tell me what to do. And again, I never liked being told what to do. I do the opposite, which is human. It's human, yes. And I understand where. Where people were just trying to help, but they didn't do it the right way. Not the Right way for me. Anyway, this therapist that I went and saw said, first of all, you're not addicted to sexual. And second of all, you're a good person. And that was the first time in my life I was ever told that I was good and believed it from someone. Of all the times that my parents told me they loved me and that I was smart and kind and pretty and all those things and fun and, like, they would tell me all of those things. They would tell me how good I was, but I never believed it because I was consistently being punished for being me. And so I felt like I was bad and I was broken. And then they agreed with this bishop who said I was broken and addicted to sex. So I believed that I was addicted. Like, oh, that makes. That makes sense. Sure, I'm addicted. And then I go to the therapist who says, no, you're not addicted. You are just fine. You are a normal teenager with normal hormones. And your parents have not done this right. And mind you, my mother hated that man when he said that, in a session where they were there, she was like, no, we did the right thing. We did the right thing because you don't want to feel like you've ruined your child. Nobody wants to feel that way. And they didn't know that that's what they were doing. I understand that. I understand they were trying to love me and they were trying to help me, but it made me feel very broken. And to not hear until age 17 that you are a good person, that was hard. It was really hard because I wanted to believe that I was good. And I think I knew that I was. That I was loving, that I was helpful, I was a good friend, that I was a good sibling, that I tried my hardest. I wanted to believe that about myself, but I could never latch on to that because I didn't have anybody else telling me. I'm trying to process this all in my own head. Anyway, so the kind of therapy that he had set up was for people who, like, can't drive by a strip club without wanting to go in, you know, And I'm like, I've never had that problem. Or for people who, like, can't control their masturbation habits to where they do it in public or around other people and things like that.

John Dehlin [01:29:25] And I'm like eight or nine, ten

Kelly Trust [01:29:27] hours a day, right, where it's actually affecting their life. I'm like. Like, I feel like I have the same sort of habits as everybody else, but they're just telling me that I'm worse For it or. Or. I don't know, I felt worse for it.

Carah Burrell [01:29:41] Felt like deviating from the Mormon standard. And yeah, in that way, they. They don't have a healthy metric for how far of the deviation you're off the path on that. And it takes a professional to be like, nope, in my clinical training, this is actually quite normal, quite fine.

John Dehlin [01:30:00] Yeah. There's this real problem in the intermingling of religion and mental health. And I can just say this, because I've been trained in this, that, you know, the question of the diagnosis of sex addict, I don't even know it's problematic in and of itself. But the type of behavior that would warrant even, you know, that domain of treatment, again, would be somebody that was like multiple partners in a day, you know, eight or nine hours a day of masturbation or pornography use, where it's literally impacting every aspect of your life. That's the only type of thing that would even start to get into the realm of, you know, being called an addiction. And even then, it's probably just unhealthy coping, you know, which would be more of an appropriate way to treat it. But just healthy, normative youth exploration, that's not just not worthy of a diagnosis. It's probably healthy and normal. And so it's. But. But from a religious standpoint, you know, if it gets in the way of your religious goals, then you call it an addiction. And we get this too, with just masturbation. You get these kids who, you know, they might masturbate once every three weeks, and they're called sex addicts, too, again, because it's getting in the way of their, quote, worthiness of their desire to serve a mission. But it's just a really dangerous intermingling of religion and mental health.

Kelly Trust [01:31:31] Yeah. I mean, every time I went and talked to a bishop, I expected him to know exactly what I needed to be this worthy member of the church. Because that was their job as my spiritual leader, their stewardship over me. They're receiving revelation from God on what I need, because maybe this came from my dad. He felt. He. He has felt the burden of his stewardship over his children very heavily. And he believes that his teachings are. If he. If he did, he didn't teach us well enough. If we were doing things wrong. He felt that for sure with me. I think he feels like he failed me a lot, which is also sad that parents would take on that responsibility that I'm not doing. I'm not. My faith isn't strong enough for my kids to have this wonderful, perfect, easy, breezy life in the church. Because if we're teaching them all those things and we're doing all the right things, then they should be following all the right things. But, I mean, ultimately, my brother went on a mission. My. You know, all of us at one point got married in the temple. So he. He accomplished that task on some level. But I know that anytime we had a shortcoming, I mean, the first time I ever saw my dad cry is when I told him that I had sex and he just started bawling. And the weight that I felt that I hurt my father by something that I did that was hard because he didn't fail in teaching me. I failed in obeying him and obeying God. But that's really hard for a father, you know, who. Who, mind you, is trying very hard to provide a wonderful life for his kids that is full of love and support and kindness. And he tissue. He tried, is still trying. So unfortunately, though, we moved back into the Stepford Ward. But now I'm older and I think, okay, I know who these kids are because I knew them when they were kids. We were all taught the same things growing up because we were all Mormons. And Mormons get taught the same thing, right? So turns out, though, in Utah, the culture is flipped from everywhere else outside of Utah. I was different for being Mormon, and I stood stronger in those standards because I felt like I needed to be an example of the believers. Whereas here, that was almost uncool to do. If you were part of the cool crowd, it was because you either wouldn't tattle or you were doing the same bad things as other people. Those were your friends. Is how bad of things do you do? How much do you not follow the church? Those are the people that you hang around or you hang around with. People who are the nice, wonderful, pure people. And in that ward I had and people who were really good or really bad and hit it. And I learned that in Utah, you just hide your shit. You just. If you're Mormon and you do things, you just don't talk about it because you won't be accepted, you'll be ostracized, you will be kicked to the curb more or less in terms of your social circle. I had a wonderful friend for that one year of my senior year of high school. So they moved me the last quarter they took me out spring break, junior year, they took me out of school mid year, moved me to Orem, where I made a bunch of friends and figured out really quick that in order to Be cool here. You just have to not be perfect. I was like, ah, I know how to fit in there. I'm good at not being perfect. And again, it was. Every boy wanted to date me and every girl hated me for it because they all knew, like, more or less why I moved to Utah was because my parents caught me doing something bad and it was sexual in nature, and they would ask me questions about it. And then a boy's mind is curious. Okay, it's fine. It's normal teenage stuff. The only problem is then they would put those back on me. Well, Kelly, you're the one who is this person, and you just probably corrupted me, which is just garbage. And then the girls would say the same thing too. Well, you tried to take this person away from me. Excuse me, I'm not trying to take anybody away from anybody. If there's a boy that has interest in me, that's their own decision. And you should talk to them about it, not blame me for that.

Family Dynamics and Church Social Pressure

Carah Burrell [01:36:49] Because all of these people, again, are all Mormon.

Kelly Trust [01:36:52] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:36:52] Or at least have some strong relationship to the church, depending on how much they are living the standards, quote, unquote. Right. It's just like a hotbed of secrecy and judgment and, like, just throwing crap back and forth. It sounds like. And this is again in Sandy now, right? Yeah.

Kelly Trust [01:37:10] So in Sandy. And then. Well, yeah, and then like. So I was in Orym for half a second when I lived with my sister. And then my whole family moved up to Utah that summer. And then I spent my senior year in Sandy. And that's where they still are now, but that's where I graduated high school. I went to Alta High School. Go Hawks. I actually hated that school because.

Carah Burrell [01:37:30] Don't go Hawks.

Kelly Trust [01:37:31] It was exactly because there were. Cause I could actively see cliques in this school. And I'm like, how old are we now? Are we not just, you know. Okay. And they were definitely defined on how Mormon you were and how Mormon you

Carah Burrell [01:37:46] weren't, how much money you had.

Kelly Trust [01:37:48] I'm guessing how much money you had or if you weren't. Like, I lived in this neighborhood called Pepperwood that had people of like, here's an example. Larry H. Miller's grandson was in my grade. He. I thought he was so cute at the time. He was so cute. But he got sent to some other school because he, like, had a marijuana habit or something to send, like, to a detention school for a year. But he came back to public school this last year and, oh, we're welcome. Welcoming him. Him back. But also don't touch him with a 10 foot pole because he is publicly dirty, publicly shamed, because he should be better for being from this affluent family. And I'm like, like I never, I never caught on to that bug of making people feel shame because I was like, I know exactly what that feels like to feel shame. And I'm not gonna put that on somebody.

Carah Burrell [01:38:40] I always heard that that made the best missionaries, that people who had been through a lot of stuff made the best just actual members of the church because they were the least judgmental and they were like the most understanding of new converts. And I, I honestly wish more people had that attitude of like, oh, I know how it feels to be harshly judged in a Mormon context. I'm never going to do that. And then anyone who's listening to this, who hasn't been raised in Utah, I know exactly what you mean by like a marijuana addiction because that's a gateway drug. In the same way that like, like in a Mormon's mind, the context is sometimes like this leads to this and then your life is over. The same way that like premarital sex is next to murder. And like, it's not fair to put people in this system. Just like your dad, that in his mind, I'm sure when he heard that you had sex and he was crying about it, because in his mind this is next to murder. When somebody hears like a marijuana addiction that's next to heroin addiction, like they don't have the differentiation between the severity of sin sometimes. Is that your experience?

Kelly Trust [01:39:44] I was probably 12 the first time my dad had me sit and read that scripture about sex being next to murder.

Carah Burrell [01:39:51] Oh my gosh.

Kelly Trust [01:39:51] Because we are dealing with the powers of creation and the powers so powers of creating life and the power of taking life. And those are God's responsibility and nobody else's. And if we are not treating them how God tells us to treat them, then we are handling the most severe sins. So I believed I was not quite a murderer, but I was enough of almost a murderer to make my own father cry.

Carah Burrell [01:40:18] And if that is true, which I, I, when I was a Mormon, I definitely believed that with all my heart. The power to. That's why a lot of Mormons are so like against abortion because. And against pre marital sex because the power to create is, is next. Till then, if you don't create a baby correctly and you might end up needing an abortion. And the things that all of that messiness like, I understand that idea, but it's usually the way that we solve that is by Talking about it, it's by talking about healthy sexuality to make sure that we don't bring babies into the world unnecessarily. To make sure that the systems that we're in that would facilitate the happiest, healthiest lives. We have to talk about the messy things. Pretty much the reason that you're here today is talking about the messy things that don't need to be repeated.

Kelly Trust [01:41:06] Right?

Carah Burrell [01:41:07] So, sorry, where were we going from there?

Kelly Trust [01:41:10] No, it's okay. Well, with talking about the messy things and realizing that we're all messy people is, is the way that we've fixed that problem for sure. But then also my train of thought, so it's, it's a difficult thing to talk about. No matter what, there's not a right way to talk about it, I don't think. I think there's a healthier way or an unhealthier way, but the, the guilt that it placed on my mind and the responsibility it placed on my mind for like I was all but killing people, that's how I felt was that I was. If anytime I did something with someone else, I needed to take the murderous weight of those situations on myself. Because not only am I putting myself in that situation, I am putting another boy in that situation to where he is committing a sin that is next to murder. And that's on me. So having to sit there and read that verse in front of my parents and then have them have me explain what that meant because my dad was good at that. He would read a scripture and say, do you, can you guys explain to me what this means now? Like, have I taught you well enough reading that scripture? I said, okay, sexual sin is next in severity to murder. And in my head I'm like, he knows 2% of what I'm actually sharing with him. So the other 98% that's weighing on me right now, that makes me feel like I am 100% going to hell. Because I have caused too much damage. I have caused too many problems. I caused my family to move across the country. I caused marital problems with my sister because I had to live with her and be a 17 year old shithead teenager in her house. I caused my little sister to fear having sex because she saw what it did to me. I caused my parents to mourn. I felt the weight and the guilt for everybody else. And I was the problem. I have felt like I am the problem. And I'm not saying that they were or that any particular human was the problem, but I felt the guilt of it. And I thought it was my. My sins and my lack of faith. I wasn't strong enough. And just because I wasn't strong enough, I was ruining everybody's lives. That was hard because I think I believed I was better than that, ultimately. So it was a cognitive dissonance for me that I couldn't. Like, I'm. I think I'm good. I'm going to do the best I can to do good all the time, but the little bit that's bad just totally screws it over. And just like, it doesn't even matter if I tried to read my scriptures this week, because something else happened. And that just negates it almost in my head that you weren't actually reading with full faith. You weren't actually praying. You didn't actually want to change. You didn't want to be better enough. And this is what you got from it, Kelly. This is your punishment. It's feeling the weight.

Carah Burrell [01:45:05] Enormous. If you could look back at that girl that has all that weight, what would you, in your position now, what would you wish you could tell her?

Kelly Trust [01:45:13] Oh, boy.

Carah Burrell [01:45:15] There's some stuff going forward about maybe look out for this or that, but the weight that maybe she doesn't need to feel.

Kelly Trust [01:45:22] I think what I wish I could tell her is. Yeah, that it's one. First of all, you are responsible for you and nobody else. It is not your job to make everybody else feel better. Because I thought it was my job to that anything that I did that caused somebody else to act in a way that wasn't totally in line with the gospel, I felt it was my fault. So, no, it's not your fault. Everybody is responsible for their own actions and their own thoughts and their own feelings, and you don't have to feel that weight. And you're not doing anything wrong. You are. Okay, this is hard. This is confusing, but this is going to be your biggest strength one day, is that you can talk about things that are hard with people that need to hear it. It. So I've been training my whole life to sit in a room with people and talk about sexual things by doing that with bishops. Do I wish that that happened to me? No. But I can't change the past. So what can I do going forward? I can sit around being angry for it, or I can try and help anybody else who's ever felt like I felt and. And say that you're not responsible

John Dehlin [01:46:52] for.

Kelly Trust [01:46:56] You don't need to tear yourself down. You don't need to feel responsible for other people's actions and you don't need to be uncomfortable ever. If you're in a situation that makes you feel uncomfortable, that is your. Your knowing, your ability to figure out when something is right or something is wrong. That's something we all have. I think we all feel bad on different levels depending on our morals and values and standards. But they're your standards, they're your morals, they're your values. They're your decisions, not anybody else's. So sitting here and talking about it is hard. But I'm owning all of the things that happened leading up to some other traumatizing things. You know, we're not even to my time at byu, but all of these things adding up and contributing to me believing that I need to sacrifice my own feelings for the sake of others. That's not what any child should ever feel. They shouldn't feel like they're not wanted. They should not feel like they don't belong. I would tell her the phrase, don't judge people because they sin differently than you, so that she could use that to say that nobody's perfect and that you're not perfect and it's okay that you don't have to be perfect. You know, I grew up in a perfectionist home in a perfectionist society, and. And if I wasn't perfect, I was failing. And that's. That's nobody's perfect. Everybody fails. That's how we learn. That's how we change. That's how we grow. We test our boundaries, we make mistakes. Would we do things wrong even when we're trying our best? And that's okay. And that's human. I don't think I was allowed forgiveness for myself in those situations because it just meant I wasn't putting in enough work. I wasn't doing my best. Try harder, be better. You know, someone said, I. I think that their definition of insanity was I keep doing this thing and I keep failing at it. So I'm going to do that thing harder to make it work. He said, that's insanity. It's not doing. So you're driving yourself insane because you. Because doing that harder if it's not working is not going to all of a sudden change. You know, you gotta make bigger changes than that. But I didn't have the tools. I didn't even know that that was the thing I needed to do.

John Dehlin [01:49:43] So.

Kelly Trust [01:49:43] That poor child. I'm just thinking, here's the eternal truths, the one path I'm supposed to take in life, which has very clear steps. You get baptized and then you go into young Women's. And then you're a beehive. And then at age 14, you can start going to dances with boys. And then 16, you start dating, and you're constantly looking to. Then 18, you graduate and you go off to BYU where you're gonna find your future husband. Like, that was my plan from day one, because that's what I thought I was supposed to do. I had my dad would. Growing up, he would put pictures of football players on our walls. Like, these are the kind of men you want to date. These are the kind of people you want to marry. Look at how upstanding this player is. Austin Colley was on our wall at one point in time. Very cute. Turns out one of my sisters ended up marrying one of his friends. So not quite Austin, but friend. We almost made it there.

Carah Burrell [01:50:49] Austin adjacent.

Kelly Trust [01:50:51] Austin adjacent. Yes, exactly. So what a rude awakening it was for me when I got accepted to BYU and I go that summer.

Approaching BYU and Questions About Worthiness

Carah Burrell [01:51:01] Can I ask you a question before we get into byu?

Kelly Trust [01:51:03] You're good.

Carah Burrell [01:51:04] So all of this context, all of these themes and traumatic experiences throughout your teenage life, I wanted to ask what was your perception of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and your relationship with them and being tempted by Satan and the role that you felt like you were playing on this earth life of.

John Dehlin [01:51:26] Of.

Carah Burrell [01:51:27] Of. Whether that's your. Your testimony or your spiritual experiences or the spirit leaving the room? What was your. What was your ideas around Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ up throughout this time?

Kelly Trust [01:51:38] So you kind of touched on it earlier by saying that like. Like, emotions aren't really talked about. If they're good emotions, it's from God. If they're bad emotions, it's from the devil. That's what I was taught, is that if you're having bad emotions, anger, sadness, pain, whatever, it's coming from the devil. So in my mind, I was either on the winning team or the losing team. And my mind was being influenced by God and Heavenly Father, or it was being influenced by the devil. Not. I have my own thoughts and actions, but all of those things are being influenced by some outside force. I think it pushes off the responsibility for our own actions and thoughts and feelings, or at least it did for me, is that I could be like, oh, oh, I am letting God into my life. I am doing all the right things. That's why I'm on the right path. And if I ever do something wrong, it's because I allowed the devil to influence me. I allowed Satan to take over my mind.

Carah Burrell [01:52:37] Did you ever hear the saying that a bird can land on your head. But it's up to you if you let them build a nest there. That's what I was kind of taught growing up of like, the devil can tempt you, but it's up to you of how many I would. I was anxious down to the seconds that I let you know, like a sexual thought or something stay in my mind. And how much repentance, to what degree do I need to feel bad for how long that that can really, you know, also f up your kind of mind.

Kelly Trust [01:53:06] So I don't think I ever

Carah Burrell [01:53:11] okay

Kelly Trust [01:53:11] if I'm feeling the spirit. Unfortunately, I had Glennon Doyle define the spirit for me in a chapter called Known. She's amazing. I love her. But then I like, oh, Nikes. Everybody in the world has felt that feeling, the liquid gold she talks about. And I got a label on it as a kid, a label of this is the spirit. So any good, feeling, good emotion came from God. And was the spirit talking to me. Anything good or happy or wonderful in my life was that. And I had a lot of good, wonderful and happy. I really did. And so I felt like I had a close relationship with God. I felt like he loved me and he just wanted me to be better. But he was very disappointed in me in the way that I handled life and that he wanted me to be better. And he did love me. But I felt like I was failing God daily simply through not having enough of a desire to be the perfect little Mormon girl. I. Every time I sinned, I felt like I am. I put myself in a situation that let me be influenced by the devil. And I wasn't close enough to God. And I wasn't in a place where the Spirit could reside. And my body wasn't a place, it wasn't a temple where the spirit could reside because I was unclean and unpure. And that's not where the spirit resides. Sides, that was hard.

Carah Burrell [01:54:50] And when you went to the bishop and you said sometimes you felt clean, but you knew that you would probably mess up again. So did that further in your, like, your development that. Because sometimes, like to be honest, the reason that Mormonism works for so many people is because that is their feedback loop, loop of worthiness of where they get, you know, love and satisfaction from feeling those warm spiritual feelings, from going to repent to Heavenly Father and a rush of emotions that you're forgiven now and you're just kind of. Then. I don't know if addicted is the right word, John. I don't know if you want to help me on this from a psychological perspective. And I kind of felt like that growing up of like my, I don't know if it's like a, you know, reinforcing, like a daddy complex, I don't know what you want to call it. Of like where you get your, where you get your good emotions and your feelings is from falling short. And that's where they then provide the pick me up and you fall short and then they provide the pick me up. And so it creates this unhealthy, some semi unhealthy in my experience. Again, I'm using all the wrong words here because I'm not a psychologist, but like a semi unhealthy abusive relationship where then you're going back to this, sorry, my atheism is going to come through like an imaginary figure that is in your head of what do I need to do, almighty deity, to then be in your good graces again? And then you're kind of filling in the blank of do I need to do this? Do I need to do that? Okay, I feel the warm emotions again. That must mean I did it. Right?

Kelly Trust [01:56:23] You're never trusting your inner knowing.

Carah Burrell [01:56:25] Right.

Kelly Trust [01:56:26] You're never trusting it because you have been told your inner knowing is fallible.

John Dehlin [01:56:31] And here are broken and dirty and.

Kelly Trust [01:56:34] Yeah, and here's all of the correct answers. Here's the way that you make up for your fallibility, for your, for being human, just for not being perfect. Here, your unworthiness. Here's how we fix it, here's how we make it better. That's all I ever wanted. I wanted it to be fixed. I wanted to be better. I wanted to not feel broken. And I was told this is how you do it. This is the only way to do it.

Carah Burrell [01:57:00] But it's just a hamster wheel.

John Dehlin [01:57:01] Yeah, Sometimes the, the most pernicious thing about a high demand religion is it hijacks your identity and it hijacks your intrinsic sense of moral authority. You basically say, it doesn't matter what I think, it doesn't matter what I feel. I'm dirty, I'm wicked, I'm bad. I need a bishop or a prophet or the scriptures or a church to tell me that I'm worthy, to tell me that I'm good, to tell me what to do, to tell me how to be. And you, you literally are discouraged from developing that intrinsic sense of health and strength and worthiness. They don't want that. That's the last thing they want is you. You feeling intellectually and emotionally and psychologically and spiritually empowered because Then you don't need them.

Kelly Trust [01:57:42] Right, right. That's the whole point is I needed those bishops in order to be worthy. And that, that's what I felt like. I, I, I couldn't do it on my own. I was taught by my parents, by my bishops, that if I didn't have them, there was no way for me to be clean. And mind you, you, I tried on my own to talk with God and pray, and I had, I had a whole lot of prayer sessions in my room where I'm bawling my eyes out like, please just give me the strength to be better. Just help me not feel like this broken person who can't handle normal life situations. I wanted more than anything to be a perfect example of the believers and a perfect daughter of God. That was. I just stood up in Young Women's every single Sunday and said the young women's theme. And every time we got to virtue, I had a bad taste in my mouth because it was like, because, you know, we have that scripture that a virtuous woman is far above the price of rubies. And I thought, I'm never going to be a ruby. I am never going to be as worth it to somebody as someone else who hasn't done the things that I have done.

Carah Burrell [01:59:04] And you had something in your notes, right, about that. Was it your therapist that said that the devil had.

Kelly Trust [01:59:10] Oh, yes, I had. So this was actually, this was actually the sex addiction therapist who was, he was very Mormon, and they had loved that about him. Like, he was, he taught me so many different things that were good things, things Agreed.

John Dehlin [01:59:24] But he also had, yeah, like, your love. Like you're worthy and good, right? Yeah, that's good.

Kelly Trust [01:59:29] That was really good. That was a great thing for me. But he also taught me this thing that was, it was the gospel according to him, was that he believed that we had, like, we have, you know, angels to protect us during our life. We also have people from the devil who have been assigned to our generations to influence us and trick us and put us in these situations and deal with our weaknesses. And they know what our weaknesses are because they're generational. So I thought, oh, there's a chance. I have my own personal devils who know exactly what gets me. And they're out there trying to cause problems, almost like God of Mischief sort of thing. And so I, I think it helps me in my mind to be like, this isn't my fault, you know.

Carah Burrell [02:00:18] Did you believe it when he said that to you? You.

Kelly Trust [02:00:20] No, not. I thought he was batshit. Crazy. But at the time, I was like, I see how that maybe helps you, because he's a family therapist who's dealing with generational trauma. And generational trauma is a newer concept, too, that we're working with. So I don't think that. I think that's more the concept that he was talking about is, you know, someone who has PTSD that never gets treated, their kid can be affected by that, and that affects their kids because they were treated a certain way by their parents, and it just keeps going, going. So what that helped me to think was I'm probably not the only person in my family who's ever had problems with this. Whether it's my cousins or aunts, uncles, siblings, I have no idea. Parents, like, who knows? Maybe my parents had the same issues that I did, maybe they felt the same way that I did, but they're just not talking about it to me because they don't want to admit that that was one of their problems, too. Because my mom and dad, in my head, were perfect. They were doing everything they were supposed to. They were wonderful examples of believers. And, like, my dad was the mission president. My mom was mission president's wife. She was the perfect ward member. She was in different presidencies, whether it was Young Women's Relief Society or Primary, and she always sung us all the songs, and she always had food ready for my dad when he got home. And our home was decorated with pictures of Jesus, and everything was to bring the spirit into the home. And if I wasn't contributing to the spirit being in the home, then I was the problem. You know, I've been told that I'm confrontational, and part of me wants to say, no, I'm just not a little bitch who doesn't back down anymore. But at one time, I was the person who just said, you know what? Kelly's feelings don't matter because it is affecting everybody else, so I should just be quiet and not speak. And the way you were talking about

Carah Burrell [02:02:16] your mom, it sounds like if she was more vulnerable, if they were more vulnerable, less perfect, more relatable, then you wouldn't have had to. I guess. I guess you can finish that. I don't know. It just sounds like you were going

Kelly Trust [02:02:29] like, yeah, if my parents. If my parents offered me more information about their imperfections in their life, I think I would have felt like a better person. But I thought, I just have to one day be as perfect as my mom and my dad, and I'll one day grow my faith enough to where it will Be as strong as theirs is. And. And I failed at that over and over and over again. So I thought, I'm never going to be my parents. I'm never going to grow up to be the people that I idolize, Their spiritual strength more than anything in the world.

Carah Burrell [02:03:01] But it's all a facade, right?

Kelly Trust [02:03:03] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:03:03] Because everyone does have problems. I have.

Kelly Trust [02:03:07] This is really bad. But I have figured out that my parents are not perfect people. I think everybody has to get to that realization in their life. When you grow up, you think, oh, okay, they're just adults who lived the same life I did, more or less. Just different things in their life, different problems, different issues, their own trauma to work through. But again, I was holding the responsibility for everybody else's feelings and everybody else's emotions and everybody else's perfection. And I just wanted to be as perfect as they were. My mom, for me, I thought, she's never done these sexual things. She is way more perfect than I am. So she just doesn't understand me on any level. So her telling me those things, I was just like, well, you never had a problem with this. Like, you don't understand this. And maybe that's partially true. You said the best missionaries are the ones who've been through things for me, the best people who know how to handle sexual situations or one who have been in uncomfortable sexual situations. And I'm grateful that that wasn't my mother's trauma. But if it was, or if she allowed herself to. To think through that more, maybe then she would have been able to handle my situation better if she allowed her own imperfections to be shown that I wouldn't have felt like such a failure to her.

Family Systems and Victim Dynamics in Mormonism

John Dehlin [02:04:36] If I can just add one quick thing again, when we talk about kind of victims here and even how systems sometimes fail us, that there are these fam. Family systems really impact how the individuals end up living. Living their lives. So an example would be if your parents are modeling perfectionism to their children. They're going to be some kids that just inevitably either aren't good liars, aren't good hiders, or they just can't live up to the perfectionism. And what that creates from the system down is this reaction where I can never live up to the perfection, so I may as well just act out because I'll never be able to live up to it. That's. That's the system affecting you in ways that really aren't your fault. Right. It's just the way the system interacts with you. And sometimes it's because you're a person of integrity, where you're like, well, I'm messing up, but I'm going to be honest about it. Whereas other people in the system just learn to hide and lie and be quiet and that they're victims of the system too, just in a different way. But also, sometimes when a family sets itself up for a public facade of perfectionism, but then it's known within the family that everything isn't healthy. Sometimes that family system creates a kid that is acting out as a way to say to the family and. Or the public, hey, hey, we're acting like everything's perfect here, but everything's not perfect. And it turns out that role of the troublemaker is playing an important role in the family of helping to keep them honest and to keep them humble about the problems. And so you're actually playing an important systemic role, but you're labeled as the bad girl or as the problem. Does that make sense? So the system, sure. Systems, yeah.

Kelly Trust [02:06:19] And I think that my parents are a product of the system. I don't think that they didn't do their best to love me in every way that they possibly could and to try and support me and to do everything that in their power to help me. I 100% believe that. But they didn't have the right tools to work with because of the system, because of what the system taught them about how to handle sex. That is. That's the real thing that I'm trying to figure out is like, where's. Where's the. Where's the problem? Because if we're using scripture, if we're finding the fruit here, this is bad fruit. This is really bad fruit when it comes to people's sexuality. And that's so sad that people feel like they can't be themselves or they can't be honest. And it's. It's turning us into better liars instead of more honest people. And that's really sad. You don't want to have a system that's. That belonging is being perfect. Nah, I don't want to be a part of that system because I'm not perfect. I don't belong in a place where everybody's perfect.

John Dehlin [02:07:25] No.

Carah Burrell [02:07:25] And there can be so much more transparency, like thinking about bishop's interviews or, you know, withholding the sacrament. It just feels like there's just so many things that people. There's progressive Mormons, there's all kinds of Mormons within the church who want to get to work on this stuff. And there's a system in place maybe it's just people who are more traditional and they, or they're maybe ignorant to the harm that's been caused and the, the damage that can be done when these systems aren't changed. But it's really just like brave voices like yours coming on and talking about the like obvious and irreparable harm that's been done that these, these systems can be changed, they've been, tweaks can be made so that they're, people don't have access to, to you know, 10 year olds about asking their, their sex life, their, their masturbation habits. I mean there's, there's just so many good forward thinking people within this church and I just really hope that people who are listening to this can feel inspired that they have the means within them to push for better change for these things so it doesn't have to be repeated again. So in, if you could summarize in like one minute the attitudes about your body, your autonomy or lack thereof around your sexuality within the Mormon church, if you could just like summarize the attitudes that you were taught, what would that sound like?

Kelly Trust [02:08:54] That I definitely, I mean we're taught agency and we're taught to be responsible for the decisions that we make but we're also taught what the right decisions are to make and the wrong decisions are to make. So it doesn't actually give you any control over what you want in life or your own body's wants and needs or your own attractions and like, like I can't imagine what it would be like to grow up gay and to feel like my, I'm just this way but you're told it's wrong to be that way. I, I felt it was wrong to be a woman who was a sexual being. I felt that was a, an error in my system. So the autonomy like I, I, I was told what I was supposed to want and what I was supposed to need instead of looking in here to figure out what, what Kelly needed, what Kelly wanted. And I could not possibly have wanted anything other than what God was telling me I wanted. Wanted. Mind you, there, there are, there are progressive Mormons who are trying to do this but so far all we have is that a parent can come in there. You think I wanted to sit there and say those things in front of anybody that I didn't have to say it in front of, especially my own parents. I'm not going to invite my mom to come sit in there and say those things. I would way rather just give them to the bishop because the Less people that know the better or the less times I have to repeat it, the better.

Carah Burrell [02:10:32] And.

Kelly Trust [02:10:33] And there were probably so many things that my parents never knew that my bishops did because I thought, okay, my parents, it's a need to know basis. My bishop, he's the one who's dealing with the God part, so I'll tell him everything. So I don't think my parents really knew the extent of things that I did, but not a chance. Is that the, the if for. For me as somebody who grew up feeling the shame and the guilt, it doesn't make it better if I have my mom there with me. It just makes it harder because then I have more ears listening to the difficult situations. So I understand a parent being there and being able to control the questions that bishop said I might not have been asked those same questions that I was. I might not had to have share as much. So that, that is cool, but I just don't know what kid is like, yeah, I want my mom there when I'm talking about these really hard things, or my dad or whoever it happens to be. That's either going to make them not share all the information and they're going to feel extra guilty about it because they're not fully repenting or they're just not going to do it at all. That when someone said, well, that, you know, we fixed this problem after Samuel, I was like, no, it didn't. Not even close.

Carah Burrell [02:11:52] There's still a shame model that is the bread and butter.

Kelly Trust [02:11:54] Yes. And bishops that are trying to handle sexual experiences and sexual trauma that they don't know how to handle because they're not therapists. They're regular old guys who are just happen to be picked for that position.

Carah Burrell [02:12:08] Yeah.

Kelly Trust [02:12:08] Mind you, they're usually good men. They're usually people. I believe that. I've had a lot of bishops that have thought that was a good man who lives a good life, has a wonderful family and wonderful kids and also possibly gets off two things that I'm saying to him in a private room. And that's really hard for me to then trust my bishops too. Then like, I knew there were questions that shouldn't have been asked that were. That made me extra uncomfortable that like being probed for so much information. I would just be exhausted. I had some. I had one bishop, I forgot to go. The same bishop that told me I was addicted to sex brought me into his office one time and said, I know you did something. I need you to tell me what it was, was.

Carah Burrell [02:12:47] And I was like, like an on the spot, you have to confess. You have to confess just like Jesus wanted to.

John Dehlin [02:12:55] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:12:55] Oh gosh. Oh no.

Kelly Trust [02:12:57] Exactly. And I, at the time, that was the one time that I was basically just like, not a chance am I sitting here and talking to you about a single thing. Because I strongly disliked this bishop, obviously, and he was the authority figure in my church that I just was like, like, nah, screw you. Like, I'm not taking any more from you and I'm not talking to you a second longer. Because I felt like he was so angry with me and disappointed in me. My own bishop, they said, I need you to tell me what happened. I had someone talk to me, I need you to tell me. And I'm like, I don't know who told you what, but I'm not sitting here and fessing up to anything. So I don't care what you think it is that I did. If I'm not ready to come here and talk to you about it, I'm not going to do that.

John Dehlin [02:13:45] That.

Kelly Trust [02:13:46] And that was literally the only time I ever actually like stood up for myself in a bishop's office. Because all the other times I felt like it was something that I was choosing and I was presenting that forward. Also, there's a scripture about being compelled to repent and how those people aren't actually pure and clean. And so I was like, this would be a situation where I'm being compelled to repent. And that's not honest, it's not, that's not integrity.

Carah Burrell [02:14:09] It's not doctrinal or scriptural. And like you could literally look up scriptures like that and be like, you are acting out of accordance.

Kelly Trust [02:14:16] Exactly, exactly, exactly. So, so that particular situation I was just like, what kind of, what kind of culture are we creating here of first of all, tattling. Second, like, shit, I just can't. There's such a tattle culture, such a. If I tell somebody that this person is doing something wrong, I'm just saving people, I'm just protecting people because I'm going to prevent them from putting those sins on someone else.

Carah Burrell [02:14:49] So in summation, the church's unfortunate ideas around sexuality that in case this is mind blowing news for anyone, is a normal part of human development, not something that is a switch that's flipped on after a temple ceiling that can be explored in consent and healthy, I was gonna say consent driven ways that are not necessarily, not necessarily needing. It's the nicest way I could possibly put it. So much meddling, so much shame heaped upon it when there are completely healthy ways that could be. That this could be done. So a lot of that stuff is just. I'm. I'm really sorry that you had to experience that, and that's really unfortunate that those are so many of the messages and ideas around something that could. That I think is. Sexuality is beautiful and a part of human life and not something that needs to have such like a bright red A written on your chest for so long. So is there anything else you wanted to say about that chapter of your life before we jump into you going to byu?

Kelly Trust [02:16:10] It's fine. I did feel like I wore the bright red A, you know, my whole life in my family, I wore it. At school, I maybe didn't wear it as much. But in terms of Mormon girls. Yes. At church, oh, I wore that A. And people knew it and people talked about it. And that was hard too, you know, because it's like I'm. I feel like I'm trying my best. I'm not perfect. These same people are not perfect because I know the things they're doing because they're doing them with me. But I'm the one who's taking all of the blame and shame for it because I'm female and they're just products of their hormones, the guys. But I must be actively choosing otherwise and a worse path, and therefore I shouldn't be. They shouldn't even be friends with me. Was it ever?

Carah Burrell [02:17:08] Because I actually, in my same development, I have a lot of similar themes that happen in my brain as well. But I told myself that I was a product of my hormones all growing up from, like, the sex abuse that I suffered through and my masturbation growing up. I. I never felt hardly any shame or talked to any bishops about it because I was very aware that I was the product of my hormones. Did. Did that. Did that thought ever occurred? Like, were you ever just comfortable in it? Like, this is a product of my hormones? I'm just gonna say, no, I'm not gonna play your system anymore. That's kind of the way that I survived Mormonism, to be quite honest. Did that ever play into your brain?

Kelly Trust [02:17:42] No, because I never. I never doubted the church.

Carah Burrell [02:17:47] Okay.

Kelly Trust [02:17:47] I never doubted it. Was it. It was everything. It was. It was my only option. Because for me, it wasn't like, oh, I'm just not gonna hang out with these people. It was, I need to keep trying to fit in here. I need to do everything that I can to fit in here. I need to do everything that I can to be like these people. Because this is my eternal glory at risk, my eternal salvation. Sorry, I should say.

Carah Burrell [02:18:18] And my Orthodox mindset.

Kelly Trust [02:18:21] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:18:22] That is completely, I think, again, conditional on who raises you. I didn't have very orthodox parents. Maybe that's why.

Kelly Trust [02:18:28] So, yeah, I am jealous when I hear of other kids who did the same things that I did, but their parents were still there for them. I hadn't just told them that they are normal teenagers. I'm jealous of those people. I wish my parents handled it that way. I cannot change the past. And I don't think that they knew how to handle. I don't think they had the proper tools to handle it mentally, emotionally. They talk about the wonderful life that they gave me when I tried talking about these things. And I say, yes, I had a wonderful life. I had no physical wants and needs, but emotional wants and needs. I had a lot of those and they weren't met. And that was exhausting and traumatizing and led me to believe that I was broken and that I wasn't good enough for God because I wasn't good enough even for my family. And I wasn't good enough for my friends. And those people believe the same things I did. So I should believe that about myself. That was hard. So I wish that. I wish I had parents that were a little bit more able to allow for error, allow for humanity, allow for, like, it's almost like, no, our bodies were made by God and we need to treat them as a temple and as this thing. And this is the only right way to treat them. This is the only right way to use them.

John Dehlin [02:20:04] Them.

Kelly Trust [02:20:04] And any other way that's off that path is of the devil. So I felt like I just wasn't strong enough to combat Satan. I was weak. That's how I felt. And I don't think that that is what they meant to do. I think they taught. They told me enough times of how strong I was and all these things, and I just, just. I never believed it when they told me that because it's like, no, I wasn't strong enough. Because you're telling me I'm not strong enough and I'm not doing enough and I'm not holy enough

John Dehlin [02:20:46] ever.

Kelly Trust [02:20:49] That was hard.

Carah Burrell [02:20:50] Yeah, it's unfortunate. Sorry.

Kelly Trust [02:20:54] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:20:55] So if somebody were to listen to all of this interview up to this point, they might ask, like, why even stay in the church? Like, why can't you just leave? What would your answer to that be?

Kelly Trust [02:21:07] So my answer to that is, you know, some people say, well, the church didn't fit them, so they left the church, but for me is that I didn't fit into the church. And it was told that was all I was ever supposed to want. So I just tried my hardest to keep, keep, to keep trying to be this person. Because in the end I did believe that if I was trying my best, that God would forgive me for my shortcomings. That if I really was just trying to be Mormon and as Mormon as I could be, that it would

Carah Burrell [02:21:43] be

Kelly Trust [02:21:43] enough at the very least. And so why did I keep trying? Because I had faith in this system that, that it was, that eventually was going to work for me. So some people just said the church didn't fit them, so they left the church. But for me, I didn't fit the church. So I didn't leave the church. I just tried to be more of the church,

Carah Burrell [02:22:09] which that kind of means like to the perfect kind of Mormon ideal. Like then you have to kind of go to BYU and follow along that covenant path. Sorry, were you going to say something else as well?

Kelly Trust [02:22:21] Yeah, well, my dad told me that my only option was to go to BYU because he wouldn't pay for any other school. My well to do father, who could handle paying for another school, but that was the only one that he would help pay for. So what kind of option did that give me? It was always like, that was my, it was my plan to go to BYU my entire life. And any other plan would have been unrighteous. Any other desire would have been that I wasn't actually wanting the things that my parents wanted for me and that ultimately I wanted for me because my parents wanted it for me. So I applied to BYU and I got into summer semester. Are we ready to go down this path?

Carah Burrell [02:23:10] Let's go down this path.

Kelly Trust [02:23:11] Let's go down this path. Path.

Arriving at BYU and the Honor Code Culture

Carah Burrell [02:23:12] Okay,

John Dehlin [02:23:14] tell, tell our, tell our listeners what you promise, you know, the honor code and what you promise to behave like when you, when you commit to a BYU school.

Kelly Trust [02:23:27] So the honor code. H. That is a, that's a fun thing for me to talk about because we promise when we go to BYU that we are not going to drink alcohol, we're not going to use drugs, we're not going to commit sexual sins. And all of these things we have established yearly by an ecclesiastical endorsement. So we have to go in and have an interview with our bishop before we go to the school. And then he tells us whether we are worthy enough to attend the school, whether we fit that, whether we can follow the honor code. Essentially, if you're Mormon and you have an Ecclesiastical endorsement. It means that you are doing all the things that you need to do and you're following the honor code. If you're not Mormon, it clearly lines out what you are and are not supposed to do. And a lot of things are like curfews at midnight and you can't be found in the opposite sex's dorm or apartment or whatever past midnight. You aren't going to go past a certain line in certain apartments. You'll have like a, like well, this is tile I and this is carpet and if you're on the carpet back there, then you're in an inappropriate space. They definitely separate men and women. There's no co ed housing and, and housing is very dependent on whether you are following the honor code or not. Like there is, there are apartments around BYU that have people from UVU that are going there different or any other school or even just working. But you still have to agree to follow the honor code because it's BYU approved housing housing. So no matter whether you're going to be BYU or not, if you're in that housing, you're following those rules. So it's BYU and all of the BYU approved housing around it too. So I won't limit it to just the campus itself or just attending the university itself because I was one of those people that was attending UVU for well, we will get there, we'll get there. I was one of those people though that was living in BYU approved housing that wasn't at byu. And so I know that and I. And I'm saying that because it establishes this bubble in provo of perfectionism and also really hiding your problems because it's going to affect your career at that point, it's going to affect your education at that point.

Carah Burrell [02:25:58] So it's not if you have faith in the Mormon gospel is irrelevant, quite honestly.

Kelly Trust [02:26:03] Yes.

Carah Burrell [02:26:04] It's affecting where you go to school, where you live, your money, your income, your future career prospects and then probably your friends and ward relationships. Probably other things that I'm leaving off of that list. That the standards of Mormonism are now exponentially more important now that you have left your parents house that they want to keep kind of a tighter than ever leash on these young college kids and people, I guess you could say they voluntarily. The argument to that, I guess for Mormons is usually that they voluntarily sign up for the system knowing what they're getting into.

Kelly Trust [02:26:41] Yes, you are definitely given the honor code in signing all of your paperwork for getting into school. That is something you have to put your Signature on that says, I agree to follow these standards and follow these rules and abide by these rules while I'm here. And if I don't, I agree that they can suspend me for not following those rules. Every single human who is attending that school right now has to sign that part of the deal.

Carah Burrell [02:27:13] And if your dad. And then the other side, like you said, if your parents are saying you're only gonna have the option to go to byu, you are kind of, like, thrust into a situation where you're either gonna lie about it or just, you know, kill yourself. Trying to go be a perfectionist into the system that you. Again, a box that you're not really made for, that, again, will affect all of these numerous different aspects.

John Dehlin [02:27:37] So at a time that's supposed to be the pinnacle of self exploration, of identity development, of just what it means to become an independent human, you know, screw that.

Carah Burrell [02:27:46] Conformity. Conformity. Conformity.

Kelly Trust [02:27:50] Get rid of individualism in this society. Let's not treat people like individuals with feelings. Let's try and make a copy of the perfect human. Human.

Carah Burrell [02:27:59] Bingo. Is that on BYU's, like, logo? No kidding.

Kelly Trust [02:28:03] No. So be like everyone else.

Carah Burrell [02:28:07] So you're trying to, like, live into the system or live in this. This system's maybe not the right word, but, like, you're trying to be in a conformist system that you are having trouble conforming to.

Kelly Trust [02:28:19] Yes, that I've always had trouble conforming to. And I figured out very quickly getting to that school that there is. There are the good kids and there are the kids who do whatever they want to do. And I go like this because these ones are considered to be more righteous, better the end. And we're just doing our own shit down here. And it's like. And if you are in this crowd, who does things? The word we used that summer, which is really, like, looking back, I'm like, oh, stupid. But is that person chill? Is that person chill enough to be around us? Basically, do they have a stick up their butt or do they not have a stick up their butt?

John Dehlin [02:29:05] Like, can they tell on you?

Kelly Trust [02:29:06] Will they tell on you?

John Dehlin [02:29:07] Yeah.

Kelly Trust [02:29:08] And who doesn't want to be tattled on the people doing those things and who are doing those things? The athletes, let me tell you, because they are collegiate athletes. In the end, they are no different than any other collegiate collegiate athletic program. And I was taught my whole life, these are the stronger ones. These are the better ones. The ones who definitely follow the rules because they have the spotlight on them. And they're representing byu. Out in the world. And so they should. They are held to even higher standards, and they meet them is what I was taught. That's not true. We'll just start with that part. Okay? But look, I made friends with people who were like me because it made me feel like I fit in and I wasn't this horrible person. And they were at byu, too, so they lied just as much to get here and still promised all the same things, though. So it's still, like, there's this honor code that's there that's telling us what we need to do. But then there's also this group of people who say, well, as long as you don't tattle, we can do whatever we want to and be normal college kids. Like, within, like, my first week there, I went to a party with some friends, and they were playing beer pong, and I walked in and I was like, what? This is. These are all BYU students. And it was like, people who were sophomores, juniors, seniors that had been there for years. And I'm like, oh, so they've been doing this the whole time they're here, too. Cool. What? Because in my brain, it was supposed to be like, no, BYU is for all these amazing people, and all these people promise to do this, and they come here and they're gonna do it, and those are the only people that

Carah Burrell [02:30:57] you're going to be around.

John Dehlin [02:30:58] I would imagine in your mind, you're like, well, now I can become that good girl. Maybe BYU will be the context that I need to be that good girl. I remember it's like coming to Oz and then you re. It's like Dorothy coming to Oz for the first time. It's like, this is where everything's going to be Good.

Kelly Trust [02:31:13] Good.

John Dehlin [02:31:13] I would imagine that it might have been disappointing for you to. To get to BYU and then see that, oh, my gosh, this might even be worse than what I was experiencing in high school. I don't know.

Kelly Trust [02:31:24] I. What I thought about was, like, I had a picture of Austin Collie on our wall, and he was one of these guys. He was one of these guys. He was probably just as bad as all of these other guys. And. And those are not the people that I want to marry, because those are not the people that are following the rules. Those are not the people who are going to give me eternal salvation. But mind you, I'm still this person who's trying so hard just to make friends and fit in. And I have habits and wants and needs that are different than what the church tells me. I should want and need. And so I just found people that were like me and hung around them and like. Like, I messed around with the elders quorum president and then saw him in church the next day. And he's just acting like he's Mr. Perfect, Mr. Mr. BYU. I hung out with all sorts of players who are out drinking and smoking and having sex with people and whatever, and then going and practicing, and it was like.

John Dehlin [02:32:31] You mean football players?

Kelly Trust [02:32:33] Football players, yeah, football players, specifically, because those were the people that I ended up hanging out with was the freshmen that were there when I was there, that were there for summer camp. Because I don't know if you know this, but kind of the freshman players, they usually will go to school that summer. They'll do extra training, they'll kind of get ready for fall camp, and then when they go into it, they're not completely behind, and they. And it doesn't slow the team down, essentially, if that makes sense, which honestly does work very well football wise. Like, they. They know the pattern of things and they're able to do things. So I was around these football players, and I felt like I was so cool, though, because I was friends with the football players, and my dad had spent his life training us to want to be with football players, BYU football players, because these are amazing men and they're wonderful examples and all this stuff. And mind you, most of them are really, really good guys who are coming into a program that teaches you to hide every mistake that you do, because if you talk about it, you don't get to play. Play. And this is their career, this is their scholarship, this is their future. And a lot of them aren't Mormon. And so they're coming into this system saying, I'm going to agree to follow these rules. Yeah, no way am I going to actually follow those rules. But sure, I'll sign this thing, and I'll just not tell anybody. So those are the people that I'm then hanging around, and I'm just like, okay. And I. I met one in particular who was interested in me, and we hung out a few times. More than a few times. But then, like, it was a few times of us kind of like having an interest in each other before we ended up having sex. Okay. We had sex one time.

Carah Burrell [02:34:20] While you're a freshman.

Kelly Trust [02:34:21] While I'm a freshman. During this. This summer semester. Right.

Carah Burrell [02:34:25] So this is before the fall of even the school starting.

Kelly Trust [02:34:28] Yeah, yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:34:28] So before even. You're already.

Kelly Trust [02:34:31] Yep.

Carah Burrell [02:34:31] Right there.

Kelly Trust [02:34:32] Oh, yep. The boys took about five seconds for me to Realize that these people are not any different than any other people in the world. Weird that when I went from Houston to Utah that those boys still had those same desires. And then when I graduated from high school and went to college, those boys still had those same desires.

Carah Burrell [02:34:53] Interesting. The gospel. I wish I. When I was Mormon, I honestly did believe with all my heart that the gospel did cure people of, like, if they are reading their scriptures, they're filled with the Holy Ghost enough that their sexual desires can be tamped down. You're telling me that's not true?

Kelly Trust [02:35:09] That is not factual. That is not how it works in practicality. I wanted to believe that too. I wanted to believe that all the things that I was doing would. Would heal me, heal my sexual desires. Sorry, eye roll. For people who are just listening, it was a big eye roll because that's just not reality. And that's, that's not what we're taught, though. We're not taught that this is. This is normal and whatever. And so I keep thinking I'm gonna find the, the group of people that actually does do the right things. And nobody does. Does all the right things. So I think it was hard for me because I was like, I can't. If I can't forgive myself for doing these things, I'm not going to forgive other people for doing those things, which wasn't right. You know, I can look back and see my mentality in the situation and how my brain was messed up as well in terms of judging other people for what they were doing because I was told to make righteous judgments and that that would be healthy and safer for me if I was judging other people just enough to keep myself safe.

John Dehlin [02:36:18] Life.

Carah Burrell [02:36:19] That's interesting.

Kelly Trust [02:36:20] Yeah, and that's, that's, that's hard because judging other people to any extent, it's not. It doesn't work that way. You just judge them hard and you. You pick your own standards. And then if they don't meet them, then they're not good enough. And that's not the right way to treat humans. In my head is that if we're really teaching that God is our only judge, then there's no good way to judge. There is no good way. You do not know how to handle somebody who has murdered someone. You don't know how to judge it. You've never been in that situation. Could have been that that person had their daughter raped and killed in front of them. I would want to murder too.

Carah Burrell [02:37:03] You know, there's context.

Kelly Trust [02:37:04] There's context.

Carah Burrell [02:37:05] Yeah.

Kelly Trust [02:37:06] Matters, you know, And I'M not ever going to say that murder is good. Good. I still think murder is bad in any situation. I don't think it's right for anybody to kill anybody. But I understand that context does matter. And if we believe in a God that's the only one that knows all of the context, then I have zero place to judge anybody else for anything that they do. But that's not what we're taught in the Church. We're taught to make righteous judgments that keep us safe, is what they say. But all it does is turn us into really judgmental assholes who like to tattle. Like, if we talk about. If you go on the Honor Code Stories page, how many times have you heard, and then my roommate tattled and then my room. I couldn't be this person. I couldn't. Whatever.

Carah Burrell [02:37:49] You're talking about the Instagram page, that's for honor code.

Kelly Trust [02:37:53] Yes. So, yeah, there's an Instagram page called Honor Code Stories. And if you go read those, which I don't, I would say I recommend just to see the experiences that other people have had with this system that show a lot of. That bring light to a lot of the difficult problems that surround having an honor code system there that are messing with people's careers, because this is people's livelihoods. And mind you, these men don't want to go and talk to their bishops about stuff because they are expected to be the breadwinners in a family. And one tiny story that I heard is this person, and out of pure honesty as a junior, said, I want to not list myself as LDs anymore because I know that tithing subsidizes our tuition when we're Mormon, but if you're not Mormon, you do pay a little bit more. And he said, look, I don't identify with the Church anymore. I just want to, when I graduate for it to just, you know, like, I'll pay the full price. He was like, I want to have integrity. That there they wouldn't let him. Or when he did change that status, he. He got so much backlash from the school that he said, okay, I want to go somewhere else. And then they wouldn't release his records to him. And two years after working through this problem and not being able to get it solved, he commits suicide.

Carah Burrell [02:39:23] Oh, my gosh.

Kelly Trust [02:39:25] Because his whole identity was around his career, and he had one more year of school left. Left. And all he was trying to do was to finish his career or finish his schooling so that he could go on to support his family doing a

Carah Burrell [02:39:41] lot of the things the church wants you to be able to do. But they are the very like, damn, that's in the way from them being able to achieve a lot of these good wholesome things, these attitudes and aspirations that were instilled probably in him and other people that they don't have the autonomy or the, the free agency. There's so many good parts of Mormonism quite honestly that if they were, if they were forwarded and they were put as the highest ideals for people in the honor code office or the honor for code office actually should probably be, you know, dismantled but like agreed within these church systems that like the ideas around free agency and, and integrity and honesty that then you were literally told that your life will kind of come to a crashing end if you're not, if you don't fit within this system now and it's a system versus what Christ would actually probably want people to do. There's a lot of cherry picking that goes on in religion and it just breaks my heart that the, that we don't cherry pick sometimes the best, you know, attributes of Christ. That's really unfortunate to hear.

John Dehlin [02:40:51] Let me ask really quick and I think I know the answer to this question because I was actually a tutor to NCAA athletes when I was at byu. There's this, there's probably this perception that most BYU athletes are living the honor code, but then there's an exceptional. There's a rare exception where a player messes up and then it's usually discovered and then usually there's some sort of formal or informal discipline and then sometimes that leads to them being kicked in, out. What, what would you say is the norm for, you know, the BYU athletes that, that you saw in terms of what percentage of them are breaking the honor code either by parting drugs, alcohol or sex? Just your experience.

Kelly Trust [02:41:37] I will back up my experience with the fact that I was a student athletic trainer there. So I spent a lot of time time around BYU athletics in all different sports in all different places, like male, female. I spent time with them during their injuries. I spent time with them before practice, after practice. I taped them all the time. I was the person who gave them water. Like I was around these people all the time. I know a lot of them. I love them as people. It's probably more like 90, 10, 10, 90 of the people who just do what they want to do as athletes and 10 of the people who really are trying to be good. But we only see, we, we believe and are shown that it's the opposite

John Dehlin [02:42:25] that you're saying 90 of the BYU athletes in your experience, are violating the honor code and just lying about it or hiding it?

Kelly Trust [02:42:34] Yes, for sure. That's. That's more so my experience. And that's just through talking to people and knowing things that they are doing and saying it is worse on the football team in particular. But I know it exists in all of the sports and this, this culture of secrecy so that we can succeed in sports and have better numbers on the board by having the better players, no matter what they are doing. And so even the coaches will just look the other way even if they know things, they turn a blind eye to it because they want bigger numbers on the board, they want faster times, they want

John Dehlin [02:43:17] more wins.

Kelly Trust [02:43:18] Wins, yeah, because it makes BYU look good. That's the whole reason we went independent is so that we could be on ESPN and so we could play bigger schools and so we could have more light shed on the situation. You want this wonderful image of BYU put out there and you're putting that on athletes because you see that people in the church look up to these athletes and believe that they are the best of the best of the best. And on top of that, they're handling school and family and sports like they are devoting all of their lives to this. So you see that and you think, wow, what amazing, strong, wonderful examples of believers that never do anything wrong.

Carah Burrell [02:44:00] And examples of believers who never do anything wrong is the perception that's definitely put out there and to like yellow, young, you know, developing kids. I grew up in Provo, just down the street from byu. So the ideas around, like you're saying these really strong in the faith BYU athletes that are on your wall, but it is all a facade. Right?

John Dehlin [02:44:20] So you're saying it's a sham, basically,

Carah Burrell [02:44:21] and that like, that the perception of young, developing minds of people who look up to these BYU athletes that are kind of put on this pedestal that they are doing all these things like you said, and also keeping strong in the faith. Faith and following the rules. When it sounds like what you're saying is like, that is not even close to the case in actuality.

Kelly Trust [02:44:43] No, it is not close to the case. I think they're all trying their best like everybody else.

Carah Burrell [02:44:51] And they're human, they're normal, they're.

Kelly Trust [02:44:53] Yeah, they're human, they're normal, they're doing their best, they have the same rules they're supposed to follow. So more or less we're all to trying, trying, but. But it's the, it's the, the bishop roulette, the coach roulette the administrator roulette that we're playing with in this situation where we get to pick and usually in sports it's how many people know about it. Not usually, always. If, if it is very well known that this thing happened, they will take action and they will take public action. And if it's not known, let's sweep it under the rug and go back and keep playing. Which mind you, I don't think that the things that they're doing are bad. I think they are normal college kids living their lives and doing all the things that they should do as college students. So when you say throw out the honor code, I'm with you because I'm like this, this is a set of rules that is totally unrealistic for people in this phase in their life and not healthy to grow into wonderful mature adults who are responsible for their own decisions. That's a huge thing is, you know, if we're, if we're teaching these athletes that they can do these things and they can get away with them, they're going to push those boundaries even further is how much can I do without getting caught? What kind of things can I do where just me being an athlete means that I'm above the rules? Because that's the culture I get in sports. There is if you are an athlete and especially if you are good, the rules do not apply.

Carah Burrell [02:46:32] And I actually don't know the answer to this question whatsoever. But there are obviously other Christian universities out there that I'm sure have similar honor code type situations like Liberty University comes to mind where like you can't even hug like male to female, you know, on campus. Do you have any idea how strict and how like enforced the BYU standards are from. Because Mormonism, that's what's funny to me. This is a two part question is that Christians often get on Mormon's case because we are not a very grace based gospel and very rules earning your way to salvation type oriented. And that was a real like, like thorn for me growing up and seeing exactly the things you're talking about of the checklist and people lying. But it's all just like performative. And I really just missed like the vitamin G, the vitamin grace that a lot of my Christian friends were talking about and how much more wonderful it would be if I could have a young adult experience where I just have a relationship with God and no one's asking me questions about what I'm doing because my relationship with God as at the forefront of my mind, not about putting on a performance and trying to hide things. I do the right thing. I follow the rules just because I want to, because I do want to abide in the spirit. So my question is all kind of leading up to like, how do you think BYU could approach this because they're going to stay a religious school no matter what. How could they approach with. You want to forward ideas for young adults where they are staying out of trouble, quote, unquote vote, but without such a strict, enforced, you're going to be kicked out of school if you mess up in your like ideal mind. What would, what could BYU do within the context that they, they do have to live within the paradigm of Mormonism? Do you have an ideal system? Maybe not ideal, but what, what would you push for if you could?

Kelly Trust [02:48:22] I don't agree to follow the honor code growing up my entire life. Those are just the expectations placed there there through my church and my religion and my own beliefs. So maybe believe that we can be adults and that we can make adult decisions. And don't give us rules like we're children on a playground because we're going to try and test those rules and we're going to break them. So if the honor code wasn't there my whole life and then all of a sudden it is and it's this thing that affects my future and my career and all this stuff. If we believe that people are imperfect and that we're going to make mistakes, then every single one of us is going to break that honor code because it's, you have to dress perfectly, you have to groom perfectly, you have to be this perfect person, especially when it comes to sexual things and your interactions with boys and girls. We're not allowing ourselves to make adult decisions and to really train the decision making part of our brains because we're just giving an outline again of what you're supposed to do instead of saying you are human, you are an individual. Let's talk about how to make this better. If you're coming to me as a bishop in a BYU ward and you're saying that you have things that are going on, like, first of all, if it has to do with sex, there's therapy. There are therapists, there are psychologists that are psychiatrists. There's all sorts of people who can help with those things. And it has nothing to do with your relationship with God. You can be wonderful and close to God, God and be a sexual being, you know, but we don't allow for that. We don't allow for people to be mature because we are constantly outlining what they need to do all the time.

John Dehlin [02:50:00] So

Kelly Trust [02:50:02] either lighten up the rules and expect them to just be good. It's like saying if we make weed legal, everybody's going to start smoking. It's like, that's. That's the biggest load of trash in the world. Because that's not what happens in practicality. It's that people who don't want to do drugs are still not going to do drugs, and people that do want to are still going to do it or they're going to do it illegally. You know what I mean? If that law is there. That's how I see it in my head, is either you're going to break the rules and get in trouble for it, or you're going to break the rules and be given grace and be given tools to work out of this situation if it's not where you want to be.

Carah Burrell [02:50:41] Right?

Kelly Trust [02:50:43] But the sexual immaturity of people in that system is so like their children, because again, they are given the rules. They're not given the. The tools to build their own boundaries and their own comfort level and their own image. Again, we're trying to make the same human who follows all of these rules instead of individual people who have different wants and needs. I think I'm a firm believer that as much as we have different tastes in food and all of us generally like the same foods, or we have people who are like, oh, that's different. But we don't say, because you like asparagus more than I do, I'm not going to be your friend, or you can't attend this school. I think that that's sexuality, too, that we all have a million different wants and needs. Needs. And if we're not trying different foods, then we don't know what we like or what we don't like. And then we're going to agree that because everybody else likes broccoli, I need to like broccoli, too, and I'm gonna marry broccoli, and I'm stuck with broccoli for the rest of my life. But I hate broccoli. But I don't have another option because broccoli is the only thing that we're allowed to like.

Carah Burrell [02:51:59] Yeah, yeah, there's definitely a box there.

Kelly Trust [02:52:01] That's the box we're putting people in.

Sexual Encounter with an Athlete and Reporting to the Honor Code Office

Carah Burrell [02:52:04] So you jumping back to your encounter with a football player that you eventually had sex with, and what was your. And what was your interaction then with the honor code office, and what was the process then with your bishop and your schooling, then from that point So

Kelly Trust [02:52:20] I repeated the same pattern of feeling very guilty for things that I did. And the thing that actually really led me to going in and talking to my bishop was getting caught. But not in this sense. But anytime I did get caught, I would go in and I'd spill it all out on the table and just be like, while I'm here, here's all the stuff since last time I talked to a bishop.

Carah Burrell [02:52:41] Wow. Really?

Kelly Trust [02:52:42] Because I would just be like, I. I don't want there to be anything in my past that I haven't confessed to. Because they always ask that question, is there anything that you haven't resolved with one of your bishops? It's a temple question. It's like, is there anything in your past that you haven't resolved with a church authority member that needs to be resolved? I didn't ever want to have to say, oh, yeah, there was this one time that I forgot to confess to. So for me, it was kind of like a let me make sure I catch all the sins so that I don't have to feel guilty for him

John Dehlin [02:53:12] essentially backing up a tiny bit. So, like, I can imagine the scenario where you have sex with a player, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, my gosh, I could get kicked out of school. This could be really serious. You might be feeling that. He might be feeling that. He might be wondering, is this going to ruin my career? So, like, before even jumping to the bishop part, what's that? Or is it just like, oh, no, no, we're all doing this and this is part of the deal. We do this behind the scenes, but we never tell anyone. So, you know, it's not even a thing because it's just part of the culture. So which was it in. In your case? Does that question make sense? It does. Like, what's the conversation like with you and this football player?

Kelly Trust [02:53:56] It was assumed I wasn't going to share that information with anybody and that it was secretive and that I was part of the group of people that could handle being around that stuff, because there were people who couldn't handle it and who had tattled and there were people who could handle it. And I felt like I was always caught in between because I was trying so hard to be good. But then I was doing other things that I was like, this is fun, and I like these friends and whatever, and this is acceptance and belonging. And so I would get there. And while hanging out with all these people, I had a boy from high school who ended up posting pictures that I had sent to him, to Facebook, because he was mad at me because I wasn't dating him anymore, and he blamed me for his. His sexual sin. It was definitely my fault. I convinced him. I pushed him in that direction, and he was very mad about it. And he posted a few pictures of me in my underwear on Facebook to Rebecca to get back at me. To get back at me. I never saw the pictures, but mind you, they were up for about 15 minutes. And my mother, my younger sister, a couple of friends from high school school saw them.

John Dehlin [02:55:08] And while you're at byu?

Kelly Trust [02:55:10] While I'm at byu, and this is like, I was. I think I was out with my family. We're kayaking, didn't have any service. And I get back to my phone, and all of a sudden, I have, like, 19 missed calls and all these things. Like, hey, did you see what that person put up? And I was like, what are you talking about? So this is my getting caught, you know, and my mom and my dad said, well, you know, let's. Let's figure this out and whatever and where it's the right thing to do. Go talk to the bishop about these things and let's solve it and whatever, but let's. Let's not even touch on how emotionally traumatizing that was to have those pictures of me on the Internet, because that's a terrible thing for any human to ever do to another person. Because if I would, I would say that if I am trusting somebody enough to share that part of my life with them, I'm not expecting them to share it with the whole world. Okay, for sure. Yeah. That's not the right way to handle that. I was very hurt by that situation, but that was my getting caught. So at this point, I'd already had sex with the football player, but this kind of thing caught up to me. So I go in, and I'm talking to my bishop, and I just decide. I'm like, look, I'm gonna just tell him everything. I'm gonna stop doing these things. I'm gonna change my life again. I'm gonna be better. And I talked through all of these things, and when I mentioned this football player's name, he said, wait, who?

John Dehlin [02:56:29] And this is the name people would know if they heard it. Maybe.

Kelly Trust [02:56:32] Yes. And I have spoken with him directly, and he said, this is part of his past. He does not want to have his name brought into this. And I. He has told me BYU treated you wrong. BYU treated me wrong. But I want to put this behind me, and I don't want to sure.

John Dehlin [02:56:46] So, but just to know the sense that it was a high profile.

Kelly Trust [02:56:49] He was a high profile player for sure. And he was only a freshman then, so it's like he was a big deal already and he, he later became a bigger deal. And so it's like I see now why they wanted him there. But anyway, okay, so, so I'm with my bishop, I'm talking about it, and he says, I know that name. And I said, yeah. And he encouraged me to go talk to the Honor Code office about this because he thought, thought that he wanted to resolve these problems. But then I think he was worried that if I talk to other people about things that happen with this player who, mind you, wasn't lds. They told me that because my bishop and the Honor Code office then needed every single detail of the encounter with him. Like what, where was it? Who else was there who knows about it? I, eventually I will throw out this name because Dean Heprey is somebody that I had to go talk to about this on top of whoever it was I told in the Honor Code office. And then I had Dean Heppri, who I had to talk about, the Dean of Students, who I'm sitting there in a room with him and he's asking me the same questions that my bishop asked me. This is someone who is not in charge of my repentance process. This is not someone who's in charge of my ecclesiastical endorsement. He is somebody who's in charge of publicity of students and things that happen there and, and in high profile situations. Okay, I did not have an option to not tell him. I did not have an option to not talk about this. Because I also was thinking, okay, if I'm getting better and things are going down this path and whatever, that I need to just do this to the full extent that they believe that I need to do it. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was protecting a perfect image that BYU was trying to put out there. And I knew this person didn't fit that mold. And so maybe it was better for everybody in the end anyway. I did not value his emotions as an individual and I was caring about myself and my own repentance process. And it didn't matter who I hurt to get there. I can look back now and say, I probably said things I didn't need to. I probably had a little bit of, of I just want to get my justice here in this situation and whatever. Because at this point, there was the second that people knew that I talked to my bishop about this and Then talked to the honor code about this, which my roommates who are friends with them, and then went and told him that I was doing this. I had one of my roommates stand in my doorway, put her foot in the door and yelled at me at how much of a hypocrite I was and how I didn't actually love Christ and how I was such a whore and a slut and how I should feel terrible about myself and that I'm never gonna have any friends because I'm never gonna value their feelings enough and that I shouldn't feel good about what I'm doing. And I tried so hard to just.

John Dehlin [02:59:55] She was mad you were confessing.

Kelly Trust [02:59:57] She was mad I was confessing. And she thought it was hypocritical of me because I did those things and then felt bad for them.

John Dehlin [03:00:03] Them.

Kelly Trust [03:00:05] That was a really hard time.

John Dehlin [03:00:06] Such a mess.

Kelly Trust [03:00:07] I actually had my phone out at that point and I hit record. And so I. Cuz I had to at one point go back and say, this is the kind of treatment that I got for who I was. These are people that were members who confessed to being loving, Christlike examples who offered grace to other people as well, which is not what they offered there. So I'm already getting crap from it. But I'm thinking the school is telling me I have to go talk to these people. They're setting these appointments for me to go talk to different people. The dean asked me to come in two or three times and he said the final interview that I had with him, I've kind of shared everything. And he says, okay, well, you know, you're gonna be suspended and all of these things. And just so you know, because he's not Mormon, he's not really held to the same standards you are.

Carah Burrell [03:00:59] Which even though he signed the honor code.

Kelly Trust [03:01:01] He signed the honor code, but that's the. The. He said you have to think that he doesn't think he's doing something wrong. Okay. And then he asked me, is he circumcised? I kind of was like, dean, this

Carah Burrell [03:01:23] is Dean, Dean, Dean asked you free

Kelly Trust [03:01:25] ask me if this player was circumcised or not. Where.

Carah Burrell [03:01:29] Where is he thinking that's relevant?

Kelly Trust [03:01:31] Where is he thinking that's relevant? In my head, the way that I've justified it as. He's trying to decide whether I've actually seen this boy's penis or not.

John Dehlin [03:01:39] So it's like a test.

Kelly Trust [03:01:40] That's a test. And mind you, I have at that point in my life never seen an uncircumcised or an uncircumcised penis. And I was like. First of all, I was like. I don't know if I could tell that. Can. What? No, it seemed normal to me. What. You know what I mean? But I, like, stuttered my answer out because I was very shocked by the question in the first place because it made me feel very uncomfortable. And I think my discomfort for that question was taken as dishonesty or not being fully forthcoming about this situation or making it up. I don't know.

John Dehlin [03:02:17] Know.

Kelly Trust [03:02:18] Maybe he had to justify it in his head that I was making it up. I don't. I don't know. Either way. Gross.

Carah Burrell [03:02:24] Are you. So are they sorry? I'm like, a lot of the Loss for words.

Kelly Trust [03:02:29] Because it's. Yeah, because.

Carah Burrell [03:02:31] Are you saying that they are trying to disbelieve you because they want so badly to think that he would not do this, that they have to then have a responsibility to kick him out of school? They are trying to throw you under the bus as far as humanly possible.

John Dehlin [03:02:49] If they can make you not credible as a witness, then they don't have to punish him because maybe you're just lying or making it up or trying to get attention. Is that the sense you got?

Kelly Trust [03:03:00] That is 100 the sense that I got. And, Kelly, you're a member of the church. This person is not. You don't matter as much the school as this person, because we need this person for the publicity and for the. The. The. The player that he is. Which, mind you, he's a great player. I agree with him. But at the time, I felt like. Because. So here's what happens. I get suspended for a year. I have to withdraw from all of my classes. So all of my friends know that I am withdrawing. Which you withdraw for very few reasons. At that school. School, I had to move out of my dorm. I had to tell my family why I was leaving, which I didn't want to talk to my family about getting kicked out of school. But of course, they all asked me, and I've always kind of been pretty open, so I kind of just said, well, this happened, you know, and this is why I'm not there. Guess who didn't get kicked out. Guess who stayed and played football player.

Carah Burrell [03:04:03] That's what happens when he makes religious requirements with collegiate athletics that just. It. You people are gonna. Yeah, people like you are gonna be. I need a better term than thrown under the bus. I already used that one. Collateral damage.

Kelly Trust [03:04:20] I guess I am collateral damage to a system that valued that man more than he. They valued me. I felt like I was not as important to BYU as that person. And mind you, I'm paying tuition and you're paying him to be there, essentially. And like, I'm paying tuition. I'm trying my best. I'm sitting here saying, I'm just trying to make things better. I'm just trying to repent how I know how to, how I've been taught my entire life. Did I do it 100 the right way? Hell no. I can look back and say where I was mad or angry or whatever and, and frustrated and whatever. And I didn't handle things right the whole time. And I know there's a lot of people who would be like, well, Kelly did this and said this and I'm like, okay, yeah, whatever. Like, yes, no, I wasn't perfect. I will totally sit here and realize where my wrongdoings were. But I did not matter as much to that school as that person. And that hurt because I thought I don't matter as much to the church because I am unclean. And he's held to a different standard at this school because he is, because he's playing sports and because he's not Mormon. He doesn't need to be treated the same way and punished the same way as me. Not that I was expecting, like that's the thing is it sounds like I wanted him to be punished. I think I just wanted it to be the same. I think I just wanted to be treated equal to him. That if you're not going to kick him out, don't kick me out. You know, if you're letting him stay and giving him the forgiveness here, where's my forgiveness? Especially when I'm the one who's trying to be better. I'm trying to get better. I'm putting in the effort here. And he is straight. Just upset about it and being mean to me and commit. Like I had a few track players who were his friends who, who said they wanted to beat me up, guys. I didn't feel comfortable in my own apartment. I had to move in with my brother and sister in law. And it was really difficult because I just didn't even feel comfortable in my own home at that point.

Fearing Expulsion After Confessing as the Victim

Carah Burrell [03:06:36] You were like, by literally trying to do the right thing by confessing as you have been taught to do, to be right with God again. You feared for your safety at the Lord's University, Is that what you're saying?

Kelly Trust [03:06:49] I feared for my safety at the Lord's University and I was publicly shamed by Everybody who knew what the situation was, and they also knew that he was not getting that same treatment.

Carah Burrell [03:07:02] And nobody spoke up.

Kelly Trust [03:07:03] And nobody spoke up, mind you. My own family didn't speak up. They knew this story too, and I had to tell them about it. And while they thought it was confusing or whatever, but my dad almost agreed with their decision and he might have been upset by it too. But if it was my child, I would have gone busting down some doors and I would have said, no, no, no, you do not treat my daughter differently because she's not an athlete. That's not bringing you money. That's not cool. We don't treat individuals differently because they are male or female or because they are better at sports or not better at sports. If we're talking about everybody is same in the eyes of God, then everybody has the same standards. And if we break them and we're punishing them in a specific way, this is the situation where I said, oh, misogyny.

John Dehlin [03:08:08] So, so this dean guy, what's his name again?

Kelly Trust [03:08:10] Dean Hempry.

John Dehlin [03:08:11] So, you know, you would. Vern.

Kelly Trust [03:08:13] He.

John Dehlin [03:08:14] If you want to, you would. You would think just an idealistic person would think, okay, the head of the honor code office is going to make sure the honor code is enforced. But what you learn with the way kind of the church picks its leaders, they pick people who are loyal and usually they pick people who are attorneys and who understand pr. Because it's pretty clear that what this dean's job was was not necessarily to ensure that the honor code was followed and enforced. His job was to prevent important players from being kicked out, to prevent some sort of public scandal from erupting that would embarrass the name of. Of the university and of the church and to handle people like you so that you would be handled and silenced and distanced in a way to maximize the protection of the church and its athletes and its money and its power and its reputation. So it's a, It's a, It's a. That's a really dark thing to think about that the people who should be in the. In the positions of highest power to do the most good are really their. To protect the church at the expense of, of the little people of the powerless. Right?

Kelly Trust [03:09:34] Yes. I was asked so many times about who knew about this? Who knew this happened? Who knew this happened? And I said, you know, 10 to 15 people, you know, I was like, I don't know, probably not even that. I guess that was the wrong answer. I should have said everybody. But he said, okay, you know, and it's. This is really better for everybody's safety and concern and, and discretion if we just, you know, if we don't talk about this more and we don't share this more. And at the time I'm like, yeah, you're right. Of course we need to protect people.

John Dehlin [03:10:10] Did I remember the Brandon Davies thing happening? Was that before? So, yeah, so I remember when Jimmer Fredette was the, this national star and, and BYU was potentially gonna make a run for the NCAA tournament. This Brandon Davies basketball player who's a person of color, he gets, I guess it's, it's discovered that, that he, someone had gotten pregnant, someone that he had sex with. And it was a big scandal because they, if I'm remembering right, he was suspended because how do you hide the pregnancy? And it was a big national thing because it was, it highlighted the unfairness and of this policy, especially for athletes of color, especially for athletes that were not raised Mormon. Although I think Brandon may have been adopted into a.

Carah Burrell [03:10:59] He went to Provo High, I thought, yeah, that's right.

John Dehlin [03:11:02] That's right.

Kelly Trust [03:11:02] Well, and at the time we all praised Brandon for, for being honest about what he was doing and for taking responsibility for his actions. My roommate hooked up with him in a car not that long after that. He is, I don't know him personally, so I can't really speak to his character, but I can see that story and then know that he hooked up with my roommate and say, okay, so he wasn't actually sad for what he did. He's the same as me. He wants to do the same things. He's just, just got caught that time. And when you get caught, that's the part when the church has a hard time. Because if you don't know about all those things that are happening, if you don't know that all this crap garbage exists in the church, then the church can maintain its beautiful, perfect image to the world.

John Dehlin [03:11:46] And it's hard to hide a baby. So maybe, you know, maybe the only reason he got busted was because there was a baby involved and he couldn't really hide that.

Kelly Trust [03:11:53] Right, yeah.

Carah Burrell [03:11:55] Start a religion. Immaculate conception. No, I was going to say.

Kelly Trust [03:11:58] Sorry,

Carah Burrell [03:12:01] I actually remember that. And I actually wrote a blog post on my personal blog about that Brandon Davies situation. And I remember, remember that was one of the proudest moments I ever felt when I was Mormon. I don't know if you guys felt the same way that like my church is doing the right thing because I had such a narrow mind view. I didn't know all this stuff you're talking about, obviously. And I was like, when I'm player, I literally thought when a player at BYU has sex, they are punished, even if it means losing, like the NCAA tournament. I literally thought that it was my church. Will, because it's true, will always stand up for truth and righteousness business. And if you turned on ESPN during that time, I remember watching it specifically to listen to them talk about the story. And all of these, you know, secular sports commentators being like, good job, byu. Nobody else would do that. And you're like, yay, go my religion. That, like, of course they're going to stand up for truth and righteousness. I had no idea. All the other things that we're discussing here today, but if you have a myopic view and you're just looking for confirmation bias, yeah. You'll find the one rare stories where, like, you need to confirm that everything is good and everything checks out, but you. You're not looking for all of the dead bodies underneath, like the, the corpses riding, rotting underneath the surface here.

John Dehlin [03:13:16] And what you're telling us, Kelly, is it's BYU honor code with athletes is kind of a hypocritical sham. Is. Is what I hear you saying, big time.

Kelly Trust [03:13:24] Big, big time. Those athletes don't have the same honor code. And let me tell you, I've spoken with many, many other athletes since then who said, first of all, I'm so sorry that happened to you. And second of all, yeah, I experienced the same culture there. I knew that I just didn't talk about the things that I did if I wanted to play, or I would start to talk about it with my coaches and they would say, I don't want to know. They wanted plausible deniability. 100%. The coaches want to know. They don't want to know because they don't want to be held accountable for the things, things that they know or they'll keep the secrets too with them because they want their players to play. And in the end, I want these players to play. But that doesn't mean that we treat humans differently because they're better at sports or not. That's the ultimate thing here, is that I am not less of, less value to God and to that school or I shouldn't be, but I was definitely treated that way. And so all the dead bodies that you don't see, I was one of them. Them. And I knew all the other ones because I was in the same boat and I experienced the same things. And occasionally when I would talk about this Story. They would, they would share their story too, of how they either were told by a coach not to share things or they were told or, or they were publicly shamed. Like those are your options, to be publicly shamed. To have a spirit of con. Of secrecy there, of dishonesty, of not owning your actions no matter what person they're involving. Like, we're dealing with people's emotions here. Their, their collegiate careers, their. Like the, these, these athletes have put every single bit of their lives into this program. I've seen the hours that they put in. I've been there before practice and after practice. I've seen the blood, sweat and tears. And on top of that, they have to have an education. And then, then they're, then they're not allowed to have jobs. So they're stuck in the system because it's like, I can't pay for school if I wanted to, but I have a scholarship, so I have to maintain that scholarship. So there's not a chance that I'm going to talk about the things that I'm doing because that will be ripped away from me or I do talk about it, and I exist in a hypocritical society. What kind of humans are we spitting

Carah Burrell [03:15:44] out of that system at 18 years old? Sometimes that are not meant to be under that kind of strain, stress, that are kind of thrust into a system. Yeah, that's really difficult. So from that point forward. So you said that you were kicked out of school for. Was it one year?

Expelled from BYU and the Aftermath

Kelly Trust [03:16:02] Yes, it was one year. So I talked with Dean Hempry about it and I said, I'll just, you know, go to UVU for a year or whatever. And then I have to ask, how

John Dehlin [03:16:12] is it not stupid for them to not punish him and punish you? Because you could be a whistleblower or like I'm thinking, if I'm trying to be the godfather like Dean Hempry, and I want to avoid this becoming public knowledge, the last thing I'm going to do is exonerate the athlete and punish the woman. I wonder how in the world in their calculus, they felt like that was a smart thing to do. Or do you just have to silence and get rid of the woman? Like, I don't. Do you have any idea?

Kelly Trust [03:16:40] I probably convinced them that I truly believed in their cause laws.

John Dehlin [03:16:44] It was you.

Kelly Trust [03:16:45] Yeah, and. And partially I did feel responsible in that situation. You're right. I am held to higher standards because he doesn't have those same rules. So if I'm the person who has these laws that I'M God's laws that I'm breaking. When he doesn't believe he's breaking God's laws, I should be more responsible.

John Dehlin [03:17:03] I mean, you were groomed as a Mormon woman to believe that a sexual indiscretion is your fault, is that right?

Kelly Trust [03:17:10] Yes, I was groomed to believe that it was my fault. And I was also groomed to believe that Mormons are held to a higher standard than the rest of the world and that if we act differently after knowing better, we are worse.

John Dehlin [03:17:24] The more. More light, more responsibility kind of argument. Yes. Or more. Much is given, much is required.

Kelly Trust [03:17:29] Much is required. So more was required of me. And when I did not meet those requirements and he did not meet those requirements, I felt like it should have been heavier on my shoulders. It. I agreed with them. And I think I got that message across to the dean enough to where he felt like I wasn't a liability, which.

John Dehlin [03:17:48] You're expendable.

Kelly Trust [03:17:49] Yeah, I was expendable. And if I never came back, then good riddance from his eyes. And I. I was. At that point, I had withdrawn from my classes. I had barely made it in on time to go to uvu. And so it's like, okay, I was doing the things already. And so he thought, okay, she's compliant with what we're saying here and she's not going to talk about it because we're protecting people.

John Dehlin [03:18:12] You got handled.

Kelly Trust [03:18:13] Oh, I got handled.

John Dehlin [03:18:14] He handled you.

Kelly Trust [03:18:15] He did. He was good at it.

John Dehlin [03:18:18] Fixer.

Kelly Trust [03:18:19] Yeah, he's a fixer and he fixed it. And he's still fixing things over there. He got promoted to some other higher. It's like administrative position. He's not in that role as Dean of Students anymore. But I know he's still there. That's why I say his name, because I'm like, no, this is someone who's still running stuff over at byu, who's still making decisions about out. Whose life matters more. Because I thought my life was over for a second. I was like, I'm getting kicked out of college and I have to talk to my family and friends about this. And they know. And anybody who knows me well enough knows who it was with, too, and are seeing him play on that field that year and are seeing that he didn't get kicked out. So again, like. Like my family knew. And again, I don't judge them for not knowing how to handle the situation and not whatever. Like it's their own decision how they're going to react to that. But I think I almost wanted my family to fight for me. I wanted my family to stand up for me and to say, no, you matter just as much as that person. But the fact that there wasn't the fight made me believe they thought the same thing as the school, that that person mattered more. And it was more important for that person to be at the school than I. I was because he was representing BYU and making BYU look good and I wasn't. So I carried that weight for a long time. I was really mad. But a year later I said, what did I promise the dean that I would do? Go back.

Carah Burrell [03:19:57] So you did.

Kelly Trust [03:19:59] So I did one year at UVU

Carah Burrell [03:20:00] and then went back to one year at uvu.

Kelly Trust [03:20:02] Whereas where I met my husband, I didn't meet him at uvu, but I met him during that time, which, mind you, I met somebody during a time where I was very emotionally and sexually traumatized. And he loved me anyway more than any other human that the planet loved me and wanted me and thought I was great and tried his very hardest to love me. He was just as livid at this system as I was. But of course, like, he always saw the hypocrisy in the church of being perfect, and then if you're not perfect, you're cast out. He never liked the culture of the church, which was just rampant all over byu, because we just have this perfectionism culture and we don't allow grace and if, you know, faith without works is dead and those sort of things. And it's just like, oh, it's gross. And he saw it and I was. I didn't have to deal with that quite as much because I was down in athletics with my people, the sinners who were good at hiding things. Because I was in the sports medicine program, so wonderful program there, where I was able to see the behind the scenes part a lot more. Okay. And I just kind of thought, okay, now's the point where I keep my mouth shut. Now's the point where I just get done with school. And if I know things and if I have issues with this program and this school, those are my own issues. It's not everybody's problem. This is just my problem. So for the most part, I didn't really talk about it, but I did hear things from other people. And I would be like, hey, me too. This, the honor code office treated me terribly. But you're not a bad person and you're here and you're trying your best and those things. And I tried to be a better voice. I was still a true believing Mormon who was still trying to do everything that I was supposed to. And I thought I needed to prove a point by going back and overcoming that challenge. People again, ask me, why'd you go back? Because I said I was gonna go back. Because I do what I say I'm gonna do, even if it makes me uncomfortable. I'm supposed to do the right thing, no matter how uncomfortable it makes me. That's been my pattern my whole life. And I was expected to graduate from byu. That was all I ever wanted in my whole life. So if I can go back, yeah, of course I'm gonna go back. Screw this garbage school 15 minutes away, which, actually, I loved those people at UVU because there's just so many. So many more real people. That was the one time I thought I wanted to be a. An interpreter for deaf people because there's a strong deaf community over there and they have a great program, and I. I loved that. I been in sign language, but, you know, I. So I thought, you know, if. I guess if I stay at uvu, I could do that. But then I was like, no, no, I really want to do sports medicine. I want to go back to byu, and that's where I can do it. So I go back to byu. I'm married at this point, start the athletic training program. And.

John Dehlin [03:23:34] And

Kelly Trust [03:23:37] my last semester in the program, I got placed with BYU football during the senior season of this player that I was. That I had this indiscretion.

Carah Burrell [03:23:50] What does that mean? Because, like, it means that you're taping them up or what? Like you're working one on one with them consistently.

Kelly Trust [03:23:56] Yeah. So being placed with the football team in season is a big deal as an athletic trainer, because those student athletic trainers have to be the most capable, the ones that are able to handle situations, because there's too many players for one athletic trainer, head athletic trainer to handle everybody. So he needs more eyes and ears, right? He needs those things, and he needs knowledgeable people. And as someone who was a fourth semester, I was like, okay, look, they need somebody else over there. I can. I can handle this. I'm strong enough. I'm over it. I've healed. I've moved on. I had not even started to heal from that, but I thought I was okay. Okay. And I was married. So I thought at this point, like, it's fine. It's all water under the bridge because I got married in the temple, and thank heavens that I got married in the temple and made it there and accomplished that task. That's how I felt at that point. My husband at the time was not super thrilled with the fact that I was going to be spending a bunch of time around this person. But I said, look, for the most part, there's enough people there that I. I don't really have to talk to him a ton. And I. We hadn't spoken since that happened because we were obviously on the outs. And so I was a little concerned that he was still upset with me. So that was my only concern, going into working with the football team in season. I'm there every single practice.

Carah Burrell [03:25:15] I wait. Sorry, just to be clear.

Kelly Trust [03:25:17] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [03:25:18] When you say upset with you, you mean that he was upset with you for even confessing that.

Kelly Trust [03:25:23] For tattling off that.

Carah Burrell [03:25:24] That even rocked the boat for his career.

Kelly Trust [03:25:26] Yeah, that I could have. I could have ruined his career right then. If he got suspended for a year, who knows where he would be?

Carah Burrell [03:25:33] So he and his. Probably his friends and stuff still had a vendetta in the back of their mind that Kelly is back at BYU now and, like, kind of watch out.

Kelly Trust [03:25:42] And not only that, she's around athletics all the time, so don't tell her a darn thing and don't trust her, because she's gonna say something. And I was a different human then, but that's neither here nor there. Like, that's all they knew about me. And so I was like, okay, I get that. And this person is very, very big on loyalty. Like. Like, loyalty is his number one thing. And I was not loyal to him by being loyal to myself, which is what I felt like I was doing at the time. I really believed I was doing the right thing. I wasn't really trying to hurt anybody. I wasn't trying to destroy careers. I was trying to heal. And other people were involved, other people who made decisions for themselves, mind you. It was not like I was forcing sex on this person. No. He came into my apartment, into my bedroom, hanging out with me. Natural progression of things. That is how that went. So he was just as much responsible for that situation as I was. And. And that was more so for me. It was like, own your shit if you're gonna do that. I'm good at owning my shit. I'm good at being open about the things that I do wrong, because people are. We make mistakes, and that's okay. And so I figured if I'm offering forgiveness and grace, then everybody else should offer me the same forgiveness and grace, which is not really fair to expect that from other.

Carah Burrell [03:27:16] Other people.

Kelly Trust [03:27:16] But that's what I did expect, because that's what the righteous human would do. Right.

Carah Burrell [03:27:22] You're saying, like, he never owned up, that he was just as interested in getting into bed as you were. That. Because there's the perception again, going back to, like, the way you're talking about your upbringing that, like, you had a lot of people heaped on you that, like, the expectation was that you were gonna keep the boys at bay, but there takes two to tango. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Kelly Trust [03:27:52] Yes.

Carah Burrell [03:27:52] That's like, he never. He never owned up to that.

Kelly Trust [03:27:55] It takes two to tango, big time. And I don't think I ever. I don't. I never got that he owned that. I. The message never got to me. Me. It was more. The message that got to me was, he's denying this out the wazoo. That's the message I got. And. And how dare you break the. The circle of trust. How dare you not be so chill?

Carah Burrell [03:28:24] That's what I was about to say.

Kelly Trust [03:28:25] Exactly.

Carah Burrell [03:28:26] They thought you were chill.

Kelly Trust [03:28:27] They thought I was chill.

Carah Burrell [03:28:28] But you're technically conditioned since you were maybe 10 years old, that you need to go talk to a bishop to be right with God again. And maybe I don't want to put words in your mouth, but, like, the way that you're made right with God again in this system, in your mind since you were a child.

Kelly Trust [03:28:45] Right. Was you.

Carah Burrell [03:28:47] Yeah. You confess and you go through this repentance process, and for somebody else, that's not their experience. That's not the way that they feel right in the world or with God again. And they are just throwing, you know, crap at you for you doing the best that you can do with the systems that you were raised with and the conditioning that you had.

Kelly Trust [03:29:06] Right.

Carah Burrell [03:29:07] Yeah.

Kelly Trust [03:29:07] I. I don't think that I am a hateful, vengeful person who's trying to ruin everybody's lives. Did I always do everything right? Did I always treat everybody perfectly? No, of course not. Nobody does. You know, but at least I'm not sitting here saying it never happened or that it wasn't as real to me as it was to you, because I don't think I would ever want to deny people's real experience. Experiences. You know, in talking about this, there was. You know, someone told me, keep it between you and a therapist. The things that I'm saying. I wish I had somebody to say them to me. I wish I had somebody to talk about these things or that I heard that it happened to someone else the way that it happened to me. Because that wasn't the experience. I got the experience I got was both people are just as guilty and they get kicked out when that happens. But that's not what happened to me. And so I thought, either I'm worse than them or that person matters that much more. Like, there's just. There's just not. Things were not lining up okay. And I had been programmed to believe that that was okay, and that's just the way things were. And I just needed to suck it up, up and be stronger than that. So my way to prove to myself that I was stronger than that was saying, yeah, I'll work with football. I'll do that. I can do this. And then I'm around this person all the time. Because we take care of our players very well. I will admit that We. We physically care for them very well. Emotionally, we are turning them into these secretive, like. I don't want to say abusive because. But I do think that some people could become manipulative for that reason. That, oh, well, I can get away with whatever I can get away with because I am an athlete. You're teaching somebody that they are better because of what they do. And I don't think teaching somebody ever that they're better than any human ever is ever. Right. That's just not how we treat humans. That's just not how we treat wonderful young women who are trying to contribute to this program. You know, I had. I had. You know, and. And I. I spent all this time with this team, and I learned, honestly, I learned to love BYU football again because I was a little bitter about it for a minute because I'm seeing this process person play, and I'm like, he's doing really well. And part of me wishes that he was sucking because then it would make me feel justified. That's not a wonderful thought. But I didn't. I remember thinking that to, like, look at who you fell on your sword for, but then that's, you know, it was like, oh, look who you fell on your sword for. Okay, whatever. You know, he. He did good things for you, so congrats. The only thing is, this person also had to sit out another season because he did something with someone else that was more public.

Carah Burrell [03:32:27] Oh, really? So he kind of. He was mad. He was upset with you because you kind of, like, rocked the boat, so to speak. But then going back, we were talking about, like, with Brandon Davies and stuff. It's not that they learned their lesson necessarily to, like, you know, keep it under control or whatever.

Kelly Trust [03:32:44] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [03:32:46] So we ended up sitting out a whole season.

Kelly Trust [03:32:49] I believe it was a whole Season. I think it was a season I'm trying to remember exactly because I was trying to not pay attention to this because at the time I was thinking like, I could burn down buildings for how I feel right now because of the publicity of it. It like in my head I'm just like, since when does how many people know about something matter to our, our value or whether the severity of the situation that contributes to the severity of the situation?

John Dehlin [03:33:23] By the. By the way, I was a branch president on my mission and I read in the manual that the publicity of an event factors into whether or not someone is disciplined with the dis. No, no punishment, disfellowshipment or more excommunication that goes into how the church handles disciplinary councils. There's a long standing policy that the more public behavior is, the more likely for more severe consequences. So that's, that's actually very Mormon.

Double Standards for Athletes Versus Female Students

Kelly Trust [03:33:53] It is very Mormon. And I asked my dad one time about how he felt about that and he said, well, yeah, of course the publicity matters. And I'm like, okay, hold up. This is my dad talking to me about a situation with me. Me. Like, he's not saying this that way, right? He's not actually saying the publicity really matters. But then I asked again, I'm like, okay, so how many people knows about an event changes my punishment in the hereafter? Because that's what we're saying there. Because that's a pattern, an eternal pattern. If we're talking about this, this gospel that is eternal. And he's like, well, when we're on earth, people are affected differently by things that people, people do. And if more people know about that, but know that that person's still in that position, then they would make assumptions about things. And I wanted to be like, who the fuck cares what assumptions they make? Their relationship with God and their repentance process is with God and doesn't matter who knows about it, who doesn't know about it, that does not change the severity of a sin. No.

Carah Burrell [03:34:56] Right. That's a really important point to make because I hear a lot from people who listen to this podcast. We're talking right now about, about a system in the church and a religion that is centered around spirituality and a relationship with a higher being and a deity that shouldn't have this type of power in these ways to affect you, like you said in the hereafter or here. And so what can be done within the system to make sure that doesn't happen? And so the whole point of this conversation honestly is bringing it back to like what needs to be done to fix that so that, that people are not just the carnage that's thrown under the bus for people to get run over on the bus full of BYU athletes on the way to their gaming anyway, their travel bus.

Kelly Trust [03:35:40] Right.

Carah Burrell [03:35:41] So you ended up working in the sports medicine with this player. What else did you want to mention about that point in time?

Kelly Trust [03:35:49] We healed through spending all that time together, more or less. And it was, hey, this is a part of our path. This isn't something that needs to separate us as humans. So while we don't need to be best friends, we also don't need to have any hate towards each other or any anger towards each other because it doesn't do either one of us any good. We're going to be around each other a lot. So let's not make it more painful than it needs to be. I did ask the head athletic trainer, I said don't because you kind of get assigned certain positions to take care of. And I was assigned the quarterbacks in the top tight ends so you can rule out that group of people. And so I didn't have to be around them all the time, but I still had to see him enough to where it was like, okay, we have to be able to communicate. I have to be able to offer you a water bottle without you just being like, I'm not even gonna look at your face. Like, that wasn't how I was gonna do this. I wasn't gonna feel more uncomfortable there than I already did feel. And I wanted it to be a good experience. And honestly in the end it was, it was hard. And there was all sorts of other things that like was hard about it because it's a very demanding time. Demanding. Like I'd be there at 4:30 in the morning and sometimes not get home until 6 or 7pm because we have early morning practice. And then you have your classes and then you have training room time where you have to literally just be sitting in there waiting for people to come in and get treatment. And that's totally dependent on their, the players class schedule. And then sometimes we had to close down the training room and then that would usually happen around 5ish. And then you have to clean up everything and then you have to do everything the next day and get ready, get ready for practice. So I'm doing this every single day for the whole time. I spent a lot of time with these men. I would say boys, but we're trying to make amends. So sure, I'll say men we, they are great people. They are trying their hardest to be good boys and to be good players. And they are making just as many messed up decisions as any other collegiate athlete out there. But they feel a burden and the shame and that they have to keep it so secret because if they are not 100 representing the school how they need to, then they're failing in their role there. I know so many people who felt that weight or so many people who just lost faith in the system altogether. Lost faith in the school as a good university altogether. As a, as the Lord's university. Like, nah, not this place. This place is same as any other place. And it's just, it is what it is. I'll just suck it up and play the sport. Shut up and drink scribble, if you will. That's what someone said to LeBron James. If we don't remember that, okay, I'm like, do we have the context here?

Carah Burrell [03:38:43] Not Rihanna, shut up and drive. It was. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [03:38:47] Or Dixie Chick, shut up and sing.

Kelly Trust [03:38:48] Exactly, yeah, but it was shut up and play. That's what it was. And that doesn't teach people to be responsible for their own actions. It doesn't teach integrity. So then we're taking those men and then putting them out into the world and saying, contribute to society and be normal and treat people with respect. And they're not treated like these amazing people, like they were at byu. Because let me tell you, if you're a BYU football player, everybody at that school idolizes you and you're walking around in your warm ups and they know that you are a football player and they love you and they want to be your friend and they want to hang out with you and they want to please you and they want to be like, I saw the fandom towards these players who are just, Just people.

Carah Burrell [03:39:34] Yeah, yeah.

Kelly Trust [03:39:35] They are people with emotions and feelings and goals and dreams and. And you know, my athletic training side, we're not treating their injuries like we need to either because we're doing the same thing that every other school does, which is say you're hurt, well, let's give you a steroid injection and send you out anyway. So we're then not treating their bodies like they need to be treated. And later on they have all these issues physically because of that too. We have linemen that we're making incredibly overweight just so that they can push somebody over. And it's like there's no health and physiology basis behind that. It's this, it's this not treating these people like people, we're treating them like numbers and statistics and money.

John Dehlin [03:40:24] Not to mention the head injury stuff, right?

Kelly Trust [03:40:26] Yeah, we talk about all sorts of head injury things, concussions. Like I work in concussion field. I have a sister who deals with people who have all sorts of problems. She's currently working with a football player right now that just left the school and is dealing with his own problems. And that's so sad that it's like, okay, if we are the Lord's university, if we are better, then be better. Treat people like people, don't treat them like money, don't treat them like statistics. Don't figure out what their monetary worth is to you. That is not how we are supposed to treat people ever.

Carah Burrell [03:41:05] No. And like sports is these statistics that you're bringing things to me, like, you know, football seasons and things like that are so temporary and a one tackle, you know, we're talking about a head injury that can affect somebody for the rest of their life.

Kelly Trust [03:41:21] Life.

Carah Burrell [03:41:22] All to gain advancement in, you know, the, the sports world. When to me, Mormonism always came back to eternal perspectives about treating people as brothers and sisters. And you know, that we came here to learn a lesson and how much that just seems like it gets really muddled in a really dirty way when you bring religion, collegiate sports, money, money, reputation, peace, pr.

John Dehlin [03:41:51] Right.

Kelly Trust [03:41:52] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [03:41:52] When you just.

Kelly Trust [03:41:53] It just do it for the clout.

Carah Burrell [03:41:54] Yeah, there's. It just seems like I like a lot of these things. I assumed I kind of made assumptions about the way that it is and the way that you're telling me it is right now. It just really breaks my heart because I do know though that Mormons have such a good. Have such a good heart and if they knew the ways that all of these things are all kind of muddied together, I would hope that people would want better. They would want better for fellow Mormons, fellow people that are in the system, fellow athletes, that this. It's really heartbreaking to hear.

John Dehlin [03:42:23] The catch 22 though, is if. If BYU starts being more strict, if they punish everyone equally, if they really hold the athletes to a true standard, then they lose and they lose all the time. And. And that's not good for money. It's a waste of money. It becomes a financial loser. And then the PR is bad because we have a sucky football and basketball team. And so the church is in a real pickle because. Because if they're a constant loser, that. That's no good for anybody. Right.

Carah Burrell [03:42:50] Who knew that a church named after Brigham Young was not set up for success. Like this. Weird, interesting, weird ironic.

Kelly Trust [03:42:57] But that's a, that's a whole other podcast. But yeah, I mean, they are 100 concerned with their image and if they want to be better, they're not going to have the same sort of athletes. Unfortunately, they, that's more of a sports culture because sports culture is party, drink, sex, all those things. And that's a bigger problem that needs to be solved. But it seeps into BYU just as much as it seeps into any other school. We're not any different than any other university that deals with these things. It's a different level at other school. I heard about an Alabama player whose girlfriend got pregnant and because he was a high profile player and she got pregnant with someone else and was still his girlfriend or whatever, they paid her to have an abortion in his dorm room. They did the abortion in his dorm room and paid her right there. Lawyer and a doctor show up at his door. So that's the extreme version of it where we're saying, hey, female, you don't actually have any worth. And your feelings and your emotional state doesn't matter to us. It's just money. And whether this player succeeds and how he looks in the public eye, that's garbage and shouldn't exist in the sports world. But it for damn sure shouldn't exist at byu. Because if we're saying they're actually better and they are saying they're actually better and that's the image that they're putting out there, then be better.

Carah Burrell [03:44:19] Be better. Yeah.

Kelly Trust [03:44:22] Otherwise, give them the grace and the forgiveness and the opportunity to be mentally stronger than that and to handle their situation. Patience with people who know how to help them to be stronger and better. Instead of having a coach and a bishop take a car full of guys to a strip club and then on

John Dehlin [03:44:43] the way home, this is a BYU coach.

Kelly Trust [03:44:45] This is a BYU coach. And then on the way home, having that bishop say, okay, confess to me all of this, the thoughts, the actions, the sins that you did and you will be good to go to church tomorrow and take the sacrament. I heard that story from someone who was in the car when that happened.

Carah Burrell [03:45:05] That's outrageous.

Kelly Trust [03:45:06] It's outrageous. It's disgusting is what it is. Because we are teaching these people, you don't actually have to take responsibility for your actions and you don't have to feel bad about these things even. And who knows what kind of thoughts were encouraging in that situation. Because we are flawed people and we have flawed thoughts and we are not perfect. And I don't Think everybody always has pure intentions. I think there are a lot of really good boys there. I think that there are also people who are susceptible to becoming abusers, and we're encouraging their attitude of, I get to do what I want to do because I'm a man.

John Dehlin [03:45:42] And hiding things.

Kelly Trust [03:45:43] And hiding things and lying.

Carah Burrell [03:45:47] It's not taking responsibility. Yeah, that's a wild, wild double standard that it seems like has been really active throughout your entire life.

Kelly Trust [03:45:54] It has.

John Dehlin [03:45:55] Does.

Carah Burrell [03:45:56] Is there anything else you want to say about that period before. Do you want to briefly mention talking about your marriage?

Kelly Trust [03:46:02] Yes, I do.

John Dehlin [03:46:03] Yeah. But, yeah, before we go to your faith and stuff, anything else to sum up your BYU time?

Kelly Trust [03:46:10] I don't think that BYU is a terrible place. I don't think it's full of a bunch of sinners and bad people. I think there is some administration that has been doing this for so long that they don't know any other way to do it, or at this point, they can't do it differently, because if they did, then how many people are they saying, yeah, we did treat you like shit. We did do that wrong. It's like, would that be so validating for any other person who's been treated that way by the honor code office or by administration there? Yeah, it'd be really validating to be like, I'm sorry that we handled it that way. That wasn't correct. And I'm sorry that women made you feel like you weren't worth as much to us or that we didn't value you as much. Like, that would be awesome if they could do that. I don't. I can't expect that from them. I can't expect them to make any changes. But I think that, honestly, I think Coach Sataki is way better than that. I think he is somebody who can offer that sort of grace. Kalani Sataki is somebody who didn't have to speak to any of the student athletic trainers, but did, including me. I've had a couple conversations with them of, hey, how's it going? It's hot out here. Do you need some water? Can I get you anything? Like, no, you're totally fine. And sitting there and teaching these boys about responsibility and about how they do. They are held to a higher standard. A higher standard than everybody else at the school. Not just not the same one, but a higher one because you are representing this university and. And be better, you know, and so I think he's teaching them the right things instead of teaching them to hide things. I don't know what the right answer is, but he's creating this whole Fit for Life program that's like, how do we help them succeed in business and their education after this program? Okay, those are important things. But also how do we teach them to be wonderful husbands and men and people in the church and people in society that are, that have integrity? That's one thing I would love to see more of instead of how do we make them more money after? They are going to make money for sure. It's like, do we only care about money and business? And is that all we care about? Reputation?

John Dehlin [03:48:25] There was a time when BYU Idaho or Rick's before had its own football and basketball teams. And then at some point when they renamed it BYU Idaho, they canceled all those teams. And I can totally see now why, why it's, it's hard enough to probably handle the eruptions at BYU Provo. I could see the general authorities all breathing a collective sigh of relief. It's like, well, at least we don't have to worry about these scandals at BYU Idaho anymore. And I'm sure there's general authorities that have thought, let's just get rid of BYU athletics altogether. But once they do that, it's like, what about all the fans? What about what type, you know, what about the reputation? Is it really a definition, Division one, top tier university if it can't even have successful, you know, basketball and football teams? But then if they, if they just enforce the rules, then they just have sucky, terrible teams and that, that's a disaster as well. So I'm sure there are general authorities that would want all of BYU athletics to be just eliminated. But, but I think their hands are probably tied.

Kelly Trust [03:49:28] I don't know what the right answer is. All I know is that it's not okay the way that it is. And it's, it's, it's training these really, really good boys. It's ruining them because I've seen them when they come in the program and when they leave, and let me tell you, that's a much harder person. How does it ruin emotionally? They, they become jaded because they see over and over again where the church fails people and where women aren't treated the same and where they get to get away with things because of who they are, because of what sport they play. They see it over and over again through their whole career, and then they come out the other side saying, well, you know, it's all just a big pile of anyway, so I don't think we're making stronger, better men. I think we're making more secretive, more. We're damaging them on different levels in different ways through this awful culture that exists there right now surrounding the honor code and what is acceptable to do and what's the level and how public is it. It's just garbage. It's not okay with the way that it is. And I've known people who've just been like, well, you know, this is my only option now know. It's like, no, we don't want to take that away from them. I lost faith in that system. I told my parents, because I have a little sister. I said, not a chance. Would I try and recommend her dating a single one of these people. No, keep her away. I don't want any of my. Of. Of anybody's daughters. If they said, oh, well, he's a BYU football player, I'd be like, oh, you should probably keep them away. You should probably just. Just get your daughter away from that situation. And that's so sad that I feel that way. But I can't trust the system. I can't trust the system. I can't know what's good and what's bad, because it's all the same.

Carah Burrell [03:51:29] That's a really interesting, like, window into that whole entire world that so many of us are completely blind to. Some, like, sometimes just being Mormon is synonymous with being a BYU football fan.

John Dehlin [03:51:42] Go, Cougars. You know, rise and child.

Kelly Trust [03:51:45] Anybody has a BYU shirt on outside of the state of Utah, you'll often be like, go, Cougs. And it's like, they. They're in the same club as me, you know? Yeah, it's. I don't think that we need to say, oh, they're terrible, and let's trash them and throw them through the dirt, because I'm telling you, these are people that are trying their best, but it's a system.

Carah Burrell [03:52:10] Yeah.

Kelly Trust [03:52:10] That is spitting these people out damaged. And it's like, ow. No, not my school. Not my people. Those are still my people. Because I graduated from there. I have that diploma on the wall that says, I graduated from Brigham Young University, and I. I love that. I own it.

John Dehlin [03:52:30] It.

Kelly Trust [03:52:31] I will encourage people to go to the school because I think academically it's great. I think the sports program is set up in a way that is great, but I don't think that it's a good culture there, and it's the culture of the church that's seeped into everything. And it's like, that's almost a situation where we got to separate church and state.

Carah Burrell [03:52:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:52:56] Yeah.

Kelly Trust [03:52:57] Because if we Don't. It's going to crumble and fall. Yeah. So either we're going to be not as good at all of our sports or we're going to keep making these people. And I've had. Because I've shared a few of these things kind of on Instagram and Facebook as I've been processing them on my own. And I've had a couple players have been like, oh, that stuff doesn't happen. And I'm like, okay, you keep going. Keep trying, I guess, to put that face on. But it's just not the reality of the situation. The reality of the situation is that they are just as human as any other collegiate players and they're doing all the same stuff and we're just hiding it better because everybody believes that they're amazing.

Carah Burrell [03:53:44] Yeah. Between the Lord's university and doing, I mean, catching a football at like a full speed or some. These people are superheroes sometimes. Right? Like, they are really badass, like, amazing people. So they are put on pedestals that spiritually and athletically, psychologically, we're humankind. We're not even meant to honestly be put on those types of pedestals. That just sounds like it's wildly psychologically damaging for the athletes and the. For the people that are, like, harmed in their wake, I guess. Were you able to express everything that you wanted to talk about in that section?

Kelly Trust [03:54:21] Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'm sure there's other things that I've thought about it, but that's kind of. That's the meat. That's the meat in me trying to spit out the bones. I have to take the meat and spit out the bones and say, what did I learn? How do I heal? What do we do differently? I don't necessarily need to sit there and linger on all of the meat. Things that people said and all of the. The trash that's there. Yeah, there's more. I don't need to air everybody's dirty laundry. I just wanted to talk about my particular experience with that program and with. With how it handled it and what I'm seeing come from it. I'm not saying this is happening to every single person who's ever been an athlete at byu. I'm just saying I was hurt by this. It made me feel like I wasn't worth enough to them. And nobody should ever feel like they aren't as worth. They don't have the same worth as another human, ever. Any human. For what sport they play, for what gender they are, for who they have sex with, for Their, you know, their sexuality, for their skin color, for any reason. We do not treat people differently because of who they are, are, and because of things that they do. We, we have rules and things to keep us safe. There's a reason we have laws in the world. It's to help keep us safe. But then we don't treat people differently if they break the same rule. We treat people the same. That's how I work anyway.

Life After BYU and Impact on Marriage

Carah Burrell [03:55:56] So how much did all of this stuff then affect you after leaving byu?

Kelly Trust [03:56:04] I know that it affected me in large part in my marriage. This habit at this point of being responsible for the happiness and comfort and, well, being of another man might have bled into my marriage a bit. And, and I thought my husband's responsibility was my job. And if he wasn't happy, I probably wasn't doing something right. And he's dealing with a very traumatized person who hasn't approached any of that because I just think, you know, I just need to be stronger than that. He had his own things that he was, he was a product of the system too. He had parents that were a little more lax. So he kind of always had, had. He was able to think freer and have his own thoughts and opinions about things. And he helped me honestly start thinking for myself and say, hey, maybe everything that your mom and dad say and do isn't always perfect. And that was really earth shattering for me because I thought, no, no, my parents always have my best intentions. They would never. And then I, you know, I'm thinking back and I'm, I'm like, but did they. Maybe there's, maybe there's things I'm not addressing there. Okay, well, if not, then I need to start thinking for myself and I need to really start standing up for myself. And I saw my, my voice grow louder in that relationship because he encouraged me to be those things. But he was still concerned with being the best patriarch that there was. And I was concerned with his priesthood and him being able to provide the things that I needed, like being able to baptize my kids. That was like, it was a huge thing for me. And so

Carah Burrell [03:58:13] he,

Kelly Trust [03:58:15] he made mistakes and I made mistakes. And I think it was both of us expecting the other person to be more perfect than we actually were. And we didn't allow enough grace for the other human in that situation. And it made me not feel valued and it made him feel like, I don't know, I can't speak for him, so I won't. But it made me feel like my opinion wasn't valued enough in that situation that what he wanted was more important than what I wanted.

Carah Burrell [03:58:46] Wanted

Kelly Trust [03:58:49] the same way that I've acted out my entire life is sexually. So when I did not feel wanted and loved by my own husband, I was unfaithful. I hurt him. It ended my marriage. I understand that he didn't do everything right, and there were reasons that I cheated and I didn't do everything right. And cheating is not right. When you agree to maintain a relationship with someone and you say, I won't step outside of that relationship, and then you break that promise, it is very difficult, and it's not something that I can. My options are to sit around and feel bad about it or to try and heal from it. And I am trying to figure out why it was that I would do something that would hurt somebody that I loved. And I think it was probably because I wasn't offered the kind of love that I really wanted and that I really needed from my family. And I expected more of him. So the second that he started to question Joseph Smith, I thought, oh, I need to get out of this right now. It was very hard for me to process that thought. I told him, I said, I don't know how I'm supposed to continue a relationship with you because you don't believe. You're not sure that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God.

John Dehlin [04:00:14] So he started questioning first.

Kelly Trust [04:00:15] He started questioning first. He kind of always. Kind of always questioned. He told me at one point that he believes he. He's never felt the spirit before. And I. And I told him, maybe you just haven't felt it in the same way that everybody else has. But it doesn't mean you haven't had good feelings or confirming feelings to you that things are true. I kind of thought he was crazy. I was like, no, of course you felt the spirit. It, you know, God just communicates with you in a different way. And that's. That's kind of how I helped him cope with that one, you know, but he was told on his mission, you know, if you don't have a testimony, say it anyway. Lie to convince people to join the church. He, you know, he. He had his own shelf breakers, right? And so. And he heard all of the garbage that is in the CS letter before it was in the CES letter, because it was all out there. Just someone said, let me put it all into one happy package for you. And after getting divorced, though, because things happened, all sorts of things that I don't need to go into, except to say that in the end, it wasn't really great on either part. And we both have our things to work through and our challenges to work through on the that.

John Dehlin [04:01:34] Okay, did you have, did you have church discipline?

Kelly Trust [04:01:37] I know because at this point we kind of had just gotten lazy and stopped going to church. And so although I did, I did at one point when he first started to doubt the church, I went to my bishop and I said, what am I supposed to do with this? And he kind of said, well, you know, if he doesn't change his mind, eventually you do what's best for you and your family. So I had another reinforced principle of, of let's have the church matter than the human that you love,

Carah Burrell [04:02:10] like your allegiance to being, to staying in the church that alone your bishop was. What was he implying? That like that could be an option for divorce just so that you stay aligned with the church.

Kelly Trust [04:02:22] You'd be plenty justified to leave him simply for that matter, even if he's not actually doing anything to make you upset, you know, and he wasn't abusive. He wasn't like, we all had our. I say we were probably emotionally abusive to each other because we kind of held things over our head. Well, you're not perfect. No, neither are you. It's like that doesn't do anybody good. And it is, it is manipulative and wrong and not the right way to handle a marriage. But he got raised in a system that said, said he is his job and his ability to provide for the family is his identity. And when he wasn't completely focused on that, then he probably wasn't doing something right. And the thing that finally did it for me was that he said his business was more important to him than I was really. And he said those words to me and I was like, wait, say that again. And he repeated the same thing like, this is what you mean though. So my emotions aren't as important. My emotions about this situation are not as important as this business. I said no. So at that point I kind of checked out emotionally.

Carah Burrell [04:03:36] And you already had a child together, right.

Kelly Trust [04:03:39] So I got pregnant at the same with. With luckily with my husband at the same time. I happened to cheat though.

Carah Burrell [04:03:48] Really?

Kelly Trust [04:03:49] So I spent my entire pregnancy with only one other human on the planet knowing about this. And so I dealt with that burden on my own and was scared to death to give birth to my child because he was either going to come out redheaded or he was going to be somewhat Hispanic and black haired. So I was very clear and beautiful, beautiful blonde, strawberry blonde hair, baby he looks exactly spitting image of his father. Wonderful that that happened because honestly, my ex husband now loves that child more than anything in the world. And he is a great father. And I love him as a human because he just had just as much shit happen in his life as in mine, and he had to deal with my shit. And I'm not saying that he's responsible for my emotions either, or that I'm responsible for his, but we both were victims of this system that said his job is his identity. And for me, it was being a mom was my identity. So when I didn't want to work as much as he wanted me to, and like, we just had this. This church that created this, set us up to fail, you know, I know that people come out the other side of it staying together, and that's awesome and fantastic. And I love seeing people who are post Mormon, who are married and who understand each other's experiences in that situation. That wasn't my case because of my own troubles in the way that I hurt him. And that was irreparable damage, damage there. And I understand that it's not something, and it's not my place to decide whether that can heal him or not. In the end, what matters is that we. Is that that child has two people in his life who love him no matter what he does. And. And we can do that married or not married. We weren't good together in the end. And I think we're both healing and growing and changing in a lot of ways. But kind of with that, with getting divorced, I think that was the final straw for me. That, like, okay, no, I have tried everything. I have done all of the things right. I have put as much effort as I possibly can into this church. What is it that I'm doing?

Carah Burrell [04:06:24] Right?

Kelly Trust [04:06:24] Wrong. And that was when Murder Among Mormons came out on Netflix. Murderer Among Mormons, I think that's what it's called. And that's pretty recent. Very recent. This. This year or almost last year. And my sister said, I'm going to read the CES letter. I said, all right, me too. And then we spent lots of time calling each other and being very, very upset about the things that we didn't know. Because not only did I drag myself through the dirt, but I dragged other people through the dirt with me for a church that wasn't even true. So all of the shame and all of the guilt and all of the sorry pain that I felt was for nothing. Are you kidding me? My shelf breakers. There were temple ordinances changing, so Much over time, people, not people being like, like, like the way that they used to do initiatories with touching people's bodies. Like, like I, I had someone touch my head and that was pretty much it. But my mom had to have her naked buddy body touched at different parts without. Without consent.

Carah Burrell [04:08:01] Right?

Kelly Trust [04:08:01] Without having that option. That's not okay. That existed there before and I just didn't know about it and I'm just supposed to be okay with that? Or penalties being taken out or the fact that this is all coming from Masonic principles? Like, are you, are you freaking kidding me? Me? How do I not know these things? How was I never told any of these things the way that I was taught. I was raised on missionary work. I told the same story of Joseph Smith learning about the church and going and praying and all the things and all of the happy story. And people just didn't like what he was saying. So he was persecuted and driven out of town. No, it's because he was trying to have sex with everybody's daughters and people didn't like that. And why was he turned feathered? Because a man said, no, you may not marry my daughter. And if you're going to keep trying and tell them that there's a, an angel with a flaming sword will smite you if you don't do this. All of these things, I was just like. And then the pearl of great price. And then I was like, oh, what about it? So seeing his. So Joseph Smith's ability as a translator so very, very. In our own set of scriptures that we have had our entire life, I can open that up and look at those facsimiles and looking at them now, I'm like a five year old. Drew on those things, filled in the gaps. And that's supposed to be right, supposed to be this person who's capable of translating things and knowing better. I can identify Anubis and I don't know anything about Egyptology except for what I see in textbooks. And let me tell you, that's not how you draw his head.

Faith Crisis and Discovering the CES Letter

Carah Burrell [04:09:47] It's like a head of a jackal or something, right?

Kelly Trust [04:09:49] Like it's a head of a jackal. Exactly. And he drew like some human head on this body because he's like, oh yeah. And God told me this, what it was. And I have the ability to translate. No you don't. Because we actually have science now. And I am. We have science and history and studying and all of these things that exist now.

John Dehlin [04:10:10] Now.

Kelly Trust [04:10:10] And now we're talking about them and it's like, holy crap. We just didn't talk about them because we don't have the capability to talk about them as much. And so thank you, Internet. Thank you, freedom of information, you know, and so it's like I. I have all these things here that are in front of me now that are telling me that everything that I punished myself for wasn't worth it and that I'm okay and that I am just, you know, I'm a. I'm a product of my experiences, for sure. And I have different challenges and different things that I'm working on and different things that I'm healing from because of that. But that's everybody's life experience, right? It's everybody. Not just Mormons, by the way. We are not different. There's. I've. You know, I live in Atlanta now, and people who were raised Jehovah's Witnesses or Baptists or whatever all felt the same shame and blame and guilt around sex because apparently it's this big taboo thing that we can't talk about and that we can't talk about in a healthy, wonderful way that helps us to want to share that with someone who is who we trust and love and who will value our emotions and treat us like such. That exists in every single church out there. We're no different. It's just a little bit worse here because we are a little bit stricter and a little bit more psycho about it. And. And when Joseph Smith fell, everything else did. Because how many times have we said, if Joseph Smith wasn't a true prophet, then none of it is. I've heard apostles, apostles say, if Joseph Smith wasn't a true prophet, then none of this stuff is true.

Carah Burrell [04:12:00] We're engaged in a great fraud. Is that a Hinckley quote?

John Dehlin [04:12:04] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [04:12:04] Yeah. Or Joseph Smith himself said that the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion. So did you have to break down

Kelly Trust [04:12:11] again, like, the Isaiah chapters, how they're the exact same to the italicized words as the King James version of those Isaiah chapters? That is straight plagiarism from the Bible. And nobody took the time to look because nobody likes the idea chapters in the Book of Mormon in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [04:12:30] Right.

Carah Burrell [04:12:31] And, like, did the anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. I mean,

Kelly Trust [04:12:35] that's the thing is. So the CES letters, for anybody who doesn't know, it's just a compilation of all of the historical issues basically, surrounding the church and things that ultimately would discredit Joseph Smith. Smith. Because if those things are true, Joseph Smith is Not a true prophet of God. And I can't know that Joseph Smith's story is any more true than the CES Letters version. But the fact that I cannot know does not mean I'm going to base my life around a super high demand religion that has all but trashed me and spit me back out and not valued me for who I am. And I think I'm pretty great. And I think I have a good head on my shoulders. And if I have any sort of rationale and if I have any sort of knowledge in here of what is right and what is wrong, that is wrong and that is manipulation. And anybody who is in a position in the church who knows better and continues to perpetuate this is just as guilty as Joseph Smith. In my head, those people, people either need to work on their integrity and talk about things that are difficult and tell me how you justify them. And not just justify them, but how you, you know, without. Without gaslighting people. Because that happens often. It's like these. This is. This is not okay. If our church is the one true church on the earth, then everything that's listed in here is not okay. And Joseph Smith myth is not capable of translating a back of a Kellogg cereal box. No. So there's no chance that he made the one true book on this earth. Because I can find all sorts of errors in there.

John Dehlin [04:14:27] Like what?

Kelly Trust [04:14:29] Well, you know, we can talk about tapers. It was like, actually, I saw this shirt that was like, I'm just gonna ride my taper to school or something like that, and had a little taper on there. That's a tiny animal. But we're talking about how horses weren't horses, they were tapirs. And I'm like, no, horses just weren't there. We know that because of history. That's a basic one. There's fossils and dinosaurs, but we can't. Can't what? No, we. We know how to date things. I was taught statistics and science at BYU to have a critically thinking mind, to ask for more information, to figure out where there might be confounding factors. And there's a million confounding factors here that aren't talked about. Because it looks bad on the church because it discredits Joseph Smith, because it discredits prophets. And it's like, you can't pick when a prophet is a prophet and when a prophet isn't a prophet, because that person either has the answers and God either has the answers or he doesn't, or he's not communicating with him because if we believe in an all powerful, all knowing God, then God knows their skin color doesn't matter. So we don't need to treat people who are black. We can't not give them the priesthood. What is your reasoning there? We are not treating that person like an individual. We're treating them differently simply because of their skin color. And mind you, who's sitting around deciding who is black enough to not have it and white enough to have it because there's a million different ranges of skin color there. It's the same reason if there's a different million different ranges of sexual sin and you're deciding which is more severe than others. A man is deciding that God is not picking that because let me tell you, God has loved me this whole time in some way or another, I have felt some sort of higher being. We call him God, a lot of people call him other things, but honestly, to me all organized religion is the same damn story. Trying to, to explain something that's unexplainable. And when you try and define that and then force those ideas on someone else, it doesn't work. And it takes away our own responsibility for our decisions because we're just putting it on another person because it's, and it's so easy. We're masters at justifying our actions because it's how we survive and how we cope. But I think in the church you have to be extra good at it because you are treating other people differently because of who they are. And that's just not right. Altogether right. So coming out the other side of this though, I'm trying to own, I'm trying to own who I am. You know, I love sports, I love medicine.

John Dehlin [04:17:17] Real quick, did you tell your parents that you lost your faith?

Kelly Trust [04:17:21] Yes. We gotta get a giggle eruption from the sister over there. So I, I did tell my parents that I read the CES letter and I tried to share my thoughts.

John Dehlin [04:17:29] How long ago is this?

Kelly Trust [04:17:30] This is February, March of this year, of this year.

John Dehlin [04:17:34] So just a few months ago, Just a few months.

Carah Burrell [04:17:36] July 30, freshy fresh.

Kelly Trust [04:17:39] So it's probably that. So, so if we go March, April, May, June, July. So like four months where I've had to process my entire life was a lie. Now what do I believe and does it even matter what I believe? And then I get to the conclusion of it doesn't matter what anybody believes. We treat people equally, we treat them with love and kindness. And I want to rewrite the whole, every single religious text and just write be kind because I Think that's all we can do is do our best to be nice and to treat others with respect and to remember that.

Carah Burrell [04:18:15] That.

Kelly Trust [04:18:16] That there's no group of people that is bad. There is no group of. Like, I am not sitting here saying BYU football players are bad. They're individual people who are in a system that is hurting them. I don't believe there's any group of people that has any beliefs that are. That are bad. This what works for them, and it's what makes them happy. And if they're not hurting somebody else, great. That program and that system and that church is hurting people and tearing apart families. Because my dad specifically said to me that you and your sister are ruining the eternal family that we worked so hard to build.

Carah Burrell [04:18:59] Oh, yeah.

Kelly Trust [04:19:00] And what kind of guilt does that place on. On us for following our hearts and for deciding what is good and healthy for us in our lives? Which is, mind you, the whole point is to choose for ourselves.

John Dehlin [04:19:13] And you're following evidence and you're following science and you're following truth.

Kelly Trust [04:19:17] Right.

John Dehlin [04:19:17] That makes it extra complicated.

Kelly Trust [04:19:19] I don't feel like I am a dumb person who's just being tricked. Like, that's the other thing is, like, it's like, oh, well, you're just believing what that person says. I'm like, no, you just haven't looked at it. You literally haven't even looked.

Carah Burrell [04:19:34] Did your parents. So you're saying, like, your parents didn't believe you, that you were following my heart? Your heart?

Kelly Trust [04:19:39] Yes.

Carah Burrell [04:19:40] They made the worst assumptions that you were just taking the word of somebody else.

Kelly Trust [04:19:43] I'm taking the word of somebody else. My faith was never strong enough to begin with. Is it another assumption or I'm going through a phase. That's another one I get is that I'll come back to the church, and I don't think they realize how I. There. There is no going back for me. And not because I was hurt there. I was way more damaged emotionally by the things that I read in the CES letter that exploded my world than any dude who ever treated me differently because of my sexuality and me being a sexual person. Them.

John Dehlin [04:20:26] Right.

Kelly Trust [04:20:26] That's.

Carah Burrell [04:20:26] Because that's like a world view that you don't even have a framework anymore.

John Dehlin [04:20:30] Why were you damaged more? Yeah.

Kelly Trust [04:20:32] Because every decision that I made from the moment that I woke up to the moment that I went to sleep was more or less based on some Mormon teaching. What I ate, how I dressed, who I talked to, who I associated with. Because all of those things would affect me Because I was taught that all of these things affect who you are and influence the decisions that you make make. And now I actually just get to choose what's good for me. And it is the best thing ever. Waking up every day and saying I'm going to make this day the very best that I can. And I'm not going to worry about being happy tomorrow. I mean I plan more or less, but I don't have this whole life plan that is an ultimate failure if I'm failing at any one of these steps along the way. Because that's how I felt. I said I had everything lined up for me. Here's how I was supposed to live my life life. And then anytime I failed down here, I'm like, I'm not going to be reaching this goal over here, this eternal salvation over here. So I need to be better now. But it just made me miserable. And then I was just stuck in this pattern of self hatred. And that's terrible. That's so terrible. And so, and, and nobody should ever feel that way. And especially not in their own religion where you're supposed to go to seek comfort and guidance and safety. People use religion for those things. And I understand that when they get them from there and how they can feel a bond to that and want to be there. I obviously don't have that same bond there. So it was, it was maybe easier for me to let go because I was like, I've kind of always been. I've had these steps and these things that happened to me that's is this system is not perfect. And I've been told my whole life this is perfect, this is perfect. And then it's like here's all the reasons why it's not perfect. And for me it's. I could never in my heart sit in the temple and lie with everybody else again. Because I have known when people have gone through the temple who have no place to be there, who are not actually wanting what, what that place seems to offer, but they go there because they feel like they have to or they're supposed to or whatever, you're never

Carah Burrell [04:22:50] gonna let yourself be in that position again.

Kelly Trust [04:22:53] No, no, I'm. I value my integrity more than that. And I could not in my own right mind go back to that system and, and it would be. Be lying. I would have to just. I would have to convince myself self in those things again. I can't.

Leaving the Church and Family Fallout

Carah Burrell [04:23:11] I can't. To somebody who listens to this story and they're going to hear a lot of harm that was heaped upon you, shamewise, from the church and from the church's institutions. And no matter how much the evidence doesn't add up to uphold Joseph Smith as what you're saying is, you know, a prophet and the ways that we can prove or disprove certain things. Some critics might listen to this and say, well, she had a motivated reasoning to not look at the apologetics on these. There's good answers a lot of people will say to the things in the CES letter. And you had motivated reasoning to want to stop playing this game within the system of the church. What would your answer to that be?

Kelly Trust [04:23:52] That I have always been someone who has valued data. I base my decisions based off of, of facts, of science, of history. And if I'm being true to the data, if I'm being true to this situation. Sorry, one more time, repeat the question. I had the thoughts we might need to fix this in the end.

Carah Burrell [04:24:24] Is there motivated reasoning behind that? You wanted to get out of. Of this church. That sounds like caused you a lot of harm.

Kelly Trust [04:24:31] Oh, right. So I didn't leave the church because of the harm that it caused me. I left the church because of how utterly false everything is. I left the church because everything that I did in my life was built on a lie and on a narrative that was given to me that we continue to offer to people. And I can't be part of that system any longer. I cannot support that. I cannot be there for that.

John Dehlin [04:24:58] That.

Kelly Trust [04:25:04] I had an overwhelming amount of information and I went down the rabbit hole. So if people say she didn't want to look at the stuff that apologist said. No, I read it all. I spent as much time on LDS.org as I did in the CES letter to be like. Because it would say, well, here's the thing that you list in the scriptures and on LDS.org or wherever it else. Wherever else it was. And here's the problem I have with it. And I'm like, that's. That was there already. That information was there already and I just didn't even know about it. Okay. Okay. So, Kel Dog, maybe you need to go and look a little deeper and look a little deeper and look a little deeper. So on each top topic, I went down the rabbit hole. I did my research. I did my studies. I spent probably a month of my life where I did nothing but look up every single tiny bit of information I could because I said it almost would have made me feel better if I proved myself wrong or if I proved the CES letter. Wrong. If I said, no, no, no, that is lies. That is anti Mormon literature. But that's not the answer that I found. It was more confirming to me every time I sought out a topic that this just isn't true, that this just isn't right. And, and we're continuing to abuse people in this system based on lies. And that is a bigger reason of why I'm sitting here talking about these things now. Because I don't ever want somebody to have the same things happen to them.

John Dehlin [04:26:43] Them.

Kelly Trust [04:26:44] I don't want them to feel the way that I felt in that system. So if you're there now, be strong. It's not forever. And don't feel like you have to fit into some perfect example of what a, a honest, faithful person looks like. There is not a right way that that looks. And to anybody who is being told one side of the story, look a little deeper. Deeper. Just be informed on what it is you're going into. I had no idea what I was going into when I walked into the temple, but I for darn sure knew that I was expected to say yes and to follow and to. To be those things, but I didn't know I was getting myself into. And I was raised in a church by a father who I thought taught me very, very well. I think that's my biggest problem now, you know, is that my dad taught me to have the brain that I have, and he's still choosing to be there. So either he's okay with where he's at in his head and he wants to stay there, and he just doesn't want to look, even though he says he has looked, which I don't know if I really believe, but that's not my decision to make make. Or he's just like, it isn't that bad. And honestly, I think that a lot of people are probably, well, there's more good than there is bad. And I'm like, but that's not what the church taught us. The church didn't teach us. This church is more good than other churches. It said it is Perfect. It is 100% of what we need. So that system can't have a flat flaw. And it has not just a flaw, but a million of them. So I can't support it anymore.

John Dehlin [04:28:39] I'm just struck by, if you look at kind of the Mormon standard, you were just a failure every step of the way, right from 10 years old till now, at least that's how you felt. It's how you felt you were treated. And yet if you're just thinking about a, a general American parental child standard. You're doing well in school, you're doing good things, you're going to university, you're graduating. Like there's so many good things you were doing. And what I'm struck most by is the, the, the way that the church for so many years made you feel worthless and terrible contrasted with how good of a person you actually are. But then ironically, you were made to feel awful by a church that itself was completely flawed and built, built on lies and deception. And yet it put you through the wringer of feeling unworthy for a decade or more. That I guess I just wonder how that must feel for you to look back now to realize how awesome you were and how flawed the church truly was, though you didn't know it. And I don't know, I would feel super angry. Honestly.

Kelly Trust [04:30:12] I have my angry moments. I am told lately that I am confrontational, that I am angry, that I'm mad, that I'm not happy because it is still taking me time to get over that one. Yeah. Because I was told so many times how bad I was. And I'm having to rebuild my self worth on my own. I'm having to. Heal in my own way and it's not easy because my family doesn't want to be there for it. And in my mind I realized my family hasn't really ever been there for me through any of it. So this is no different. But. Yeah, I get mad. I get really mad that I worked so hard and put so much time and effort and energy and emotional, emotional energy. I feel like I've wasted 26 years of my life, life. And I feel like I limited myself because my job was to be a mom and that was my one divine role when in my head I could have been a surgeon. I feel like I got the grades, I had the worth ethic to do great things. And so, you know, someone would be like, well, you're 27, you're still young, you still have all these things. I'm like, yeah, but I'm still getting over the first 26 years. Give me a minute. Like I'm working on it, I'm getting there. I have an amazingly bright future ahead of me. I understand that I get to make my own decisions now and that's the most empowering thing in the world. Like I really feel like I'm making decisions for myself now. It's weird that I didn't feel that way before, that I felt like I was making the decisions that I felt Like I was supposed to be making. And how limiting was that to me as a human in general? So limiting. The opportunities I passed up, the things that I didn't do on Sunday, the days that I had 1/7 of my days that I spent not doing homework because I wasn't supposed to. And I'm like, what if I had a whole extra weekend day to recuperate instead of having to work an extra day? Like, what kind of. Would I be able to just give myself a break a little bit more? Because that's another thing is we're just taught that you don't give yourself a break. You're supposed to be better. You're supposed to be better. You're supposed to do better. You supposed to do better. You're never doing enough. It's like. It's exhausting. So it's taking time to heal from that. It's taking time to move on from that. And I am being separated from my family because of who I am, and that's hard. And that makes me mad, too, because I think, okay, well, if this is some perfect church who preaches family and that that's the most important thing ever, then where the. Is that now? Because I'm not seeing that now.

John Dehlin [04:33:31] What do you mean?

Kelly Trust [04:33:32] Where's the love? Where's the family bonds? It's. It's. If you knew better and you choose otherwise, that is the biggest sin you could possibly commit is if you have received the light and truth and the fullness of the gospel and you choose otherwise, you don't get to be with your family in heaven. That's a sad teaching. And I said, that's what your parents are being told. Exactly. That's what my parents believed. So when they told me that we were ruining the eternal family that they worked so hard to build, I said, that's weird. I feel like that you're a good enough person that I would be in the same place as you after this life. Sorry that you don't feel the same about me. Me. That's how I responded to that, because it hurt me so much. And. Is that a bit sassy and a little bit mean and whatever? Sure. I. I'm working on how not to respond with anger in the situation, but it's still very triggering for me. Like I said, it was only four months ago this whole shelf broke. And so it's not easy. And it's. I'm not doing it right every time. Time. And I'm scared to death to say something wrong or to offend somebody because I Feel like I do it so often right now with people that very much matter to me, who. I feel like I've offered them an insane amount of grace, an insane amount of forgiveness for things that ruined me. My own parents made me feel like I was a sex addict and was broken and needed to. To be fixed. Could I resent them forever for that? Sure. But I'm not going to do that because I know that they loved me and they were doing the best that they could with what they had. But now that you know better, do better. And I'm not seeing the do better because I'm saying, no, here's how this actually affected me. Here's what it actually did to me. And those experiences are not being validated, and that's hard.

John Dehlin [04:35:36] And you're also saying, here's some stuff I've learned that you should know about the church, right? Yeah.

Kelly Trust [04:35:41] I believe my dad to be a very smart man. He's very logical. He's very. He's very smart. He was the chief investment officer for a large real estate company. He knows how the world works. So what is he. What. And he still chose to raise us in that system. And it's like, that's hurtful to me because I feel like he should know better. That's. That's me wishing and wanting, and that's not my place to decide what he believes. He can believe what he wants to, but be there for your daughter. You know, the reason that the book Leaving the Saints by Martha Beck affected me so much is because I think what hurt her the most is that her father sacrificed her over the church. Sacrificed his own daughter over the church. Reading that book, my dad would pick Hugh Nibley over Martha Beck. So in this situation, he. He's doing the same thing. Essentially. He's picking the church over me. I don't care how my daughter feels in this situation. My faith and what I've been taught in the church, that's right and that's all that matters. And I don't even need to sit here and listen and look at how unhappy she is and how confrontational she is. And that hurts because I think that he should have a little more faith in me as somebody who can discern whether something is right and wrong. And he's saying, I don't trust your faith. Feelings or thoughts. Or thoughts.

Carah Burrell [04:37:20] Yeah.

Kelly Trust [04:37:20] Like, ouch.

Carah Burrell [04:37:21] Just devastating. My goodness. So the other day we had Leah Young on, and I recommend everyone listen to that. And during that, I asked her a question because I feel like I've moved On a lot from the, the angry, like really close to the shelf breaking kind of stage. But then doing this job a lot, I hear some really upsetting stories. This is sometimes one of them. You know, the Native American women one we did a couple weeks ago and I want to fetch and flip a table sometimes. And Leah's advice to that angry stage was just about, you know, asking how much it's serving you at that point and then being self aware enough to know when it's time to realize when it's not serving you and your ultimate goal goals and when it's not furthering what you want out of life. Because we get asked all the time me, John, you know, why keep talking about Mormonism? And for this it's because we think talking about it is healing people. But I wanted to ask, in your situation, have you found the stage now where you are able to be self aware in the areas where the, the anger is no longer serving you? Because anger is a completely valid emotion obviously to be feeling during this of this post shelf breaking I've been lied to my whole life stage that you kind of described. So my question is where, where are you in the anger stage and how much, how, what kind of future, what kind of lessons are you taking forward with you as you rebuild? I think the question I wrote down was the ways that now you're happier and healthier even though it's just this really quick post break moment that you're in.

Healing, Recovery, and Life Today

Kelly Trust [04:39:13] Right. Still fresh. I have been doing a lot of reading with a lot of books on healing from traumas and finding yourself and finding your inner voice. And one of the ones is Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown. And she, she says anger is a powerful catalyst but a life sucking companion. I have felt the life sucking part of anger, but now I use it as a catalyst when I can and I use it temporarily. So do I get angry when I sit here and talk about these things? Yes. But it's what gives me the power and the strength to sit here and talk about it.

Carah Burrell [04:39:58] Right on.

Kelly Trust [04:39:59] And so this is not the place where I stop talking about it. It's not like, oh, okay, I've shared my story in a public sense and now I'm going to stop talking about it because the same way that you guys are continuing to share stories, every time that I have talked about something, I have had people message me saying thank you so much for saying something. I've had people, people tell me their stories and say that you're the first person I've ever Told. And I say, I'm so proud of you for just telling me on an Instagram message, because that's the first step in your healing, is acknowledging that this happened to you and that it was hard and it was hurtful. So as long as there's a single human out there that I could possibly help, I'm going to keep using it as a catalyst. It's. It. It's anger that I can control. It is anger that I can use positively. I'm not going to hold on to it forever. I don't sit around trashing the church and all of my free time like my family might think I do. But the only time that I talk to them, they want to talk to me about church things because it's the only topic we've ever talked about our whole life. And so when I say something that's contrary to it, they're like, oh, you're just always talking about this. I'm like, no, I just always talk to you about this. But I'm actually outliving my life.

Carah Burrell [04:41:17] Life.

Kelly Trust [04:41:18] I. I connect with all sorts of human. I have so much more patience for people who do terrible things because I always felt like I was a terrible person. And so I have so much more forgiveness for other people of all sorts of different races, ethnicities, religions, cultures, all those things. And I just seek to understand because that. That is all we can do, is seek to understand these things and then we can move on from there and connect with humans. Though, like, empathy is such a powerful thing as well, is understanding. Like, if there's somebody else that's like,

Carah Burrell [04:41:57] oh, I've been there, too.

Kelly Trust [04:41:58] I had that same feeling. That's what. That's what got me listening to you on Instagram or not on Instagram, on TikTok, talking about your cousins that you never knew growing up.

John Dehlin [04:42:10] Up.

Kelly Trust [04:42:15] How many people did I not know in my life because of this church? Because they taught me to doubt and fear things that don't need to be doubted and feared and people that don't need to ever feel a single ounce of hatred for me. That's, again, that's just. I'm figuring out how to treat people like people with real emotions and feelings and bad emotions. I'm learning to embrace them and learn from them and find a way to understand them instead of just saying, oh, well, that comes from the devil. So I don't have to take credit for that emotion. No, I am owning my truth and living my truth. And it's. I mean, integrity is everything to me. And I Know, so many people would say that my actions in my life don't match up with the teachings that I preached and that that's not integrity. And I'm like, well, yeah, that's why I was so conflicted, because I felt like I was always doing something wrong and I was always trying to be better and whatever. And now I don't have that problem anymore. And it's. That was the most freeing thing ever, is I don't have to sit here and feel guilty forever for mistakes I've made. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has their. And we can all move on from it and we can all grow and be better. And. Am I there yet? No, but here's the thing. Nobody's there. There are some people who are learning better coping techniques and who are trying to heal and actively moving in a positive direction, but we're still going to make mistakes and we're still going to say the wrong thing and we're still going to have problems no matter how hard we try. And that's called being human. And allowing for humans to be humans is something the church doesn't provide. And so talking about it is all I can do. It's just say here, no, you cannot put on this perfect pretty face and tell the whole world about how perfect you are and then be that. Be what it is. It's just, you know, I love every single day of my life because if I want to go out with friends on Sunday and get some food, I'm bonding with them and it's a great environment and I'm growing closer to people and not a single ounce of me has to say, well, it's the Sabbath. I'm making people work. No, I'm not. They chose to be there on the weekend. You know, do I think that everybody should get the weekends off? Yeah, that'd be great. That's not real. That's not people's situations. So why on earth would I sit there for one second and judge that human for doing what's best for them and not knowing their situation? You know, there's a tick tock that came off that says, you know, like, if you have tattoos in your eyebrows, it's okay, but any other tattoos? Not good. So you can't make it into heaven if you have that. And. And piercings. Girls can have one Here, guys, if you have anything else. Nope, it's not good.

Carah Burrell [04:45:18] Let's.

Kelly Trust [04:45:18] Like we're creating these arbitrary rules that. Yeah, who cares? These are arbitrary rules made up by man, not by God. I'm not feeling that from God, what I feel from that higher power is simply love and support and do your best.

Carah Burrell [04:45:37] Yeah, and it sounds like you're describing, yeah, like the post Mormon shelf breaking is a devastating place to be in. But everything you just described about being less judgmental, be more willing to understand and learn. I think Mormons, we think of ourselves as like, I'm very Christ, like when I was Mormon, I'm very into, you know, abandoning judgment and trying to strive to be like Christ. And it's quite honestly you don't know what you don't know until you get to the other side of that. So I think you articulated that really well. For people who are struggling and possibly approaching one of the scariest things in their life, maybe reading the CS letter and coming out the other end. End. But there's so much beauty and grace for yourself for giving the people who are products of the system, like your parents or the people at byu and then just being more charitable and ironically being more Christlike to the people just in the world who are going about living their lives, who didn't grow up with the same standards that we grew up with, that you're able to feel the most Christ like compassion and love to them, to whatever situation that they're in in their life. So, Kelly, thank you so much for being so incredibly vulnerable. I don't think we have ever had such a vulnerable guest on the podcast. And I just want to, from the bottom of my heart, really, thank you for coming in today and going into such amazing detail about the things that you've been through. John, do you have any other final wrap up words that you want to speak to? I know you have to run to the airport soon.

John Dehlin [04:47:05] Oh, just. Thank you so much, Kelly. You're, I mean, it's, you're speaking truth to power and you know, Mormon church power. One thing, BYU athletics is a whole nother level of power. And so for you to speak up publicly against something that's so sacred and so special to so many people with the intent of helping it, not with the intent of harming it or defaming it, it just takes a like, like you said, Carah, it takes our extra level of courage to speak up against such a sacred cow and to do it so gracefully and thoughtfully, honestly, I think there's people who go through what you have been through and don't survive. They, they don't make it. So you're not just, you didn't just survive it, which in itself is a massive achievement. You're thriving now. That just speaks to your strength and your resilience. And it's, it's just a really inspiring story for me. So thank you so much for your example of courage, but also of strength and resilience. It's. It's really inspiring.

Kelly Trust [04:48:09] Thank you. You know, they did one thing. They made my weakness my strength. They made weak things become strong. All right, step on me enough times, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start kicking back. I know that I ruffle feathers by saying these things. Things, a lot of them. I don't really care what feathers I ruffle when I'm talking about things that are not right in terms of how

Carah Burrell [04:48:40] we treat people right. And I think that's Mormon or not. I think we all just want to cause less harm to people and do the work on ourselves and within the systems that we participate in. And I hope that's the message that people, People get across today. So if people want to follow you, can you just kind of give a overview of, I guess, your Instagram and the different ways that people could follow you or support you? Sure.

Kelly Trust [04:49:05] So I. My Instagram is Kelly Marie, FIT Mom. So I actually got into fitness, and, and I think it was really kind of getting down to my base core physical, because I did bodybuilding, and you have to get down to kind of nothing. And when you get down to that place and you push yourself as hard as all these athletes push themselves, it puts you in this place of what really matters in life, you know, and getting to that place was very hard and very painful and very difficult. And I have come out the other side so much stronger because I've put myself through the challenges and I've been through the shift. And for people who haven't been through the. This is what it looks like. Coming out the other side, though.

Carah Burrell [04:49:52] Your arms look great.

Kelly Trust [04:49:54] There we go.

Carah Burrell [04:49:56] Porn. Shoulders looking good.

John Dehlin [04:49:59] She pulled out the guns.

Kelly Trust [04:50:01] Yeah, no, I, I, I love it. And so anyway, so fitness is how I do that. And, and I plan on using every single bit of my, my platform to help talk about how we don't treat females differently in this world. You know, we talk about just the, the modesty standards of the US gymnasts, even. It's seeping into that world, too. Why do we tell people what they can wear and what they cannot wear? Why do we tell people how to live? We're done with that. So if you want to follow me, Kelly Marie, Fit Mom.

John Dehlin [04:50:31] How do you spell that?

Kelly Trust [04:50:32] K, E, L, L, Y, M, A R, I, E, F, I, T, M, O, M. And I've posted my whole BYU story there as well. That's kind of a. I probably need to tune it up a little bit too. But I continue to post things that are shedding light on this church and the things that I was taught growing up and to say, hey, this isn't crazy if you thought this thing too. Cuz I think that's the better thing is like, hey, you weren't crazy when you thought that person was crazy. You actually just had a good heart. You know, I have a very good friend that says it wasn't, wasn't that you were a bad Mormon, you were just a good person. So that's what she says. It says when you thought all the times that you thought you were a bad Mormon. No, you were just a good person. And so those feelings that you thought of, of insecurity and whatever and, and I'm not sure if this thing is true was just you following your heart. So follow your heart and be a good person no matter what that church tells you. That's no matter what any human on the planet tells you. Follow your heart, do what you think is good and what is right. That's the story I'm trying to share and that's. And I, and I love to help in any way I can.

Carah Burrell [04:51:45] So if people want to reach out to you, they can through your Instagram. Oh for sure.

Kelly Trust [04:51:48] They can reach me through my Instagram and talk to me about all that stuff and I will not only validate their feelings but respond and talk to them because talking to someone helps. And so if you don't feel safe enough to share this stuff, you. I'm a safe place to share it. I have been through all of the things and I'll be there for you.

Carah Burrell [04:52:11] That's amazing. Well, thank you, John. Should I do the post wrap up?

John Dehlin [04:52:16] Yeah. Other than. I just want to say it's been a pleasure not only to meet you Kelly, but to. To be your co pilot during your first, first, you know, first chair Mormon stories. Good job, Carah is what I'm saying. Good job. Great job.

Carah Burrell [04:52:33] Thank you Kelly for letting me like take off the training wheels here and like kind of balance bike. I hope we'll have good response from

Kelly Trust [04:52:43] people and they won't be too mean.

John Dehlin [04:52:44] Carol, lots of affirming positive comments. No need for haters. If you have respectful tips for me or Carah or anyone, that's fine. But no haters. Haters not welcome. Only encouraging supportive tips and thoughts.

Carah Burrell [04:52:58] Just me only on my TikTok because that's where I handle them. There. This is Mormon Stories. This is different. Well, yeah, thank, seriously, Kelly, thank you for letting me try out this, this chair. Thank you, John, for also giving me this opportunity. And yeah, your story was just. I hope people can have like an incredible amount of validation that have gone through these things that are just not really right. And hope that you felt comfortable and that this was a good interview. Overall, I think it went well. I think it went amazing.

John Dehlin [04:53:27] It was great.

Carah Burrell [04:53:28] Yeah. So thank Kelly. Thank you again. So in terms of donors, we always have to do like a post please give us money kind of donor speech, which I will be doing right now, which is what John is nodding at me about, affirming that I will be doing that and not him. And he's not cutting to himself do that donor speech. So that means I'm doing it. So if you enjoyed this programming, please be sure to donate to Mormon Stories. You can go to MormonStories.org org and become a monthly donor. Sign up once for 5, 10, whatever, 50. Hey, maybe it's a thousand that you can just set it and forget it. Ronco. That's the reference last time I did this that I forgot. Set it and forget it. And all of your donations are taxable, deduct deductible in the United States. They go to this new beautiful studio here in Holiday, Utah. And to upping our production game, hiring Gerardo and Brooklyn who do our lighting and cinematography and editing. And congratulations Brooklyn, on your wedding this weekend and going to hiring me and doing a lot of the tik toks that we're up to and making waves and all kinds of of different spaces. And so if you are a donor, we you have our immense gratitude and love. If you'd like to become a gratitude. If you'd like to become a donor, you will also have our undying love and gratitude on that front as well. We have a Venmo account too, which is like super easy to just snap out a donation. Mormon stories. Venmo as well, John. What else am I forgetting?

John Dehlin [04:55:00] It's good.

Carah Burrell [04:55:01] That's good.

John Dehlin [04:55:02] And follow us on all the social media.

Carah Burrell [04:55:04] Follow us on all of the social media between Facebook, Instagram. Did you know that we added even a couple hundred Instagram followers just this week alone? Our Tick Tock is doing really, really well and we just hit 60,000 subscribers this last couple days. And all around, John and I are just have a bunch of cool new projects in the works and a huge thank you to the people who donate and listen and support this content cause. And overall, if there's no other message between what Kelly was sharing today is please just be good to one another and reduce harm and look for ways that you can lead with love and kindness and do as much work in the space that whether Mormon, post Mormon, progressive Mormon, please get to work and do space work in the spaces that you're in is what I hope the theme of all of these Mormon Stories podcasts are. So that's my Carabarell wrap up John Dehlin.

John Dehlin [04:56:06] That's it.

Kelly Trust [04:56:06] Anything else you want to add?

John Dehlin [04:56:08] Just thanks. Thanks so much again. Thanks everybody. Take care. And email us@mormonstoriesmail.com if you've got any feedback for us as well. But thanks again. Care. You're amazing. Thanks, Kelly. We'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Bye.

Carah Burrell [04:56:25] Thank.

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