Introduction and Intentions for the Episode

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 1550

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is so great to have you with us today. We are recording February 17, 2022, and as always, I am so thrilled to have with me my partner in goodness and truth and righteousness, Kara Burrell. Hey, Kara.

Guest [00:00:19] Hi.

John Dehlin [00:00:20] Thanks for joining.

Guest [00:00:21] Thanks so much for having me.

John Dehlin [00:00:22] Yeah. Well, Kara, we've got kind of a intense int important and more serious episode today. So do you have your cap on for that?

Guest [00:00:32] I do, but I do have a very, like, kind of outrageous jacket on that probably is not setting the tone for what you just said.

John Dehlin [00:00:38] It's okay. It's okay. We love the jacket.

Guest [00:00:40] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:00:41] It's a special jacket. All right, well, today we have kind of a really sensitive and important topic. The topic for today's episode is when Mormon bishops abuse children. And you really, I think in 2022, maybe at least monthly, there's a story that breaks out where a Mormon bishop abuses a parishioner or, you know, a ward member or a child. It has become very, very common in the news for that to happen. And on the one hand, I don't think we're trying to say that the Mormon Church is the only church where abuse happens or where leaders abuse. If you just watch the movie Spotlight with the Catholic Church, you'll know that, like something that crazy, like 11% of their priests have, have been found to be abusing children. Like church clergy abuse children sometimes. And it would be impossible to even really know whether it happens more or less in the Mormon Church, but that's kind of less important. We know what happens. We know it's happening regularly within Mormonism. We've had several episodes recently about that, but today we're doing something quite different. Today we have with us Kolby and Cammie. Is that right?

Kolby Reddish [00:01:50] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:01:50] Do you guys want to use your last name or.

Kolby Reddish [00:01:53] Reddish.

John Dehlin [00:01:53] Okay, so it's Kolby and Cammie Reddish. They are joining us from Idaho. And the main story today is basically their bishop. Recently, their Mormon bishop was released in the past year and now is imprisoned for sexually molesting two children. You know, and he's pled guilty. So this is not speculation. This is not rumor mongering. This is, you know, this is a convicted child sex abuser who was their bishop. Now, the abuse happened, as I understand it, before and during his time as bishop. We could talk about the details of that, the focus of today's episode. And we're going to let them also talk about their own intentions. But I just want to give you a heads up of what today is going to be about. We are going to be talking about what happens, how the Mormon Church handles things. When you know a ward member and even specifically when a bishop is found out to be an abuser, to what extent do they protect the, the abuser at the expense of victims and, or at the expense of informing ward or stake members with a particular concern around not smearing the reputation of the abuser, although that may or may not be a problem, but about keeping ward and stake members safe. That's kind of a really important point here. So, so what happened when Kolby and Kimmy found out about their bishop being a sex abuser and then tried to address the way the ward and the stake were handling it in ways that I think they felt was not protecting other members of the ward and stake from also potentially being victims? So today's episode, from our perspective, at least from Karen mine, we want to help the church become better at dealing with abusers and, and particularly with abusers who are leaders in the church so that the Mormon Church can be more safe for the people in it. That is at least why Karen, I are very interested in the story along with just making sure that we can help Mormon Church members protect themselves. Because sometimes you can't make an organization safe for people, but you can help make people safer for an organization. So for all those reasons, we're going to be going in detail into, into what we know about the abuser and then how the church handled it, how they mishandled it and what happened when, when Kolby and Cammy tried to address the problems. And we just hope Curtin McConkie and the Mormon Church will watch this from start to finish along with any Mormon Church member that wants to stay safe or keep their family members safe or wants to understand how better to deal with abusers in their warden stake, which we just hope this will be a multi hour deep dive into the problems so that the church could become more healthy and so the members can be more protected. So that's my preamble, that's my introduction. And Kolby and Cammie, first of all, welcome and then. Thank you. And then what do you guys want to say as kind of an opening intention or disclaimer for the next few hours?

Kolby Reddish [00:05:04] Well, thanks, John, thank you for having us on. One of the reasons that we're here today is because we take the abuse of children seriously. And we think everyone who follows the message of Jesus Christ should, who follows that message or claims to follow that message and so we're here really to speak out against a system. I think that's probably the biggest point we'd like to start with is so often when situations like this happen, whether it's in, you know, the Mormon Church or other churches, you hear very commonly you, you know, like, well, one bad apple can't spoil the bunch. And I think what our story shows is that the policy coming directly out of Salt Lake and the stakes response, area authorities, response to a situation like this just absolutely horrified members like us who are just normal members of the church who had believed in giving every. Given everything to the church. And so I think, I completely agree with what you said. We want to come on today to help the church be healthier and to help them understand the way that their response in this situation completely affected our family and affected our ward. But I think also we want to send a message to other people in the church about the way the church handles things like this as a matter of policy. I think one of the things we've seen in the last week or so with all the stuff with Brad Wilcox is we don't like to find. And you say this all the time, and I completely agree, we don't want to find fault with individuals. This story, I think, really shows the way the system works and the way the system is designed, and we want to help make that system healthier today.

John Dehlin [00:06:45] I love it.

Guest [00:06:46] Love that.

John Dehlin [00:06:47] Kami, what would you like to add about intentions for today?

Cami Reddish [00:06:50] I think that. I think that kind of sums it up. I. I was in shock when we started going through the process. I think I assumed that most people felt the way that we did and to find out that it was completely different, that we were made to be crazy. I mean, I honestly considered if I was crazy for wanting to protect the other children in our ward. And so it shocked me. I don't think I would have ever imagined that we'd be in a position like this where something that I love and that I trust and that I give all of my time and my energy to. I make the church a daily part of my life. And I. I think maybe that I just was going through the motions and I never had asked myself what expectations I had for in return from the church. And so to find something so dramatic happen in our ward and then to see the response, I. Yeah, I couldn't believe it. And I know we'll get into the story, but I think you said it perfectly that when good people are willing to do something bad or wrong, that, you know, that there's Something. Something has gone terribly wrong in that situation. And, and that's what we saw with our. With our warden stake leaders. They were doing what the church asked them to do, and it was not right at all.

Kolby Reddish [00:08:42] I think, I think one thing you asked, if there's any disclaimers or anything else we want to say, John, I completely agree with what Kami said. And I think because our message today really is about the system. I know there's going to be people in our warden stake who won't understand why we would come and speak out. I think one of the things I want to make sure people know and they'll see this as we go through the timeline that we've been through is we have tried over and over and over again to get the church, including our new bishop, our stake president, an area authority. We have tried to do this, you know, in quote, unquote, the church's right way, tried to address this with them privately, and they would not listen. I. We care so much about doing the right thing that we're here today to say the church is not doing the right thing. And to anyone who would discount what we have to say under that, I just wanted to say that, that we have tried over and over and over again to speak with people privately, and we'll get to those conversations. I guess the last thing I want to say before we kind of start telling this story or introduce ourselves a little bit more is because this is about systems. And because, you know, child sexual abuse cases are so delicate and we want to be respectful as much as possible to the victims, we're just going to. Even though this person's pleaded guilty and is, you know, has. Has been arrested and has pleaded guilty, and that's all public information, we're not going to use this person's name out of respect for their family and for the people in our ward. But this is all readily available public information. This person has been reported on over the last year, like you said. So people who know will know. But the point is the system is the problem. Not necessarily this one individual or even the stake president or the area authority. It's a system that allows for things like this to happen by design.

Cami Reddish [00:10:43] And I think one thing to add to that is the way that this was handled. My heart just goes out to the victims. What happened to them is not okay. And I'm not sure that they got that message by the way that the people around them responded. And that's what gives me so much anxiety. Not to mention, we. We don't know if there were other victims, but what happened to them was wrong and not okay. And I am sad that I am part of the organization that sent them that message. So yeah, I, I hope that they are doing well and that they are healing because it, it's awful to think that these things happen.

John Dehlin [00:11:37] Yeah. And as I've read through kind of prepping for this episode, there's also, in addition to the system of the church, the corporate Mormon Church, Curt McConkey, the legal infrastructure and the way the church handles abuse, there's also another dynamic of how fellow ward and stake members responded to you guys when you started expressing your concerns. We're going to be talking about that as well. Again, not to throw other ward members under the bus because they're just honestly trying to protect either people or a church that they love. But, but, but there are very unhelpful and unproductive responses by ward members and leaders and stake members and leaders. When either a whistleblower or someone expressing concern tries to speak about the safety of everyone, that that has been damaging and harmful. And so that's another part of the system which is just member and leader response separate from the church. That is probably going to be a part of what we talk about today. Correct?

Kolby Reddish [00:12:42] It is. And, and just to that, you know, we live in a small community that's got a high density population of LDS people. And to those people who we're going to read some of those responses with names and things like that redacted so that people can see because truly when we get to that point, you won't believe some of the things that were said as people, I think, try and defend the church. And I guess one of the things I want to say is to those people who will feel wronged that we're sharing their messages. We are not here to find fault with anyone in particular, any individual. That's the truth. Even the Stake President, who we'll talk about a lot. I understand that he's a man doing his best. That's put in a really tough position. We are here today to say a system that prioritizes itself and requires members to say things that they would otherwise never say in defense of a child molester or a system that wants to support its own authority. Above all, that's what we're here to speak out against. So we're not trying to find fault with anyone. And I hope people can understand that.

John Dehlin [00:13:47] Yeah, totally.

Guest [00:13:49] You can already tell this is going to be really impactful. There's nothing, I think the church needs More than understanding church members need, more than understanding how they can. Can be helpful within the system, whether they stay in or get out, like, really shining a light on this. So thank you guys for doing this. This is incredible.

John Dehlin [00:14:04] Yeah.

Guest [00:14:04] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:14:05] So part one will be we're going to just do a. We're not going to go into a deep dive into their Mormon stories prior to the abuse incidences in their ward. But we will give an intro just to give you a sense for the types of Latter Day Saints that they were and in some sense still are. But we won't be doing the traditional deep dive. Then we'll go into an extensive in detail, the. The story, the store, their story about the abuse and how it was handled and mishandled. And then we'll probably come back for a part two where we talk about how this led to their own faith journey, their own faith awakening or discovery. And maybe in part two, it will be about where the abuse stuff, along with their own research, where that has left them with relationship to the church. So that will be a part two. Does that sound all right?

Kolby Reddish [00:15:01] That sounds great.

Kolby and Cami's Mormon Backgrounds

John Dehlin [00:15:02] Okay. All right, so why don't we have each of you kind of tell whatever you want to about your Mormon backgrounds. That will help everyone understand where you're coming from as you tell the story about the abuse. Who wants to go first?

Guest [00:15:17] Okay. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:15:18] Kimmy.

Cami Reddish [00:15:19] So I grew up in the church, born in the covenant. I have seven siblings, and for most of my childhood, I grew up in the Los Angeles area. So they. It. We had a good ward. Everything was a lot more spread out. But I think I didn't really. I. I don't know. I didn't really take church seriously. It was a big part of my life. Not a lot of my friends were LDs, so it might maybe felt a little embarrassing to me that we were so strict about certain things. But my parents really cared about doing all the things. They were great examples of service. They always were going and doing the right things, the good things that they were supposed to be doing. We never, ever missed family prayer, scripture read. We had family home evening every single Monday. So big part of my childhood was, you know, all the things that the church asks us to do, we were doing all of them. And I think I struggled a little bit. I. My parents were so good and so loving, but everything was. Everything was very spiritual. Everything was a spiritual experience. And I think I struggled with that because I'm not sure that I felt that I was getting the experiences that my parents would tell me about. And so Just. We would go to the grocery store, and my mom had left her wallet on the bumper of the car one time, and it was there the whole time we drove home. And she saw it after. And I remember her telling us that an angel had held her wallet on as we drove home. Or. When I was 16 or 17, my mom had a dream that we should move. And we. We did. It was. It was just a few months later that we packed up everything and we moved to Colorado. And it was. It was traumatic as a junior in high school to have to leave everything, but it was all based on the inspiration that my mom had. And our house had sold very quickly and for over asking price and. And so it seemed, I don't know, a little bit magical the way that God would put his hand in our life over and over again. And so I did struggle because I felt I wasn't getting. I wasn't getting those experiences like I was told. I mean, she had told stories about running along the side of the road and thinking a car might have swerved into her and an angel grabbing her and throwing her out of the way. And I wasn't experiencing angels and things like I was told. And I would get the same thing at church, honestly, with testimonies. And so I really tried. I remember praying about the Book of Mormon. I remember trying so hard to get the answers that I wanted. I wanted to feel like this was real and a part of me. And I remember when I wouldn't get the answer, I would just work harder and I would, you know, go into the closet to pray because that might make a difference. And. And so I struggled there. But I eventually went off to byu and, um, my parents really wanted me to serve a mission, and I. I finally decided to go. And so it was there that I really felt like I dove in and got the answers that I was looking for. I felt really good about what I was doing and what I was teaching. And I felt like that at that point it was confirmed to me that this is good and this is true. Where'd you serve in Arizona? The Tempe.

John Dehlin [00:19:13] Oh. I served four months in that mission.

Cami Reddish [00:19:15] Oh, really? Yeah, I. I loved it. I loved my mission. It was everything I thought it would be. And I. I really kind of found myself in the church, and it. It kind of became my identity. I don't think I had thought much about it before, but I grasped onto it and I. I found out that I was really good at teaching. And so I dove into the scriptures and I felt like I had Understood. I, I understood the gospel, I came home and I taught at the MTC for a few years. I taught at the MTC for long enough that I ended up training teachers how to train missionaries at the mtc.

John Dehlin [00:19:55] And, and for our, for our never Mormon listeners, the MTC is the missionary Training center in Provo, Utah. There's several throughout the world, but like you said, Cammy, it's where missionaries are trained. And in our culture, in Mormon culture, it's, it's prestigious to be a returned missionary. It's probably even more prestigious to be a female return missionary because traditionally in Mormonism, at least prior to about five or 10 years ago, it was pretty much only men that served. Women were more the exception. But if you're selected to teach at the mtc, it's kind of like you were, you're an elite Mormon in a sense, because you weren't just a Mormon missionary and returned with honor, but then you were chosen to train other missionaries. And so at byu, especially if you're a teacher in the mtc, you're kind of extra righteous and you're extra faithful. At least that's how it's perceived within our culture. Is that fair to say?

Cami Reddish [00:20:46] No. And I felt that, I felt really good about it. I thought I know this stuff and I could handle anything. So that's where I was at. I could handle any question. Because when you train at the MTC and you're teaching English, it really is about helping these missionaries understand their testimonies and, and the doctrine. So I am spending hours a day. I mean, I trained hundreds of missionaries and taught them the doctrines of the church. And so from there, Kolby and I got married in the temple. We have three kids. We have done every calling asked of us. I've served in, served in young women's presidencies and stake primary presidencies. And I think my, my involvement in the church has always been about teaching. I, I love it. I, I'm good at it. I feel like I can help when it comes to youth and understanding the gospel. And so, so yeah, it really became who I am. Like, I, I feel like it, yeah, I, I don't know if I could really separate myself from the church or the gospel because it is, it is who I am. And so, yeah, moving into a space where I begin to question what I've given everything to, that is, that is a tough thought to even just have

John Dehlin [00:22:17] and, but just to be clear, prior to discovering that you're former bishop had been an abuser, where was your testimony? Were you, like, were you, like, looking for reasons to get out of the church? Were you, like, you know, doubting the church and struggling? Or were you, like. Or something else?

Cami Reddish [00:22:36] No, I mean, I. My testimony in the gospel was strong, and I would. I think that we were struggling in a way completely different to that. Almost going. Because we knew the church was true and because it was so. My testimony was so strong. We struggled with things like Covid. We have a high risk son, so to. To attend a ward who isn't masking. And I know there's so many opinions on that, but that felt difficult to us because we thought, hey, like, we want to be here. Like, this is the true church. Like, and. And even that wasn't going to stop us from participating in the church. Even though we were frustrated and upset about how at least our ward was responding, we knew it was true. And when we couldn't participate in person, we participated online, and we would always do our family prayer and scripture read. And I believed that it was all of God, and I wanted to be good and I wanted to do the right thing. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:41] So. So prior to this bishop abuse scandal, you were super faithful, super committed, and super believing. Yeah, true.

Cami Reddish [00:23:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:50] Okay. All right. Well, Kolby, what do you want to tell us about your Mormon background prior to this scandal?

Kolby Reddish [00:23:57] Well, as you can tell, my wife's amazing. I feel like I grew up. I feel like I grew up in just a fantastic family. My parents, we were really good about prayer and. And we would do scripture study as a family. But one of the things I think I really want to just, like, praise my parents for. For my upbringing was just the church has this list of rules, and we all know what they are. Right. My parents were so much more focused on us being good people. And I think the core of what Christianity is. So, for example, we. You know, I have one sister. I never remember feeling, like, the weird oppression about, like, modesty for her, and maybe she would disagree, I don't know, but I just felt like my upbringing, it definitely was super Mormon, but it was a little less orthodox, I'd say, than my wife's. And I mean that in a good way. I meant that, you know, my parents were primarily committed to. And I'm not saying hers weren't, but my parents really were committed to us being good, honest people, standing up for other people if they were, you know, going through something tough and reaching out to those around us. My Both of my extended family, like my mom and dad's side, are lds. My mom's side, though, she has four brothers, and none of them really are active. And so growing up with that, they're just these awesome, fun, you know, kind of cowboy guys, did rodeo and stuff. And they're just great people who weren't super active in the church growing up. And so I would say one of the reasons I had a little bit more of, like, a universalist view, I think, than most Mormon people was that. And I think that experience, looking back, was really important to see that the church isn't the only place with good people. But like Cami. So I feel like I grew up pretty traditional. Cami told her story about the angel holding on the wallet. I think the only story I'd tell as a kid that really affected me was I remember getting the lesson in Sunday and primary about Jesus and Peter walking on the water. And I remember being told by primary teachers for years that if I had enough faith, just like Peter and Jesus, I could walk on the water. And I never told anyone this until I told Kami, like, a few months ago. But growing up for, like, years, I would, you know, when I. Whenever I was at the local pool or around water, I would try and, like, believe that I could walk on the water and, like, you know, close my eyes, step onto the water, and obviously never walked on the water. But I remember as a kid even that that really did cause me, like, the beginnings of some cognitive dissonance. Like, I was hearing well. And the weird thing was it isn't. It wasn't really even cognitive cognitive dissonance. I internalized that as like there was something wrong with me or that I didn't have enough faith. But I would say I, like, moved past those feelings. And then, like Cami, I went to byu, served a mission, also in Tempe. So that's where we met each other, and then started dating later at BYU, I also taught at the MTC. And then while I was at BYU, I TA'd for Professor Thomas Wayment and then ended up going to law school. And I'm an attorney today. As far as our relationship to the church, I think you kind of nailed it, John, which is we were all in type members right up until this whole thing was a real challenge for us. For the last, like, four years before this all happened, I was actually the adult gospel doctrine teacher in our ward. And so I taught all four of the standard works and just really enjoyed that. I've always really enjoyed teaching and communicating with people. And so I really tried to bring, like, a new perspective to gospel doctrine. And I think I did that over the years and gave people some insights that they maybe hadn't heard before. I think one of the things Cami said I just highlight is there were things we recognized in the church that we didn't agree with, dating back since the beginning of our marriage. But we chalked those things up to church culture, right? So we felt like there were things in the church's culture that were unhealthy, but for some reason, we never connected the two dots that, like, maybe those things were a direct result of things the church was teaching. For example, the two that come to mind is, like, we were really worried about the church's messaging about sexuality and sexual health for our kids. As we started to have kids and then for LGBT individuals, we really felt like the church was in the wrong, but we felt like that was a culture problem, not necessarily a doctrinal problem. So I think that I only raised that to show how much Cami and I believed in the doctrine and how much we believed the church was true, that we recognized some of the problems and went almost like, in spite of the culture sometimes.

John Dehlin [00:29:26] All right, love it. Okay, so both of you were super faithful. So how many years into your marriage were you when things started, when this stuff started happening in your ward? And do you want to say what city, ward, and stake you were in, or do you want to leave that out?

Kolby Reddish [00:29:46] I think we'd rather just leave that. Like we said, this is mainly about the system. People can find that pretty easily. I think it happened in Idaho, and some people can find that if they want to. But I think out of respect for the ex bishop's family, we. We won't give that information, even though people can find that. So this all began happening in January 2021. That's really where this timeline starts. That was last year, and this year is our 10th anniversary. So we've been married nine years, and that's really where this story starts.

Learning Their Bishop Was Arrested for Abuse

John Dehlin [00:30:22] All right, well, let's. I guess, let's get into it. So you're both serving. You have some kids. You've been married nine years. You're serving faithfully in your Idaho Mormon ward. How did it start?

Kolby Reddish [00:30:36] So it starts January 2021. We had a really weird releasing of this person we'll just call ex bishop, who ended up being charged with, you know, four counts of child. Serious child molestation charges. It was the weirdest releasing I've ever

John Dehlin [00:30:54] seen, because how long had he been bishop?

Kolby Reddish [00:30:56] He had been bishop a little over a year, maybe.

Cami Reddish [00:30:59] Yeah, it was pretty recent,

John Dehlin [00:31:02] but he served for a Full year or more?

Kolby Reddish [00:31:05] Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds about right. So he. It was the weirdest releasing I've ever seen because the stake president came.

John Dehlin [00:31:16] I should just tell non Mormons. Bishops in Mormonism traditionally serve five years. So it's. If a bishop's released before five years, it's usually a signal to the church members that something's gone wrong. Sorry, I just wanted to provide that context.

Kolby Reddish [00:31:31] No, yeah, absolutely. And that's actually a great point because we actually had a bishop right before this individual who was bishop for like three or four months. And then their work schedule changed such that they couldn't do it, and the stake president came and when they released him. For people who aren't familiar with it, it's such a thing in Mormon culture that if someone's released ahead of time and there isn't like a worthiness problem, they'll address it kind of directly and give reasons for why that person's being released here. So the stake president was there on a Sunday. The bishop who was being released was not, nor was his family. And the bishop got up and released him with no thank you or vote of thank you.

John Dehlin [00:32:14] The new bishop got up.

Kolby Reddish [00:32:15] I'm sorry, the stake president got up and released the old bishop. And there was no thanking his family, no thanking him, no vote of thanks, which I think is pretty standard. And instead they called the current first counselor to that bishop to be the new bishop and the second counselor to be the first.

John Dehlin [00:32:34] And for never Mormons, a stake president is over like eight, let's just say eight to 10 Mormon congregations. So it's like a diocese in the Catholic Church. So usually a stake president, and it's S T a K E, not S T E a K steak president, like stakes in a tent. The stake president presides over multiple Mormon congregations. And so they would come to release old bishops and to call new ones. And so normally it's like this celebration of like, oh, bishop, thanks for serving for five years. You've been great. Thanks to your wife. Now we release you and we'll bring on new ones. So normally it's a celebration. So if the bishop's not there and they're just like, here's the new one, and let's not talk about the old one. That's clearly an alarm sign, right?

Kolby Reddish [00:33:21] Yeah, it was definitely very different. I think another standard thing is the outgoing bishop usually gets up and like, either gives a talk or at least shares a testimony. And so that was really irregular.

John Dehlin [00:33:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So the stake president comes Releases the old bishop without much fanfare. Four years for three and a half to four years early. Doesn't talk much about him. Calls the first counselor as the new bishop. And so that leaves the whole ward wondering what.

Kolby Reddish [00:33:52] Yeah, that's the question. Right. It. We all know that. Well, people who've grown up around Mormons know that, like the rumor mill in Mormonism is a real thing. Right. Especially in a small community where I grew up in this community. So we had heard some. Some gossip and just kind of lodged it away as like, well, that was a weird thing. I wonder what we'll end up hearing when the stor kind of resolved. And then that really brings us.

Cami Reddish [00:34:15] Yeah, it brings us to where this bishop is our neighbor as well, the ex bishop. And so literally next door neighbor down the street.

John Dehlin [00:34:24] Okay, Same street.

Cami Reddish [00:34:25] Same street. So we see him move out and everything. We see him move his boat and moving. Everything moves out. And so we know that something has happened. But again, the rumors were it's an affair, something, you know, something's gone wrong, let's not talk about it. And honestly, an affair, none of our business. Right. He. So we kind of let it go at that point. So months are going by and nothing's happened. All we know is our bishop has been released and nothing's been done. He moves out of his house. So we know that there's something there. But he's been. See, he's seen around town multiple times.

John Dehlin [00:35:05] Does his wife and kids, do they stay in the church? In the. In the house?

Cami Reddish [00:35:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:10] So the family. The family remains just. The ex bishop moves out. Okay.

Cami Reddish [00:35:15] Okay. But I mean, he's seen. So dropping off his son at activity days.

John Dehlin [00:35:20] Smallish town.

Cami Reddish [00:35:22] Yeah, Yeah. I mean, yeah. So he's still at stuff. Right. And. And during this time, I'm. He's still. We have a ward Facebook page probably like most. So he's showing up to service stuff.

John Dehlin [00:35:34] So he's still showing up.

Cami Reddish [00:35:35] He's in pictures right. On the ward Facebook page. And then I don't. How many months go by?

Kolby Reddish [00:35:42] It was three. So then in April, so the release, the weird releasing happens in January. And then in April, one day I'm driving home and as an attorney in the past I've worked as a criminal prosecutor. And so it's pretty common that I'll get, you know, weird criminal law questions from family or friends. I get a call from someone saying, have you heard about this individual and the charges that were filed? And I said, no. And they were calling because charges had been filed for Lewd and lascivious conduct and sexual assault of a child under 16. Two counts of each of those. And they were calling to say, basically, how serious is this? What can you find out by looking at this public information? Because if you're not an attorney and you don't work in that system, it can be hard sometimes to figure out exactly what you're looking at. So that was in April when charges were officially filed and he was arrested.

John Dehlin [00:36:34] Okay, so you, you found this out in April?

Kolby Reddish [00:36:40] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:36:40] And then what goes through your mind?

Kolby Reddish [00:36:43] Well, in reality, we think. We think it's so common sense, right, that everyone's just going to be very hands off as far as we need to love and rally around his family, because his family didn't do anything wrong. But I thought, wow, this is a really difficult situation. I knew that it was going to be very contentious because one of the things I learned from my time as a prosecutor is people don't know how to handle child sex abuse in the States. They really don't. There are so many people who believe that it looks like strangers in white paneled vans taking people away. And statistics indicate that that's just not the reality. And so a lot of times people are just very uncomfortable with it and don't know what to say, what to do.

John Dehlin [00:37:36] The vast majority of abusers, as I understand it, are close, trusted family or friends, loved and trusted and adored people. And by the way, part of the way they are able to groom and cover up sexual abuse is by being so loved and adored and trusted. Yeah, I mean, you know, that's what I understand.

Kolby Reddish [00:37:59] Yeah. And my original. I mean, my original concern when I say this is so common sense, I just thought, okay, wow, this is really sad for his family. This is really sad even for him.

John Dehlin [00:38:10] Like, still a human.

Kolby Reddish [00:38:12] He's still human. And I can't imagine knowing as a father that you've affected your child, like your children are going to be labeled as something when they didn't do anything wrong. So I have sympathy for people who find themselves in the criminal justice system, whatever the cause is, because it can be really tough. I guess the other piece of background that's important is to know that before this individual was bishop, they had served with the youth the entire time we've been in this ward, you know, six, seven years.

Cami Reddish [00:38:44] No, it was eight years. Lincoln was 10 months.

Kolby Reddish [00:38:48] So that was my other concern was, wow. So if these charges have been filed, you know, how far down does this go? What's the story? What's the church going to do about

Cami Reddish [00:38:57] it and the charges that had been filed dated back beginning 10 years prior. And so I don't know, I think that there were a lot of people who misunderstood or had different impressions about what was actually going on. And at this point, when he had told me, I think I just assumed the stake president's gonna take care of this, right? The stake president loves us and cares about us. He cares about the children in our ward. Like he is going to make sure that we are safe, that the other kids in our ward were safe. I mean, we have seen kids have activities at his house all the time. Like we have seen the amount of time he has spent with the youth. He has been to girls camp. He has been to scout camp. He has been to all of these places. I saw this as, this is going to take some time and some work. And although it's going to be contentious, I had all the faith that the stake president was going to make sure that everybody knew and everybody knew what kind of conversations they needed to have with their children to make sure they were safe.

Cultural Pressure to Trust Church Leaders

John Dehlin [00:40:07] And there's so many cultural layers here that I just want to call out again for everyone, but also for our never Mormon listeners, which is half our audience number one is that Mormon leaders are LDS Church members are taught that there's no difference between God's voice and the voice of, you know, God's servants, meaning their bishops and stake presidents and general authorities. So in other words, God calls the leaders and the leaders speak for God in the Mormon Church. That's not hyperbole, I'm not exaggerating. That's in the Doctrine and Covenants and the, in the literal words of the scripture are whether by mind voice, this is God or Jesus speaking, whether by my voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same. And so Mormons trust their leaders, but most importantly trust their bishops because they're taught that bishops are called by God. And by the way, a bishop has to. A bishop has to be approved by Salt Lake Church headquarters. And so like the First Presidency and the Prophet are, are literally approving these bishops. And so a Mormon, a Mormon would believe that the bishop is called by God. A Mormon would believe that they should trust their bishop, that their bishop speaks for God. And then, and then Mormon bishops are regularly. It's like the main part of their job description is to meet one on one alone with men, women and children behind closed doors. And so when you add all those things, three things together, that, that these leaders are literally called by God, that they speak for God and that you're allowed to, that they're supposed to get people alone, one on one, behind closed doors. I, I hope you're doing the math and connecting the dots of why this is such a problem and, and why monthly now we're seeing news reports of another bishop who's abused a kid or another bishop who's abused a teen or another, you know, seminary or institute teacher that's been abusive because the members are, trust, are giving an unhealthy level of trust to their leaders, to their bishops, to their stake presidents, and they're allowing their children and their youth to sit alone with these men behind closed doors. And for all those reasons, it's deeply problematic. Maybe I'm leaving something out, but.

Kolby Reddish [00:42:39] Well, the one thing I would point out too, John, I completely agree with everything you just said, but the other thing I point out is so often when you hear about cases like this, believing members of the church will go to apologetic places and say, but what about agency? Right? Bishops still have their agency and they'll say that people who are being critical of situations like this are expecting too much out of the gift of discernment. And I think that's one of the reasons this case, this situation is important to note is because the charges dated back 10 years. This isn't someone who, when you look at it as criticizing the church leaders for calling this person, it's not criticizing them for not having foresight or foreknowledge. It's criticizing them for going through interviews with somebody who was unworthy when called, who was abusing children before he was called and maybe while he was called and having absolutely no gift of discernment to realize that, that makes me really sad.

John Dehlin [00:43:41] And Mormons are taught that their leaders have this gift of, of assessing. I mean, the bishop is called a judge in Israel. And a Stake President would be that with superpowers, right? We talk, we interviewed someone just a week or two ago where, like when they shake the hand of a general authority, they assume the general authority can peer into their soul and see whether they're, you know, doing something wrong. But, but, but of course, the Stake president Mormons are, Todd would be able to discern the worthiness of a man before he got called as bishop. And that's what we're all led to believe. And yes, maybe it's unfair to expect that, but we're taught it. And because we're taught it, then we trust these leaders way more than we ever should. And this is church wide. 4 million Mormons right now trust their Bishops, as if their bishops are God or Jesus. Because they're taught to. Because they're taught that they. That they're. Whoever called them had the ability to discern their worthiness before they ever got put in that position. So of course, a bishop would never be called who was an active child abuser. Of course that would never happen.

Kolby Reddish [00:44:57] Right. And you know, it's. President Eyring gave a talk, I think it was in 2017. So for people who are thinking, well, John, you don't have that exactly right. That's not exactly what the church teaches. Look at Elder Eyring or President Eyring's talk where he says it takes faith to believe that the Savior makes these callings and knows people's weaknesses and strengths.

John Dehlin [00:45:16] I mean, we'll add that to the show notes. This is an eye ring talk about.

Kolby Reddish [00:45:21] Specifically about callings in the church and about how every calling comes directly from the Savior. I don't know how with the pattern of, like you've put it, you know, cases like this happening multiple times a year across the church, a leader in the church can make a statement like that because I don't know how to interpret that when you have a situation like this. And I guess that then gets us to the next part. Like Cami and I said, we just thought this was so common sense that people would just be all on board with, you know, child molestation is not acceptable. The church stands against abuse in any form. Right. That's the line from the handbook. And the next part of the story is like a month or so later, our new bishop was getting up and. And testifying during fast and testimony meeting. And it's. I think it's kind of important to remember the weirdness of how covet affected everything here because this, the releasing happened in January before COVID had kind of gone through another wave and shut everything down. But at the time that this, the bit the new bishop gives this talk infest and testimony wing and this testimony. We were listening at home. I'm sorry. No, we weren't at home. We were there. That's right. We were there because we were teaching Sunday school for the youth at the time. The. The new bishop gets up and I want to give him credit in the sense that he was trying to be humble. The message he was trying to say, because he. This was right after he'd been called, more or less, he was trying to say, I'm imperfect. The Lord works through imperfect people. But as part of that statement, what he said was he specifically referenced this ex Bishop who was. Who had been arrested for child molestation. At this point, he specifically mentioned him by name and said how he had learned from him when he was bishop and this person was first counselor. And he mentioned other bishops too, like the past two bishops of the ward as well. But that was insane to me. So offensive and tone deaf to basically extol this person over the pulpit when we knew there were victims sitting in that chapel at that very moment. We were horrified. Praising him, the abuser, basically praising the abuser and saying he was a good guy and how much service he had given. So I immediately scheduled a conversation with the stake president because I just thought there's no way this is okay.

Early Responses from Stake Leadership

Cami Reddish [00:47:58] Well, and also I think we had been kind of waiting for the stake president to handle this situation. There were already rumors. So, I mean, now that this is public information, he's been arrested for these things. A few people have called Kolby asking what did these. What does this mean? What does this not mean? But I had heard the same exact rumor over and over again from other people in the ward that this was a misunderstanding, this was not what it seems. And so I'm, I'm getting really confused. Like, is the stake president going to set the record straight? Are they going to help these people understand that there are. This is serious? I think that's the big thing. Is it. It was just rampant in the ward, like, this isn't very serious. It's kind of not a. Not a big deal. And when people are saying that over and over again and I have a lawyer here that's telling me, no, this is what this actually means, I am very confused. And I'm waiting for the stake president to kind of tell everybody, actually, like, I care about you guys, this is really serious. For the sake of the victims and you. I want you to know how serious this is, and I want you to know that you probably need to talk to your kids so that we can make sure everybody who's been in his care, one on one in group activities, whatever, has felt safe. And none of that has happened yet.

John Dehlin [00:49:26] So it sounds like if I were to ask you guys what you would have wanted the. The following bishop or the stake president to tell congregation members, ward members or stake members is basically let them know this guy's a threat. Let, or at least, you know, convicted let. Or. Or on trial. I don't know the right legal terms. Let the, you know, he's running around the community, make sure that they protect themselves, find out if there's been other victims and, and make sure that everyone can guard against any future abuses. You would, you would. That's what, that's the minimum you would want from a bishop or stake president. Is there more?

Kolby Reddish [00:50:10] Well, we thought it would have been like, situations like this can tear wards apart. I was in a ward in my mission in Arizona where it wasn't exactly child molestation, but there was something like an affair between two high level members of a ward and they had like an entire fifth Sunday basically to air out all of this stuff. And so I couldn't believe that the stake president wasn't using it as an opportunity to talk about abuse. To say, what happened to these victims is not okay. And yeah, like you said, I believe every parent in that ward, every parent whose kids had been alone with that man when public information indicates that he is a child abuser, that they had a right to talk to their kids however they wanted to, that that was a decision the parents got to make, that the church had a duty to say, parents, these charges have been filed and they don't have to editorialize and, and, you know, besmirch this person's reputation. They just have to give the publicly available information so that people can make their own informed decision to talk to their children.

John Dehlin [00:51:21] Yeah. And because he had been at girls camp and in, you know, young men's leader, these are, these are positions where you're potentially alone with, with girls or boys. And, and again, as a bishop, for a year, he was meeting alone behind closed doors with women and children. So it's, it's a fair, it's a fair expectation.

Cami Reddish [00:51:44] Right.

Kolby Reddish [00:51:45] And it might, I mean, it might sound silly to some of the listeners who don't agree with the Book of Mormon, but the first place my mind went immediately was Jacob, where in the Book of Jacob, he gives a really harsh sermon about chastity and about cleanliness. And he specifically has a line where he talks about, you know, it grieves me that I have to speak in front of you with such boldness. And I thought, here's an opportunity for like a real leader, like a real stake president to come in and say, this is a really unfortunate situation, but we need to talk about this. And it could have helped make the world stronger and better and helped, I felt like, at least at the time, like teach people about that. The church doesn't stand for this type of stuff. Aside from just the new bishop's comment, I think it's important to note we had heard, like Cammie said, a few comments from other people like, well, this is Just a misunderstanding or they had heard, you know, a gossip about. Gossip about a really minimized version and how it was just, you know, blown out of proportion. And, you know, when charges have been filed and someone's been arrested, it's important to know that's not just. It's an allegation that hasn't been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. But it's not nothing. Right. It's not just someone gossiping. There is a judge who sat and heard whether or not there was enough information from the state to go arrest this person. And the judge said, yes. That's built into the system. Right. It wasn't just hearsay rumor. There was evidence that police and judges had looked at and a prosecutor and felt like this was more likely than not that this person had committed these crimes. And now, of course, it's worked its way through the criminal justice system and he's pleaded guilty, so he's even acknowledged that, you know, at least the things he pled guilty to, that they did happen. So.

John Dehlin [00:53:39] Okay, so you are becoming more and more alarmed at the stake president and bishop not informing the membership to keep them safe. What happens next?

Kolby Reddish [00:53:50] So after the comment by our new bishop, who's also our neighbor, we in.

John Dehlin [00:53:57] In Utah and Idaho, all your ward members are basically your neighbors, right?

Kolby Reddish [00:54:01] Yeah, basically. So we. Which makes being here a little harder. Right. And I hope people can realize that. That we have good intentions, but because

John Dehlin [00:54:13] you have to go back to your neighborhood where all of your neighbors are also ward members.

Cami Reddish [00:54:19] Right.

John Dehlin [00:54:19] And they're going to feel in some way like you betrayed the ward or the church or them by speaking publicly. And then you have to live in that, you know, environment. Right?

Kolby Reddish [00:54:31] Absolutely. And we're adults, but our kids have to live in that environment. And I guess the unfortunate thing for us is that someone taught us, do what is right. Let the consequence follow.

John Dehlin [00:54:42] Oops.

Kolby Reddish [00:54:42] And we take that teaching very seriously. And that's. I mean, that's why we're here today. Like, I. I want our kids to understand someday, when they can listen to this, that this meant enough to their mom and I, that we had to speak up and say that this situation was not handled correctly and that it needs to change.

John Dehlin [00:55:03] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [00:55:04] And if people treat us poorly because of that, we can pay that price because we care enough about children to get back to what happened next. So after that extolling over the pulpit, after this person had been arrested for child molestation, I immediately scheduled an interview or a meeting with the Stake president and just kind of said, started by saying, like explaining what had happened and saying this was not okay and you correct me if I'm wrong. And to his credit, he agreed with me that that was very poor wording. That's a common explanation for. I feel like things that are said that are kind of horrifying in Mormonism. But he agreed to talk to the bishop. I basically explained that I was really disappointed in the way that he'd handled the situation in the way that we just talked about. I shared with him the story about the word on my mission and how it was a real opportunity for transparency and for that ward to move forward and grow. And so I was surprised that he hadn't done anything about that. He also, and I want to tell this story, I did not go and ask whether or not the ex bishop was called of God because I already knew that the God I believed in would not put a child molester in those rooms with bishops or with children and put children at risk. I did not believe that. I did not ask that question because I didn't want the answer or I didn't want to hear his answer. Frankly enough, people had come and talked to him, concerned about the situation, that he volunteered the answer anyways, which was also very horrifying. He said, and I was alone at

John Dehlin [00:56:53] this point because he would have called the original bishop.

Kolby Reddish [00:56:55] He called this bishop? Yes. And he told me that he wanted to testify that the Lord had called this bishop and that sometimes the Lord works in mysterious ways.

John Dehlin [00:57:10] He just. He bore. Your stake president bore testimony to you that God shows that child molester to be a bishop because the Lord works in mysterious ways.

Kolby Reddish [00:57:25] Yeah. And I want to be really clear. I do not expect perfection of church leaders. If this stake president would have just told me, you know, I had a feeling, because that's. We know that's how the Spirit works. I had a feeling and I felt like I was doing what was right. But truthfully, I don't know. I would have probably dropped at least this part of the story. But that is so damaging. I mean, I can't imagine putting myself in the shoes of those victims and knowing that they were abused, that the person who called the abuser points the finger right at God rather than just admit I may have made a mistake. I think that's the part getting back to our theme of systems not people, that's the part that horrifies me, is because Mormonism takes people, otherwise good people, and puts them in a position and tells them, you speak for God, they'll do this weird mental gymnastics where they actually denigrate God to save their own perceived infallibility or their own image or their own reputation.

Cami Reddish [00:58:43] To be fair, I don't think that most people. I've heard that before. I don't think most people who say things like that have thought that through. I don't think they would have been able to rephrase it and be like, I think God wanted him there. Even though that's exactly what they're saying. I think if they took a moment and thought, oh, wow, yeah, I am making this God's fault. I am saying, yeah, God wanted him to be there. And we kind of get so wrapped up in just the things that we say. You know, it's just these common things that they do sound beautiful in some situations. Like, my mom's stories sounded beautiful to me when I was young. But the internal struggle that came from those angels showing up all the time. I'm thinking now, why didn't an angel show up to this stake president and. And give him a dream.

John Dehlin [00:59:39] Right.

Cami Reddish [00:59:39] That he was not supposed to call this man? I don't understand. I'm starting to rethink.

John Dehlin [00:59:46] Yeah.

Cami Reddish [00:59:47] How I've been understanding my entire life.

John Dehlin [00:59:51] I mean, it's. It's Mormon history. It's. It's accepted Mormon history that according to Joseph Smith, when God wanted him to marry some teenage girls, that God sent an angel with a flaming sword to threaten Joseph's life, to force him against his will to marry a teenage girl. That's Mormon history. That's accepted Mormon history. Like, if God's sending angels with flaming swords, what God should have done is sent an angel with a flaming sword to keep that stake president from calling that man is bishop. Right.

Kolby Reddish [01:00:32] Or. Or I'd say to prevent the abuse in the first place. Right.

John Dehlin [01:00:35] Even. Of course.

Cami Reddish [01:00:36] Right.

John Dehlin [01:00:37] Yeah. Even more so. Right.

Guest [01:00:39] What's that thing you always say, John, where it's like the church cares about two things and it's like authority and.

John Dehlin [01:00:45] And pr and pr and so for. You can add money and I don't. I think the church cares about its members.

Guest [01:00:51] Yeah. I'm just trying to say, like, I think in that situation, in the Stake president's head, his authority trumps everything else. That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah. Individual members can care about different things. The church can generally care about a broad array of things. But when you're talking about authority, and if your authority is being questioned and you're like a big, strong, tough guy, you're not willing to be like, ooh, you're right. I should take a seat. Now, that's not really in a, in like a Mormon authority, like a Stake president's playbook.

John Dehlin [01:01:17] No, you're making a great point, Kara, that we're not going to say that the church doesn't care about its members. The church cares about its members. The church cares about its doctrines, theology. But when push comes to shove, if it's, if it's the church's authority, if it's the truthfulness of the church or its reputation, members will get stepped on and pushed aside if they do anything that could challenge the church's authority or reputation.

Kolby Reddish [01:01:45] I think we absolutely agree with that, John, as people who have felt completely stepped on because we've tried to speak truth to power. I agree with that wholeheartedly. The Church does care about its members. But like you said, when there's a conflict, the church's authority is the most important thing. That's one of the biggest things. That's one of the biggest reasons we're here today is we don't want to draw anyone away from the church if it works for them. But we want people who are in the church to understand the way the church works so that they can make their decisions about how they define their relationship to the church accordingly. They need to understand that this is the way the church works. I. One thing I want to say about that meeting. Kami wasn't able to make it that meeting. So it was just he and I. I wish for the life of me I had recorded that meeting. Yeah, I haven't or I didn't. I haven't recorded any of the meetings because at the time I, I really felt like these people just that they had blind spots. Right. And I felt like if I go to them respectfully and try and say, I think there's a problem with the way you handled this or the way this was said or done. I really believe that they would say, oh my gosh, thank you so much for the helpful feedback and would adjust accordingly. That didn't turn out to be the case all that much. And I guess just the one thing I want to say is I want to be very clear that that interaction happened even though I can't prove it. People who work with me in the professional capacity or who know me know that I would never like. I don't lie, I just don't. And I specifically remember that interaction because it took me so off kilter. It just was so offensive to me. And I remember it went even a little farther than that because he said he tried to like theorize. Right. He said, well, maybe the abuse wouldn't have come out and it would have continued or gotten worse if he hadn't been called as a bishop. So that was, calling him as a

John Dehlin [01:03:51] bishop was a way for the Lord to get him eventually busted and prosecuted for the, for the abuse.

Kolby Reddish [01:03:59] Right, right.

Cami Reddish [01:04:00] And that was a mysterious, mysterious way.

Kolby Reddish [01:04:04] Yeah. And so the stake president, I would know also the stake president, as that meeting closed, I offered to just, you know, I'm an attorney who's worked in the criminal law sphere. I have dealt with victims before. I know a little bit about how this works. I am happy to help or be used in whatever way possible because the stake president had asked if I'd be willing to like, counsel with him going forward if he needed to run stuff by someone that never happened. And it's a little frustrating when you have a leader like make offers like that and then they just completely seem to forget. And I bring that up because the next part of the story is that rather than do like an adult only fifth Sunday, like I had mentioned, that

Cami Reddish [01:04:51] was after the second time we met. This is still the first time where you asked him what he was going to do.

Kolby Reddish [01:04:57] Yeah. And he had no idea. So then we had the weird sacrament meeting.

Cami Reddish [01:05:02] Oh, okay.

Kolby Reddish [01:05:03] Yeah.

Cami Reddish [01:05:03] But your, your conversation with him about what he was going to do to, to address this. He said, I'm taking care of that in private meetings.

Kolby Reddish [01:05:16] So what she's talking about is the concern I raised that other people don't know about this and don't know they need to be having these conversations with their kids. I, I, what I actually said to him was, if this person had interviewed my kid and you haven't told me now for four and a half months, we would be having a very different conversation right now. Our kid was younger than the 7.

Cami Reddish [01:05:42] He wouldn't have gotten his first interview until he was 8, being baptized.

Kolby Reddish [01:05:45] And so he hadn't been alone with this person. But I was trying to express to the stake president, you need to tell people, or what are you doing to tell people so that they can have conversations with their kids so that you actually know the scope of this problem.

John Dehlin [01:05:59] Because my understanding about child abusers is that they, they repeat, offend, it's once they become abusers. And he had been an abuser for 10 years at this point, or nine years when he'd been called his bishop, whatever it was, who knows how many people he might have abused. Because it's very rare for a child sex abuser to just abuse one or even two kids. That's my understanding. I don't know if that's. You know, that's my understanding. Having a training in mental health. So. So it would stand to reason that there would be other victims in the wake.

Kolby Reddish [01:06:33] Right, Right. And you never know if you don't ask. Right. There might not be. I think you're right. The statistic statistics indicate that that's probably the case with someone who's, you know, sexually attracted to children. But you don't know if you don't give people the information to have the conversations with their children.

John Dehlin [01:06:51] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [01:06:51] What the stake president told me at the time was, so your kids, because your kids weren't affected, you didn't have, like, a conversation with the bishop. But those conversations are happening behind closed doors so that people can talk to their kids. You just weren't involved because you didn't have kids of that age. So at the time, I said, well, I don't necessarily agree with the way that's being handled, but out of respect for his family, for the victims, I at least felt like, okay, well, they're at least telling people in some way they're doing something. They're not doing it the way I would, but they are doing something. And so that kind of cooled me off on that. That part at that point.

John Dehlin [01:07:36] Okay.

Sacrament Meeting and Calls to Forgive the Abuser

Cami Reddish [01:07:37] Okay. So then we go into the sacrament meeting.

John Dehlin [01:07:39] This is the weird one.

Kolby Reddish [01:07:41] Yeah. So about a month later, this was. I think, really this was the stake president's attempt to recreate my pitch of like a, you know, a fifth Sunday or an adult only. Fireside. Go ahead.

Cami Reddish [01:07:54] Oh, I mean, I. He's there.

John Dehlin [01:07:57] The state president shows up. He's there as the sacrament meeting for your word.

Cami Reddish [01:08:02] He speaks after the ex bishop's wife. So he has the exact wife. It was on forgiveness. Oh, so he has the ex bishop's wife give a talk about loving and forgiving. She did not explain what happened. She said something happened in our family, and it has led her to find herself in a place of forgiveness and kindness. And he followed with a talk about forgiveness. And it felt very. I don't know, like I was confused why that was the conversation, because I feel like we missed a step in the conversation. I can see in somewhere in this plan that the forgiveness takes place, but we kind of, like, skipped a bunch of stuff, and our ward is super messed up at this point with all the rumors going on there. Very few people know exactly what happened. And people are saying all sorts of things. I mean, people are still saying he's a good guy. And defending him. And other people are saying it wasn't really what they say. It's just this big fight. There's definitely sides.

John Dehlin [01:09:17] And so we get super vague.

Cami Reddish [01:09:18] Yeah, we. We get a sacrament meeting about forgiveness.

John Dehlin [01:09:22] So just to kind of like summarize the. The wife of the abuser is asked and. Or pressured by the stake president to get up and give a talk about forgiveness while the victims are in the congregation and the family members of the victims are in the congregation. Hearing this, knowing that the context is, is that there's pressure now on friends and family and ward members to immediately forgive the abuser when it's only three or four or five months into this whole process and people finding out about everything. I mean, yeah, and kind of stunning

Cami Reddish [01:10:09] not having it not be addressed, having there be 10 different stories about out there about what happened. I think it was a lot of confusion. And then it's. It's like kind of like trying to push the ward into the next phase when we didn't actually process what happened. Because at that point, I don't think most people knew what happened. And it was a. It was just a mess.

John Dehlin [01:10:34] I mean, I actually. One of the really good teachings of Mormonism are these steps of repentance where you acknowledge the wrong, you admit it, that those are like the first steps. You acknowledge that you did something wrong and you admit it, and then you apologize for it, and then you can make restitution and then you can, you know, not do it again and change your heart and not do it again. If we're thinking about collectively the ward, the stake, the stake president, there was no acknowledgment publicly of what happened so that it could be identified. That's step one. And they just skipped right over their own steps of repentance.

Kolby Reddish [01:11:14] Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I think it also just ignored the way that something like this affects everybody. Because the stake president, I specifically remember him making a comment about following the ex bishop's wife's lead. And I remember I don't have the text of that entire talk, but I remember telling Cammie my impression right after it was over was, oh my gosh, this is going to get completely swept under the rug and he's just going to go back home like nothing happened. That was the takeaway from this talk, was that it was all good. Now we're all going to move past and we all need to forgive. So the clear signal to the entire ward was this is over and done with. And it's important to note that there Were no specifics given there. It was very vague because it was in sacrament meeting. And of course, you don't necessarily want to talk about specifics of child abuse in front of a bunch of children. Right. We need to be age sensitive. But that really bothered me, the fact that it was so, so vague because there had never been specific communication about what had specifically happened. And like you said, taking accountability is a part of the repentance process. Right. The atonement shouldn't be used to jump over all of the steps and say, the possibility that this person could one day be forgiven because of the Savior means that we should forgive them right now. And that's very much what I felt like the ward members, including us, were being asked to do was let this go. It didn't affect you because it affected these other people more. But the reality is it did affect the entire ward.

John Dehlin [01:12:53] Yeah. And then I think maybe the most important and shocking and disturbing part of all this is when what does it do to victims to have them be sitting in the room while their perpetrator has not been sufficiently identified and called out? And then all the leaders are saying, forgive, forgive, forgive. Jump right to forgiveness. What's that like for a sexual abuse victim to not have any. No public discussion of, like, oh, my gosh, you're a victim. You're acknowledge that you were a victim. Like, how can we support you? How can you help you? The only public discourse that you as a victim hear by your leaders is pressure to rush to forgive. I mean, what's that like for a victim? Can anyone. I don't even know.

Cami Reddish [01:13:45] I can't imagine. The other thing that I've wondered as well is because we missed the step of even just talking about it and making sure that everybody who was around him and spent time with him felt safe that time, we as an entire ward kind of jumped over that and pushed it aside. And we're pushing people to. To say. I mean, if you talk about it, it was like, why are you talking about this? Like, we. We've been asked not to talk about this. If there were other victims that they didn't know about, that space was not a safe space for them to come forward. There would. There would have been no way that they would say, actually, you know what, this. Like, I was affected by this too, or I have questions about this even on that level. It was not a safe space for any of the youth in our ward to talk about how they felt. And again, this man had been in charge of the youth since we were in this Ward. And so it has been eight years of him either being the young men's president or the bishop.

Kolby Reddish [01:15:04] And I. I think, like you, like Cammie said, I mean, we have no idea how those victims are feeling. I can't imagine. And any other victims that were out there in the chance that they listen to this, I know that they probably feel like we are talking about their business. I just want to say publicly, we are trying to thread a very difficult needle here and not do that. But we're speaking up because what happened to them in the case they do listen to this was not okay. And people who were telling them that they needed to let it go and move on and forgive that may come down the road. That's up to them. Like, they're the survivors. They get to tell that story and write that story. But the way that they might feel angry that people are talking about their personal business or something that affected them, I just want to say we are trying to help you the best way we know how, which is when adults find out that children have been harmed, we speak out. And I'm sorry that other people haven't done that for them and that they've been told that what happened to them wasn't important or that big of a deal. It really breaks my heart for them, and I hope that they can see that. That even if they can't understand it now, that we have the absolute best intention towards them and their healing. And that's part of why we're here, so that that doesn't happen to any other children or as many as we can prevent in the future. Because I can't. I seriously cannot imagine even just the optics of the new bishop. Right. So the new bishop who was called was the child molester's first counselor. Why? What are the optics of that from a stake presidency standpoint? Why in the world would you not call a completely new person who had no association with this person or as little as possible?

John Dehlin [01:17:07] I'm guessing it would be to have as much continuity as possible. At least he'd been serving for a year. He would know about a lot of the issues going on, and it would be potentially the least disruptive to the ward and provide continuity. Obviously, that's. Not.

Guest [01:17:22] Obviously have authority, though. How does that work? Like, if you're. When you're a bishop, you call your counselors because you're in a position of authority to have revelation on who should be called. So if you are actually not worthy to receive the mantle of bishop, how do you call someone?

John Dehlin [01:17:36] A good point.

Guest [01:17:36] If you don't even have that revelation because you're not worthy of it, but

John Dehlin [01:17:39] also, well, of the state, from the state president's point of view, he was worthy because God had called the bishop. And so regardless of his actions. So the, the inspiration of that exhibition was valid because God put him there even though he's a child molester. But I think, I wonder if you're also asking about a conflict of interest, because if a bishop calls his two counselors, two people he's close to, two people he's trusts, does that potentially call into question their objectivity to preside over the ward and the aftermath and the cleanup if they're kind of homies to the original bishop? Is that part of what you're saying?

Kolby Reddish [01:18:18] Yeah.

Guest [01:18:18] Space that you mentioned? Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [01:18:20] And part of what I'm saying is, so if those conversations were happening with the adults and the youth. Right. And the person who's communicating, that is the ex bishop's first counselor. They haven't really created a situation where people like you said, Kara, have a safe space to disclose or let's. You know, the new bishop is of course, going to be doing youth interviews as well. If there were other victims that might be a space, if they felt like it was a safe space to come forward and tell the new bishop, I was also abused. Right. Courage is contagious. But that's. I don't think that's going to happen when you know that the previous, you know that the previous bishop put the current bishop in that position. Basically. I just can't imagine how they think that they'd ever find out the scope of the problem with the way they handled it. Yeah.

Guest [01:19:12] They ever wanted to. Do we know if they ever even wanted to?

Kolby Reddish [01:19:15] Well, and that's, I mean, that's a great point, Cara. That's my honest opinion, is they're getting exactly what they wanted, which is look like we're doing something, but we're really

John Dehlin [01:19:24] not, and kind of brush it under the. Brush it under the rug and, and, and use the atonement as a way to pressure members to forgive quickly and forget and victims and family members. And this is, you know, one of the big problems that I've seen over and over again is that the church leaders, they don't want it to be taken to the legal authorities, and they don't want people to get upset or angry. They want them to forgive and forget. So it's minimally disruptive to the warden stake, but also to minimize any legal or financial or public relations implications for the church. They just want it to be quiet and to go away because that, that, that protects the name of the church. And I think that's the words that they use. Protect the good name of the church. That's the justification. And to prevent lawsuits against the church. That's one of the jobs of Curt McConkey.

Kolby Reddish [01:20:20] And that actually reminds me of another part of the conversation I had with the stake President that I kind of forgot about was this will look much better for you when this hits the press, as these things always do. If you can say, I've had this special fireside or we've had this special meeting that highlights abuse is not okay. I remember in every meeting I've had with the stake president, I have asked him to just make. Because so many members got crosswise trying to defend the church's authority and justify this person's behavior. I have asked every time just for him to read the statement that's in the church manual, the church handbook about abuse, which is the church stands against abuse in all of its many forms. He has never done that to this day. And that's very sad to me. Like, why? Why not? It seriously calls into question, like, why won't you just say that? Is it because that's. Well, we'll get to why that's because. But I don't understand, even from a public relations and legal perspective, that can help make things look so much better. I don't understand why they can't take that ability to say, this person is not like the rest of us because we stand against abuse rather than sweep it under the rug.

John Dehlin [01:21:38] Yeah.

Ward Email Exchanges and Community Reactions

Kolby Reddish [01:21:39] So I guess getting back to really, the next part of the story is we ran it. So really the tone in our ward and stake was this is over and done with. It was an unfortunate incident, but people didn't want to talk about it. We were renewing our temple recommends and we ran into one of our friends from the ward. They're going to be kind of, I don't want to say central in the story, but they're a big part of the story and they've given us permission to use their names. Brian and Natalie Tooley. They were members of our ward and in fact, Brian was in the bishopric before the ex bishop was, and Natalie was in the Relief Society presidency. They are great, very Christlike people and very courageous. We ran into them at temple, recommended interviews, and we said something about we're going to struggle with the question about sustaining and supporting local leaders in the temple. Recommended interviews. That's a standard question that every Mormon Gets asked if they want to go to the temple, if they support and sustain their local leaders. And it was like we had this instant moment with them where we both realized that we felt very strongly that the way the church was handling this was not okay and that everyone around us kind of disagreed with us. So we had this like, immediate kinship of, oh, you think this is a big deal too? And so we went to meet with them just shortly after that.

Cami Reddish [01:23:14] Yeah, it turns out they had met with the stake president as well and gone over similar things, even more things because of their relationship with some of the people in our ward. From their relationship with the ex bishop and his wife, they had a lot of information that made it seem a lot more real to us that we can't sweep this under the rug. What happened can't just be set aside and moved on from without it being addressed.

Kolby Reddish [01:23:51] Yeah. And so really, after we met with them and discussed the seriousness of the charges, again, they wanted to pick my brain from being a prosecutor about how to understand the charges. After that, we found out that the Tulis had been talking to other members of our ward and that the story I'd been told by the stake president, that they were having these one on one conversations with the adults in the ward, was just not true at all. That they had basically been talking to other people, asking if they were concerned. And more than half, if not, almost all of the people they were talking to really had no idea that this had even happened or how serious it was or what the charges were. And so feeling just like us, Brian, like Kami said, had taken his concerns to the stake president, felt like he was ignored. And so Brian decided to send an email out to members of our ward. Even though he wasn't a member of that ward anymore, he obviously had ties to it because of his time in the bishopric. They had only moved recently. And so he sent out an email to members of the ward that had the ex bishop's mugshot the charges and just said, we had the opportunity to talk to our kids about this. We feel this is very serious and we feel like everyone else needs the opportunity to talk to their kids as well. And that happened. I remember these emails started being exchanged on August 31st of 2021. Okay, so I actually brought some of the emails because you can't even believe some of the responses unless I read them. And so I'm gonna read. I'll start with reading Brian's email.

John Dehlin [01:25:40] So these are emails that are written in response.

Kolby Reddish [01:25:44] So I'll read Brian's first and then I'll read a few responses.

John Dehlin [01:25:48] And again, this is. This email is from Brian.

Kolby Reddish [01:25:52] Yes. To the members of our ward over

John Dehlin [01:25:56] some type of just regular.

Kolby Reddish [01:25:58] Just over email. Yeah. It's important that it wasn't used. Sent over LDS tools for later in the story.

John Dehlin [01:26:04] Yeah. So Brian sends an email to the ward. Ward members.

Cami Reddish [01:26:09] Yeah. Every email he had from the ward, he sends an email to everybody.

John Dehlin [01:26:13] Okay.

Kolby Reddish [01:26:14] And one thing I want to note, and Brian knows this, he had sent me a draft of this email before he sent it. I told Brian that I didn't know that it was his place, but I understood why he felt like he needed to send it. Anyways, we'll get to my email where I even tell the other members of the ward that. But Brian knew. What I'm saying is, Brian. This was not a spur of the moment thing. Brian had been. If you look at the timeline, they knew about this back in January. It's now August, so seven months. And the church had done nothing.

John Dehlin [01:26:52] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [01:26:52] And they had taken concerns except for

John Dehlin [01:26:54] pressure everyone to be quiet and to forgive.

Kolby Reddish [01:26:57] That's true. That's true. And they had gone to meet with the stake president also. And nothing was being done.

John Dehlin [01:27:04] Yeah. And so who knows how many other members also talked to the bishops or stake presidents to. To express concern.

Kolby Reddish [01:27:12] Yeah, I know many people did go talk to the stake president because he told me that he obviously didn't use any other names, but he did tell me that many people were really concerned.

John Dehlin [01:27:22] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [01:27:23] So I'll go ahead and read this first email from Brian. He says to the ward. To the ward says, hello, brothers and sisters. We found out in January. We found this out in January. And we were able to talk to our kids to make sure nothing inappropriate happened to them. And we feel that everyone deserves the same opportunity to talk to their children as well. Ex bishop sexually abused children for a span of 10 years and only came clean after being given an ultimatum by one of his victims. Feel free to call me if you have any questions. And again, he attached the mugshot, the person's name and the details of the charges. So the first response came about an hour later. This person was also in the same bishopric with Brian Tooley. For what it's worth, he said, before.

Cami Reddish [01:28:10] From before previous bishopric.

Kolby Reddish [01:28:11] That's right. He said, dear Brian, we were deeply disappointed to receive your email regarding ex bishop when we moved into the ward. I came to love you and your family. And after serving with you, I respected you for your love of others, your willingness to serve, and your testimony of The Savior. This is why it is so difficult for me to write this message and tell you that it was wrong of you to send out your message. While I am disappointed in the choices ex Bishop made, I believe that the legal process will work and I believe that the church disciplinary process will work. And ultimately Heavenly Father's judgment will be final. Until then, our role is to love and forgive as the Savior did. We should spend more time and energy praying for and serving this family. I would respectfully ask that you remove all of my family's email addresses from any further communications, as we all feel the same regarding this matter. He then attached from the Gospel Topics link from the church's website, the judging others. There's a page they have that says talks about judging others.

Cami Reddish [01:29:17] And this was sent back to everybody,

John Dehlin [01:29:21] everybody in the wardrobe on their phones

Cami Reddish [01:29:23] reading these emails as they trickle in. In response to Brian's email. It was a weird.

John Dehlin [01:29:29] And just to be clear, Brian, I would guess if Brian were here, he would say that his intent was not to smear or besmirch the reputation of the abuser. It would be to. And this is where Sam Young comes in to protect the children. So Sam Young's organization is called Protect LDS Children. This is exactly what Sam was trying to curtail. Isn't that right? Isn't the motive not to smear, but to protect the children and to put everyone on notice, tell them what happened so that they can make sure their kids are okay and to protect them further?

Kolby Reddish [01:30:06] Absolutely fair. And I. It's absolutely fair.

John Dehlin [01:30:08] Sort of a turn with don't smear and gossip. That's missing the point.

Kolby Reddish [01:30:13] Right, right, right. And that's those, those principles. You can feel those principles are true, but I think that's where the context super matters. Right. It's the same thing we were talking about with talking about forgiveness. Forgiving people is a good thing. But when you're talking about forgiving someone for extremely serious child sexual abuse charges four months after or less, you know, four months after they've come clean, a month after they've been in jail, it's sending a wrong message. So when you're saying we need to not be judging other people, you're actually saying that Brian, for bringing this to other people's attention is to be condemned for judging. It gets to this very, very weird, dysfunctional place.

Cami Reddish [01:30:59] Well, and. And not to say that forgiveness isn't somewhere down the road, but we as adults in this ward had not done our part to make sure that the kids were safe. That whatever that was And I would have hoped that the stake president was inspired to know what that looked like. But we had not done that yet. And we could feel it, and the Tulies could feel it, and the other people who talked to our stake president could feel, we haven't done our part to make sure that we understand the scope of what happened here. It wasn't done. We just decided to skip that part. And we left all of these children who were in this ex bishop's career at risk of not being able to come forward if they needed to.

John Dehlin [01:31:46] In some sense, it's not fair. Brian was put in a bad position because he shouldn't have to be telling everybody about this. It should have been the leaders that did it. And, you know, so in some sense, it's just he's taking the fall for something that really isn't his. And he's going to feel the backlash, the public backlash of being disloyal and unfaithful and steadying the ark is a term that's often used in Mormonism to say, let the leaders handle it, you know, but what if the leaders are mishandling it? But the other thing is Christ, if you believe in Jesus at all, Christ made it very clear about how he felt about protecting the children. What did Christ say about those who harm children? He said.

Kolby Reddish [01:32:25] You're skipping to my email, John.

John Dehlin [01:32:27] Okay, okay. I'm gonna. We'll. That's a cliffhanger. As a cliffhanger, Christ has some pretty strong things to say. I just wanted to speak up in Brian's defense.

Kolby Reddish [01:32:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:32:37] Because I. I think. And you'll tell us the scripture. But Brian is following Jesus when he says we need to protect the children. That's all I'm trying to say.

Kolby Reddish [01:32:46] Absolutely. And I just want to, since we're here.

John Dehlin [01:32:50] Well, don't skip. What? Keep telling your story.

Kolby Reddish [01:32:51] No, but I want to publicly thank them, because courage is contagious. And even though I can completely understand people who thought, this isn't Brian's place, I actually agree it wasn't Brian's place. But the leaders of the church were doing anything. And so what do you do when you feel like people have a right to know and they're not being told? And you go to those people and say, you need to tell people, and they don't do anything for months and months and months.

John Dehlin [01:33:15] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [01:33:15] You get to this point where you feel like. Not to quote from Zoolander, but you get to this point where you're like, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. And that's how we felt like. And that's why I want to share these emails so that people can see these are popping up on our phones. And even though we're normally, I would say, pretty good parents, we ignored our kids all day as these emails are going back and forth. So the next one comes from the bishop. So we have this, don't judge other people. And then we get this number from the bishop which says, brothers and sisters, Brian's email was not authorized by Stake president or any church leader. Please contact myself or stake President if you have any questions regarding this matter. More importantly, please contact the police if you think there may have been any issues with anyone you know regarding this or any other person where you suspect abuse. As you can see, police have been involved in this case and have been investigating for as long as the church has been aware. As a bishopric and as a church, we take the protection of our youth and our children and youth very seriously and put procedures in place to ensure they are protected. This has been a very challenging time for ex bishop family and they need our love, support and prayers. Please continue to pray for them. Please also pray for all of us. We need to be more truly Latter Day Saints and act in a Christlike way to all around us forgiving as we have been forgiven. And I will give him credit for saying that we take the protection of children very seriously. I believe that he believes that, but we'll get to. Well, actually it's. The next part of the story is.

John Dehlin [01:34:51] Can I just say I, I do take umbrage with one thing he said because the Mormon Church, along with Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientologists, they're famous for telling abuse victims not to speak to police and doing every they can, everything they can in state legislatures to keep Mormon church leaders, including bishops, from being mandatory reporters and to make sure that in Mormon controlled states, bishops are exempt from, from being mandatory reporters. And so it's, it almost sounds like he's saying hey, we as the church made sure that the police were involved. But I'm guessing that the police were involved because the, because of other reasons. And it almost gives the impression in this email that he's saying we've, we've notified the authorities, we've kept them involved, we've done what's right. So you guys don't need to worry about, you just need to worry about forgiving. I don't know if that's relevant or not, but like I'm calling him on that because the Mormon Church is famous for saying keep the Police out of this.

Cami Reddish [01:35:55] Yeah, actually we, we missed a part of the story, I think when we met with the toolies and we didn't have a lot of information on this, which is just crazy because we were actually in this ward. But they knew the person who called the police. And so while I don't know what. And it wasn't the church, it was not the church.

John Dehlin [01:36:15] Yeah.

Cami Reddish [01:36:16] So the state president became aware of.

John Dehlin [01:36:18] Because Kurt McConkey literally has a history of telling bishops and ward members there's a hotline. The bishop calls the hotline when there's abuse. Kurt McConkey, the church's law firm in Salt Lake says do not involve the police. And that's, that's the counsel that the church's law firm has always given ward members.

Cami Reddish [01:36:37] Yeah. And that's exactly what happened. And so we didn't know that.

John Dehlin [01:36:41] It was a year ago.

Cami Reddish [01:36:42] The stake president.

John Dehlin [01:36:42] This is a year ago. Long after protect LDS children, the church is still telling its leaders and members to not contact law officials.

Kolby Reddish [01:36:50] And they were. The church was in the middle of a lawsuit from 2020 in Arizona for that policy, that direct policy that led to children continuing to be abused because the bishop did not disclose and the church did not disclose that abuse.

John Dehlin [01:37:07] Yeah.

Cami Reddish [01:37:08] And just like Arizona months, like we. There's that timeline that we didn't fully understand of our bishop getting released. So the ex bishop coming to our stake president and saying child abuse. I'm involved in child abuse. He releases him from his job as a bishop, but does not call the authorities, does not call the police. We find out from the tulies later that they knew who did it and he was immediately arrested then months later. So there is this time, I don't understand what is going on in our stake president's mind where I mean he, he tells us later he did everything he was told to do, which I believe he was. He was not getting the right advice. From a moral standpoint, you, when you know there's abuse happening, you call the authorities so that that person can't continue to abuse. It's just common sense.

Kolby Reddish [01:38:03] And far be it from me to say, but I don't even think it's the right legal advice because the hide thing strategy only works if people don't find out. It makes things look so much worse when they do come to light like these things almost always do. Taking full accountability and just owning mistakes. People look so much more charitably on that than people who hide. Yeah, Yeah.

Cami Reddish [01:38:30] I remember asking you about that specific law because I said, why didn't he call? And you looked, looked it up. He's not required to call. And not only is he not required to call, though, if he were to disclose the information, there were laws to protect him because he chose to disclose. I mean, it was. It was on his side to tell people about this, but he was told not to do it. He was told, you don't, don't tell anyone.

Kolby Reddish [01:38:59] Yeah, please. We'll get to that conversation with the stake president.

Cami Reddish [01:39:03] So, okay, so we're in the middle of the emails.

Kolby Reddish [01:39:05] Yeah, we're in the middle of the emails. And the way this little bird walk started was John was saying, like, thank you to Brian and Natalie for standing up. And I just want to say, yes, like the church. We've heard the statement. All of us who have been members of the church have heard the statement so many times. The church is perfect. The people aren't right. If anything, the exact opposite is true. There are really good people in the church. The Tulis being those type of people that are far better than the institutional church deserves and who will speak up and say very tough things. This is one of the text messages that Brian got. So someone texted and said, you have absolutely lost my respect. I am blown away you would take it upon yourself to judge another man the way you have judged ex bishop. I don't care who you think you are, but it is not your position to use the church tools to solicit emails so you can torch a torture ex bishop and his family. Our leaders in the warden stake will handle the situation. What makes you feel like you have the right to email my family and I a mugshot of ex bishop from a legal standpoint or a religious standpoint? You have zero business in this. And this is the line that just. I can't imagine texting this. I would rather stand next to ex bishop, knowing what he has done and who he is today, than a coward like you. Do not send me future emails. You are not welcome around me as long as you choose to act the way you are. And for people who don't like, which many of the people on our ward did not like, that Brian took it upon himself to send these emails, you at least have to acknowledge that saying unpopular things takes courage and is really hard. And I just want to say thank you so much to Brian and Natalie for having the fortitude, for having the courage to speak up and say, this doesn't happen in my church, like, this is not the way I think things should be run because that needs to happen a whole lot more the members of the church need to take ownership of the church and stand for.

Cami Reddish [01:41:14] I think felt like he had no choice at this point if the stake and the ward leaders weren't going to make sure there wasn't other abuse. He had to notify the families himself and it wasn't being done. And he waited and waited and waited for them to take control of the situation and stop these rumors and share with people, this is serious. You actually do need to talk to your kids. This guy's been in charge of your kids for a long time. None of that ever happened. We just skipped over that step to the forgiveness. And he could not handle the anxiety of people don't know and they deserve to know this. And so, yeah, I thank them too for having the courage to. To share that information. It was not popular information, but as that text says, like legal, there's. That was all public information. He just copied and pasted it from online. People should have known that this happened and that it was serious and that they needed to have conversations with the kids he was in charge of.

Kolby Reddish [01:42:16] Yeah. As these emails are going back and forth, we get angry at the church, we get angry at the leadership's inability to address the situation has now caused this to happen and for Brian to feel othered and feel like he had to do this. So we schedule a meeting with our new bishop who is right across the street. And he comes over and the conversation is pretty brief. I remember it started with, basically, I think I said, I have a lot of problems with the way the situation was handled and I'm going to get to the bottom of why it was handled this way. What hand in the way it was handled did you have? Basically, the new bishop was just following the lead of the stake president, according to him, which makes sense since it was involving an ex bishop. That makes sense with the church's hierarchical structure. He talked about Brian's email and talked about how inappropriate he felt he was or it was for Brian to send those emails. He also talked about the fact that Brian's email was wrong in the sense that it referenced the abuse going back 10 years ago. If he had done 10 seconds of research on, you know, the Idaho Judicial system website for criminal charges, he would have seen that that's just publicly available information. That's kind of inexcusable in my mind. If you're the bishop of a ward and there's this really groundbreaking thing that

Cami Reddish [01:44:00] happens, well, you're trying to help this ward heal from something and you don't even know what actually Happened. He had no idea.

John Dehlin [01:44:08] He didn't know.

Cami Reddish [01:44:09] He, he did not know what the charges meant. He did not know that the charges began 10 years prior. He even testified to us that as he served with this ex bishop, he felt when something went wrong and something, as if, as if that he had known when the abuse started. That's what it sounded like to us. And, and we asked him, we, we were very confused about why he would have felt something went wrong because these charges were like beginning 10 years ago. He, he had been abusing children for 10 years, still called us bishop. And then for some reason he, he testifies to us that number one, he was supposed to be called as bishop. So he did the same thing as our stake president and then says, and I, I could feel when they're was a difference in him, I knew that something had gone wrong. And I just.

John Dehlin [01:45:01] In other words, he was inspired up. And as bishop, he was inspired up until the point where he made a mistake not acknowledging thinking that belief, thinking in Mormonism, feelings are truth. If you, if some charming human makes you feel good for whatever reason, then they must be okay with God and living a righteous life totally flying in the face of the fact that, that oftentimes abusers are super charismatic and, and make you feel really good. You know, Mormons would think, well, if this person's making me feel good, they must be righteous.

Guest [01:45:34] I think it's even a little bit worse than that. The way I view this is that people, like I was saying earlier, did they want to know, do you actually ask the questions if you're not comfortable with what the answer might be? So people in that position, if you're not, if you know deep down you're not man enough to actually handle what's with the answers that might come out, you know, that you're not that type of man, that you're not actually going to stand up for children. You're going to kind of cower and you're going to just rest on, well, somebody else is doing something. It's not that big of a deal. It's a misunderstanding. If you know that you're not the type of person that can stand up. It just makes me question who are the people that we're calling into these leadership, leadership positions? Like, what would it take? How many, how many years would it have taken? What would have had to get this new bishop's attention enough to say, oh shoot, now I need to man up now. I need to, you know, send out an email myself now. I need to be that person that Brian had to be, because Brian sounds like he was the man. He was the person who was going to say, no, enough is enough. I'm going to actually do what Christ has called me to do. And it's really frustrating that there are people in positions not only not doing it, but looking down on the people

Cami Reddish [01:46:35] that do so and doing what he was told. I feel like in their, in their head, it's, I did what I was told. We got the same thing from our bishop. We got the same thing from our stake president. And that pushes it all the way up. Right. It keeps pushing it to, like, I did what I was told. Well, then our state president did what I told. I mean, he kept asking questions to be like, who did you talk to? Who told you to do this? Like, it. It's so wrong. Like, we have to figure out where this came from and then deal with the fact that everybody else was okay with just doing it.

Silence, Patriarchy, and Institutional Enabling

John Dehlin [01:47:06] Yeah. I just want to quickly call out, so silence. I say this a lot. Silence is the enabler. Silence is the killer. And then patriarchy, but maybe even not even to call it patriarchy. A culture of blind obedience and trust in leadership. Those are some of the structural components that are so dangerous. Because the bishop wouldn't want to go learn because, like, his job is to, like, okay, stake president, tell me what to do. And I don't want to learn anything that would lead me to not just totally obey my leader and fall in line and handle this the way the church wants me to. Because the church is led by God. The prophets led by God. The apostles are led by God. The general authorities, the area authorities are led by God, which means the state president said by God, and now the bishop's led by God. So let's just look up the food chain, figure out what they're telling us to do. Not ask any other questions, not talk to anybody else, not learn anything else. Not. Not even tap into my own conscience or my own. Use my own, you know, critical thinking skills to do what's best for everyone. It's literally. It's kind of like a military. And I, I think the military is probably better in these ways than. Than a Mormon. It's. It's sort of like this. Sort of like blind faith, blind obedience, hierarchy. That, that would keep a bishop from learning even the basic facts.

Cami Reddish [01:48:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:29] About. About his own, you know, abusers under his own congregation, in. Under his own church.

Cami Reddish [01:48:35] At the end of that, you. You end up with a God that you don't even teach, like the, The God that would put this bishop in this place and allow this abuse to continue, to not check if any other abuse happened. Like, we push all of that all the way back up to God and that's the, not the God that we go to church and learn about every week. It doesn't make any sense.

Kolby Reddish [01:48:56] Yeah, that's one of the ironies of like this level of apologetics is to save your image of the church. You often denigrate the very image of God.

John Dehlin [01:49:06] And the church does this with the Gospel topics essays where the Race and the Priesthood essay. Yes, a lot of past apostles and general authorities said horrendously racist things. You know, they were just speaking as men and. But, but then why did the. Why were blacks excluded from the priesthood, you know, for so long? Well, it's God's infinite wisdom. And Mormons just need to stop. And Brad Wilcox, the same sort of rhetoric happens just this week with the Brad Wilcox thing. Mormons need to stop blaming human evil on God.

Kolby Reddish [01:49:38] And I, I want to point out, you're absolutely right, that that is what Mormonism teaches. Right. Is look up the food chain. But I want to point out, as we've gone through this like, and going back to the New Testament, that idea is actually anti what Christ taught in John. Christ is teaching doctrine that people don't like. And he says, try the doctrine and see if I speak of my Father, that my doctrine is not mine, it's the doctrine of him who sent me. So even Christ says, don't just look at me, do it yourself. Find out if it is truth. So it's one of the ways that Mormonism differs from, I think the Christian message is that idea, for whatever reason, it is Mormon culture. It is what is taught by the church, but it is not Christian. Like it is. Right. Against what Christ taught. And Wendy Nelson's recent fireside in the EU about, you know, exclamation.

John Dehlin [01:50:40] Tell our viewers who don't know what you're talking about, about. Yeah, who's Wendy Nelson and what did she say?

Kolby Reddish [01:50:44] So Wendy Nelson is President Nelson's wife, the prophet.

John Dehlin [01:50:48] The Mormon Church president and prophet.

Kolby Reddish [01:50:50] That's right. And they.

John Dehlin [01:50:51] Second wife.

Kolby Reddish [01:50:52] Second wife. They recently did a fireside with I think, the Bednars to the Saints in the eu. And as part of that, Wendy Nelson's talk was completely focused on learning from Russell M. Nelson's example. And it's the same thing. It's the same thing. Look up the food chain at the prophet. And she specifically gave, I think, four or five examples of things that she's learned from him as his wife that she's asking the saints to follow. And my reference to exclamation marks is she said put a exclamation mark behind everything a prophet says for the next 30 days. People on the ex Mormon Reddit have really helped her with that. The most egregious parts of what general authorities have said. But the point is it's this.

John Dehlin [01:51:39] But she also said put a question mark behind.

Kolby Reddish [01:51:41] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:51:41] Anything that is not the prophet.

Kolby Reddish [01:51:43] Yeah. Literally everything else.

John Dehlin [01:51:45] So if anyone else who's not the prophet says something, always question it. If the prophet says it, put an exclamation point behind it and believe it and follow it.

Kolby Reddish [01:51:53] But it's super harmful.

John Dehlin [01:51:55] That is cult like, I don't like to use that word, but that is a cult like teaching.

Kolby Reddish [01:52:00] It's super harmful. And the thing I want to point out is it's not Christian, it's anti. What? Christ.

John Dehlin [01:52:05] Antichrist.

Kolby Reddish [01:52:06] Christ did not point to even himself as the Son of God and say, just listen to me and follow me, or just listen. In Wendy Nelson's case, just listen to my husband. The only time she referenced Jesus Christ in that entire talk, we're referencing the name of the church, which just boggles my mind how that could make it through a correlation department that the church has or whoever's approving these talks that they didn't realize how tone deaf that was and how anti Christian. It comes across crossed. But it's the same problem that we saw magnified in our warden stake. This idea that if I did what the person who's right above me in the food chain said, I've done the right thing, period, end of story.

John Dehlin [01:52:48] Don't ask any questions.

Kolby Reddish [01:52:49] And members need to put your head down.

John Dehlin [01:52:52] Just do do what you're told.

Kolby Reddish [01:52:53] And members need to take ownership of their church and say this doesn't happen in my church. And we have seen over and over again how the church becomes healthier for people doing that. You referenced Sam Young. I would also point to. I would also point to, well, one yourself, John, and the way that you helped make the church realize why people are going through faith crisises and helped, I think, spurn on the Gospel topics essays. And I would also point to, I

John Dehlin [01:53:27] don't know who you what's the organization or the movement.

Kolby Reddish [01:53:30] Kate Kelly Ordained Women. The Ordained women movement and how there were changes that were made specifically because of the requests from those groups. Of course, those people are excommunicated in the meantime, but they're just members standing up and saying, this doesn't happen in my church. I don't agree with this. And I think the members need to realize the power that they have, because I think it's. They do run the church if they want to. And so I really admire members who will speak up. So the next part of the story is after we met with the bishop, we had scheduled a meeting with the stake president. But seeing the heat that Brian was catching.

Confronting the Stake President

John Dehlin [01:54:13] Were there a lot more emails than the ones you read?

Kolby Reddish [01:54:15] There were. And there were a lot of phone calls. There was an angry phone call from the stake president. Brian said, I could share this. Where the stake president said, so in the meeting that they had had several months before, Brian had told the stake president that he felt like people needed to know. And the stake president said he wasn't going to tell people. So Brian said, then I might just tell people. And the stake president said something to the effect of, well, if you're going to, I can't stop you. Brian took that as enough of an implicit or tacit acknowledgment that when people were calling him, he said, well, the stake president told me that if I felt like I needed to tell people, I could. And so that's what I was doing. When that got back to the stake president, that same night, he called Brian and told him that he needed to call members and say that the stake president did not say that. That he did not authorize this email and apologize.

John Dehlin [01:55:06] Did you say yelled?

Kolby Reddish [01:55:07] He was angry is what Brian said. I wasn't on the phone call, so I don't know if he yelled, but I can't picture him yelling. He's not really a yelling type of guy. But he was definitely angry.

Cami Reddish [01:55:17] Well, and he told Brian he had to call all of those people and say, actually, the stake president didn't say I could tell people if I feel like I needed to. And apologize to the ward members for sending this email.

John Dehlin [01:55:32] Just for sending it.

Kolby Reddish [01:55:33] Just for sending it.

Cami Reddish [01:55:33] Just for sending it.

Kolby Reddish [01:55:34] Right. So because of that and because of the relationship we'd kind of had to the ward, like I said, we. I had taught gospel, the adult gospel doctrine, for, like, four years and felt really close to the ward. I decided to chime in. So I sent an email. I'll read that one now. So I took about a day processing. So this was the next day. But we were talking and praying a lot about what exactly to put in the.

Cami Reddish [01:56:03] We felt bad for Brian because he was getting texts like this. He was getting awful things said about him. And to Him. He was getting angry phone calls from members in the ward and the stake president. Like, their house got vandalized that night.

John Dehlin [01:56:18] Oh, my goodness.

Cami Reddish [01:56:19] It was crazy. I mean, people are throwing eggs at their house. And the response is outrageous. Like, absolutely. I would have never imagined. I would have thought, thank you so much. I didn't know I needed to talk to my kids about this very serious situation. I don't even think people after the email knew. They wrote it off as this guy being disgruntled or upset about something, not taking it seriously in the sense that I need to address this in my own home. Like, I might need to do that. This man was in charge of our entire ward and before that, in charge of our youth. There's a. There's a problem here, and I am. I cannot believe that people could not see the problem. I did not understand. I did not understand the response at all.

Kolby Reddish [01:57:08] And in fact, find fault with the person who's telling you there's a problem. Not the person who caused the problem, just the person telling you that there's a problem.

John Dehlin [01:57:17] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [01:57:17] So because of that, we took some time and processed, and I wrote the following email to the members of the ward. Good afternoon, brothers and sisters. It has certainly been a difficult 24 hours processing the information shared with us by Brian Tooley. At the risk of further inviting the spirit of contention, I feel the need, because I love this award, to add a few of the thoughts I've had over the past day. First, many of you may be upset that this email was sent. I believe that it took an enormous amount of courage to do what Brian believed to be the right thing, despite the fact that he knew it would likely be very unpopular. While. While I agree that this information likely should not have come from Brian, I do not fault him for that. This public information has been available for over four months and has never been communicated. Communicated to the membership of our ward. In my view, this information should have been clearly communicated to the ward by ward or stake leadership when the information became publicly available. Second, many people have approached me to understand the nature of the charges against Ex Bishop as well as the general criminal process. Because of my time as a prosecuting attorney, I truly feel that many leaping to his defense do not understand the gravity of the allegations against against him. Public records show that Ex Bishop has been charged with two counts of felony sexual abuse of a child under the age of 16 and an additional two counts of lewd conduct with a minor under 16. According to public records, these charges date back to 2011 and 2014. To understand the factual allegations behind these charges, you must review and then I gave the state laws to properly communicate the seriousness of these charges. The maximum sentence on these charges is two life sentences plus plus an additional 50 years. Of course, the criminal case has yet to resolve, but probable cause has been found to sustain the charges at this point. Third, alerting the parents of the ward to these allegations does not constitute impermissibly judging any individual, in my opinion. Of course, ultimately earthly judgment is reserved for the courts and final judgment belongs to the Lord. However, the Savior exhibited righteous and divine judgment on many occasions when he drove the money changers from the temple and when he repeatedly chastised the Pharisees for their hypocrisy. While we are asked to love and forgive, as the passage shared from the Judging Others page of the Church's website says, sometimes people feel that it is wrong to judge others in any way. While it is true that we should not condemn others or judge them unrighteously, we will need to make judgments of ideas, situations and people throughout our lives. In other words, in my opinion, we should quickly surrender any idea that would allow us to invite a wolf back amongst the sheep under the guise of reserving judgment for the Lord. The Lord has clearly directed how he feels about the abuse of his little ones. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea. Fourth, many may feel that this matter should have remained confidential. There are of course, many parts of the situation that are none of our business. However, the reality is that ex Bishop had contact to our youth and we cannot know the extent of any problem until we have those difficult conversations with our families. I know from my time as a prosecutor and statistics indicate that sexual abuse of children often goes undisclosed or is disclosed long after the fact. For that reason, I believe that this publicly available information should have been shared long ago. Only then can parents have the discussions they need to have with their children. Until then, there is truly no way to know the scope of this problem. I hope that even if you are frustrated with my message, you understand the intention behind it. I truly want the best for everyone involved in this tragic and heartbreaking situation, even ex Bishop. Like an untreated infection, this issue is already and will continue to divide our wart if we let it. It is the unfortunate reality that sometimes difficult conversations must be had. In my opinion, only through open and honest discussions can we once Again, come together. Thank you. Wow.

Guest [02:01:17] Well done. I think it's interesting you said, in my opinion, so many times. It seems like you're trying to be really humble and put down people's pitchforks as much as possible, but I think you handled that beautifully.

Kolby Reddish [02:01:28] Yeah, thank you. Like I said, it's hard to send emails like that.

John Dehlin [02:01:34] You know, in my. I was. I was listening with my Mormon brain, and my Mormon brain was saying, you're out of line, Kolby. This is not your place. This would be. This. This would be the bishop's place or the stake president's place to send an email. Your place would have been to be quiet. That's. Honestly, that's what my Mormon brain was saying. Because, like, it's like to a orthodox Mormon, it's all want, want, want. What are the leaders? What do the leaders think and what do the leaders want us to do and think?

Kolby Reddish [02:02:04] There were people who felt that way. There were also, I will say there were quite a few people who emailed or called me and said, thank you for that. Like, thank you for illustrating how serious it was. We didn't realize. And I want to stress, I really do think most people who are defending, justifying, equivocating about this conduct, they really didn't understand. Again, I kind of believed that if you could just help them see what they were defending, they would be horrified. I think there are some people, the church's pull and its need to recognize its authority is so strong that there are some people, no matter what they need to justify, they will. Like you said, we'll get to the gospel topics essays later. Racism, sexism, polygamy, all those things can be excused by some people and not by other people. And it's because of the church's authority. Right. It's defending the church's authority and its truth claims I will give credit to. There were quite a few members of our ward who thanked me for this email, and I really appreciate that. None of them were in the leadership.

John Dehlin [02:03:17] The stake president, bishop were not too. Of the people who thanked you.

Guest [02:03:21] And if your intent was to, you know, notify parents and say, speak to the youth that were in any capacity involved in a room alone with ex bishop, if your intent is to notify the parents, and hopefully, you know, somebody did have a bad interaction, that they'd have a safe space to share it with their parent. Right. That's your intent. Right. I'm not misunderstanding. Okay.

Cami Reddish [02:03:42] So if that is what I would

Guest [02:03:45] c. Is a very, really normal intention. A. Did. Did anything come out after that I guess we can either answer that now. But my question is, what do you think the ward members would say if somebody's kid did come forward and say, yeah, this bishop did something else to me and it was all for all of this anger towards you and Brian and Yeah, what if, what if it actually came to fruition that this was exactly what needed to happen? And it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for your emails. What do you think they would have said, said if a child did come forward?

Kolby Reddish [02:04:16] Well, Cara, the Lord works in mysterious ways. I don't know what they would have said.

John Dehlin [02:04:22] Yeah, that's a great point, Car.

Kolby Reddish [02:04:24] It is a great point.

John Dehlin [02:04:25] Yeah. And we don't, we don't know whether that happened because maybe they would have talked to their bishops or stake presidents that we wouldn't even know.

Cami Reddish [02:04:32] And again, this discussion, I think went out to a lot of the people in our ward. I don't know if Brian had every single email. Yeah, it still wasn't addressed by the leadership. Like you said. If you're listening to it with hearing your Mormon ears, you may still just be angry that this wasn't. It doesn't really matter how beautifully you wrote it. Might not even finish the email and anger place. And, and we saw that with our own bishop. So that, and that leads into.

John Dehlin [02:04:57] Yeah, you get a couple. It's like all these exit emails or letters that ex Mormons write to their family. They get a couple sentences in. It's like, whoa, I'm not feeling good. I'm not going to finish reading this letter. I don't feel the devil.

Cami Reddish [02:05:09] Right. Can't be.

John Dehlin [02:05:10] It's that thought stopping thing. If I'm uncomfortable, it's not that I'm disturbed because this is a problem and these leaders are acting wrong. It's, oh, I feel a little bit uncomfortable. That's Satan telling me that this email is a bad thing. So I'm not even going to finish reading the whole thing. Right.

Kolby Reddish [02:05:25] Yeah. And that I, that is such a good point, John, because I, that idea needs to die in Mormonism like so fast because the idea that we can judge the truth from. Of something by the way we feel about it. And I'll just give like the clear example to me. If you can watch Schindler's List and not feel insanely uncomfortable and terrible, there's something wrong with you. But those events, I mean, that's true events, right? Based on true events that really happen to people. If you can read a book like Night by Elie Wiesel, and not feel horrified. There's something wrong with you. That those feelings do not come from the. Like, feeling negative about stuff does not come from the devil. And I was trying to hit that idea and speak against that idea by saying sometimes difficult conversations need to be had. When I was a prosecutor, one of the reasons I'm not a prosecutor anymore is I didn't like being involved so directly with the criminal justice system every day because it makes you feel really uncomfortable. And kind of like I told my wife, I was a little tired of seeing pedophiles everywhere I looked, because that was my day every day. Right. Was seeing people who committed crimes and those types of crimes. And it's just a very heavy burden to bear. Now, the fact that that made me uncomfortable doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

John Dehlin [02:06:49] That we don't need prosecutors. Right.

Kolby Reddish [02:06:51] Exactly. Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:06:52] Or a judicial system.

Kolby Reddish [02:06:53] Exactly. Those people need to be praised for really sticking their hands into the filth sometimes and dealing with problems that the rest of us have the luxury of not thinking about.

John Dehlin [02:07:03] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [02:07:03] But when we're confronted with those problems, it's not okay for Mormonism to say any longer, in my opinion. Again, sorry. Being bringing that humility Kara was talking about. But it's not okay to say. Because I feel uncomfortable about this or this thing I learned makes me feel uncomfortable. It must not be true.

John Dehlin [02:07:21] It must be Satan.

Kolby Reddish [02:07:22] It must be Satan. Yes.

John Dehlin [02:07:24] Doing evil things. So run away.

Kolby Reddish [02:07:26] Yeah, right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:07:27] Yeah, that's a good point.

Kolby Reddish [02:07:28] And so Cammy kind of hit the next part of the story already. Do you want to talk about it?

Cami Reddish [02:07:32] Should we go Stake President or bishop?

Kolby Reddish [02:07:33] I think just finish the bishop story, and then we'll go to stake President.

Cami Reddish [02:07:36] So this happened the week our son was getting baptized. This email chain happened. So we had him scheduled to get baptized on Saturday with the stake baptisms. So there was a group of three from our ward getting baptized. One of the other kids getting baptized was our bishop's son. And we had planned the program together. So someone from his family was giving one talk. Someone from our family was giving another. They're singing a song together in the middle. Our. Our son and his son. And they decide the night before. So the. Oh, no, you know that they do not want to be a part of a baptism with us. Oh, so they pull out. We're trying to, like, redo our thing.

John Dehlin [02:08:16] The bishop's family.

Cami Reddish [02:08:18] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:08:19] Doesn't want to have their kid baptized with your kid because you tried to protect the ward members and let them know about an abuser in their midst.

Kolby Reddish [02:08:29] And what was told to the third family, who was involved or to other people?

Cami Reddish [02:08:34] Well, she calls me and lets me know what's happening, because they don't talk to us at all. They don't. They don't explain. They don't say, hey, like, we just feel like it'd be best. They could have blamed it on Covid. They could have done.

John Dehlin [02:08:46] Just lie, please.

Cami Reddish [02:08:47] But they called the. The third a member that was getting. She's in the primary presidency, too. So she was kind of trying to figure out what the schedule is gonna be like. She calls me because we have to get another talk in there. We were missing one of our talks because they're not going to do it with us. And. And I was like, that is so strange. Like, do you know what happened? And she was like, well, she starts to lecture me. She's like, well, I think that we just needed to put our big girl pants on and. And get. And I was like, do you. Do you know what's going on? Like, did you get an email the other day? I don't. I don't think she had any idea. But the message that I received is that we're causing issues. Like, we're being petty about something, and so they can no longer do the baptism with us. And. And that really bothered me because they had not contacted us since we. I mean, we were only meeting with him a couple days before that when he was at our house talking about this. But then Kolby sends this email, and they are no longer willing to communicate with us. They pull out of the baptism with our son. It is just odd. I mean, I had family coming into town. I have to ask my mom to, like, give a different talk. And, yeah, it was definitely a weird situation. And not only that, as they live right now, we see them all the time. I mean, you walk out the front door and you're looking into their, you know, front room because we're that close in neighbors. And so that was just strange. And I don't know if it's. A few weeks later, he comes over with one of his counselors talking about something completely different, talking about COVID because we had decided we had to not go anymore because Covid got bad again in Idaho and our son and nobody would wear masks. So I had posted on the Word Facer page, like, I'm like, we won't be able to come anymore to church in person. We'll be watching from home, doing our own thing. So they come to see how we're doing, and he doesn't bring it up at all. And so I bring it up. I said, bishop, what? Like, what happened with the baptism? And he just straight up tells us, I don't know. You. He addressed it to you?

Kolby Reddish [02:10:49] Yeah, I am. I was in the house when they started the conversation. I wandered out to take out the trash or something. And so I stumbled into the middle of her saying, why did you pull out? Just being direct and being like, what? You know, what happened? And he said, and it's like burned into my brain. Well, I wouldn't have felt good about being in a temple prayer circle with you. So we just really didn't want to do the baptism with you guys. And, man, there's so many feelings. I want to say that's like their day. Right? I don't want anyone to do stuff with me that doesn't want to. But I wish that sometimes leaders would think about how damaging having someone like you've already talked about John, who's supposed to speak for the Lord, basically telling you, I don't like you personally because of. And he referenced that email that I. Because I directly said that this stake, basically. And I still feel this way today, the stake and the ward had completely failed and abdicated a duty they owed to their members. I would tell that right to the prophet's face if he were here. And I put that in the email, and that's what bothered him.

John Dehlin [02:12:08] Yeah. Mormons are famously. And it probably not just Mormons, but Mormons are famously passive aggressive, and they're famous. They famously avoid direct conversations.

Kolby Reddish [02:12:20] And so I think they brought it across the plains, actually passive aggression with them. So then turning back to the stake president, so we meet with the bishop. I send my email the very next night, or actually the day, same day I send the email, we meet with the stake president, and he. We arrive probably like 15 minutes before. He very clearly was on the phone with church legal.

Cami Reddish [02:12:47] Because we were right outside the door.

Kolby Reddish [02:12:48] Because we were right outside the door. He had asked, meaning Curtin McConkey law firm and McConkey. He had asked a Stake Presidency member to be there. The Stake Presidency member was one of my youth leaders growing up. So I was completely fine with that and comfortable with that. And we'll come back to him in a second.

John Dehlin [02:13:07] Did you request the meeting or did he request the meeting?

Kolby Reddish [02:13:09] We requested the meeting to basically say we agree with Brian and we're really bothered by the way this happened. So he did not ask to meet with us. That's a good point. We asked for it.

Cami Reddish [02:13:19] Well, and at that point, we had realized that what he had told Kolby previously was not true, that he told. That he told Kolby he was taking care of this behind closed doors out of respect for the family or whatever it was. And that. That stopped us from pushing for months and to find out that some people found out through this email what actually happened.

Kolby Reddish [02:13:40] Right.

Cami Reddish [02:13:40] And so there. There's some disconnect there. He was not taking care of the situation. He was not making sure that the abuse didn't happen elsewhere.

Kolby Reddish [02:13:49] Right. And so the meeting starts with me handing him a printed copy of the email I just read to everybody that I had sent. I had actually forwarded it to him after because he wasn't on the original email thread, but I forwarded it to him, so he had access to it before the meeting. And basically the meeting starts with me sliding the email across the table and saying, I am willing to be corrected if I've said anything in here that is wrong. Let's just have a conversation about this, because we want to figure out if we've said anything wrong or done anything wrong, because we don't feel like we have. And the first words out of his mouth, and the most common words out of his mouth for this meeting was, I can neither confirm nor deny anything you've put in this email. I. I'm not kidding. That was what he said, which is,

Cami Reddish [02:14:41] like, many times, I can't legalize.

John Dehlin [02:14:43] Right.

Cami Reddish [02:14:44] Confirm or deny.

John Dehlin [02:14:44] I mean, you're an attorney.

Kolby Reddish [02:14:45] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:14:46] Is that legalese?

Kolby Reddish [02:14:48] Yeah, I mean, it's movie legal. Yeah. It's from an episode of Law and Order, I think.

John Dehlin [02:14:55] But was he trying to protect himself?

Kolby Reddish [02:14:57] Absolutely. Absolutely. He was primarily concerned with establishing he'd done nothing wrong. And Cammie already kind of hinted at this, but basically what he continued to say was, I have done everything Church Legal has asked of me. And for some reason, he thought that that was like a magic word defense that would stop us from being concerned about what? The way he had handled the situation. Do you have any more thoughts about that? Because that really bothered you.

Cami Reddish [02:15:28] I mean. Yeah, I. I mean, I got heated and. Which is weird for me. I don't usually yell at people or get angry.

John Dehlin [02:15:36] Why were you so angry?

Cami Reddish [02:15:37] Well, because he just said, I did everything I was told. And I said, who told you to do that? Like, who told you first not to call the authorities? Who told you not to tell the people in our ward that you would put a child molester in charge of them? Like, who told you not to say that? I don't care what kind of person you are. When that happens, you make sure the other kids he was in charge of are safe. Like, you can't skip over that step because it hurts your feelings or you have to question a decision that you're embarrassed. Right?

Kolby Reddish [02:16:07] Makes you look bad.

Cami Reddish [02:16:09] And I said, I, I think I yelled eyes like, are you a human being? Like, do you feel good about the decisions you made? Like, you not, I did everything I was told. Do you feel good about that? I like to believe if I was in that situation, I would have said, absolutely not. Absolutely not releasing from, I'm calling, I am going to make sure all these kids are safe. But he did not see any of that. He just kept saying, I did everything I was told. I did everything I was told. And I just, it like festered inside of me in that moment because I, I just, I could not make him see this is not what a good person does. Like, I believe you're a good person. Something's wrong here. Something's not going right. You've been told bad information from the church. You can't believe, as a good human Christ, like, being that you did the right thing by not notifying the parents that a child molester was with them and in charge of them and planning their activities and meeting with them one on one. You can't tell me that because I don't believe that. I don't believe that a good person would say, oh, yeah, I still think that was a good idea. I still think it was a good choice. But that's what he did.

John Dehlin [02:17:21] Really quick. I just want to do a psa. You mentioned this before, that there was that original interaction with your stake president you issued recorded. I just want to do a public service announcement. Mormons and post Mormons out there. Record where it's legal. Record every conversation with your bishop or stake president or area authority or general authority that you think is going to be relevant to the health and safety of or the informed consent of members of yourself. You know, because that, that's the only trans. You know, if Brad Wilcox, if we hadn't have been able to record the Brad Wilcox stuff, just like he's been saying this stuff for years, it would have never come to light. And if I hadn't recorded my stake president, my interactions with him prior to my excommunication, no one would, would know really why I was excommunicated. And, you know, it takes whistleblowers who record these conversations that can then bring them to light and allow for transparency. And so I just, I had to throw I was going to say that before I forgot I had to throw that in now keep recording. And even like private trainings, regional trainings, area trainings, you know, record stuff not to hurt anyone, but to, to allow for the sunlight of transparency to disinfect the church. Right, because the church won't clean up its own mess.

Recording Leadership and Lack of Accountability

Kolby Reddish [02:18:40] And that, that is, that's a great note, John. And it's actually something that really irritates me about this whole interaction. So the stake president was unwilling to confirm or deny anything that was in my email. He was unwilling to ever substantially substantively engage over email. And we'll get to this.

John Dehlin [02:18:57] Because it's a written record.

Kolby Reddish [02:18:59] Because it's a written record. That's exactly right.

John Dehlin [02:19:01] Later in a.

Kolby Reddish [02:19:02] And I just want to point out to believing members who might listen and say, oh no, no, I don't like that, John. That makes me feel uncomfortable because it might make the church look bad again. Isn't it Jesus Christ who told us to record everything that happens? Like how can you.

John Dehlin [02:19:18] In the Doctrine and Covenants.

Kolby Reddish [02:19:19] That is one of the. I think it's in Third Nephi. But that's one of the things that boggles my mind from like putting myself in the stake president's shoes. Again, this is about the system. It's not about finding fault with him as a person. But how can you feel like you're on the right side of something when your side tells you, well, don't put anything in writing. Don't like confirm anything, don't deny anything. Like, is that like, that's not the Mormonism I was raised in, which like I said, is do what is right, let the consequence follow. Like it bothers me so bad that members accept and make that latitude for leaders. Because I again, I think it's anti Christian to say, well our side can't put anything down in writing. Like it's so ridiculous to feel like you're on the right side when you have to have no paper trail. I don't mind people reviewing my emails that I've sent on this topic because I stand by what I said. The only reason you don't want to paper trail is so that you can shift the story later. And I would echo what you said. I wish I would have recorded these interactions, but the truth was I didn't know at the time and well, not

Cami Reddish [02:20:24] only did you didn't know we were living in this space of full trust in, in the church. I had full trust in my stake president. I, I would never have expected even the first meeting going the way that it did. Coming back, saying he doesn't want to tell. Tell people about this.

John Dehlin [02:20:40] He.

Cami Reddish [02:20:41] He didn't do what was right. I truly believed, even after the second meeting, I could not believe how the meeting went. I thought he was going to say, I see now. I see now.

John Dehlin [02:20:53] I'm so sorry.

Cami Reddish [02:20:54] I am a good person. I am so sorry. I'll fix it. We should have made. Yeah, we should have made sure these kids were safe. We missed that part. We were wrong, like. And I just. It just blows my mind to this day that it still is. No, we can't confirm that we did what we were told. Nothing went wrong here. Haven't you heard our. He even referenced. Didn't you hear our message on forgiveness? Didn't you hear our talks? We addressed this. And I just thought this. This was not addressed at all. At all. I wouldn't have known if I had a youth, like a youth that was in his care, which I am very grateful that I didn't, but there are many who did. I wouldn't have known that I needed to speak to my kids about it.

John Dehlin [02:21:36] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [02:21:37] Based on the way that.

Cami Reddish [02:21:38] Well, with the way that it was handled with, with any information that we got from our stake president to our ward, I would not have known. And so it wasn't taken care of. It wasn't taken care of in a way that was safe.

Kolby Reddish [02:21:50] And I think one of the things, again, you know, I'm an attorney, so I ask people questions sometimes to get down to what they're actually saying. One of the things that he did confirm multiple times and I asked multiple times, was who actually made this decision? Because we hear this all the time in the church. Right. The stake president has keys, the prophet has keys, area authorities have keys. They have special priesthood responsibilities is what they mean by keys. Right. I asked over and over again, so who made the decision with the way this was going to be handled? To say nothing, basically. He specifically told me that the church legal department made that decision. And I kind of challenged him and said, so it wasn't you? He said, no, no, no, it wasn't me. And I said it wasn't the area elder that comes into the story here in just a second. He said, no, no, no. He definitely knew about the situation, but church legal made the call. And so that's another part of this story that I just need active members to understand is like when you raise your hands during general conference or state conference the next time, and you're sustaining and agreeing to uphold the leaders of the church you need to understand that sometimes the decisions you're saying you're going to sustain are made by lawyers who are making those decisions because of the church's financial interest. That's the reason that he was given the advice. He was. I know how this works. And I told him right to his face when he told me that, that it was disgusting to me and that I was disgusted that he went along with it.

John Dehlin [02:23:24] But, Kolby, maybe they're inspired lawyers.

Kolby Reddish [02:23:27] That's true.

Guest [02:23:28] That's true.

Kolby Reddish [02:23:29] I work in the public sector. They make more than me.

Guest [02:23:32] That's really interesting. Like, that's a super big connection. I'm glad that you pointed that out for Mormons to understand that you're sustaining who they put in. At the end of the day, it's the lawyer's decisions on how these get handled. And you're thinking it's people in authority. You're thinking they have a revelation from God that this is covered and God's happy with it, but they're really kicking the can to the lawyers who have a different interest.

Kolby Reddish [02:23:52] Yeah. Which really makes me wonder. I've acted as an institutional lawyer like that before, and it really makes me wonder if those law. I mean, I wasn't part of those conversations, but in my mind, that's crossing the line. Lawyers are supposed to give advice and let the principals, the decision makers, make the decision. So either my stake president is lying, or I have some concerns about lawyers making those decisions for stake presidents. I can just say, because I try and have charity for the stake president, I can say he was put in a really difficult position. But this is again where my point of church members, you need to wake up and take ownership of your church comes in. If you're uncomfortable with a lawyer telling you you're going to handle it this way and it disagrees with your conscience, speak up and say, you, you can release me if you don't agree, but I'm not gonna do that. Or you can say, I'm gonna tell people you wanna help me do it in the way that exposes us as little as possible legally. Cause that's completely something the church lawyers could have done. One of the things I think that's important to note is in this conversation, the stake president kept referencing church legal, and he kept referencing the Idaho statute that makes clergy gives clergy an exception from mandated reporter statute like you referenced, John. And the important thing is that law, and I told the stake president this in our meeting, that law only protects confidential communications that happen in a confessional type relationship. Right. So as soon as this information became public, as soon as the charges were filed, communicating the public information is not in any way violating that law. But the stake president continued to insist that he could say nothing because of this statute. And even if he were right about that, like, even if he were right, that it applies. The important thing to note, like Cammie said, is this statute doesn't excuse you from saying anything, or all it does is excuses you from being mandated to say anything. It doesn't say you can't say anything under certain circumstances.

John Dehlin [02:26:03] Yeah, well, I, I'll just say from my training in my psychology program, there's this really, really famous study called the Obedience to Authority study, led by a researcher named Stanley Milgram. And they were trying to answer the question, how did so many Germans participate in the Holocaust? Like, it's. It's one thing if Hitler was a crazy, maniacal narcissist or whatever racist guy, but like tens or hundreds of thousands of Germans all went along with it. So it can't be that they're all evil. So what happened? And it's this experiment that they replicated where they basically brought in participants to administer shock, what they thought was a shock to somebody who is, you know, involved in some sort of educational thing. And every time they got an answer wrong, they believed that they would be shocking the. The learner. And every time they administered a shock, they would turn up the voltage and then shock the next time at a higher level. And they found that two thirds of the participants would administer lethal levels of the shock, such that the participant was literally an actor, of course, was shouting and screaming and then going silent in response to the shock. Two thirds of the people would administer the lethal level of shock. And all that it took was a. A person with a lab coat with a clipboard over them saying, you must continue the experiment. You must continue the experiment. And what it just shows is that we're wired to obey authority as humans. And the cost of that is turning off your conscience. That, you know, your stake president and your bishop, you know, they believed that they were operating in a system where every. All the leaders are inspired, all the leaders are going to do what's right, all the leaders are going to protect them, which may or may not be true. And so what we learn as Mormons to do is turn off our conscience, turn off our critical thinking, turn off our conscience and bow our heads and obey. And literally in temple, in the Mormon temple, you raise your arm to the square, you bow your head and you say, yes, bowing your head to Say yes means I will obey. I will do what I'm told. And what's the. What's one of the covenants you make in the temple? The law of obedience. To obey your leaders, to obey God and your. And the leaders who speak for God. And so that's what's so systemically dysfunctional about this system, is that we're culturized to ignore our consciences, to shut off our critical thinking, and to obey our leaders. And that's what your stake president, in effect, he was operating under that system. That's why it's systems, not people. At the end of the day, they've trained us to obey their authority and to not question, you know? Right.

Kolby Reddish [02:28:54] Yeah. No, that's. That's all very true. And I. I would even point out, I think the language of the temple is even a little stronger. I think you covenant to give your entire life, if necessary, everything you are, everything you have to the church. And so I think you can see where that devotion comes from. This isn't some outlier. I think, like you said, John, that's why we're speaking up. And it's not about finding fault with the stake president. Right. It could have been any number of otherwise good members of the church in that seat, and they could have been put in the exact same situation.

John Dehlin [02:29:30] Yeah. Yeah. Super hard.

Stake President Meetings and Blame-Shifting

Kolby Reddish [02:29:35] Was there anything else about the stake presidents meeting that you wanted to talk about? I kind of want to talk about the presidency member, but.

Cami Reddish [02:29:43] Oh, I mean, I think that you directly asked him about how he was handling it and that you had. He said, I feel like you've lied to me, that you hadn't taken care of this like you told me you were. You can tell him what he. What he told you.

Kolby Reddish [02:29:59] Yeah. So I worded it very carefully because I didn't want to accuse him of lying to me. But what Cami's referencing is the fact that he had told me that they were having these one on one conversations, and I'd since found out that that wasn't happening. And so I worded it very carefully, but basically said president, you told me this, and I feel like I was lied to or I walked away with a false impression. And that's the only reason that we're here four months later is I felt like you assuaged my concerns when you weren't really doing what you said you were doing. And so what he. Well, first he denied that he said that, and then he realized that that wasn't super helpful. So he was like, okay, well, tell me what you Thought I said, so I explained. And then he said, well, here's what I meant. When the youth are going into their interviews with new bishop, who, again, remember, was ex bishop's first counselor, they were being asked at the end of the interview, is there anything else you want to talk to me about? That's what the stake president pointed to as like trying to determine the scope of the problem. And I responded, you know, you mean the standard question they ended they ask at the end of every single interview. And he said, yeah, that that was what they felt like was doing adequate levels of investigation or trying to determine the scope of this problem was doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Not. And I'm not saying that I would have rather that the new bishop be asking about it directly, but the idea that, especially to the kids, because he was talking about talking directly to the kids, but this idea that, like, well, we gave people a space to speak up. I think one of the things we need to learn is sometimes we need to ask questions and not just expect members to bring their concerns to the leaders. One of the other things the stake president continued to insist on during this meeting was, I didn't know people thought I wasn't handling this correctly. People needed to bring their concerns to me, which, of course, the first thought in my mind is, well, what about revelation? What about discernment? But in the course of that same conversation, he talked about, aside from just us and the tulies, at least six other people who had brought concerns to him about how it wasn't being handled correctly. And so part of me thinks, how can you, even with a straight face, say, well, how am I supposed to know if people don't tell me I'm handling it correctly? If the recurring theme is people are telling you you're not handling it correctly, I think maybe it's time to have some humility on the part of church leaders and say, then maybe we're not handling it correctly.

John Dehlin [02:32:35] Absolutely. Yeah, man. Okay. So not a great interaction with your stake president.

Cami Reddish [02:32:43] No.

Kolby Reddish [02:32:44] And I. So I referenced that the stake presidency member was there. I will say to his credit, he said that the stake president had basically been handling this situation all on his own. And he looked. I don't want to speak for him, but to my eyes, because I know him, he looked absolutely horrified at some of the stuff coming out of the stake president's mouth. And he specifically said at the end of the meeting, president, I don't feel like we've given you very good counsel as your counselors that we need to Talk a lot more about how to handle this situation correctly. And again, we had an offer to counsel with us going forward, Cammie and I, that never happened. That, like I said, that stake presidency member was one of my youth leaders growing up. And I don't know the stake president as well as I know the stake presidency member. And I think one of the things that really has just been really hard for me through this whole situation is when you have people who've known you since you were, like, a youth, and they know your integrity, they know your heart, they know that you're not trying to criticize anyone personally. You're just saying, I don't like the way the situation was handled. Help me understand if I don't understand part of it, to then not, like, speak up or, like, check in. Like, really hurts personally to not have people care enough to, like, check up on how you're doing when they know you're going through something because you've come and told them you're going through something. It just makes relationships in the church feel very shallow and like there isn't really Christ, like, love or charity behind them.

John Dehlin [02:34:22] Yeah, yeah, that's. That's one of the ironies is we. We are Mormons, I think subconsciously, if not consciously, in part because we feel like the community is so amazing and it. And I use this analogy sometimes, that we're. We're like cogs in a machine. Because as long as we all play our role as a cog, which is a little bit impersonal, but that's how it ends up being. The machine works great if all the cogs play their role, but as soon as one cog gets out of line, it all breaks down. And all these people that you've been serving for years, that you serve them, they served you. You thought, you know, you loved them. You thought that they loved you. If you. If you're a cog that steps out of line, the machine grinds to a halt for you, and the. The community evaporates. And your leaders aren't there for you. Your friends, your ward members, often aren't there for you. It's not always there. There are exceptions to this rule, but Margi and I were just. We were. We were shocked at how our North Logan Ward community completely disappeared and. Or abandoned us. Once I spoke out against. As a cog, spoke out against injustice or harm that was being done, it just disappears. Like a ghost town. It was like a spiritual and a societal communal ghost town.

Kolby Reddish [02:35:47] Yeah. And I, you know, I do appreciate the members who did reach out, like, after the emails and say, we agree with you. Thanks for doing this. But I think there's something to be said of the fact that the church, like, scares people enough that most of those conversations were private. There were very few people who were willing to reply all on that email or talk to people at church and say, like, no, I agree with Kolby and Cammie. They did the right thing. Because just like you're saying, like, if you're the squeaky wheel, the church just doesn't really deal with squeaky wheels all that well. And I just wish the people who. I wish people would look around and realize that we're all squeaky wheels in one way or another and that we need to, like, speak out and speak out about the things that bother us. Because if a lot of people speak out and we see this over the church's history, if a lot of people speak out, the church changes. The brethren get a revelation, and the church changes. And that's what I want people to do is, like, have the courage to speak out and say, this doesn't happen in my ward. This doesn't happen in my stake. Not. Not with me being, you know, the leader or being part of it. I'm not okay with this.

John Dehlin [02:37:01] Yeah.

Cami Reddish [02:37:01] Yeah. And this leads right into to a couple weeks after the stake president decides to address it in. So after this meeting where he says he's not going to do anything, and it's because of this Idaho code law, he. He decides that he's going to call all the adults for the last five minutes of church into the culture hall to have a discussion about something. So he says he. They announced that in soccer meeting. He's there during our sacrament meeting, and then says, at last five minutes of Sunday school, just everyone, me in the culture, all the adults. And so do you want to share how that fell?

John Dehlin [02:37:41] And he was blaming his prior action on some Idaho law, some obscure Idaho

Cami Reddish [02:37:46] law, saying he couldn't talk.

Kolby Reddish [02:37:47] Yeah. So the way this started, he was reading a prepared statement. I wish we had, again, audio of this prepared statement, because it was prepared. We have asked him at least three times to read it. And the thing that's so funny is this statement upset Cami a whole lot. Me less so. I don't know why. She wanted a copy of it, and I insisted, well, let's just ask him for a copy of it, and let's reread it and see if just our feelings were. If we were feeling defensive, if we felt singled out. And it's not really there when we read the text of the statement. He refuses to send it to us. Which, again, just kind of comes back to my comment of, how can you think you're on the Lord's side when you can't put anything in writing? That just boggles my mind. But the. So he reads this prepared statement, which I'm sure was reviewed by church legal. The primary concern clearly was establishing that he had done nothing wrong. Because it started, if I remember, I might be barely paraphrasing, but I think the first sentence was, I am here today because there are people in your ward and in our stake who feel like I have not handled the situation with ex bishop correctly.

Cami Reddish [02:38:58] And then you see everybody look at us. By the way, at least how that. That's how I felt when you get up and say that the Tulies aren't in our ward. Right. So we're the only ones there who had had an impact on this email chain, which everybody knows about and is secretly talking about. And he says, I'm here. I have to have this hard conversation with you now. Because some people feel like this wasn't handled correctly. He never says himself that he feels like he mishandled it. He doesn't be the leader that we hope that he would have been and say, I can see that your ward is confused. I can see that your ward is suffering and that there's contention here and that there's fighting going on here. And because I'm called as your stake president by God, I feel like I need to step in and let you know what's really going on, because I was wrong and I should have done this earlier and these conversations needed to have place, and I was kind of unsure about how to handle it. But now I really do feel like it needs to be addressed. That would have felt like a leader. That would have felt like a man of God coming in and being humble and saying, I can see now that I didn't handle this correctly, but at least what we heard, which I don't know. And he could change the statement now and send it to us so that we're completely wrong. But what I felt in that moment was some people don't like the way that I did this, but let me just tell you, I did it right. And yes, your ex bishop was arrested for child abuse. If you feel like you should talk to your kids, do it. It was extremely short, probably less than 30 seconds. He tells us, at the beginning, there will be no comments. There will be no questions. I will immediately walk out with his little posse. He Just like walks out like. Like he has all these bodyguards around him. He says, I'll be in my office after if you want to talk. And I just. We got out of there as fast as we could because we could just feel the heat on us. And I'm not sure that he thought that through and thought, hey, I wonder how the Reddish would feel if I say this and blame it on them. Which is how it felt to us that he had to do this now because there were some people who weren't happy about it.

Kolby Reddish [02:41:22] But he did again to your question about referencing the law, John. He did again. Even though I'd corrected him like a week or two before, he did again point to this section of law that just says he's not a mandated reporter. And he was representing that statute as saying more than it says he was saying. And that prevented me from saying anything, which isn't the case. It's just an exception from the requirement to say anything. And it only applies to confessionals anyways. So the message he was sending that I couldn't.

John Dehlin [02:41:54] Oh, and he wasn't a confessor. Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [02:41:57] Well, not with the publicly available information. Right?

John Dehlin [02:41:59] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [02:42:00] Because once it hits publicly available information, it wasn't in a confidential confessional.

John Dehlin [02:42:05] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [02:42:05] And that was part of what Brian and I were saying in those emails. And so he's directly referencing that.

John Dehlin [02:42:11] And what everyone needs to know is that the Mormon Church works really hard to control state legislatures and to make sure that these types of exemptions exist with bishops and stake presidents so that they are protected in their non reporting to law officers. So for the church to be pointing to these laws when they were in. In effect the authors of them is a. Is. Is deceitful. In a way.

Kolby Reddish [02:42:40] It is. And I'd also point to the fact that this is coming from a lawyer, that there are all sorts of things that you can do legally that are unethical.

John Dehlin [02:42:47] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [02:42:48] And it's very telling and scary to me that the Church defines its duty to its members and to children who may have been abused by what the law absolutely requires them to do. They were willing to do no more than what they were absolutely right required to do. In my opinion, they had a clear duty when the information became public to communicate that to all the adults of the ward so that they could have those conversations, so that the adults could have those conversations with their kids and they could actually find out if other kids had been affected and abused. Because the way they handled it with skipping right to forgiveness, skipping to let's not talk about this skipping to sweeping it under the rug, they will never know. And I've told both the stake president and that presidency member this. They will never truly know the extent of this problem. There could be other victims out there that of course they're not going to feel comfortable to come forward when they see other victims come forward and they're basically getting this implicit message that what they brought is not important. It isn't that big of a deal. It's something that should just be forgiven. Of course, if you were a victim, you're going to feel like, well, why would I come forward now? That, that part is really sad to me.

Cami Reddish [02:44:05] Well, it's sad that it feels like, and I can't speak for the church, but it feels like the church did not want to know if there were more victims. That's what the process looked like from my, from my side when I said, we've got to take care of this. We've got to make sure they did not want to know if there were more victims out there. I cannot frame it in any different way. I can't see another reason why they tell the stake president. Yeah, I probably shouldn't tell people about this. At first you shouldn't report it, but then it got reported, so then he had to deal with that. But then now that it's reported, you shouldn't tell people about this publicly available information. Something is wrong with that because now I guess it would look worse for the church if there were other children who got abused. But I just can't imagine a Christ like organization not wanting to make sure their own children in their organization are safe.

Guest [02:45:05] It's.

Cami Reddish [02:45:05] It seems, it just seems crazy to me. It, it just seems crazy.

Kolby Reddish [02:45:10] Yeah. So that, that fifth Sunday little five minutes was really tough for us. That same presidency member who I know personally and have known for 15 years, I walked right past him on the way out. And it really bothers me that he, and to be fair, I didn't say anything to him either, but I was trying to process and he didn't say anything to me. He didn't ask if I wanted to just. Or if we wanted to step into one of the classrooms right there and talk about it. And this is after he was the one who had offered to counsel with us about what they might do going forward. And that's the thing that's so hard for me is like I try and attribute good intentions to everybody along the chain, but I don't understand how you as a human being can know that someone's been bothered by Something that's going on, have something like that happen. Have that person walk past you and not go, hey, can we just chat for a second? I just want to make sure you're okay. Like, were you guys bothered by that? Were you cool with what he said? I guess I don't understand this idea that, like, members need to constantly be bringing memberships. You know, the members need to bring the leadership's problems to their attention so directly. Like, even at, like, work, people ask for feedback, supervisors ask for feedback, but church leaders are completely unwilling to do that in any way. Not really bothered me.

John Dehlin [02:46:51] Yeah, they should care about how you guys are doing. How's your family? How are you feeling? There should be a care about that.

Kolby Reddish [02:46:58] Yeah. Or if they don't. Like, if they don't, that's fine. Like, but then don't, you know? And no one's come over and talked to us. But I've told Cami, the one thing that will just absolutely trigger me is if anyone comes over and starts with, well, we just love and care about your family so much. Like, I'll be tempted to throw that person out of my house because they know and they've ignored us because we were the squeaky wheel. It's just easier for us to not be there. And that's fine. They don't owe anything to us. But don't pretend like you love and care about us. I think would be my next point. So even though we asked for the statement, we never got a copy of it because the event had hit the news. Now, at this point, that was part of what I think precipitated the stake president making this statement to everybody was that it was in the newspaper all over the state. There was a meeting set up between the area Authority, the stake president, the. The Tulis, and us. The Tulis, I think, took the lead on setting this meeting up. As the meeting got closer and we talked more about it, we really just felt like, what is the area Authority going to do? We didn't feel like the area Authority was going to say anything different than what the stake president did. We felt like we were going to be heard out and then basically patted on the head and told to go away. And so as we were getting ready for this meeting, we decided to pull out, and I sent one more email to the area Authority directly and the stake president, because we had all been emailing about the week before trying to coordinate this meeting. And this is the email I sent. Good evening. As my wife and I have discussed the situation further, we no longer feel our presence is necessary at the proposed meeting and will only detract from the important information that Brian and Natalie need to communicate. This change comes in light of the statements made this Sunday by the Stake President advising the members of our ward about the nature of the charges against ex Bishop. While we would have hoped a few things could have been added to that prepared statement or stated difference differently, we would also like the ability to review it. It did accomplish the important the most important goal of disclosure. In particular, I am unclear why a statement was not included about how the Church unequivocally stands against any form of child abuse and members should not condone or justify Ex Bishop's behavior. I am also disappointed to have repeated that the law tied the hands of the Church leaders and I gave the example of the law and said it simply removes the requirement to disclose and it is represented as being as doing more than that. That said, our primary concern has always been allowing the parents of our ward access to the publicly available information to stop the gossip mill and allow parents to discuss the situation with their children. Now that that has finally happened, we have nothing further to seek through the meeting, though I do have several things I want to state. Unfortunately, I feel our intentions as well as the intentions of the Tulis have been severely misunderstood by our leaders. I want to be very clear that my intention all along has never been to criticize or find fault with the war to the stakeholders leadership that have been dealing with a very sensitive and difficult situation. I approached Stake President originally in late April or early May because I was horrified at statements being made over the pulpit praising ex Bishop. Even at that point I sought only to understand why the situation was being handled as it was. We have avoided criticizing or gossiping with any ward members entirely. I have been nothing but open and honest with the leaders about how I would have expected this situation would have been handled. I am disappointed that our attempts to be honest and have been misconstrued and met with nothing but resistance. We feel demonized and ostracized in our Warden stake simply because I felt the need to correct misinformation that was being communicated. We know that the Tooley family has been treated even worse having their home vandalized, for example. Our current Bishop decided the day after I sent my response to separate his child's baptism from ours. The perception we received from other members was that this happened because we were causing trouble in the ward. I then sent on the email that I've already read and said for what it's worth, I still Stand by every word of this email. And I am disappointed leaders feel they cannot discuss. I believe this situation was severely mishandled and am disappointed that the primary concern from our leaders seems to be establishing that they made no mistakes. I am similarly disappointed at the continued disunity in our ward as a result of the handling of this situation. However, our faith in the Savior and his plan remains unchanged. We have no ill will towards any of our leaders and those in our ward that seemingly treat us differently. And at this point, we just want to focus on moving past the situation and feel that communicating our feelings in this way is the best way for us to do so. And I only read that email to note that there was a response from the stake president just to say thank you for telling us you won't be at the meeting. And no response from the area authority. And when you take the time to, like, draft something like that, and I hope people can tell how heartfelt it is as we were struggling and trying to make sense of this, to just get nothing is so frustrating and so unchristlike. Like, when people reach out in real humility and are trying, it just is beyond me how anyone who thinks they represent Jesus Christ can just not respond to something like that.

John Dehlin [02:52:37] Yeah. And this really reminds me of my interactions with my stake president leading up to my excommunication, where I know Kurt McConkey was involved there too. And I just think that, you know better than anyone, they drop into lawyer mode, where it's like, minimize any risk, minimize any information, any exchange that could eventually be used against you. It's just kind of like, how would Jesus lawyer? Basically, it's just, you know, it's, it's. It's just covering your. Your rear end. And it's not ministering. It's not being pastoral. It's just cya. Cover your rear end and, and minimizing the church's legal risks, which is a real. It's a real conflict for the church because they're obviously, they're a corporation. They're literally, literally a corporation with assets that can be sued. So they need lawyers. They operate under legal jurisdictions, so they, again, they care about their members, but when push comes to shove, they care about their reputation, their assets and, and their authority. Always, always more than the members. At the end of the day, I think. Am I too harsh?

Cami Reddish [02:53:54] Yeah, no, no, I don't. I don't think that's too harsh. I think. I think it showed us. And at this point, I think we understood because we chose not to go to that meeting and we chose to just write an email that we weren't going to get a different answer from an area Authority. I think that a few months before that I would have thought differently. I would have thought if we just keep going up, somebody will understand. These are good people. They're gonna hear what happened and they're gonna say, whoa, something went wrong here. We will fix it, we will take care of it. We're gonna change this policy. And the Tulis I know are still communicating with Elder Furmich. They met with him and then he told them in that meeting, if you need to talk about this more, if you still have any concerns, please reach out to me. And he had forgotten though, because they kept reaching out to him over and over again asking for a. Another meeting because they want to know that, that this policy and the way that this was handled isn't going to continue in other words and other stakes. And I, they have such good hearts, they want to be told that and they still haven't gotten it. And so they want to meet with him again. But the communication has been difficult and he has not responded. And at one point I think he, he said, oh, I forgot, I forgot about you guys.

Kolby Reddish [02:55:22] Yeah. So when they had the initial meeting, which they're now six months out from

John Dehlin [02:55:25] at this point, the you that you decided not, we were not there.

Kolby Reddish [02:55:29] So this is according to Brian and Natalie.

John Dehlin [02:55:31] So this is Elder Furmage, the Area Authority with Brian.

Kolby Reddish [02:55:37] With Brian and Natalie and the stake President.

John Dehlin [02:55:40] Okay.

Kolby Reddish [02:55:40] He, he basically told the Tulies that they did the right thing, that this was a culture problem that needed to change.

John Dehlin [02:55:47] Wow.

Kolby Reddish [02:55:47] And that it was so important that people like them come forward so that the church can change and that this was very pressing.

John Dehlin [02:55:54] Whoa.

Kolby Reddish [02:55:55] Now it has been six months and nothing today till about six months from that meeting to now.

John Dehlin [02:56:03] Okay.

Kolby Reddish [02:56:04] To my knowledge, nothing has changed. The toolies have been trying to schedule a follow up meeting to see if anything has changed and have been basically getting. Well, you need to go meet with the stake president first from the Area Authority's secretary. And I know they're really frustrated by that and I completely understand why. But I think Kami and I realized, and one of the reasons we didn't go to the first meeting was these policies. When we realized that these policies are coming from Salt Lake, I knew that I could be talking to President Nelson myself and I would get, I would get told that my concerns were important. But I just don't think anything's going to change unless there's more members who speak out, if that makes sense. I don't think this is. What I'm saying is this isn't an anomaly. This isn't some stake president that was acting incorrectly. This is the policy. The policy is we do nothing unless we're required to.

John Dehlin [02:57:06] Yeah. Yeah. And what. What again, what would you like to. For you. For. For them to have taken action. What is the action you would have liked them to have taken?

Kolby Reddish [02:57:17] I think just open disclosure to all the adults of the ward so that they can communicate with their kids about whether or not.

John Dehlin [02:57:25] Didn't they do that, though, in that ward meeting?

Kolby Reddish [02:57:28] So they did, finally, at that point. Yes. And that's why. That's another reason why we decided not to go to that meeting was. Were unhappy with the way it was handled. But they had finally, you know, after 10 months of finding out about it or nine months of finding out about it, gotten to the point where they had said, here's the situation now, go talk to your kids. Now there's part of me that seriously wonders if that would have ever happened if Brian hadn't had the courage to have.

John Dehlin [02:57:55] Of course not. Of course.

Kolby Reddish [02:57:57] Of course it wouldn't have. And that's the problem. Right. The church needs to impose upon itself the duty to do that in the first place. That's the policy change that we would ask for that. I think if you follow Jesus's message, demands, frankly, if you care about children, then care about children. Don't just pay at lip service.

John Dehlin [02:58:21] The church's default is covered up and hush it up and then make sure everyone pretends like nothing ever happened and then only deal with it if there are these rare whistleblowers or dissenters or people of conscience that speak up and stir it up and then marginalize and ostracize them socially excommunicate them, and then minimally deal with it as little as you have to to shut them up and to kind of COVID your tail and then do nothing more than that.

Kolby Reddish [02:58:55] And then the church put out a press release when there were news stories about this. And the thing that really killed me is then the church is acting like they've done the right thing all along. They completely ignore the fact that they were basically dragged kicking and screaming to doing what I consider minimal effort to protect children and be open and transparent. And yet they don't tell that story. They just talk about how he was removed. And anyways, that part really bothers me that they act like they're the heroes when the only reason things happened the way it was wasn't because of their choices. And it could have been, but they chose not to act that way. I think probably the last part of this story is. And this is one of the things about our story that I hope people realize is Cammie and I were like, we've said we believed with all of our hearts in the church that the church is what it claims to be. The final nail in the coffin for me, with the scales falling off my eyes and feeling like I could finally admit that the church has a problem, that it isn't fully what it claims to be, was it took multi points of failure. And what I mean by that is, you know, we had ex bishop, we had new bishop, we had the stake president, we had the area authority. And the final one is we had an apostle come to our stake conference about two weeks after. It was right after this fifth Sunday. And it seemed like it was kind of an impromptu visit. It was Elder Christofferson. It seemed like it was kind of an impromptu visit because it was only advertised, like, starting the Tuesday before he ended up coming.

Guest [03:00:44] And

Kolby Reddish [03:00:46] there's part of me that felt like maybe he's coming to do something or talk about it in some way. And as it got closer and closer, I prayed so much. I've grown up hearing the stories about general authorities, like leaving the 99 at state conference and going and talking to one person. Person. Right. But I know that that's like super miraculous. So all I hoped for, all I prayed for.

John Dehlin [03:01:14] You were hoping that he would come see you guys?

Kolby Reddish [03:01:16] Not necessarily. So all I. Maybe, yeah. But all I wanted and all I asked for was I prayed harder than I think I ever had him in my life. And I said, God, if you speak to this man in some special way, you can give me half, like an ambiguous, vague half of a sentence that I can interpret and say, God speaks to him in some special way. And God knows that I needed to hear that. What happened to our family and what happened to the families on our board is not okay.

Struggling With Leadership's Failure to Act

Cami Reddish [03:01:53] Well, I think at that point, we're struggling. We're struggling with understanding why it was so difficult for these men in leadership to do what we thought at the beginning was just naturally the right thing to do. And we saw how. How much it was, this struggle to just get the right information out there. And in turn, we created a space in our ward for months, a space that wouldn't allow other victims to come out. Who knows at this point, right? They finally did the right thing. Months and months later, after all the rumors flew around, after no leadership was coming in and taking control of the situation and letting people know, wait a minute. It wasn't okay. We still not never got the. This was not okay. What happened here was not okay. That was never communicated. It was kind of like a. Yeah, I guess we'll have to let you know now that this happened. So if there's anything you need to talk about, go ahead and do it. But this is after this disaster of fighting against each other and sides and people defending people saying nice things over the pulpit. It's this whole disaster. And we thought, okay, Elder Christofferson's going to say something here that's going to make it seem like this can still be our home. Like, it's okay to still raise our kids in this ward and in this system. Like, we wanted to hear. Like, this is. This is still good. Like something bad happened, but this is still good. And we got the opposite. We got Elder Christopherson stand up and say, we met with your stake president, and we can tell that he is this great person. And we can even tell that he is not looking for praise or he kind of went on off this weird rant. Like, I don't think I've ever heard it described that way before, but it was. It just felt so hollow to me because of the experiences that we had just had with our stake president and feeling so ostracized by him and our ward that I thought, he's gonna tell us that it's okay to still be part of this. And I just felt he didn't. He had no idea. He had no idea what we were feeling.

Guest [03:04:28] Right.

Cami Reddish [03:04:28] Or the Tulis or the other people who had gone to the stake president and. And voiced their concerns about how it was handled. It was very much, this guy's doing the right thing.

John Dehlin [03:04:39] And this is a state conference speaks at. Yeah, I. I'm reminded of when the Chad Dable and Lori Valo thing happened and those kids were all killed and these were all Mormons that were involved in the prepper stuff and the Julie Rose stuff that led up to the Denver snuffer stuff at some point. I think it was Christopherson, might have been another apostle. They go out to Rexburg and everybody thinks they're going to address the prepper stuff and the snuffer stuff and the murders and. And they actually just don't say anything about it. And it's just like, what are these guys thinking?

Kolby Reddish [03:05:20] Yeah. And I know. I know that Brian really thought that Elder Christofferson was. That he was going to be prompted to, like, meet with Our family and their family. And I, I just want to stress, like, how little I was asking for. Like, I was asking and pleading with the Lord for half of a sentence, like a vague sentence. I knew that he wasn't going to come out and say that the stake president hadn't handled it correctly because the church never does that. I knew they weren't going to do that. But all I was hoping for was if you, if these are imperfect men that are really messengers for God, if they're really a special witness of Christ in some special way, give him half of a sentence that he doesn't even understand, but that I'll understand. And I just. I don't know how to say it other than like, I got nothing. I got the opposite of that. I got told that my concerns weren't valid, that I was wrong.

John Dehlin [03:06:20] Yeah, yeah. And that just adds, I mean, when it comes from the top, how much more devastating is that?

Kolby Reddish [03:06:29] And that's, that's why I'm convinced that I could have been in a direct meeting with President Nelson and I would have gotten the exact same results I would have gotten. Thank you so much for bringing these, you know, bringing your concerns to us and that nothing would have changed.

John Dehlin [03:06:46] And what adds insult to injury is that those apostles literally were taught their title is Special Witnesses of Christ. So if they know, if they've seen Christ, if they know Christ better than all of us, then they would act the most Christlike. And if Christ left the 99 to. To go after the 1, certainly they wouldn't have, like, protected the corporate institution, protected the leaders, and then left you guys or Brian or others just out to dry, literally feeling spiritually, psychologically, and socially left out to dry. And yet that's what the special witness of Christ did in your case.

Kolby Reddish [03:07:28] Yeah. And that actually reminds me of this thought I've had. You know, as we were preparing to come on this, I was talking to my mom, who's been really supportive and is a great person. And as we were talking, she said that she hoped we didn't just come off as gripey, like angry ex members of the church. She used that phrase. And I realized how nonsensical it is that sometimes for critics of the church to be heard, they have to be the most Christlike and humble person in the room. That oftentimes the apostles can do whatever they want. Elder Holland can, in my opinion, completely slander Matt Easton, say very offensive and dangerous and irresponsible things, and no one holds him accountable. He's not required to apologize or doesn't take it upon himself to apologize. We can have Brad Wilcox say very offensive things and have members of the church telling other people, well, you just need to have more charity for the leaders. Right? I know that there will be people who will listen to our story and say, well you're just criticizing the leaders. You need to have more charity for the leaders. What that results in is that the good average member of the church, the person at the bottom of this hierarchical pyramid, is basically required to be the most christlike person in the room. And the brethren at the top are allowed to get away with being the least christlike people in the room. They're the ones who don't have to be careful in any way with what they say. But if you want to be a critic of the church or you're an ex member of the church, you have to tiptoe around other people's feelings and carefully word what you say. Give credit to the church for the good things it does. And I just want to say I'm so tired of that to anyone who would discount us as just wanted to criticize members of the church or lead the leadership of the church in this instance, that's not what it is. We're just sharing our story about how when you have a multi point failure like that, how it absolutely made us realize the church is unequivocally not what it claims to be, it is not the true church of God, and those men are not spoken to by God in any special way. Now I'm not claiming that they're bad, evil, mustache twirling villains. I honestly believe they have good intentions. But I wish they would take a moment to consider how even their well intentioned statements affect people. If Elder Christofferson doesn't know the character of a stake president or of a bishop, be careful with what you say because there are people out there who are suffering because of the person's choices. And being told by an apostle, a special witness of Christ, who even on a higher level speaks directly for God, this person is good. He doesn't care about the honors of the world. He's doing the right thing. For me it was just, there's like really nothing I could do to move past it. I know so often members of the church ask, you know, how can people leave? I look at our situation like objectively and I'm like, how in the world could we stay? Like every leader along the chain up to and including an apostle completely failed to do the Christ like thing. How in the world could I still have A testimony that this is Christ's special organization.

Cami Reddish [03:11:07] I think at that point, I think you could. He can articulate it better than I can. But I felt what you said. I felt what you said. Like, I don't know what to do with this. But at the same time, I believed in the Church. I had had experiences with the Book of Mormon. I had on all of these things, and I didn't. It just kind of felt like this weird mess that I was dealing with. And I could not. Like, there's the cognitive dissonance there. I didn't understand how to make sense of it. I didn't understand why this was happening and why this was happening because of the Church's own policies. I couldn't. I couldn't fix this problem. And that's why this. This experience became the catalyst for us of trying to make sense of it. And we started to research and try to make sense of how this could have happened in the church that we choose to give everything to every day of our lives.

John Dehlin [03:12:07] Yeah. It's so heartbreaking. I'm so sorry.

Kolby Reddish [03:12:16] We just hope that, like, I appreciate that, but what we honestly hope is the church is full of good people. That's one of the things, I think that makes it so tough. I just hope that those good people will hear our story and realize there's nothing wrong with believing in the church. But you need to understand what the church is. And that's what we're trying to do is shed some light on our experience with the church and say, you need to understand that supporting the church means you're supporting this. And if you're an active member and you think that our story is not okay, we need to demand the church change, because it will. If the membership demands that, it changes.

John Dehlin [03:13:05] For me, a point. And I don't know if you guys have other final points you want to make about this segment before we move, before we kind of take a pause and then come back for the next segment. I'll just say this, that I want to make sure Kara puts in the show notes the movie Spotlight. It's a really important movie. But what you find out is that it took years and years and years and years to just for a journalist to be able to uncover one example without, you know, a shadow of a doubt that there, you know, that there was without doubt a priest being a pedophile and then the Church covering it up. They worked forever to be able to report on one story, but. But it turns out that like 10% or 11% of priests worldwide were Abusing and had been pedophiles and it had been covered up. And the point, the point I want to make sure and make is this is not just an isolated instance within the Mormon Church. Like there's a reason why the, why the Mormon Church recently committed hundreds of millions of dollars in the Boy Scouts of America settlement. It's because tens of thousands of Mormon boys were sexually abused by their Mormon priesthood holding Boy Scout leaders. And Kara and I will attest that we've received hundreds and thousands of messages from Mormon girls, Mormon boys, Mormon men, Mormon women who were systemically abused by bishops, by seminary teachers, by elders quorum presidents, by home teachers, by their own dads or moms. And the church for decades has been silencing the victims, protecting the abusers, not notifying the law enforcement officers, silencing the ward, ensuring, you know, pushing the atonement and forgiveness as a way to create a culture of silence and punishing the whistleblowers who speak out and try and encourage accountability. It's not just you guys, it's not just dozens or hundreds of other examples, thousands of these instances over decades and decades and decades. And you guys are just among the very first in the history of the church who have been willing to speak publicly about it.

Deciding to Speak Out Publicly

Kolby Reddish [03:15:46] Yeah, and I. The other thing I'd like to say, I guess just kind of in close of this segment is before we sent the original email back in August responding to Brian, we talked a lot about how to word that. And like you pointed out, John, it's a very anti Mormonism to stand up to a leader and say you did the wrong thing thing. But Cami and I talked about together and prayed about. We know that this might lead us down a road of the church taking adverse action against us, which they do.

John Dehlin [03:16:21] There are people that get church discipline, formal or informal, for being whistleblowers regarding abuse. That happens.

Kolby Reddish [03:16:30] Yeah. And I want to speak to that because we had no idea where sending that email would lead us, you know, six, seven months ago. But what we did know was that it was the right Christ like thing to do to stand up for victims and say, no, what happened here wasn't okay. And to say that the church has a problem and that it needs to be healthier and change. And I just want to say if speaking up gets us excommunicated or I'm sorry, whatever the new term is, we decided back then that we would gladly pay that price if it helps protect one child. And I just want that to be known. I want my family who won't understand how I lost my faith. I want my kids one day to understand that that's what this is about. That we felt and still feel that we needed to speak up and do the right thing. And we knew that if it led us down the road that we got excommunicated, that the church would be telling us very clearly and unequivocally what it was.

Guest [03:17:38] Yeah.

Cami Reddish [03:17:38] I think that what surprised me the most in all of this was the way that most of our ward members responded to us. I. And I just didn't see it coming. Like, I thought if we let them know that there could have been more abuse or that it's just. It's not okay. If we don't make sure that there wasn't more abuse, they'll. They would. They're gonna understand this. They've got kids in this ward. And to see the types of texts that the Tulis got and to see the way that. I mean, people have stopped speaking to us. Like, our bishop point out the baptism, just. We have just been completely isolated because we spoke out against child abuse. And I. That doesn't even sound like a real sentence that you say. Like, these people are being affected by the way that the church teaches things. And I. I could not see it before. I don't understand why I couldn't see it, really, but the fact that this flipped that light on for me, and I started to see things that I had never seen before. And this is before we started to look into stuff that we didn't understand something was wrong. Like, that's all I knew at this point. Like, something has gone wrong here. I trusted these people, and I never, ever once thought that they might not be being honest with me. I never thought that they weren't telling me the truth. And it had been my entire life. I took everything that these people said as truth. And then to see this. That they did this thing that put kids at risk, I couldn't accept it. Like, my mind wasn't wanting me to accept that this happened because I started to question everything else that I had been taught by the church and that. And that was hard, and that's what led us down a whole separate path.

Kolby Reddish [03:19:40] Yeah. I think the last thing I would say. Cami's so right. I think the last thing I would say is to members who have hard feelings towards us. It boggles my mind that we're involved in a story that involves a child molester and we are somehow the bad guys, that the child molester is not the bad guy that says, enough about the culture and the policies of the church. That needs to change. That's absolutely disgusting. And I will tell that to anyone I talk to, member or non member, who asked me about this story.

John Dehlin [03:20:15] Yeah. Yeah. And one of the really dark things about excommunication is there's no real moral or ethical or logical backbone to who the church does and doesn't excommunicate. They'll excommunicate you if they can get away with it and if it won't cause a public backlash or hurt their authority or their reputation. And they won't, you know, like Stephen Barb Young, for example, they're LGBT allies, they've spoken openly. They get a pass because Steve Young's famous, you know what I'm saying? The church will give people passes if they, if it's in their best interest to do so. So. But, you know, so that's weird. But what's, what's also true and completely heartbreaking and something that we experienced is, you know, I got excommunicated. But, but my, my, my wife and my children, they were socially excommunicated. In other words, Mormon kids that used to be their friends wouldn't play with them anymore. Families that used to be friends of our families no longer wanted to be our friends. And even if you're not literally excommunicated out of fear on the church's part or self protection, you are socially excommunicated. And that's, it's devastating because you have to go back and drive around those streets and see all these people, drive all these homes, see all these kids out playing in the neighborhood, walk, just take walks in your neighborhood and walk by these houses of people that used to be their friends and it becomes this spiritual, psychological ghost town where people see you coming and then they go in the house and you have to live in that community where you're being socially excommunicated. And we had to move. We, it was psychologically toxic. We're pretty tough. Margi and I, after a couple years, had to move out of the ward. The ward wanted us. They kept asking, when are you moving? When are you moving? They wanted us to move because we made them uncomfortable just staying in the ward. And I, I don't want to say, I don't want that to be a self fulfilling prophecy of what's going to happen to you. You. But that's, that's kind of in these Utah, Idaho, Arizona kind of neighborhoods. That's kind of how it ends up happening. And it's, it's a real diabolical pernicious, unethical, unchristlike consequence of standing up for what's right. And your kids might pay the biggest price. You guys might be okay. It might be your kids that actually pay the worst price of all. And they didn't do anything. Sorry, I don't mean to be dark.

Guest [03:23:04] That's kind of how you guys started this whole interview where you were saying, like, I hope one day my kids will be able to look back at this and see that my parents, like their parents, did the right thing. And I hope that there's enough people rallying around you and your kids even right now that they'll be able to say your parents are doing the right thing.

Kolby Reddish [03:23:20] Yeah, me too.

Guest [03:23:23] Yeah,

John Dehlin [03:23:25] well, so as things stand, this guy's in prison and the ward marches on. And.

Kolby Reddish [03:23:34] Yeah, the last contact we had with the ward, one of the bishopric members, because Brian Tooley had called them and said, how in the world have you guys not reached out to the. The Reddish? The bishopric member texted me and said that we were on his mind and the spirit had prompted him to reach out to us. When Brian had told me that he'd called him, I just thought that was funny. But the guy, he basically said with regards to, like, the ex bishop situation, like, well, we just think that the war just needs time and things will move forward. And even then I, like, pushed back on that idea. And I was like, things don't just heal like this. Like, it takes openness, it takes honesty, it takes hard conversations, it takes transparency. He never responded to that message. So.

Cami Reddish [03:24:29] And this gets. This gets kind of mixed into our next part where we. We once that. That happened and all the confusion came and the frustration and the cognitive kind of dissonance, we started to look. Look at the gospel topics, essays and things like that, But I guess we were still going to church. I had no intention of not believing in the true church. I. I still knew, like, I knew that this had happened, but I hadn't yet made sense of why. And so we. I mean, well, we've been going to church until up to three weeks ago. We've been going and we've been trying to understand and we've been trying to participate and trying to work through what this feels like to make sense of it. I. I don't know how to describe it, but I wanted it to, like, be something that we didn't have to, like, walk away from. Like, why would you, like, walk away from who you are? Like, that's. That's the craziest part. If you're raised in the church. It is so mixed up with who you are as a person. Like, you can't just pretend it was someplace. You showed up once a week. It was a daily part of who I am and what I believed and what I did and why I made all of the choices I made in my life. And so I don't, I don't think it was as easy as, okay, now that we saw who they were in this instance, we, we aren't, we can't be there anymore. It was this long road of painfully trying to deconstruct why that happened and finding out that there's a lot more, there's a lot more going on than just this happening. And all of it kind of plays a role in why things happened the way that they did. So many things that I did not know, that I, I didn't know I needed to look for because of that. Again, that trust and faith in the leadership of the church was so strong that I stayed inside that box and I had researched well inside that box. I had answers to every question. I was the one that people would call, so was Kolby, when they had tough questions. But I didn't ever imagine a time that I had to question if they were being honest with me until this happened.

Reflections on Part One and Transition to Faith Crisis

John Dehlin [03:27:12] Yeah, well, that'll be a good segue to our part two. That will, that we'll take a, we'll end this episode in just a second and then we'll come back maybe for a final part. I just want to say that as of February, you know, 17th, 2022, the Mormon Church is still supporting laws that don't require bishops to be mandatory reporters. They're still having one on one meetings alone. Bishops are still Mormon bishops are still having one on one meetings alone with children, with, with, with youth, with, with minors, men and women, asking them sexually explicit questions about where they touch themselves and why and how. And you know, the Mormon Church is still advising Mormon church leaders, bishops, stake presidents to not report instances of abuse to authorities. They're still silencing and hushing ward and stake members, pressuring victims to forgive and stay quiet, pressuring whistleblowers and trying to cover things up. And, and there's still Dallin H. Oaks's utterance that the, the Mormon Church neither seeks nor offers apologies. The church still refuses to apologize, and they're still refusing to communicate to warden stake members when an abuser is in their midst. And then they're still, you know, paying hush money to people who sue the church to try and pay them off quietly so that a lot of these, you know, the vast majority of these cases either never get reported in the first place or if they do go through the legal system, the Church pays off in silences with hush money. The, the people who sue the Church to make sure this stuff never comes to light. So that's, that's 2022. We've heard that the Church is going to be making some changes around one on one interviews thanks to Sam Young. That's going to be coming in the next year or so. But just the, the damage is just infinite and the Church is still supporting the silencing and the marginalizing of the whistleblowers. So I mean just, there's so much the Church needs to change. So thank you for shining a huge spotlight on these problems and wow. The Church is still teaching a culture of, of, of, of discernment of the leaders being called by and inspired by God and of end of blind, obedient end of the abdication of your conscience and of your critical thinking as a member of, and the quashing of all dissent and, and criticism of, of leaders. It's still part of the Mormon Temple ceremony that you do not speak ill of the Lord's anointed. You raise your arm to the square and promise you'll never speak ill of the Lord's anointed, which means you never criticize your church leaders. All of that is still fully Mormon doctrine and practice in 2022. I think those are all problems. I think they're all part of why you're here in front of us today.

Kolby Reddish [03:30:25] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:30:27] So.

Kolby Reddish [03:30:29] Well, thank you, John. We hope people will listen to this and realize that you're right. The Church has many problems. They need to fix them.

John Dehlin [03:30:38] Yeah. And if you are a listener, record every single interaction with your bishops or stake presidents where it's legal to do so. If you think bad things are happening, if you have been a part of COVID ups of sexual abuse, we'll bring in more stories. And just like we've done in the past, we will keep telling these stories until the Church changes. We know that the Church has changed from Mormon stories and from Sam Young and, and ordained women and all the other things. We know we're changing the Church at a rapid pace. And so we invite you share with us the recordings. Share with us your stories. Come on. Mormon stories. And we'll, we'll keep promoting this transparency, you know, until the Church is the super healthy, happy, productive place for everybody. Because that's what we want. We just, we're not trying to take the Mormon Church down. We want the Mormon Church to be more healthy for its members and more open and honest to the world. So thank you, guys. Thank you so much for your willingness to do what's super courageous and healthy and speak publicly. It's so rare and it's, it's so important. So thank you.

Kolby Reddish [03:31:50] Thank you.

Cami Reddish [03:31:51] Thanks.

John Dehlin [03:31:52] And Kara.

Guest [03:31:54] Yeah?

John Dehlin [03:31:54] Thanks so much for being, being my co host.

Guest [03:31:58] Thanks for. I mean, I always am just amazed at anybody who can, like John's been saying, be this courageous and stuff. So I'm really, really excited that you guys were. Had the. Had the courage enough to come here and share this story. And so we're coming back for part two so we get to hear all the other. All the other things that happen after all of this. So thank you guys again.

John Dehlin [03:32:22] So part two is going to be about, you know, your faith journey, how this has impacted your faith, and how it kicked off the ball rolling on investigating other things about the church. Right?

Kolby Reddish [03:32:33] That's right.

John Dehlin [03:32:33] All right. All right, everyone, thanks for joining us for part one. Please share this wherever you can. Thanks to everyone who supports Mormon Stories and the Overstories foundation that you make all this possible. Please get the word out, share this with everyone. Email us@mormonstoriesgmail.com for your feedback. If you want to come on Mormon Stories and tell your story, email us and we'll look at the story and see if it's something we can do. We want to be responsible, but we want to report this stuff. So send us your feedback, comment everywhere you can, and just share this story with bishops and stake presidents and ward members and family members. And just in the sunlight will become the best disinfectant for the church. So thanks, everybody. We'll see you guys all again for part two of this episode on Mormon Stories podcast. Be good to each other, take care of.

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 1551

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is February 17th, and we are in part two of our interview with Kolby and Cammie Reddish. Is that right? Did I get the names right?

Kolby Reddish [00:00:15] Yeah, you did.

John Dehlin [00:00:16] Yeah. And we just got done with an epic three and a half hour interview where Kolby and Kami talk about being raised as faithful Mormons, getting married in the temple, having kids and living in Idaho. Kolby's an attorney and finding out that their Mormon bishop was abuser, sexual abuser of children. And so they told this epic story of the bishop getting released, of discovering what the reason was that he was released because it wasn't announced, and having to deal with a ward and a stake and a church that. That seem to want to quiet it, hide it, and not do everything it could to protect the children and honestly, to kind of support the victims. And it's a really important episode. We know that this is a systemic problem in the church, and we know that this has happened thousands and tens of thousands of times within the Mormon Church. And so we think it's a groundbreaking and important episode to help the Mormon Church learn to handle abuse cases better. So go check out part one. If you haven't already checked it out. We decided to go ahead and do a part two, which is kind of like how this experience and how the way the church mishandled it then impacted their own faith journey. And so that's what part two is going to be about. It's literally going to be one hour long because I have to leave in one hour. And so we're going to cover their faith journey as a result of this now. And I am excited to announce that we have a special guest co host with us today. It is Jen Camp. Hey, Jen. Welcome.

Jenn Kamp [00:01:53] Hi. Hi, everybody.

John Dehlin [00:01:55] So Cara Barrell is sick, and so she had to run home and sleep and get better. And Jen is our newest employee of the Open Storage Foundation. She is kind of office manager, operations director, and events manager for us. And so, Jen, it's just so lovely to have you. And she fills in for Kara when needed.

Cami Reddish [00:02:18] So.

John Dehlin [00:02:19] Look at you. You're filling in.

Jenn Kamp [00:02:20] Yes. I hope I'm 1, 1 millionth times as good as Kara. I'll try not to be horrible.

John Dehlin [00:02:26] Yeah.

Jenn Kamp [00:02:26] But Kara is amazing.

John Dehlin [00:02:28] Yeah. Well, it's so good to have you. Thanks for covering. All right, so Kolby and Cammie, you've. You've told us about how you had some cracks developing in your faith prior to all this stuff coming out, but then some Big cracks started emerging when this whole sexual abuse scandal with your bishop emerged. But you also just told us it was kind of like a little bit of a mind blower. You have been attending your Idaho ward up until three weeks ago. So you are still members of record as far as I know. And you, you know, you're still kind of active in a sense, but now let's just spend an hour talking about the aftermath and how all this stuff has led to other explorations and discoveries and then where that leaves you. And part of the point is Mormon Church, if you mishandle sexual abuse scandals more and more, it's going to affect your membership. It's going to affect a lot more than just the victims involved. It's going to affect people and church, church activity rates and attrition. So let's just hear. Where do you guys want to begin kind of your own faith journeys as a result of this abuse?

How the Abuse Case Cracked Their Faith

Kolby Reddish [00:03:42] Well, I think the point of, you know, our first three and a half hours is that it took a lot for us to realize that we had deal breakers for the church. There were certain things the church would. Could do that would make us go, wait a second, that is not what Christ's church would do. That's not the way Christ's church would act. That's really the awakening we had as a result of that situation. The very next thing we did was we started to look around at the damage that the church had done to other people. Cami and I had talked for years about how the culture of the church, specifically about its sexual messaging and purity culture, and its messaging to LGBT individuals was unacceptable. And we didn't think that there was a legitimate place, that the church hadn't created a legitimate place for those brothers and sisters of ours. And we had even had the conversation, which kind of blows my mind now, that we didn't realize what that meant, that if one of our kids had come out as lgbt, that we would leave the church in solidarity with them if the church hadn't changed and been more healthy and created a legitimate space for those people. So really the next step, I guess, or the next part of this story is we. Because of the child sex abuse scandal in our area, we had started listening to Podcasts featuring Dr. Jennifer Finlayson Fife about how to talk to your kids about sex. And as I was listening to one of those podcasts, she referenced Matt Easton and the church's messaging on LGBT issues and Elder Holland's talk from August. Was it 2020? I think August 2020 at BYU?

Jenn Kamp [00:05:35] No, it was.

Cami Reddish [00:05:36] It was 2021.

Kolby Reddish [00:05:37] 2021.

Cami Reddish [00:05:38] It was. It was h. That was happening at the same time because I remember seeing ward members in our area change their Facebook status to I Stand with Holland. And I didn't know what it meant because I. I wasn't aware of Holland's talk and the news. But listening to that podcast, which we had both listened to. We listened to the same podcast.

John Dehlin [00:05:57] Was this the first podcast, Mormon theme podcast you had ever listened to?

Cami Reddish [00:06:00] No, we. We'd been listening to Finlay Sim 5

Kolby Reddish [00:06:02] for a while, but the first. Yeah, the first Mormon Stories episode, I

Cami Reddish [00:06:06] listened to Faith Matters.

John Dehlin [00:06:07] So you were listening to Faithful Mormon podcasts prior to just a few months ago? Basically, yeah.

Kolby Reddish [00:06:15] Yeah.

Cami Reddish [00:06:15] Yep.

Kolby Reddish [00:06:16] This would have been in September. So that's how close.

Cami Reddish [00:06:19] Yeah, that's what we were noticing that. And I think when Kolby heard that, he.

John Dehlin [00:06:24] That's six months ago.

Kolby Reddish [00:06:25] It's six months ago.

Jenn Kamp [00:06:26] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:06:27] So, yeah, as of six months ago, even though you had been through all this sexual abuse scandal, you were still listening to Faithful Mormon podcasts and. And probably unaware of a lot of the problems with church history. And.

Kolby Reddish [00:06:39] Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't say I was unaware. I, like my best friend growing up, no longer believes. And I had read the CS letter when he wanted to discuss it, like, back on its original release. And I was. I think, like I said, my background kind of led me to believe in a more deistic God than most Mormons did. And so I found a space basically to say, well, I just don't think God works the way most Mormons teach, but I still believe in a lot of what Mormonism teaches. I know it's kind of like a weird place, but I wasn't a member who felt like, well, I can answer every question that the CS litter raises. I just kind of was aware of some of the issues and kind of acknowledged, well, I don't have answers to all of the questions, but for right now, the church is good for me. It's good for my family. And so we continued believing even if we didn't have full knowledge of some of the historical problems of the church. But that day, when I was encouraged to. Or I felt like I was almost, like, prompted to go listen to Matt Easton's original commencement speech. And then I went and listened to Elder Holland's talk, which really bothered me. I felt like even his tone really bothered me. I thought, you know, a person like him using his authority to slam an individual who I thought came off as very genuine, like Matt was really inappropriate. And then I guess thank the YouTube algorithm. But the very next thing that was recommended was Matt Easton's Mormon Stories interview.

John Dehlin [00:08:17] Thank you, YouTube.

Kolby Reddish [00:08:19] So that was the very next thing I listened to. And Matt was so genuine and heartfelt and sincere. Thanks to him. Like, he and I have exchanged a few texts back and forth, and I think the big thing that listening to Matt's story brought me was recognition that I kind of understood the church did damage to people in the abstract. And I more or less. And I'm ashamed to say it looked the other way because it was good for me and good for my family and good for my life. And I'm not exaggerating when I say listening to Matt's entire story brought me to tears for a while in my office. I was actually at work, and I just sobbed because of the complicity I felt with the way that the church was damaging people like Matt and couldn't even give the reason. That's the thing that really frustrates me about the LGBT situation and our brothers and sisters who are in that space is the church makes no legitimate place for them, but can't even give a reason. And there's part of me that wants to say to the brethren, if you are who you claim to be, get your 15 people together in a room and start praying and figuring out some answers to these questions, like, tell us why you hear it so often. We can't allow people to be in open LGBT relationships because it frustrates God's purposes or whatever, but they can never tell you why or how or what that even means or what that means.

Cami Reddish [00:09:53] That doesn't really make any sense to just say, well, it's. It's frustrating, the plan. And I. I feel the same as you that I. He sent that. That podcast to me. He's like, listen to this, then listen to this, and then listen to this podcast that has my son in on it. And I did. So we both listened to it separately in the same day. I was at home with the kids, and he's at work. And we come home, and we just. We just start talking. How did we not know? How did we not see the damage that the church does in this whole other area? Like, we had just experienced how the church responded to sexual abuse of children. And then you just like, look over and see, wait a minute. This isn't the only place that the church is causing harm to other people. This church that we go to and that we pay our tithing to and that we put our kids in the classes of this church that we make a huge part of our lives is causing harm to other people. We have to do something about that. And I think that just that was heartbreaking to me. To hear a real person's story of what it was like to grow up in the church and then start to see, oh, yeah, I see how that damaged them. I see how that hurt them. And I believed those things too. I just wasn't aware of anyone personally, so I didn't understand how great that damage was. And I think from there we started to listen to Mormon stories. We started to think about the implications of even just the things that we teach our own kids, right, about who God is and what role he plays in your life. And the fact that we had in fact prayed to find keys before and things like that. I started to think, this, this can't be the right way. This might not actually be a safe, healthy place for us to raise our kids. But at the same time, you feel the weight of, but this is our home. This is who we are. How can we make sense of these things? How can we understand these things? And, and so we started to study. I thought, I need to know, I need to know the truth of these things so that I can make sense of them, so I can defend the truth and make this a better, healthier place for my family.

Confronting Troubling Church Policies and History

John Dehlin [00:12:17] Can I just say that? Isn't it amazing, the tunnel vision we have as Mormons while the church is working for us, that, you know, the church, we could have an LGBTQ suicide epidemic. Not to mention that, you know, there's the depression and the anxiety and just the bigotry towards LGBT people. And then there's like a literal suicide epidemic where, like, our suicide rates in the, in Utah can be two or three times the national average. And we're either oblivious to it as active Mormons or just callous to it or just dismiss it or don't even care because the church is working for us. Or the church can be super racist and teach that dark skin is a curse, but if we're white and the church is working for us, we kind of just, oh, that's in the Book of Mormon, but let's just read past it. Or the fact that women, half of all the women in the church are sick, literally half of the members of the church are second class citizens. But if the church is working for us, we're completely blind and insensitive to that. Not to mention all the historical problems. Like, it's not, not to shame anyone, but it's just a real testament to the undue influence of the church or of high demand religions that until you have some earth shattering event that sensitizes you, a kid dies by suicide, a loved one comes out as gay, you literally have to deal with the bishop that's sexually abusing children. That's sometimes what it takes. And even for most Mormons who have been through the things you've been through, it doesn't even faze them. Yeah, it's kind of mind blowing.

Kolby Reddish [00:13:58] When I was discussing this whole situation with a family member and basically telling them that I couldn't believe anymore, they asked me a question that I think was really telling. They said, well, I know that you've told me stories about people who've been negatively affected by the church, but that wasn't your experience. So why does that, like, why does that change your opinion? And I think for people who look around and see the damage that they see, for many people around us, the church can be a meat grinder of human damage and collateral damage. It's like compassion. Like, you can't, once you see it, you can't unsee it. And it does make me really sad. Like I said, John, that's why I felt so complicit and felt so sad, because that damage was being done whether I saw it or not. And that's why I would just encourage all members. Like, I make space in my heart and in, in following Christ's path. For members who know about the church's historical problems and issues, if they're informed and if they speak up and say no more damage, like no more damage, especially with no explanation. That's the thing that just gets me so bad about LGBT specifically is the brethren can't even give an explanation of why it frustrates God's purposes.

Cami Reddish [00:15:28] And as you, as you look at, I don't know, as you look at everything in which I hadn't done, and I don't, I don't understand why I didn't feel the need to look at the church in a different way. I don't know what it, I don't know what it is. I had researched in their box so many times. I just never thought I was being lied to. I believed everything I was told. And I was told, you do not need to look anywhere else but than what we've told you. And I believed that and I stayed there and I researched there. But now that I see like this, this harm is being done. I mean, Matt Eason has spoken out now and there's been, there's been no apology from Elder Holland. There's been no responsibility taken. There's been. No. There's been. I mean, in no way can I say now that I want my kids looking up to Elder Holland as someone of how to act like he's not showing us the right way to act. If we want to act like Jesus Christ, he's not showing us that. And I love Holland. He said beautiful things before.

John Dehlin [00:16:32] He's charismatic.

Cami Reddish [00:16:33] Right, Right. And not only that, like, I. I do think some of the things that he says are good and beautiful and

John Dehlin [00:16:40] he says some good things.

Cami Reddish [00:16:41] Yeah, right. And that's the thing is I was so willing to hold on to those things. And as soon as I saw it, like I said, as soon as I saw what he had done to Matt Easton, and there's no way. He doesn't know what he had done. He. He did not apologize for that. I can't get behind that. I can't get behind that. That person who is saying, yeah, I have caused some damage. I have caused some harm here, and I don't care what defense you want to say, if he was speaking as a man or what it is, but that deserves an apology. When you hurt somebody, you apologize. Even if you didn't mean to, even if you didn't mean it the way that you said it. You apologize when you do something wrong like that and when you cause harm like that. And the more that I think about it, the more that I. I look into the things that we do teach something like polygamy and how women get really hurt and upset sometimes about how they just don't know what's coming after this life, if they're sealed to more than one man or what that looks like. And we say, no, that's okay. That's okay. God loves you, and it's all gonna work out in this next life. It's all gonna work out. We don't have all the answers here, and we can say that about one thing, but then we take the LGBTQ community and we see that it's causing damage, and we see that it's causing hurt to people, and we decide that God doesn't want them to have the same blessings as the regular members. God doesn't want them to have the. The same blessings as Kolby and I, who are straight, and we can just go into the temple because of that. It doesn't make any sense that sometimes we say, you know what? I know polygamy is messy, so we don't have all the answers, and we know God loves us. Why couldn't they Just say the same exact thing about the LGBTQ community and say, we know God loves us. We know it's Christ, like to love everybody. So even if there were some crazy reason that God wouldn't accept a temple marriage for an LGBTQ person, we're going to let God deal with that because we know that he cares about us and our happiness. But we're actively teaching the opposite. We're actively teaching that he wants us to discriminate against those people, that he's telling our prophets and apostles that, that we should not allow them to participate like other members. And I just, I don't know why I didn't see that. I don't why I didn't understand. But now that I see it, I don't know if I can support that. I can't support a church that is doing that. And it seems like they're cherry picking some random things to do that with and that that's hard for me to understand.

Kolby Reddish [00:19:21] And I think one of the things I'd point out too, is that that bigotry isn't born into kids. We went, we teach it, we teach it. And we saw that really starkly. We went on a vacation with old college roommates and friends, and one of the people's in an LGBT relationship and they came with their partner and our daughter, who's 6, said, you know, because these are two boys, they couldn't have a baby together, right? And I said, yeah. And she said, so they'd have to adopt. And I was like, yeah, if they wanted to have kids. And she said, well, then can I go and help them, like, pick out the baby that they want? And, you know, she's just a kid asking honest questions. And I was just looking at a kid like that, of her age of six. She doesn't see any illegitimacy in that relationship in any way. She's like, oh, there's.

Cami Reddish [00:20:18] They still get the family. Can I, can I help them? Like, I think she thought it would be fun to go. I don't know if she thinks it's a baby store or what it is that you go to when you adopt a child, but to see her just accept, oh, yeah, that makes sense. It wasn't like something's gone wrong, you know, And I, I, if we let her stay, she will be told that something has gone wrong there, that something is wrong with that relationship. And I don't, I don't know why. Again, I can't explain to you why I wasn't seeing, seeing these things, because they were all around me. It is what I've been taught my entire life. And maybe that's why it just is what it was for me and my experience.

John Dehlin [00:21:09] I'm kind of crystallizing what we're saying here. And part of the perniciousness of Mormonism is it doesn't just teach bigotry. It doesn't just teach bigotry to children. It teaches children that God supports bigotry. And that's just a whole nother level of evil, I guess. I don't know. Or harm. If you don't say evil. Harm.

Kolby Reddish [00:21:35] Yeah, it is. And it's. It goes back to what we said in our first interview about oftentimes to save the image of the church, to save the good name of the church, apologists or people who make excuses for the bad actions of the church actually denigrate God. They put those things on God. And the way you put it is perfect, because our very next concern. So then we had four historical concerns that we really studied. And the first was race in the priesthood. And we'll just say this. Of these. So we had race in the priesthood, polygamy, the Book of Abraham, and the historicity and DNA on the book, Book of Mormon. And we'll kind of be brief on these, but I'll go through each one. Well, the big thing I want to say about race in the priesthood, because what Cami and I did, our primary study was the gospel topics essays and the footnotes that the Church used to support its contentions. One of the things that really bothered me about the Race and the Priesthood essay is it does not fully come clean or explain. And I actually bought Matt Harris's book on the Gospel topics essay series after watching his interview. And that really showed me how the Church does not fully come clean on the race and the priesthood issue. It basically tries two different explanations. It says, one, yes, the Church was racist, but everyone else was racist, too. We weren't that far behind the times, which, as an attorney who also has a fondness for history, that's just not accurate. Historically, if you look at the way that the world or the Supreme Court has recognized the legitimacy of, you know, of minorities in this country, the Church was well beyond the times it was teaching. As late as 1982, as far as I could find, Spencer W. Kimball was teaching that interracial marriage was a sin and bad. Yet the Supreme Court had forbidden, invalidating those marriages in 1967. They started integration in 1954. Yet the Mormon Church, you know, withheld the priesthood and temple Blessings. That's the other part that really irritates me is I don't feel like most members understand that it wasn't just priesthood. A lot of the common apologetic explanations, kind of like even Brad Wilcox did, is, well, it's God's priesthood. He could do what he wants with it. But what about the temple blessings? What about people like, is it Jane Manning James who wasn't even allowed to go into the temple and receive her own blessings after being faithful for her basically for her entire life, and then when she does get to go in, she's sealed by proxy as a servant. Things like that are horrifying. The way that the church treated minorities is wrong. And the thing that really irritates me about the Gospel Topics essay is it makes it sound like the brethren did not teach these things as doctrine. And they absolutely did teach it as doctrine. If people haven't read yet the exchange between Larry Nelson, I think that's in 1949 and the first presidency, I know it was George Albert Smith was the president of the church at the time. You have to read that exchange and recognize that the brethren taught so openly that God instituted basically this racism and that it was God sanctioned and that the prophets weren't going to separate it. And that is just so, like you said, John, that's so wrong. It's putting the bigotry on God and the gospel topics. Si, I think lets those past leaders of the church off the hook far too much by saying that it was just policy and procedure. I think the last thing I'd say is when we've talked about this issue in particular with people, there are people who've told us the same thing, like, well, we need to have more leaders or more charity. For the leaders of the church, including the past leaders of the church, it was a different time. And I just want to say to that like, explanation, I am just plumb out of charity for people who damaged other people. Like, if I have charity for people now, if I look back in history and I'm trying to use my charity, my heart goes out to the African American and other racial minorities who were damaged and told they were less than because of these brethren's decisions that they were teaching as doctrine, that's who my heart goes out to. I'm kind of sick of using charity for the leaders as an explanation and a salve for just bad behavior. I care much more about, you know, the average member of the church than feeling like I'm maligning Brigham Young's reputation by labeling him what I think he just clearly was. Which is a racist.

John Dehlin [00:26:13] Yeah, yeah. And we're in. The show notes will include the Lowry Nelson exchanges, will include the Mormon Church First Presidency statement.

Kolby Reddish [00:26:23] Right.

John Dehlin [00:26:24] Affirming that the priesthood ban on people of African descent, Mormons of African descent was doctrine. I think there were at least two First Presidency declarations to that effect and will include the Gospel Topics essay, which is the worst of all, the least informative and least helpful of all.

Kolby Reddish [00:26:42] And one of those, one of those statements was made in 1969. I think that's really important. So this idea that the Gospel Topics essay offers, which is like, yeah, we were racist, but so was everyone else. Like, we had the Equal Rights Amendment, we had Supreme Court cases moving rights forward. As you know, the Equal Rights Amendment was in 1964. I'm sorry, the Civil Rights act in 1964. So the world is 14 years ahead of the prophets and apostles. So this idea that the church wasn't exclusively racist, one, I don't think that's a good explanation anyways, because. But even if you believe that the church was far beyond the times, the world was doing much better, in other words, of moving rights forward for people.

Cami Reddish [00:27:26] Yeah, I think too, as we were studying these things, I wanted to. I started studying like I were researching a paper for college. It's. It's such a different way to study. I wanted the sources. I, I mean, we even wrote the quotes in here, but putting them in the show notes is even better. So people can kind of go and,

John Dehlin [00:27:45] oh, you can send them. Send us any resources you want. Include a bunch of resources from them in our show notes to help you learn and fact check for yourself, because we're not asking you just to believe us.

Cami Reddish [00:27:56] Yeah. And, and that's the thing is I, I would go to these, these quotes from, from church history and start to understand the timelines are off. The things that I've been told are off because the narrative that I was told growing up, the narrative that I was told to teach people on my mission, is that the church would have crumbled if it had gone forward with anti racism too soon. Right. It was this weird, like they really wanted not to discriminate. They didn't want to hurt the black people, they didn't want to be this way, but God had to not let them do it yet because the other people around them who were really racist would have, you know, taken out the church. And I, it doesn't make. First of all, that's just not true. That's just not true. I Feel like I lied to people saying that. Right. I feel like that was, that was not a truthful statement. And the other thing is that's still what the Church is teaching today. If you research. And here's what I went to a lot of the times to kind of understand what the Church's stance on it is that saints unscripted videos, they've got some, I mean, they've moved past Kwaku and things like that, but they have some on there that are, they are lying to you. I read the actual documents and then I watch that five minute clip that they do about race in the priesthood and they're saying the same things that I was told to tell missionaries. First they say they, this was not doctrine. They're very specific about that. When I just learned that it was doctrine, my mind was blown when it was doctrine. But again, if you choose to only research within the church, you're going to come across these messages like these people don't know what they're talking about. It wasn't doctrine. When that's just not true. And that's what's so frustrating to me is I was starting to see I was being deceived. I was actively being deceived. It's no longer even about the information that I didn't know. It's about the fact that they were actually trying to keep me from getting this information and they were feeding me false information so that I wouldn't ever look for the real information. And I just, that like I just sunk. I don't, I don't know what to do with that. That's what makes me feel like I can't stay in this system. If they were honest with me and just said, hey, we found these quotes from the past, we're not really sure what to do with them. Let's kind of figure this out together, figure out how we've evolved, make this a good, healthy, transparent place to be. I would say, yes, that's a place I can get behind. I might be able to raise my kids here if we all come together and just try and figure out this messy past. But I found out the messy past has been hidden from me and that I've been told to teach people things that are not true and that, that is hard. I, I wish that I hadn't told some of these people. Some of the things I told our mission came out with this packet that they gave to all the missionaries called the Resolving Concerns Packet. So it says Arizona Temp Admission Mission.

John Dehlin [00:31:14] You still have it?

Cami Reddish [00:31:15] I do, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:17] I'D like a copy of that.

Jenn Kamp [00:31:18] It's.

Cami Reddish [00:31:18] It's in the car. And so, and it has every point. It was called, we would call it the anti Mormon concerns packet. So it goes through every single point and gives us missionaries a way to explain and I remember in there exact. And I've told people this, it says this line under race in the priesthood is the church was actively for the equal rights movement. They were right. So. Oh, sorry, yeah. The civil rights movement. So they were for it. And now that I'm finding all of these quotes that they were still today they're actively against equal rights. It makes me just cringe. I want to call these people and say I am so sorry I lied to you about these things. I was given this information as a young missionary with no, no resources. I mean I didn't have a smartphone as a missionary. I was a missionary in 2010. We had those little flip phones. I, I only had about five books I was allowed to read. I, I wasn't even able to go outside and research these things for myself. This is just what I was handed. I was just given these things and told this is what the truth is on these topics. Anyone who says anything different is an anti Mormon and trying to tell you things that aren't true. And that shaped me in a way that I took forward into my teachings in the church and being an MTC teacher and all these things. That's what gave me that arrogance. I think of thinking I could answer all the questions is because I had answers. They gave me answers to all the questions. And when I go back now and look at those things with the real quotes and the Joseph Smith papers available to me, I realized that I was told, I was told to lie to people without knowing it. And that is really, that's a hard pill to swallow for me. I, I wish that I hadn't done that. But I didn't know. I didn't know any different.

High-Demand Religion and the BITE Model

John Dehlin [00:33:15] I mean we just illustrated is what we often refer to as Stephen Hassan's bite model. B I T E high demand religions or cults, they control your behavior. That's the B. In this case they'll say things like don't read anti Mormon literature. Don't associate with apostates, don't associate with people who excommunicated. Don't speak to people who have left the church. Don't you stay away from social media, stay away from the Internet, stay away from podcasts. So they're trying to control your behavior. That's the be because they need to Control the information that you take in. That's the eye information. Because if you learned all the stuff, all the truth about the church, you would probably have made very different decisions. But. And so they have to limit the information. And they limit the information both by literally telling you not to read it, but also by creating deceptive apologetics that protect you from being more curious or feeling like there's any need to dig deeper. Because if you have someone in trust saying, oh, well, there were just so many women on the planes, and the men, the women outnumbered men so much that. That the Lord needed the women to be taken care of, and so he called them to be polygamists because the women needed men to help them. You know, once a trusted apologist tells you that, you're like, well, I don't need to read about polygamy anymore because I already know the answer. So that's how they control the information, through telling you not to read it and through.

Jenn Kamp [00:34:51] Through.

John Dehlin [00:34:53] Through dishonest apologetics. And that's why we tend to be a little bit hard on apologists here on Mormon stories, because. Because they're part of undue influence, honestly. And they. They control the information so that you won't ever have the thought, huh, I wonder if there's, you know, a problem here. I wonder if I need to learn more. I wonder if the church maybe isn't true. That's the thoughts that they don't want you to have. So they control the information. And then, of course, they use emotion to coerce you and manipulate you and control you to make you feel like you need them and you can't be happy without them, and they make you feel afraid if you leave them. That's the bite model, and you just illustrated it perfectly well.

Kolby Reddish [00:35:33] And I love that you highlighted apologists, because one of the things that I think is really important to our journey is as we were reading the gospel topics essays, and then we might read, say, a more critical view, we might read a more critical book. I really enjoyed, like, Grant Palmer's Insider's View of Mormon Origins. As we'd read stuff like that. I would then go to Fair Mormon or whatever they're called today, or we'd watch those Saints unscripted videos. And so many of their explanations were just so bonkers to me that I. I can't even understand how. I guess I. I can. I can understand how people who want to believe find reasons to continue believing when they go to those explanations. But if you actually look at them critically for even one second, some of them make absolutely no sense.

Cami Reddish [00:36:26] It doesn't make sense that those responses were based on the same set of facts. Right. If you just look at all the facts and then you look at the Saints unscripted video, it doesn't make sense that their answer was based on all those facts. They. They just pick one thing from here and there. Or their favorite thing to do is just be like, there are so many ways to explain this, let me tell you. And none of the ways actually make sense. None of the ways actually they're just talking at you. But honestly, if I had watched that as a believing member, I would have said, okay, that makes sense.

Kolby Reddish [00:37:07] Yeah, I just wish you had Jim Bennett on. And I will say to his credit, at least Jim Bennett was honest. I feel like he was very honest about his beliefs. My ask, not that any apologists are going to listen to me or the church. Or the church, but my ask to apologists, I guess it's more to people who listen to apologists is you need to realize that while they'll speak at their Fairmore or MEN conference, like they've reviewed the evidence just like critics, and they have come to a different objective conclusion. That is the biggest lie apologists tell, period. They are not objective. I mean, John Gee and Kerry Muhlenstein, I've listened to them a bunch because Book of Abraham was one I put hundreds of hours of research into, literally. And they openly acknowledge. They start with the conclusion that the church is true and that everything it teaches is true and work backwards from there and make the evidence fit. I feel like all traditional apologists do the exact same thing, even if they won't admit it. They are trying to find any reason to believe. And you just need to know that if you're reading them, they're not objectively reviewing information like someone who's more critical, like a Dan Vogel or someone who's like an actual. I feel like an actual scholar might. So race in the priesthood. We talked about polygamy was our next big one. I would just say the church and Brian Hales say a polygamy, that it was needed to come back, that it was part of. That it was part of the restitution of all things and that Joseph taught that.

Cami Reddish [00:38:45] I think the big thing with me. And I dove into that resolving concerns packet. I remember studying it on my mission and then I dove into the scriptures. So I started reading every scripture I could find on polygamy. I thought, if there's an answer, I'm going to get it. And I looked at every single one that mentioned polygamy and found no place that polygamy was commanded in the past. Nothing. I. And that's what I had been taught. That was the story. God had commanded this in the past. And then Joseph Smith was commanded to restore all things to now. And so I was. It was based off of something that was not true. It was not commanded in the past. And so reading those scriptures for myself and seeing that they took this scripture that mentions polygamy in it because it was a custom of the time. And when God says, hey, if you're polygamous, please treat your wives the same, it would say things like that. It would mention people with multiple wives and ask them to, you know, be nice to them. It never once said, you know, Abraham, or so I command you to take all of these wives. And this comes from me. It was so clear to me that it was never commanded. And so the reason that Joseph Smith brought it back now doesn't make sense. And then, second, when you look at the timeline of polygamy, which I had never done, I had always heard, like, what you were talking about, that the women needed the men. At the time, a lot of the men had died coming over from the planes. They were just trying to take care of them. I had never heard the stories of the flaming sword asking him to practice polygamy. I didn't know he had lied about it his whole life. I didn't know that he had started practicing polygamy without telling his wife. I didn't know that when he started practicing polygamy, he didn't even have the ceiling power yet that polygamy actually wasn't commanded until after he had started polygamy. And all of those things just mesh together into something that is so different than what I had been taught my entire life about why it is that our people have been asked to do this thing. It started to feel, again, just deceptive. Rather than having any sense of understanding about this issue, I. I came back very confused about why all of this information had been kept from me my whole entire life.

John Dehlin [00:41:29] Yeah.

Cami Reddish [00:41:31] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [00:41:31] And then the next two for us were Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon. Viewing the Book of Mormon as a literal historical document. And I think one of the things I was really struck by as I researched both the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon's historicity was if you go to actual history and you look at what we know about ancient Americans, or you look at what we know about ancient Egyptians, it is so offensive to me now that Joseph took other people's stories. So I watched the interview with Dr. Robert Ridner, all 15 hours of it. And one of the things I was really struck by was that the Book of Abraham, I think he talked about this, how the priest who had commissioned that Book of Breathings likely had to work his entire life to save up enough money to have those papers drawn up. That was how important that was to him. That was his devotion to his belief system. And that then Joseph takes it, turns it into something it's not at all. And so to believe in Mormonism, you basically have to erase other people's legitimate history. And the same thing happens with the Book of Mormon. We know that Joseph, in my opinion at least, was going off of the mound builder myth and that he, I think, wrote the Book of Mormon to try and explain where he thought the Native Americans came from. But if you look at the Book of Mormon, I think the thing to me that's far more troubling about the Book of Mormon rather than anachronisms, is actually the things that, if it was a legitimate historical record based on what we know about Native Americans, should be there, but aren't. One of the ones that struck me just even this week as I was thinking about it is bears. Like if Nephi and Lehi and their family came over to America where there are no bears, so they started in Jerusalem where there are no bears, and they come to America where bears were part of a staple ancient American, Native American diet. It is so unbelievable to me that you could encounter a creature that's the size of a man or bigger, covered in fur, and never mention it. It's not mentioned in the Book of Mormon ever. A bear corn is barely mentioned, yet it was a staple of most of the agrarian people who lived here in ancient America, as was Cacao. If we look to more Central and South America, it just is completely inconsistent with real history. Another theme that I noticed was also turkeys. Like turkeys, turkeys, jaguars, things like that that should be mentioned. And that's to say nothing of the 2 million people that are recorded in the Book of Ether as having died that nobody can find. Right. The other thing that really struck me was the themes of the Book of Mormon. So Captain Moroni and his big treatise between him and Pahoran about liberty and freedom, those ideas are so far from an ancient Semitic ideal, but who did they line up with? Like an early American settler who cared a lot about American origins and had this idea of American exceptionalism all floating around in his head, right? Like this idea of fighting for freedom and democracy. That's built into the Book of Mormon narrative. It's inconsistent with viewing it as an ancient Hebrew text, in my opinion. And I think those are really the issues that we studied in depth. We went line by line through every gospel topic essay, through every resource, and we'll provide more of that because we don't want people to believe us. But I think the biggest thing I would say is going through this. One of the things I want to share is one night, the night I really felt like I came to the conclusion that I knew the church wasn't fully what it claims to be. I remember going to Cami, and we know that people leave their spouses over one of the spouses not believing anymore. And I remember going to Cami and saying, I don't think the church is true anymore. And it was really hard for me to even get those words out. And one of the blessings, I think, of this faith crisis or faith journey was Cami saying, well, we'll study and we'll figure this out together. And just fully loving and accepting me. I've said to her and to a few of our friends, like, that was something from her that I didn't even know that I needed, but that I did need, because I felt like. And it's just because of how amazing she is, I felt less than in some way, in our marriage because of the church. Our mission president came to our ceiling. And after the ceremony, I'm not kidding, this is a real story. He came up to us and told my wife right in front of me that if I didn't walk up to my priesthood commitments, she had too much potential to not leave me if that's what I did. And so Cami just fully accepting me and working through this with me and us coming out on the same page, which is that the church is on what it claims to be. And that just meant so much in many of the same ways, I felt led to go on a mission or do other things in the church. I felt led in every instance by God here, like, through this faith journey. I think that's probably where we would just end, is what we believe today is like. We don't believe in the church's truth claims. After the research, we do believe in God still. We choose to believe in Christ is the way we say it. We believe that even if Christ, even if the record we have of Christ isn't fully accurate, say he wasn't really the son of God, that the message we have recorded in the New Testament is a good message to base your life around. We really view it as his primary message was to love other people and to help other people, help reduce suffering. And really anything that conflicts with that, we just kind of reject. That's kind of where this ended up leading us.

Reaching a Breaking Point With the Church

Cami Reddish [00:47:51] I think when it came down to it, to feel so deceived by what you trust and what you love and where your family is, I can't imagine anyone believing that we would just want to walk away from this. Like, we feel like we don't have a choice at this point. There is not a way back after learning this information. You can't go back. I mean, we tried the month of January, we took seriously, we said, we are gonna go and we are gonna see if this could still be our home. And what we found is that the church was still going to continue to

John Dehlin [00:48:44] teach

Cami Reddish [00:48:47] the same things that we had been taught our whole life, and that those things are not true. Those things are not the truth of what happened. Those things are not the truth of how to be Christlike. And so we're now having to navigate how to separate ourselves from the church. And the saddest part of all of this is that what Brad Wilcox was talking about last week, what he was saying, as harsh as it came across, like he is speaking, which for the church, which thing, the fact that he's saying that if you leave, you lose everything. Right? He. He kind of went on a rant about it, saying, give up this, give up that. If you walk away from this, there's nothing left for you. And I. I believe that because I feel like I'm losing everything. I have been taught my whole life that the church is all or nothing. It has been the way it is. It's just. It's all or nothing. And so I am now having to try and convince myself that it's okay if I take Christ with me. It's okay if I take God with me. But they have taught me that I should never, ever believe that, that I should never come to some place where I can think, I can walk away without the good stuff. I know that there's good things about the church. I know that there's good people in the church. The church functions because of the regular members like us, who do their part in making it a good place. But what I didn't know is that I needed to be more aware of even just the current church news. I needed to be more aware of what was going on. I needed to think harder about the implications of what we're teaching in church. And what we're teaching our children. And I didn't do that. I wish I had done it earlier. But now that I see. And now that I see that it's causing harm and the institution of the church does not want to change their harmful ways, I don't feel like I can stay there. I do feel like it is not a choice I'm making. I feel like I am being pushed out of my family. I feel like I'm being pushed out of my home. And I feel paralyzed in the sense that I don't. I know I can't go back. I know I can't go back to the believing place, the safe, having all the answers that I was in. But I also don't know. I don't know how to move forward from this. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know how to separate myself from the church. And so what you were saying about the bite model makes so much more sense to me now that I am having to pry those pieces apart in my own brain because I am telling myself that I don't deserve happiness outside of this. And I know that that's not true. I know that that's not true. But that doesn't. That doesn't mean that I'm not in that battle right now in my own head. It doesn't mean that I'm not having the thoughts over and over again that you are ruining your children, even though I can see that I would be if I kept them here in this space. And so I guess that's. That's the struggle moving forward is how. How to find peace outside of this. Because I know that we deserve it. And I know that it is truly our own relationship with God that is guiding us out. It's our. It's our own integrity that is saying, you can no longer stay here, because if you stay, you will lose that integrity. You have to leave. And so I guess moving forward, it's just trying to figure out what that. What that looks like, how that. How that's gonna be for our family and everything.

John Dehlin [00:53:05] It's so beautiful, so powerful. And I just have to take a moment to kind of call this out, that high demand religions are cults, number one. There's no. There's no credible reason to leave a high demand religion or a culture. There's no way to do it with your dignity intact. Thomas McConkey, relative to Bruce R. McConkey, once told me, a cult is any organization that won't let you leave with your dignity intact. And when we talk about the bite model and the e. The emotion. They need you to feel like you will lose everything if you leave. They need you to worry that you'll lose, potentially your marriage, your parents, the love and esteem of your parents, the relationship with your siblings, potentially with your children, with your neighbors and your family and friends. They need you to feel that fear of the consequences because that's what keeps so many people in. And so they need you to feel that way. And Brad Wilcox in the church need you to feel like you won't be able to stay faithful in your marriage. You won't be able to be a moral person. You won't be able to have the light in your eyes, you'll have a darkened countenance.

Jenn Kamp [00:54:13] You'll.

John Dehlin [00:54:13] Your kids will become, you know, drug dealers and sex workers. Like, they need all that so that you stay terrified and don't ever leave. And then in some case they want you feeling terrible if you do leave, which I don't know that it's intentional, but that's just how these organizations end up working. And then there's such a punishment there. I. We did an interview just this week from a trusted source, a member of a stake high council who reported that 30 to 40% of the active members in his Utah, you know, south Salt Lake county, northern Utah county, kind of ward and stake, 30 to 40% don't believe anymore, but they still attend. Part of that is maybe because they're benefiting. Part of it is because they're terrified to leave. Yeah, and you just, you know, you just so beautifully, you know, express that.

Cami Reddish [00:55:10] It's. It seems so funny to me now that this church is, is kind of about this, this list that they give you. And it's a very safe space to live in, to have just a, just a very simple list of if you live this way, if you're able to answer their temple recommend interview questions. If you, if you don't show your shoulders and you don't get a second piercing and you don't get any tattoos and you, you just do this, this and this, and you do your calling and come to church and go to the temple, you do these things, things that equals righteousness. I mean, that is what is ingrained in you. That that is what goodness is. And so we equate the two and we just say that is what it is. And so if somebody pulls back and says the things that these, this, the brethren have said, this list isn't, isn't coming from a good source. And it doesn't mean Those things aren't good or bad, but moving forward. Like, we have to create our own list of what it means to be a good person. And they've made it. So that feels really scary. That feels really scary. When you've lived your whole life being told if you do this, you're in, like you're fine. It doesn't matter if your addictions fall within the word of wisdom, like you're good, because if you can answer these right questions, it's fine. And, and I just, I mean, we talk sometimes in the church about getting complacent in those things, but it does feel really scary to have to decide what it means for ourselves to be a good person. Like what it actually means to be Christlike. Since we choose to believe in Christ, choose to use Christ stories to teach our kids. Not a lot has changed even going through this. When it comes to us and our kids and our family, the most important things have stayed the same in the sense that we want good relationships, relationships with our children. We want to be good parents. And as we've evolved over the last six months in finding this new information, we found out that the church was actively going to work against what our morals are as a family, what our intentions are as parents. And I don't. That leaves us in a place where we have to find out how to move forward from this and that. That is really scary for us because it's all we know.

Kolby Reddish [00:57:33] It is really scary. But then at the same time, I would tell people who are questioning or feeling the same way. It's also very freeing in the sense that when I was a true believing member, I had to do these mental backflips to make things work or to explain why a brother who, like a brother high up in the church who said something offensive, it wasn't really offensive. If you look at it and be super charitable, I don't have to do that anymore. Like the only people I have to answer for are the five people in my little family and try and love and influence people for good wherever I can. And I think that's much more consistent with Jesus Christ's message than what the church teaches. And I just, I just invite them if they listen, to try and make the church more actually Christ centered.

John Dehlin [00:58:26] Yeah, because you remember how Gordon B. Hinckley when he was trying to soft pedal the one true church idea and he was going on those media campaigns, you guys may be too young to remember this, but he would always say, you know what we like to tell non Mormons is bring what you have. That's true and good and see if we can add a little bit to it. I mean, I think he meant it right. Why shouldn't the church now take the posture? Take what? Take the good that we've given you and if you're going to leave, see what other good you can find afterwards. Why can't they have as graceful of a perspective about people coming into the church? Why can't they have as gracious of a perspective about people leaving it? I hope you've enjoyed your time as a Mormon. I hope we've done our best to help you. It feels like you're ready to go try and do go on some new adventures. We hope. We hope you've enjoyed your stay. We hope you. We've been a benefit to your lives and we bless you on whatever path you end up taking. But instead, what they do right now is they're going to all, after this interview, gossip about you, tell everyone that you're dangerous, possibly excommunicate you, and then tell them also tell their kids not to play with your kids and marginalize and demean and ostracize you. And that's what it means to be an ex Mormon. And then they're going to talk bad about you and warn everybody you know about ex Mormons, just in general, that they're dark, they're loathsome, the lights got out of their eyes, that they're evil. They might even say things like he was cheating or there was adultery and, and spread false rumors or there was a porn problem or whatever, whatever they can, they have to smear and demean anyone who leaves and label them as an apostate. And that needs to change. Sorry for the rant. And then the only other thing I'll say is this is why we have helped form the Thrive foundation. And this is why we've started thrivebeyondreligion.com as a sister nonprofit. Because people need to know that there's health and healing. We've been conditioned to believe our life's over. There's nothing to look forward to. We're lost and dark and now sad, miserable forever. The Thrive Foundation. All it means is, hey, there's healing and growth after high demand religion and all we want to do with. With Thrive, which is a separate nonprofit, go to thrivebeyondreligion.com you can find friends, you can find community. You can attend workshops or events or retreats or whatever just to help you realize that there's a big, beautiful, wonderful world out there, possibly better than you ever had within the church and thrive just wants to give you hope, give you tools, help you find friends and community to rebuild and to go live that big, beautiful life afterwards. Because the truth is, two thirds of all the people in the world that have ever been baptized Mormon have left the Mormon Church. And a bunch of those people are way happier having left it than when they were in it. That's just the truth.

Kolby Reddish [01:01:26] Yeah.

Cami Reddish [01:01:27] Yeah. I think it helped me, too, to learn. And I don't even remember what the stats were, but that it's a high percentage of or considered millennials who. Who leave the church. And I thought, okay, there's other people out there that can see this, and there might be. There might be hope for that community. I think the hardest part is just dealing with your own. Your own mind that's telling you you can't. You can't go. Thanks, Brad Wilcox.

Life After Leaving and Hopes for the Future

Kolby Reddish [01:01:58] I think just kind of the last thing I'd say is the narrative, like you said, John, the narrative the church teaches about apostates. Apostates is just so unhealthy and wrong. And like, we're leaving because of our personal convictions and principle. Like, my integrity doesn't allow me to stay. So the idea that people will think I'm lazy or was looking to sin or change my life, it's just not true. I mean, I don't know how to say it any simpler than that. We have the same values that we've always had, and in some ways, we're going to hold them even stronger because now we don't have to do mental gymnastics to make them bend to some organization. And that's all I would say, is stop teaching the narrative about people who leave the church, that they're that there. That there aren't legitimate reasons to leave the church. There are a host of legitimate reasons to church and I to leave the church. And I truly feel like we've been led out of the church.

John Dehlin [01:03:02] Jen.

Jenn Kamp [01:03:04] I've just been listening, and you guys are amazing. But one of the things that, when you say, like, Cami, like, these words keep coming into your mind, you know, the things that you've been taught, you know, and I feel you, you know, but something that someone said to me once was, you know, you've. For me, I'd been in the church 44 years, so it's going to take a little while, you know, for those things that have been, like, repeated to you over and over in the church, for your own voice to come through and kind of silence those a little bit. But it'll happen. And then one other thing I wanted to say really quick is I wanted to give Cammy props for when you came to her. And instead of reacting or, you know, leaving, which a lot of people do, that you loved him enough to listen, and you stayed and you said, we're gonna work through this together. And that I wish a lot more active members could hear. I hope that they hear that from you. I hope that they can just pause and listen. And I think that you gave such a great example of that. Thank you.

Cami Reddish [01:04:37] The information is out there. That's the thing. And I didn't know it was out there before this. But if you want to know, if you want to understand for yourself the truth claims of the church, like, there are ways to do that, and it takes a lot of effort, and the barrier is huge because your mind will push you back, and the people around you will say, well, you can't. You can't research in that way. Right. Which it just sounds so crazy in any other circumstance. Right. You would want all the talk about your.

John Dehlin [01:05:08] Your bedtop analogy.

Cami Reddish [01:05:11] I had told Kolby before, as we were going through this, I. I just said, you know what? I have done more research on our mattress topper than I ever had on the church. I didn't know what was going on. I just. I was living the gospel the way that I knew how, the way that I was told to live it, and I could not believe. I mean, I research everything on Amazon. Don't. When you. You don't buy something on Amazon without reading all the reviews. And for someone to not know the true stories of people who have gone through this system and been affected by the things that they were taught and they learned and been affected by the doctrines of the church. I had no clue. And then to. To find out I had no clue about the actual things that I thought I had answers to just blew my mind. I. I don't. I don't think I would have ever imagined myself sitting here in this space having to fight for happiness, because I know that. That I deserve it. I deserve to raise my kids in a healthy, healthy, happy place. Yeah. I'm gonna be surrounded by people who are going to tell me, I can't do that without them. I won't be able to do it without these people. And that's probably the biggest thing that people have said to us when they find out that we're questioning. I think their first thought is their mind's been poisoned somehow. They. They heard something that has just taken over, and then they say, how could you do this to your kids? And I just. That just gets you right away. How could. How could I do this? How could I. Now I believe. I don't know how I could put my kids back into the system. I don't think I could do it. And so I know that there are people who find ways to stay, and there are people who might feel led the same way that we're led out of the church. They might feel led to stay because of a certain calling that they have, and they feel like they can do good where they are, and I have no doubt that they will be guided to do what is right for them. But when it comes to us and our family and the things that we know now, we truly feel like we cannot support this. This can't be where we put our time and our energy and. And our children. I. I mean, if we stay, we'd be required to. To give our son for two years to them. And that sounds crazy now, right? Yeah. To go on a mission that's just. It's expected of young men then girls have that choice.

John Dehlin [01:07:54] Not these days. These days, the church is relying on women to be the missionaries because two thirds of the boys are staying home now.

Jenn Kamp [01:08:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:03] Yeah. So the church needs the women missionaries. Anyway. I don't mean to sidetrack you.

Cami Reddish [01:08:07] Yeah. I mean, regardless. I'm just saying we could. We. We even thought for. For a little while, like, we could go and then bring them home from church and make sure they weren't taught anything off bait. I mean, I did that for crazy thoughts.

John Dehlin [01:08:19] 12 or 13 years.

Jenn Kamp [01:08:20] Yeah.

Cami Reddish [01:08:20] The crazy thoughts that you have where you think, maybe I don't have to give up my community. Maybe I don't have to give up what feels like home to me or I don't have to ruin the family relationships that I have. And then you just kind of come to this point where you think, how I ca. I have to. I don't. I don't think we could stay and just deprogram our kids every time we come home from church to make sure that they're not gonna grow up with these certain ideas about LGBTQ people or

John Dehlin [01:08:51] women or women or their bodies or sexuality or people of color or people who leave the church or. Or other religious traditions or Christian faiths.

Jenn Kamp [01:09:01] Right.

John Dehlin [01:09:02] Yeah.

Cami Reddish [01:09:02] All those people playing pretend.

John Dehlin [01:09:06] According to pretend church. Playing church. Playing church with part of piano. Basically.

Kolby Reddish [01:09:12] Yes.

Cami Reddish [01:09:14] It. And it is. It's very sad. It's very sad that this is where it ends. It ends here.

Jenn Kamp [01:09:20] Where.

Cami Reddish [01:09:22] I mean, I don't Know, like, I hope that in five years, we feel like we have a home somewhere else, but I know that people aren't gonna stop telling me that I'm hurting my kids, and that's hard. So I guess we'll just deal with that as it comes. Do you want to say anything to end it, babe?

Kolby Reddish [01:09:54] No, I think I would just say. I think, like Cammie said, our belief in God, our belief in Christ, can make space for people in Mormonism who are trying to do their. What they think is the right thing, who are informed and are trying to reduce suffering and love those around them. And I just hope that people we know that remain believers, like, we're the same Kolby and Cami we've always been. We have the same values. Those values are what led us out, and I trust in that. I. I just hope that people can listen and recognize that we're not deceived, we're not fallen, we're not broken. God gave us the ability to research and read, and he gave us a conscience, and those are the things we're following. That doesn't make us bad.

Cami Reddish [01:10:48] It makes so much more sense to me now that there are so many ways to be good, to be a good person. There are so many paths to feeling. I don't know, to. To becoming like Christ, I guess I would say, since we believe in Christ, but there's so many ways to connect with the higher power or to just find purpose in life. And then that's the real thing here, is that let's not forget that all of us are just human beings who want to feel loved. Like, that's. That's what it is. We just. We're all here, and we want to feel loved, and we want our kids to feel loved. And so we're all trying to find a way to love each other. And whether that's through believing in Jesus Christ and telling his stories, or whether that's through deciding that I want to be a good person and I'm going to do it. I just. That feels so much better to me than saying there is one straight and narrow path. And the path actually looks like following this list of rules that these brethren have given us, because if you follow the rules, you can get to the temple, and that means you're saved. And I just. I don't know how I believe that in that space, but I see now that that doesn't really make any sense when you think about the world as it is right now. But at the same time, I am afraid to be outside of the Church. Like, my. My conditioning is so strong that I am afraid of those people that wake up in the morning and drink a cup of coffee, like. And I don't know where that comes from. I wish I could say I just. I feel so great now, you know, I wish I could say I'm at this place where I am happy to feel this freedom. And I have had glimpses of that where I have felt like, okay, if this doesn't control my life, I get to take responsibility for that. I get to decide what being a good person looks like for me and my family. But at the same time, I have to notice that I've been affected by this my entire life. And the. The fear of being on the outside is very real. And so I guess I have to learn how to. How to fight that battle and figure it out. All the scary, worldly people out there that I am now, I'm part of that. But my community is out there, and. And I. I have to get rid of the us versus them mentality that I didn't even know I had. I would have never told somebody that that's how I feel about other people. Until I had to consider being one of those people. I didn't know. I felt like that. That's awful. I. I can't believe that I. I am so scared of that, but I am. That's a real feeling. That's a real fear that I have to work through. And I. And I'm sure anybody else who is raised in the church will experience that very intense disorientation and fear when they consider not being part of the church anymore, when they consider that they might have to go out and find their community elsewhere because this community is not safe for their family and their kids. This community is not healthy for their family and their kids.

Kolby Reddish [01:14:11] I just point out, too, that, like. Like you pointed to Stephen Hassan's model. I mean, I feel like Cammie got the worst of the conditioning out of the two of us. I would just point out, like you did of Brad Wilcox's statement, right? That, like, if you leave this church, you lose everything. That's not necessarily a selling point. Like the fact that people. The fact that my wife knows that these feelings she's feeling of feeling less than. Of being scared that they don't come from God, but that she still feels them. Like, that's not healthy. That's not a healthy space. That's not to. To any believer who would watch that and go, oh, Kenny, that's God telling you that you got to go back. It's not. It's conditioning, it's brainwashing, and it's super unhealthy.

John Dehlin [01:15:03] Well, it's the classic trait of an abuser who tells his victims, you're nothing without me. You'll be nothing without me. Your life will be over without me. The church needs to realize that when they send that message, they are literally being abusive and following the path of abusers.

Kolby Reddish [01:15:23] Yeah, I completely agree with that. It's not a selling point that people, like you said, can't leave with their dignity intact.

John Dehlin [01:15:29] Yeah. Well, I just want to say, number one, you guys are beautiful and courageous, and this is going to help so many people. So that's the first thing I want to say. So thank you. Secondly, I want to say it gets better. So Cami, especially, I've. I've been doing this 20 years. I've counseled tens of thousands of people, and odds are, within a few years, take some time, you're going to. You're going to be way happier and healthier. You're going to have better friends, better marriage, and be a better parent. You'll have better community. You'll have a happier and a healthier life. And you don't necessarily have to believe that now, but I want to put that. Plant that seed of hope in you that. That is the way it works. Occasionally, people mess up their lives after they leave a religion, but people mess up their lives in religion, so you can't really factor that in. You just have to kind of look at the probabilities, and the probability is you guys are going to be way happier and healthier and stronger in. In just a little bit of time. So I hope you'll believe me if there's ever room for faith. I hope you'll have faith in that.

Cami Reddish [01:16:45] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:16:47] Third thing I want to say is this is why we created a podcast called the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. You go tomormonfaith crisis.com it's free. I'm not asking for any money for this. You can go through. And we've got 70 hours of free coaching, me, Margi, and Natasha, where we're just giving our best stuff out there for free to help people through a faith crisis so that it can keep you from hitting the potholes. It can help you, accelerate you to the happy place. Parenting, marriage stuff, communication with believing family and friends, rebuilding a new life, rebuilding new family traditions. It's all there. So go there, check it out. I also want to say, Jen, maybe this is an okay time to plug the work you're doing with number one, we at the Open Stories foundation, with Jen's help, are now offering eight weeks of faith crisis support groups. So there's five across the, across the i15 corridor in Utah, but there's one online group and you can sign up, you go to mormonstories.org events and you can join a support group and get support. We're also doing some retreats. We're doing one in kind of American Fork ish area in late March and we're doing a mixed faith marriage retreat with Julie Diaze Hanks in June.

Jenn Kamp [01:18:04] July.

John Dehlin [01:18:04] In July, yep. And thank you. And so we are going. We are committed to continuing to provide the resources and support. We don't do it for the money. You know, we charge for these workshops and retreats just to pay the professionals that run them. But the workshops are free or heavily discounted. We're just doing all we can. And then don't forget Thrive beyond religion. Join a support community near you. Create one if there isn't one in your local area and then find your pod, attend these Thrive events, get to know other post Mormons in your area, and you'll start making some of the best friends of your life. So also. And there's a big, beautiful world out there. Join other churches, Explore Brene Brown and Oprah and you know, Glennon Doyle and Eckhart Tolle. And there's so many, so much wisdom and truth out there. Go to brunch and go on a hike with your kids and improve your marriage and get some sex therapy and have a better sex life. Like there's a million happy, positive things you can do. Get a therapist, get a coach. Right. A big, beautiful, bright world is out there. Jed, you're a couple years out of your faith crisis, right?

Jenn Kamp [01:19:15] Yeah, about a year and a half.

John Dehlin [01:19:16] And.

Jenn Kamp [01:19:17] And filling the light. Yeah, the light never left.

John Dehlin [01:19:23] Oh, good.

Jenn Kamp [01:19:24] Yeah, the light never left.

John Dehlin [01:19:25] Yeah. But you're feeling hopeful and feeling happy.

Jenn Kamp [01:19:28] Yeah, definitely hopeful, happy. I think the best thing for me that's come out of my faith crisis is the ability to love at a larger scale, to not to have a box of you can love this that's in fits in here. But now that that box is gone, that love that you've never felt before for other people and things, it's just amazing. And. Yeah. So I think that so far, just that love that I feel is just such a huge gift. Huge gift. And I can see it in you guys too. So it gets better.

Kolby Reddish [01:20:15] I love that.

John Dehlin [01:20:17] I love it. Well, thanks so much again, Kolby. And Cammie Reddish, we wish you well. I hope. Listen, ex Mormon, post Mormon community, figure out where they live in Idaho. And for those of you who live near them, shower them with love and support because they're going to need it while their. Well, their community most likely abandons them. If you guys want us to put you in touch with these groups, the thrive groups, we will. But thank you for your courage and strength and conviction and integrity and wisdom. We just can't thank you enough.

Kolby Reddish [01:20:53] Thank you, John.

Jenn Kamp [01:20:53] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:20:55] And Jen, you freaking grand slammed it your first time to co host. Look at you.

Cami Reddish [01:21:00] I don't know.

Jenn Kamp [01:21:01] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:21:02] I know you're nice. Nice work.

Jenn Kamp [01:21:05] Thank you. Yeah, yeah, this was really fun and I. I really enjoyed being here with Cammy and Kolby today and hearing their story.

John Dehlin [01:21:11] I'm sure I'm going to get messages and emails. Keep. Keep Jen on more. Jen does a good job. John, you go away. Jen and Car can host Mormon Stories podcast.

Jenn Kamp [01:21:20] I doubt that I'd be okay with

John Dehlin [01:21:22] that, actually, but Jen, you're awesome. Welcome aboard. Thanks so much.

Jenn Kamp [01:21:27] Thank you. Appreciate that.

John Dehlin [01:21:29] All right. And Cara, get better and. And yeah, thanks for joining us. Email us@mormonstoriesgmail.com for your feedback. Feel free to comment on Facebook or on YouTube or wherever it is that you consume this content. Give us positive reviews if you can on the Mormon on the Apple podcast app because we have haters bringing our ratings down who don't even listen to the podcast. You can also rate us on Spotify and on the Mormon Stories podcast Facebook page. If. If you want to see people like Jen and Gerardo and Kara and Jennifer and others be a part of this team to make to allow us to reach more people and help more people. Please join the massive wave in 2021 and 2022. Become a monthly supporter of the Open Stories Foundation. We're transparent in our finances. All of the money goes towards the mission of supporting Mormons in faith crisis and helping people heal and grow afterwards and helping the Mormon Church get more healthy by shining a spotlight on the bad stuff and encouraging informed consent. So if you value this programming, please support it as a monthly donor. Go to mormonstories. Org and donate and we'll keep doing lots of good stuff in the weeks, months and years ahead. All right, thanks, everybody. Be good to each other. Love you. Stay tuned. Thanks again, Kolby and Kami.

Kolby Reddish [01:22:46] Thanks.

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