Introducing the Panel and Episode Topic

Joelle Kastix [00:00:03] Shapes. Oh, society loves their shapes.

John Dehlin [00:00:09] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button or on the right side of the page under support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible in the United States and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Hello everyone and welcome to a special edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host John Dehlin. It's July 11, 2019. This is part of a periodic feature that we do on Mormon Stories podcast called the Mormon News Podcast and we have a fun, interesting, disturbing news story that just came across the Mormon Stories news desk a couple days ago. We first learned on the Ex Mormon Reddit that the Mormon Church, the LDS Church, has put out a survey

Guest [00:01:43] on

John Dehlin [00:01:43] Qualtrics which is attempting to query its active membership as sort of market research, sort of surveying the customers to find out if the customers are okay with the idea of the Mormon Church lowering the age of youth, interviews with clergy from age 12 to age 8. So yeah, and so ex Mormon read it and eventually the Internet, the Mormon progressive and post Mormon Internet, was sort of ablaze with strong, strong feelings about whether or not adult men should be periodically interviewing 8, 9 year olds alone in their office or with adults, presumably to assess worthiness, because that's usually what interviews with with Mormon bishops and other church leaders are about. And so we felt like it would be a good idea to assemble an all star panel of thoughtful people to assess this idea. Now I will acknowledge that I was really hoping to find a panel that would be a mix of people who felt differently, you know, positively or negatively about this idea. So I put out a query and said, Hey, 25,000 Facebook friends and followers. I would love to find a Mormon, a believing Mormon, an active Mormon who would be able to or willing to speak in favor of this idea. And so far I haven't been able to find anyone. I did have one person who identified as a non believing inactive Mormon who said that he would be able to speak sort of in theoretical terms about why this could be a good idea. But unfortunately he works the night shifts and was not awake at 11am to be able to do this interview. Another person said that they knew a guy who might be able to appear, but they weren't able to do that Today. So unfortunately, in spite of our best efforts, we were not able to find a panelist who would speak out in favor of this topic. So in the future, for those of you who are active believing Mormons, thoughtful Mormons, progressive Mormons who tend to have different points of view than the panelists that we generally bring on, I want to invite you to reach out to me, email me@mormonstoriesmail.com and we will have you on as a panelist to make sure and provide balance. Having said that, I think we have an amazing all star panel assembled to talk to us today about this idea, whether or not it's a good idea. And you will not regret watching this interview. So without any further ado, we welcome back to Mormon Stories Podcast. Marriage and family therapist, licensed sex therapist, host of Mormon Mental Health podcast, host of Mormon Sex Info Morm, host of Sex Talk with Natasha the Wonderful, the only, Natasha Alfer Parker. Natasha, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:05:13] Hello, everybody. So glad to be here. What an important topic to be talking

John Dehlin [00:05:17] about and tell us why you have the bona fides to talk about this issue.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:05:25] Well, I'm, like you said, a clinical, family and marriage therapist. I'm a certified sex therapist. I'm also very involved on the board of directors of the Mormon Mental Health association, who's come out with a position statement about worthiness interviews and why they generally don't follow good mental health practice for anyone, much less minors. So, yeah, very excited to talk about the topic.

John Dehlin [00:05:49] All right, well, it's a thrill to have you. And if you guys haven't checked out my three hour discussion with Natasha on a more constructive way for Mormons to handle masturbation and pornography. It's a must. Listen, it's a must. See, this is an issue that's plaguing youth, it's plaguing marriages, plaguing adults. And we need to get better at talking about it and handling it. So check that out. All right. Also welcoming them back to Mormon Stories Podcast is the one, the only, the courageous, the dragon slayer, Bishop Sam Young. Sam Young, welcome back to Mormon Stories Podcast.

Sam Young [00:06:26] Well, thanks, John. I'm delighted to be here with this amazing panel. I might not say a single word because they've got all the wisdom, but I'm looking forward to discussing this proposed change as the survey states it is.

John Dehlin [00:06:40] Yeah. And those of you who have been on Mars will not know that Sam Young is the founder of Protect LDS Children. He's the founder of Protect All Children. He's, he has been a lion within Mormonism to Advocate for the rights of children and for survivors of sexual abuse within the Mormon Church to the point where the church got so comfortable uncomfortable with his effectiveness advocating for sexual abuse survivors that they excommunicated him. And, Sam, are you feeling. How are you feeling about that excommunication these days?

Sam Young [00:07:17] Well, first of all, they excommunicated me after they made some changes.

John Dehlin [00:07:21] That's right.

Sam Young [00:07:22] Our movement. So that was a positive thing. I did not want to be excommunicated. I was an active member, planning on continuing to be an active member. I'm perfectly fine with sacrificing my membership in the Mormon Church in order to protect children.

John Dehlin [00:07:39] All right, well, we're honored to have you back, Sam. Also returning is a dear friend of mine, a brilliant man, a wise man, a sage. He's been a great support over the years, and he holds the record for the longest individual interview for an individual on Mormon Stories. Ten and a half hours. We have former bishop, former stake presidency member, former CES director, former mission president, former board board member of the Deseret Trust Company, appointed by no other than Gordon B. Hinckley himself, the one, the only. It sounds like a boxing match. Roger Hendricks. Roger, welcome back to Mormon Stories.

Guest [00:08:29] Wow. I'm delighted to be here. And this is going to be an interesting topic. We can actually talk about this intellectually as well as, you know, psychologically or legally. So I'm, you know, I want to get into it.

John Dehlin [00:08:51] All right, Roger, I know you're a lover of philosophy, so you can talk about this philosophically if you'd like as well.

Guest [00:08:57] Good, I will.

John Dehlin [00:08:59] And you guys are in for a treat because for the first time ever on Mormon Stories podcast, we have Joelle Kastix. Is that how I pronounce it? Joelle?

Joelle Kastix [00:09:11] You got it right on.

John Dehlin [00:09:12] Joelle is a leading global expert advocate and spokesperson for survivors of sexual assault and institutional coverup. Joelle has never been Mormon. Joelle, do you have a Catholic background? Is that right?

Joelle Kastix [00:09:25] Yes, I grew up Catholic, and I'm a survivor of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

John Dehlin [00:09:30] And what our listeners will be super interested to hear, and we're going to go on a slight diversion just to understand Joel's background. Joelle actually gets involved in local state legislative initiatives to battle any church or organization's efforts to weaken or undermine legislation that would advocate for sexual abuse survivors. And Joelle, do you mind sharing with us your experience in working with the Mormon Church, working against the Mormon Church on legislative matters regarding sexual assault and the recent efforts you were involved in in Arizon because I think our listeners would be fascinated to hear basically how the Mormon Church historically deals with these sorts of cases when they're up in front of state legislatures.

Joelle Kastix [00:10:21] I'd love to. Do you want me to do it now?

John Dehlin [00:10:23] Yeah, let's do it.

Arizona Law Lets Abuse Survivors Sue Institutions

Joelle Kastix [00:10:24] Okay. So in Arizona, we have passed a phenomenal new law that allows survivors of sexual abuse, no matter when they were abused, to come forward until December of 2020 and use the civil courts to expose the person who abused them and the institution who covered it up. So that means if you were sexually abused by a bishop in a worthiness interview, if you were sexually abused by anyone in the Mormon Church, you can come forward and file a civil lawsuit and expose that person and the Mormon Church that covered it up. It also applies to the Boy Scouts,

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:10:59] the Catholic Church, whatever.

Joelle Kastix [00:11:01] And this law is called a civil window. And we've worked on these civil windows before because they are really vital because they expose predators who are on the streets right now. It's the only way that we can expose the Mormon bishop who still might be doing worthiness interviews, or the Catholic priest who still might be in a parish or the Boy Scout leader who's still in a troop. We've worked on these laws. We've also passed one in New York recently and we passed one in New Jersey. So survivors there have the possibility to come forward. And I can give John the information on these laws because this also applies to Mormon survivors and the fights have always been really tough.

John Dehlin [00:11:37] Joel, tell us about the legal context that would make it so prior to the law, victims wouldn't be able to come before the civil courts.

Joelle Kastix [00:11:46] So in Arizona, Arizona had some of the worst laws in the nation. And the reason they had some of the worst civil laws in the nation was because of the stranglehold the Mormon Church had over the legislature there. If you were sexually abused as a child in Arizona, you had until you were 20 years old to come forward. And as Natasha will tell you, most survivors of child sexual abuse take decades to come to terms with what happened to them. Plus, if they're still involved in the institution, if they're still Mormon or if their family's still Mormon, there's a lot of fear and shame and self loathing. Many deal with addiction issues, fear, mental health issues, things like that. It takes survivors so long to heal, they need to come forward when they are ready.

John Dehlin [00:12:35] Also viability, like a financial, self support, sustainability. I can imagine that if parents were involved or prominent church leaders, if, you know, parents could withdraw funds, parents could withdraw support community could harm an individual. And so oftentimes, survivors just may not feel safe to come out until they've reached a viable status in adulthood where they feel like their parents or loved ones or the church or their faith community or their neighbors couldn't harm them in some way if they actually spoke freely.

Joelle Kastix [00:13:09] Exactly. And many times the kids don't even know that what happened to them was a crime because they blame themselves. They think, because predators are cunning. If it happens in a worthiness interview and the predator convinces the kid through careful grooming that it was their fault, the child knows that something horrible happened to them that messed them up, but they don't know it's a crime until they're in their 30s and 40s. And so that's how predators get away with it. And because the Arizona legislature was so heavily Mormon, they were able to keep these laws very predator friendly. And so survivors had no chance at all to come forward and do anything to get these people off of the streets.

John Dehlin [00:13:47] Let me just ask. We don't want to assume that all Mormon leaders are pernicious, that Mormon leaders are bad. We want to have a thoughtful, balanced discussion. I would even venture to say the Mormon church and its leaders are against sexual abuse and abuse of any kind. So why would the Mormon church, Mormon leaders in Arizona, what would be their benefit to pass sort of draconian laws that we're going to limit? Would it be just worries about false reporting? Would it be attempts to minimize legal liability? Why would a church pass legislation that would make it hard for victims to report?

Joelle Kastix [00:14:28] The same reason that very devout Catholic leaders do the same thing. Their first priority is their church, not victims of child sexual abuse. So they will say that it's false reporting. When we all know that there are very few cases of false reporting. But really, when they, when they talk to, they go into their lobbying groups and the church will say, you need to, you need to side with your church. And your church says, you must vote no on this bill. And a good Mormon will say, okay, that's what I will do. In the case of one of the legislators in Arizona, he actually had personal involvement in the COVID up of child sexual abuse. It wasn't a Mormon case, but it was the COVID up of child sexual abuse. So it becomes personal. But when it comes to a faith organization, whether it's Mormon, whether it's Catholic, whether it's foursquare, whatever, when it comes time for the lobbying organizations to come in, the church will talk to their legislators and their faith group and say, we need you to vote this way because you are a bishop, you are a stake president, you are a good Catholic, you are this, you are that, and this is how we need you to vote, because this is your devotion and they'll do that.

John Dehlin [00:15:41] So in Arizona, as I understand it, some of the opponents that you actively worked against were active believing Mormons in positions of power. Is that right? Tell us about who was involved in the fight on the local level, what their relationship was to the church, and what that fight was like for you guys.

Joelle Kastix [00:15:59] Well, it was very, very personal. I have never dealt with a legislative battle that really got as into what I call a fist fight on this level. In other states, such as New York, New Jersey, California, Delaware, Minnesota, where we've done these, it's been on a far more. On a much higher level where it's been behind the scenes lobbying. Here in Arizona or in Arizona, the fight became much more personal because it is a smaller legislative body and there was a lot more at stake. And we had hearings where the Senate Judiciary president came over, who is a high ranking Mormon leader, would come over and testify on the bill that wasn't his bill, it wasn't in his house, it wasn't in his committee, and he would come and testify against it. We had bills being pulled. We had hearings where victims were not allowed to testify.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:16:59] We.

Joelle Kastix [00:17:00] We had hearings where people weren't allowed to vote. We had people crying in hearings, and not survivors, but the actual legislators crying in hearings. We had yelling and screaming. And in the end, the only reason that the bill passed was twofold. Number one, there was a meeting where the Republican caucus came together and had a private meeting where they were going to punish the two Senate Republicans who were pushing for this bill to pass, and the rest of the Republicans didn't want it to. And they had this meeting where they were gonna punish these two Republicans and they were trying to figure out how to do it. But there was an open mic in that meeting and the media heard about it, so that became front page news, and it was embarrassing.

John Dehlin [00:17:44] And were those Mormons involved in that open mic scandal?

Joelle Kastix [00:17:47] Yeah. And then the other part was, are those recordings public? Oh, yeah. It was on the front page of the paper. And I can send you all those links too, where you can post those. And it was on the front page of the Arizona report.

John Dehlin [00:17:59] Send us those links. That'd be fascinating.

Joelle Kastix [00:18:00] Yeah. And then the other part was, and this is part of the Catholic side, but it all breeds into that fear in Michigan. And the. I believe it was the attorney, an attorney general there issued arrest warrants for some priests who had been on the lam for quite some time. And we're talking like 20 years. And this was the fight that we'd had in Arizona because the legislators said, oh, let bygones be bygones. And it was a long time ago. Well, they arrested a priest in Phoenix who had been accused of crimes 25 years ago in Michigan, and they arrested him in Phoenix and took him back to Michigan. And that bred a lot of fear in the legislators. So we got our bill passed at the last minute. Nobody liked that bill till everybody liked it and we got it through. So it ended up being what started as a, what we wanted was a three year window. We ended up with a civil window that started on May 27, and it goes until December 31 of 2020. So it's a very short period of time that survivors have of any age, if they were sexually abused in the state of Arizona, to come forward and use the civil courts to seek justice.

John Dehlin [00:19:14] Beautiful. Any. Anyone, Any of our panelists have any questions for Joelle before we move on to the topic of the day?

Church Survey on Lowering the Age for Youth Interviews

Sam Young [00:19:22] Well, I just want to congratulate her and everybody else that worked with the legislature to pass this law. That is great and I'm so glad and fully, I fully support folks that are working to protect our children and get pedophiles off the streets. So great job, Joelle and everybody else who worked with you.

Joelle Kastix [00:19:42] Thank you. And we have them in other states, too. We have New Jersey and New York and I'll send you all that information too, and we hope to get other states passed as well.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:19:51] I will just say that Joelle gave an excellent interview on Mormon sex info. So go check that out.

John Dehlin [00:19:57] All right, thanks, Natasha. All right, so let's jump into the news of the day. I want to give a special thanks one to Ex Mormon Reddit, where this type of news always breaks first. Ex Mormon Reddit is the Mormon news media's primary source now for leads. But I also want to give a shout out to KUTV here in Salt Lake City and Adam Forge or Forge that was actually courageous enough to cover this story. And the headline is LDS Church considering lowering age for Youth interviews with Clergy to eight, survey says. And so somebody who some active member who received this survey just a couple days ago, the survey kind of said the following. Let's see. This survey is being conducted by the Correlation Research Division of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The church is considering having primary children ages 8 to 11 receive periodic individual interviews Similar to the current practice of interviewing young men and young women. For those who don't know, when the church interviews young men and young women, it's usually around worthiness. So, are you masturbating? Are you living the law of chastity? Are you having sexual relations with people? Are people touching you where they shouldn't? Are you touching people where you shouldn't? Are you drinking alcohol? Are you smoking illegal drugs? Using illegal drugs? Are you paying your tithing? Is there anything in your life that's out of harmony with the Savior and the gospel? It's sort of this worthiness culture where basically a priesthood leader gets to assess you for your worthiness, dig into your private lives to find out what's going on, and let you know whether or not he ultimately finds you worthy. So the survey goes on to say, your honest feedback will provide valuable information on this proposed change. Your individual answers will be kept confidential. Your participation in the survey is important but voluntary. Your responses will be combined with those received from other participants, and they will be used only to identify broad statistical trends and not any individual information. So before we actually dive into the substance of the survey, I am curious what people think about the church doing these market research surveys. I kind of talk about it customers, because this is the kind of research businesses do with customers. And the first time I heard about this type of research going on was actually in the 90s when the Mormon Church changed its temple ceremony. When the God Makers came out, the movie and the book the God Makers, that started really exposing some of the more disturbing things that were going on in the temple. In the Mormon Temple, the death oaths, the blood oaths, the signs and the penalties. And we started getting really taken out to the woodshed by evangelical Christians around some of those things. It turns out the church actually conducted a market research study, asked members how they felt about the Mormon temple ceremony. And the feedback was that there was an overwhelming number of Mormons that were really disturbed by what was going on in the temples. And so that research, directly, as I understand it, led to the church changing the temple ceremony in very, very significant ways around 1990. So what do you guys think? On the one hand, Mormons kind of look to their leaders as being led by God, as being led by revelation. The Lord is going to speak to his anointed leaders and tell the church how to move. On the other hand, you could, you could. And so on the one hand, you could say, well, that's kind of disturbing that they're acting more like a corporation than a Sort of an organization led by God. On the other hand, practical minds would just say that's what, you know, corporations and modern structures do that it's good that they're finding out what the members do and don't like and sort of moving accordingly. Roger, I want to start with you. You've worked at some of the highest levels of the church. You've interacted with some of the highest level leaders of the church. What is sort of your balanced view on the good and the bad of this sort of market research?

Guest [00:24:35] Well, my first gut reaction is I view it with a little bit of suspicion because we're now suspicious with Russians hacking elections and putting out dummy information. And it doesn't make sense to me that that type of market research would go out. So that's. On the one hand, I view it with a little bit. I view it with some skepticism. On the other hand, say that they did it. So why would they do it? What would be the most practical reason they would do would be the thought, the idea that we need to inoculate or convert at a younger age. We know that the practice of suggesting that little girls wear long sleeves on their sundresses as opposed to just strap sundresses, which is to me ridiculous, but there is that feeling we need to get at them at a younger age. So if they did put that out, there would only be one reason for that, and that is to start bringing them in closer because. And what would be that reason? Because they're losing too many members. And so what they have, they've got to nurture at a younger age. And so that's the one side and that's the other side.

John Dehlin [00:26:35] Okay, thanks, Roger. Natasha, do you have any thoughts about just the church conducting surveys like this? Do you think it's positive or negative?

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:26:43] I think it's a huge positive. I do think that it kind of goes against our ideas about how Revelation works. At the same time, we've been doing surveys and getting feedback from members since pretty much forever. We just never have given them credit. We always give the credit to Revelation. So I think. But I think, you know, most good things that have happened in the church have happened from the grassroots up. So I was actually very pleased to see that they would want parent input and ideas as to who should be in a room with their children. If that's how they decide to go forward, I think that they should be concerned about members ideas and thoughts. So that was a positive for me.

John Dehlin [00:27:33] Sam, you feel the same?

Sam Young [00:27:35] I do. I think this is a really good thing that. So the survey they did back in the 90s where they decided to make changes to the temple ceremony, I think that's a really good thing. In fact, it goes along with the foundations of the church where it was very specific and still is in the Doctrine and Covenants about having common consent. In fact, in this survey, number one, it doesn't say we're gathering information, it's specific, it's gathering information. But it's about a proposed change. This isn't just we want to get some opinions. They stated, this is about a proposed change. And then I loved it when they, they ask the question, are you in favor or opposed? I'm thinking, okay, that's common consent on the grassroots level with a few people. So I do like now. I've never been under the illusion that God speaks to the prophet, to the STAKE president and the bishop especially. I was a bishop. God never spoke to me. I've always, I've witnessed in every level of the organization that I've been involved in the way it works. You come together, you discuss something, you make a decision. You don't know how good the decision is, but you make it. And sometimes it's a good decision, sometimes it's not. If it's not, well, on a local level, you can make changes. I've never been under the illusion that policies and procedures in Salt Lake City were made any differently over the last 10 years. It started to bug me that I kept hearing that I started hearing more and more, this is God's will. I'm looking at, Geez, when I was bishop, I'd never feel comfortable saying, this is God's will. We made a decision and we'll see. It's the best we could come up with based on the information we have. This survey, to me, I would hope would be an illustration to the members of the church that this is how it works. God didn't speak to the prophet in the middle of the night where he got up and used his pen to say, okay, we need to have 8 and 11 year olds maybe got up in the middle of the night and said, I think we ought to talk about this. Okay, good. But the church doesn't work by God making a phone call on the back phone and saying, make this change. This is the way it works. And I'm okay with that. I've always been okay with that. But yes, I really like that this is. They're gathering information for the members about this and I'm hoping they get a lot of pushback like this woman who's featured in the story gave them.

John Dehlin [00:30:14] Roger, when you were stake president, stake presidency member, bishop, or mission president, did God ever give you sort of irrefutable, undeniable, you know, counsel?

Guest [00:30:28] Well, sometimes I thought so. And that makes me think that, you know, times have changed. I think I kind of want to change the subject just a little, get under why we're even having this discussion and how it is we're able to have this discussion. There is, as long as I've been alive and for as much history as I've read that there's always been this tension between the prophet and the priest versus the scholar and intellectual. And it's gone back and forth. But in the main, the prophet and the priest have held sway, but not. But lately that has really shifted the scholar and the intellectual. They're challenging everything that the prophet and the priest does that's of a questionable nature. For example, you get someone like Natasha who is a scholar on human interaction, and she says she'll be able to show you with research that under certain conditions, it's not good for a male to be with a little 8 year old or a 10 year old or 11 year old or a 12 year old for that matter, with certain subjects. Whereas the prophet and the priest have always held sway and said we have a right to do that so that we can inculcate obedience. And so right now, the secular world, with the prophet, with the scholar and the intellectual, with the aid of the podcast, they have changed things to the point that. To the point that the prophet and the priest are losing and we're heading down to a very powerful secular world that, frankly, I think is safer, more honest. It's the age of the specialist and the professional who dig into the facts and all they want are the facts. And so I like the discussion. I still wonder why they would send out a survey like this with all the scrutiny they're receiving. But that's my feeling. I believe you as scholars, as intellectuals, as podcasters, you started winning the day on these battles, hard fought battles. But believe me, they're listening to the podcast.

Recent Church Changes and the Role of Revelation

John Dehlin [00:33:55] Absolutely. Yeah. And we're proud of that. We're proud in 2019 of the changes Russell Nelson has made to Mormonism. So many changes that are directly tied to initiatives and concerns and movements. Whether it's Sam Young's efforts that have changed how interviews are done, you know, whether it's the gospel topics essays, whether it's the length of church, whether it's, you know, how women are treated so, so many issues. We now know the church is changing and it's almost as if. And it was kind of like this when Joseph Smith died. So many subsequent prophets, presidents of the church, didn't call themselves prophets, they called themselves presidents. And it wasn't until David O. McKay that they started calling themselves prophets again. But the truth is, leaders of the church now are more administrators, kind of like you said, priests or presidents. And the modern day prophets are the podcasters or the bloggers are the activists. And we are making noise. And you know, whether it's the November 2015 policy or whatever it may be, the church's approach to LGBT matters, I love it, what you said, Roger. The church is paying attention to the professionals, the scholarship, the activists, the podcasters, the bloggers, and we're kind of running the church. Joelle, what do you think? Are you happy to see the church instead of just making this bold move? Are you happy to see the Mormon Church checking to see if members like these ideas first?

Joelle Kastix [00:35:18] Well, the role of a faith organization has changed in the past hundred years. And we have a literate laity, we have the Internet, we have the, as Roger said, we have a very educated lady full of specialists who understand child safety and everything else. I think it goes against the role of a religion because as we've talked about a faith organization growing up Catholic, what the Pope says goes. And so that's what we were used to. No one ever asked a Catholic's opinion on everything, on anything. The priest comes to your parish, no one asks if you like him, no one cares. You just deal with it. But the fact that the Mormon Church is actually beginning to sway a little bit in asking people's opinions is kind of telling. Are they changing their opinion? But I don't know what the motives are. It could be a step in the right direction. That being said, you know, this is a child safety issue and they are under a lot of scrutiny for child safety issues. And I don't think that they feel safe doing anything, having to do and making any move, having to do with children without testing the waters to see what the Mormon populace has to say about it. And especially when it comes to these worthiness interviews, which are so problematic to start with, that, you know, if they're thinking of extending them even an iota, I think they should be obliterated. But they really need to take the temperature, everyone's temperature, and see what's going on. So I think it is a good sign, but a good sign in an abyss of bad signs.

John Dehlin [00:37:04] I don't know okay, thank you, Joel. That's great perspective. I think it's just mind blowing. I mean, the Church knows every one of these surveys is going to be screenshotted and posted to ex Mormon Reddit. So the fact that they couldn't find a more discreet way to put this out, because it is a little bit mind blowing that in today's environment with Protect LDS Children, with Protect All Children, with the MeToo movement, with the Spotlight movement in the Catholic Church, that the church would almost like double down in the other direction and have more, you know, have more priesthood leadership meeting alone, possibly with younger and younger children. So let me just read the question on the survey. It says below our questions found on the survey, if the church, the Mormon Church, were to do interviews with 8 to 11 year old children, who would you prefer conduct those interviews? A, the bishop, B a counselor in the bishopric, C either the bishop or a counselor, D a member of the primary presidency or E, a member of the young men's or young women's presidency. So that's the first question. Now, before we actually talk about that question, I want to just ask Natasha first, just this idea of worthiness interviews. Do you have opinions about that? And if so, fundamentally, structurally, what are your views on the idea of worthiness interviews? On the one hand, well, you know, members need to be worthy and members need to be righteous and members need to obey God and Jesus and we need to strive for goodness so that, you know, you could say these worthiness interviews just help people stay on the straight and narrow. On the other hand, there might be problems with them. So Natasha, your views on just the fundamental premise of worthiness interviews, regardless of age?

The Impact of Worthiness on Children's Self-Esteem

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:39:01] Yeah, so worthiness is a very loaded term and it impacts directly kind of all of the understanding that we have about self esteem and how we see ourselves and how we see ourselves in context with other individuals. And of course, when you're talking about minors in particular, there's developmental stages that minors are going through. There's a lot of peer influence, a lot of family influence, and kids are trying to do their best to figure out where their place in the world is. And even as adults, we all struggle with concerns about mental health or self esteem or things of that nature. It's just an ongoing kind of lifelong process. My concern with the whole concept of worthiness is that it is a measurement stick used by our Mormon Church to deem whether or not you're going to get to participate in the culture and in the rituals and in the processes that we have set out for the Ideal kind of path of a Mormon youth or adult. And so it's very easy to start otherizing. You either make the cut or you don't make the cut. And then in the context of a relationship with a divine being, if that's something you believe in and want to have a relationship with, now all of a sudden, it becomes a very easy step to be in a space of God, a divine entity. And the universe is either pleased with me or disappointed pleased with me. And this leads to a whole host of issues, one of them being internalized shame. So I would actually like to just kind of give a quick few paragraphs or sentences that the Mormon Mental Health association wrote about this, if nobody minds. So having to prove worthiness, status, to be able to fully participate in one's faith, tradition and community is concerning for both adults and minors from the following perspectives. It can create or influence distorted thinking about self worth and self esteem. It can create an atmosphere of unhealthy or inappropriate boundaries by asking questions that members are expected to answer regardless of their comfort levels or needs for privacy. It can create an atmosphere of rejection, exclusion, and public embarrassment. It creates an atmosphere in ward, stake and family settings where there's a high risk of breaches and confidentiality. It can create a culture of perfectionism. And it can interfere with spiritual development and a member's potential relationship with how they perceive the divine. So that's just a few bullet points that many of us as colleagues came up with. As far as why this is a concerning practice to begin with, we see it much better to take an approach of, you know, we're all worthy, we're worthy of love, we're worthy, we're deserving, we're deserving of good things in life. We are worthy of good experiences. We're worthy of a relationship with the divine, if that's something we seek after. And behavioral context of how we conduct ourselves as community members, as family members, as ward members can be separate from an internal sense of being worthy to begin with. Which is interesting because Mormonism has that, you know, we talk about divine worth, we talk about the fact that we're children of God, that there's something integrally positive and wonderful about us to begin with. And worthiness interviews in some weird way kind of goes in the. It just kind of counter, is counter to those doctrinal beliefs that we actually have within the faith.

John Dehlin [00:42:56] Thank you. For me, I just don't like the idea, number one of some. Well, there's always the problem of a man sitting alone with a 12 or a 10 or an 8 year old period. And we'll have Sam talk about that in a second. And maybe Joel, I just don't like the idea of some leader representing God, assessing whether a kid is good or bad. I think there are much better ways for kids to learn and adults to learn how to have a relationship with their self, with their self worth and with the divine. And I just for all we've learned from priesthood leaders, it's deeply problematic to put leaders in the position of sort

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:43:42] of

John Dehlin [00:43:44] representing God and what God thinks about an individual soul. Sam, let's bring you in. In all your narratives that you've read within a Mormon context, in your work with protect LDS children and protect all children, what are your thoughts about just worthiness interviews in general?

Protect Every Child and the Case Against One-on-One Interviews

Sam Young [00:44:02] First of all, we've expanded to the name Protect every child.

John Dehlin [00:44:08] Oh, okay. Thank you.

Sam Young [00:44:09] The same thing as Protect all children, Protect every child. No, I've got the same problems with worthiness. Issue with the term worthiness. Determine the worthiness because what that communicates to a child, they are not really. They're children. I mean, I struggle with that concept as an adult. A child is not going to understand that in fact what they're going to equate it to is worth or worthlessness. So if they're not worthy and just asking the questions that the bishops can ask can cause the person to feel worthless and start to. I mean, it's very common for a kid to start self loathing, which causes all kinds of problems. So no, the worthiness concept is terrible. Now, is that what you want?

John Dehlin [00:45:01] Yeah, yeah, that's, that's it. Roger, do you have anything you want to add? And then I want to bring Joelle in

Guest [00:45:08] again. I'm thinking I have a couple of reactions. One is you would think that men with great maturity would have thought these things through. Now when President Nelson made that announcement in Hawaii where children of gay couples would basically be banned from the church until they were 18 and then they would have to, they had to move out of their parents home, that shocked it shocked our reasonable minds. And then they changed it in three years. Now what did that say? That wasn't good policy from people we would expect to utter good policy. So on the one hand, we can't always trust any leader. And number two is I'm not in favor of a survey going out because I'm not in favor of these kinds of interviews. And why am I not? Because I believe in the individual civil rights of an individual to grow and progress at their own level. And Every child is growing at a different level than another child. These surveys are for boat. I don't even like the idea of the survey, that it seems presumptuous of me to me.

John Dehlin [00:47:05] Let me play devil's advocate for a second. Let's just say, you know, Roger, you're a nice guy. I assume you would never want to harm a child. Sam, you too. You both have been bishops. I imagine that if you were to interview an 8 year old or a 10 year old or a 12 year old, you wouldn't ask them about where they touch themselves, you wouldn't abuse them, you wouldn't verbally or sexually abuse them or physically abuse them. It would just sort of be this cute little interview where it's like, how are you doing? How's your life going? Are you happy? Are you reading your scriptures? Are you saying your prayers? Do you feel the Heavenly Father loves you? Is there anything I can do as a bishop to serve you? And that you two men and probably maybe I would even argue to say most Mormon bishops or bishopric members would just be loving and age appropriate and diplomatic and benign or even loving and encouraging and supportive. So, Sam, isn't that how you would be back when you were bishop? And I know you probably interviewed 12 year olds and you interviewed 8 year olds for baptism. I'm guessing you didn't sexually or physically abuse these kids. I'm guessing you probably didn't even ask them inappropriate questions. I'm guessing they left your office feeling loved, like the bishop is someone who would be kind to them, who would help them if they needed it. So why object this if. Let's just say there are going to be a few bad apples as bishops, but overall, bishops are generally going to be just loving, affirming, supportive people.

Sam Young [00:48:44] Well, so you're guessing that people left my office uplifted? Well, frankly, I hope they were, but I would have to guess at that too. I did not ask sexually explicit questions. I'm sure I asked about the law of chastity I must meet sometimes I think, was I a crappy bishop because I have one confession from a kid who came in and confessed to masturbation. That was it. But I never asked anybody about that. But here's the problem. The bishops have no training whatsoever on how to interact with children, especially with regards to sexual matters. So you mentioned something, asking age appropriate questions. Who the hell knows what an age appropriate question is? It depends on the kid or, I don't know, Natasha can probably tell us what they are. I would say for sex. For me there's no age appropriate question because I don't know what I don't know. I'm not trained in how I can harm that child. So just that statement right there, and it's in the church interview instructions to only ask age appropriate questions, yet who knows what those are. So training is a gigantic problem.

John Dehlin [00:50:01] Yeah, we know that unlike other clergy, Mormon bishops don't have seminary training or years of mental health training or really any type of training. Just from the bishops we've interviewed on Mormon stories, it's kind of like, all right, you're a bishop, go take care of your members. And that's about as intense as it gets. Joel, I really want to bring you in here. So you've had experience with lots of other religious traditions. How normal or abnormal is it for a 40 or 50, a 60 year old man to sit alone with an 8 year old kid or a 12 year old kid and to say, you know, do you masturbate? Do you touch yourself? Did someone touch you? Are you worthy? Do you read your scriptures? Do you pray? How normal or abnormal is that?

Joelle Kastix [00:50:49] When I first heard about what Sam was doing, I was shocked that these interviews were going on because on a number of different levels. First of all, that an adult male and a kid were behind a closed door. Having an interview at all was absolutely shocking because that just doesn't, that's not condoned anywhere. Not in the scouts, not in ayso. Nowhere, nowhere does that happen. Secondly, that there are sexual questions asked. So let's look at the Catholic Church and if in the confessional, if a priest asked those kinds of questions of a kid, that is considered solicitation in the confessional, those are leading grooming questions that can instantly or not instantly, that's not fair, but can lead to sexual abuse if given to the wrong person. Those are problematic questions. I was shocked to hear that this was going on. And in this day and age, with everything that we know about childhood sexual abuse, because we know that 99.9% of bishops are good guys, they just want to do a nice job. Chances are they don't like doing the interviews a whole lot either. But for that one guy, he could cut a swath of damage that is irreparable and we have to look at it from the kids point of view too. And another reason why I really don't like these interviews goes back to the worthiness name that Natasha talks about. How awful is it? Children inherently don't feel. Many children inherently don't feel worthy. We as adults don't Feel worthy. And the worthiness concept is used as an indoctrination tactic. It's used as an indoctrination tactic by faith organizations. It's used an indoctrination tactic by cults. Are you worthy to be a part of us? By secretive organizations. And I thought this was supposed to be an organization of love and family and everything else. And it creates that otherism, that otherness that Natasha was talking about. And it's really problematic for children. The meeting is traumatic. Talking to the adult is traumatic. The one on one interaction is traumatic. And now you're creating this power differential that the child doesn't even know how to respond. And so even asking the questions about sex that the kid doesn't even know the answers to is a traumatic experience in and of itself. So I have so many issues with the whole thing. I was blown away when I found

Sam Young [00:53:19] out it was happening.

John Dehlin [00:53:21] Okay, well, that's kind of the professional view from outside of Mormonism. So in the priest, in the confessional, I can just imagine, forgive me, Father, for I've sinned, I have touched myself, or forgive me, Father, I've sinned. I. I had sex with this girl. I've committed adultery. Surely those conversations happen.

Joelle Kastix [00:53:41] Yeah, but it goes the other way. So in the Catholic Church now you're either in a room with a wall between you, so the priest can't touch the kid, or they're on the altar in full view of everybody. And the confession only goes one way. The kid says, you know, I punched my sister, I stole something, so on, so forth. The priest doesn't say, did you masturbate? Did you. Do you think about sex? Do you do this, do you do that? There's no leading questions because, you know, if you ask my son when he was 10 years old, do you masturbate? He would look at you like, I

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:54:21] don't even know what you're talking about.

Joelle Kastix [00:54:22] And now you have to explain it to him. He wouldn't know what an orgasm was because that wasn't age appropriate at the time. So the leading questions don't exist. I'm not saying the Catholic Church has, but the questions just go one, the statements just go one way. And what the priest says is, you know, I hope you know, they'll say, are you feeling okay? So on, so forth. And then there is the whole seal of the confessional, which is a whole other issue altogether. But it's the behind the closed doors, the interaction where the adult can touch the child, the adult can do whatever he wants to the child, and the fact that the adult asks the child leading questions in an inappropriate, age inappropriate manner.

John Dehlin [00:55:02] Thank you. And not to mention the fact that the most common question bishops are asking of youth these days is, do you look at pornography? Do you masturbate? And as Natasha and I talked about in our three hour discussion of this topic, it's ineffective. The more you're talking about masturbation and pornography and the more you're shaming it and saying don't do it, you're actually making, you're actually nurturing and growing the problem that you claim to want to be extinguishing. It's just like, don't look in the closet. Don't go behind the curtain. As soon as you say that to a kid or an adult, that's the first place their mind goes. And you're going to be educating people to think more about masturbation, to think more about pornography, and you're going to actually be nurturing the opposite behavior that you claim to be wanting to extinguish. So, Sam, really quickly. Oh, go ahead, Roger.

Guest [00:56:04] You know, I want to introduce a little bit of logic to my own mind. On the one hand, I think that people like Natasha and Joelle and you and Sam, but especially those people who are educated in this area, they're slamming the institutional churches who want to keep the wraps on people and keep them faithful. They are now losing this battle. I don't see it turning around anytime soon. And I'm glad for that. I don't like the surveys. I think they're inappropriate. They're foolish. Now, on the other hand, when I was in seventh grade, my gym teacher got us all together in a room, handed out literature and taught us about sex education. Now, if I'm against it in a church, am I against it in a school?

Joelle Kastix [00:57:09] No.

Guest [00:57:10] I think that at a certain point, people, young kids, should be taught, have a sex education course about a sperm and an egg and how you get pregnant, where that all happens. But a gym teacher should be educated, should be a professional like Joelle and Natasha. I think that's appropriate for a person who has a priesthood badge. It's inappropriate because they have different motives. They want to strengthen the institution. And you do that in other ways other than this obsession with sex and worthiness.

John Dehlin [00:58:10] Right, Sam? Because I tried to play devil's advocate and because we all understand what Joelle was even willing to concede, that a large percentage of these bishops are actually just tactful, kind, diplomatic, sensitive men. Can you tell us the types of questions that your, you know, that the people you've interacted with, the people that have posted to your website, protect every child. Is that right? Can you tell us the types of questions that bishops and SIG presidents have asked to many of the people who have posted to your site?

Examples of Inappropriate Questions Asked in Interviews

Sam Young [00:58:47] So I'm going to tell you some questions here and I just think in my mind the age appropriate instructions in the Church's manual to ask age appropriate questions. Do you masturbate? Right there. When is that age appropriate? And that has been asked tons of people when I do surveys with people in a room. How many of you were asked if you masturbate? Over half the hands are raised. Maybe during their youth they had three bishops. Maybe one of those bishops asked about masturbation. But the majority of the members that I run into have been asked that question, do you masturbate? So when would the follow up question be appropriate? You do it under or over your panties? How can anybody ask a question like that? When in the world is that age appropriate? How many fingers do you use to masturbate? Did you reach an orgasm? A 40 year old man looking at a cute 16 year old girl and asking her, did you reach an orgasm in any context, whether that's masturbation, whether that's when they're making out with their boyfriend, whether that was when they're having sex, where did the boy ejaculate? To the boy, where did you ejaculate? And then to get even more specific than that, yesterday I had the first posted another story that came in yesterday and it was the first time that, I mean there's so many questions that bishops ask. You look at this and think the vast majority of bishops are good, and even good bishops may be asking us horrendous questions, but I think there are voyeuristic bishops that are asking questions for their own benefit. But here's a question. So there's all kinds of questions. This is the first time this question came up. A 13 year old was asked by a bishop, do you masturbate? The boy said no. The bishop then asked the question, do you masturbate with other boys? In other words, he was taught in this term circle jerk. I, I mean she used that, she said in the story, my husband was first exposed to the practice of circle jerk by the bishop at age 13. So anyway, there's some examples of the questions that are asked, oh, do you engage in bestiality? And we could laugh that off. But when you're asking a child that who may or may not know what it means, they're thinking they could very well be thinking in their heads, why am I giving the impression to this bishop or stake president that I might be engaged in bestiality, that I never have been? It shames them just by the thought that a man of God looked at me and that's the thought that he came. Why? How am I transmitting that? Anyway, I could go into a whole bunch more, but.

John Dehlin [01:01:45] And Sam, just to be clear, those are real life examples of questions that bishops ask their members, correct?

Sam Young [01:01:52] That's correct. And there are thousands of examples of this. There's over a thousand of examples on the website and I've got another three or four thousand stories of people having sent their experiences with a bishop in.

John Dehlin [01:02:08] Okay. Natasha, can you confirm Sam's allegations or statement or evidence regarding these types of questions?

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:02:19] Absolutely, yes, I can. Many, many people have come through my clientele or my podcasts or people who've just written in and yes, lots of inappropriate, probing questions. And, and again, I just want to be very clear that asking even the question, do you keep the law of chastity, which is probably the most kind of benign way that you can ask the question, is a breach of a boundary and is in of itself a very loaded question that children may or may not understand. You also have to understand that a human huge amount of us, about 30 to possibly 40% of us, have had some type of sexual interaction that was non consensual before we reach age 18. And those things are often very conflated in people's minds as to whether or not they hold responsibility for something that happened that was not consensual and sexual development is happening. And so whether or not the answer is yes, I have. No, I haven't. You are now introducing something about sexual development in a setting with an untrained professional in a setting where now that that happening or that experience is now being judged either righteous or unrighteous, worthy or unworthy. And it's, it really starts what I think is an epidemic of internalized sexual shame that most of us then carry with us into our adult lives, into our marriages, into our understanding about healthy sexuality. And as a sex therapist, believe me, I'm much busier than I would prefer to be for issues that I think are unnecessarily tragic, that they exist to begin with. And much of this happens with people who, whether they're well intentioned or not really is beside the point. We are causing harm.

Who Should Conduct Interviews with Young Children

John Dehlin [01:04:29] All right, so let's go back to this question now. Again, I've already read it, but I'LL read it again. If the Church were to do interviews with 8 to 11 year old children, who would you prefer conduct those interviews? The bishop, the counselor, and the bishopric. Either the bishop or a counselor, a member of the primary presidency or a member of the young men's or young women's presidency. Now somebody to play again, devil's advocate. Somebody may say, hey, this is progress. These are the types of suggestions that came out of the Protect LDS Children movement or the Protect All Children movement. If anybody's going to be interviewing a young woman, it should be another woman. And if somebody's going to be interviewing a young child or even a young girl, it should be a member of the primary presidency or a woman. At least it should be women interviewing girls and young women, you know, not men. So on the one hand, you could say this is progress that the Church is considering including women in the interviews. And my guess is if we had more women doing these sorts of interviews, we would probably potentially have less abusive or invasive questions. Natasha, am I right or wrong?

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:05:47] Well, I guess the first thing that comes to mind is an object lesson I learned in young women's that a brownie batter with just one teaspoon of poop in it is still not worth eating. Although I wondered about that for a minute.

John Dehlin [01:06:02] But I'm just saying, because you love brownies so much.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:06:05] I love brownies so much and it smelled really good and I don't think she really put poop in it. But I will say this, I think it is hard because yes, you're right in some ways this is them listening and having some level of ability to shift. And yet we're shifting a broken system into a less broken system. And what we're trying to say is let's stop functioning under a broken system altogether so that ecclesiastical leaders and young men's and young women's leaders and primary presidencies can all be advocates and can all be mentors and can all be people in a child's life or a minor's life that are helpful to them. We know that kids do well in communities. We know that kids especially who come from abusive homes or difficult backgrounds, oftentimes people in a church community are kind of like their lifesaver. You know, it's like they, they have people who care about them, who love them, who offers structure, who offer their homes, who offer their children. So by no means are we saying there should be no interaction between adults and minors in a church setting. We are just very much against this particular interaction where, like Joelle said Leading questions, worthiness narratives and closed door interviews that measure the okayness or not okayness of you with God is inappropriate, harmful and destructive for children and minors.

John Dehlin [01:07:36] Yeah, I'm just trying to imagine the scenario where I've got children and I'm one. You know, let's say they're nine years old or even 13 years old. Some young men's president or young women's president or primary leader, untrained. I didn't pick them randomly selected from the general membership. They're getting my child alone and asking them if they're worthy. They're assessing their worthiness. They're talking to them about our private family lives and our private family situation. I guess that's just kind of eerie. I don't want any adult sitting alone with my kids. I don't care if it's a primary presidency member, young men's or young women's. Sam, do you have any thoughts about whether this improves things to have the primary involved or the young men's or the young women's? There's also the matter of confidentiality, the matter of safety, the matter of training. What do you think, Sam?

Sam Young [01:08:29] Well, I think it's an absolutely bad idea. See, right now we have the bishops that are being defended by members of the church, that our bishops are good people, they're inspired by God. But from my standpoint, well, okay, we've got a bishop. There are pedophiles that are bishops. We just had another one that was convicted a couple of months ago and sent to jail for fondling one of the one or two boys in his ward. But you've only got the bishop to worry about. But that's not true. You've got the bishop and his counselors. So there's three people in the ward you need to worry about. Is there a pedophile in those three people? But it's more than that. You got the stake presidency. So now you've got six people that could talk to your child. But it's more than that. The High Council could be giving an assignment to talk to your kid about an assignment. So now you've got 12. Well, now we're up to 18. Well, now if you add all these other organizations, it's almost like we're giving license to almost anybody in the ward to take a job behind closed doors. And how likely is it that we're going to have a bad actor once you include all these people? No, it's a really bad idea.

John Dehlin [01:09:42] Joelle, do you feel any better about the idea of a woman sitting alone with an eight year old assessing their worthiness.

Joelle Kastix [01:09:50] No, I mean, as we've grown in awareness about child sexual abuse, we've learned that women abuse too. And also when we women also protect abusers, Correct? Definitely. And we also know that we're talking about the perpetuation of shame when it comes to sexuality. And I can tell you a woman can shame a child just as much as a man can in asking these leading questions. And so when you have an untrained person asking these leading questions, if we're talking about the perpetuation of shame, if we're talking about these leading questions that could lead to abuse, it doesn't matter if it's a man or a woman. If this person is untrained, unprepared, in a closed door room with a child, it's a broken system and the whole system needs to be fixed.

John Dehlin [01:10:36] Roger, anything you want to add real quick before we go to the next?

Guest [01:10:41] I'm trying to think of a universal truth that would cover this. And I think that interviews, interviews that are introduced by an institution on any human being are inappropriate. The only time that an interview should be given is when a person wants to be interviewed or has to be interviewed to be adopted into like the Naval Academy or West Point or into a doctoral program. In other words, I don't think that any child or adult should be required to be interviewed as a unless they want to. And unless they say they want to or they request it, you would never give an interview. The idea of an interview where you have to queue up, I think in our modern society is not truthful is something that should be put to the side.

John Dehlin [01:12:11] Thank you, Roger. One of the, you know, I would have liked to seen a sixth option on this question which clearly says none of the above. And it was a little bit weird. That is an obvious, you know, option that you give in the social sciences when you're asking people their preferences. And fortunately there's a question later that kind of addresses that. But I felt like it was missing a follow up question is aside from the interviewer and child, who else would you prefer to be present in an interview with your primary child? Now, Sam, I'm going to give you and your supporters direct credit for this. It was not in the Mormon zeitgeist to ever have. I mean, yes, yes, many of us talked about not allowing our kids, you know, prior to you, Sam, a lot of us in the blogger NACL in the podcast world talked about not letting bishops interview our children alone and insisting that we accompany them. But that was just kind of what we were talking about in the progressive and post Mormon world. It was never really brought into the public discourse and public consciousness and in such a direct way until after you and your supporters started making a huge stink about it. You did your survey and then you did the marches and you did your fast, and you did all those wonderful things to bring media attention and scrutiny. So this is the first time the Church has, along with the policy changes it made recently, this notion of the Church acknowledging the possibility of someone else being in the interview is sort of like a real, relatively recent phenomenon of the past year or two. But the question says, aside from the interviewer and child, who else would you prefer to be present in an interview with your primary child? Mark, all that apply? No one else, Myself, my spouse, a bishopric member or a primary leader. So are we okay saying it's positive that at least the church is entertaining a second person? And let's just say there was always a primary leader or a bishopric member or a counselor or some other spouse. Does that make it better? Does it make it better to have a second adult in the room or not? Sam, what do you think?

Sam Young [01:14:30] Absolutely. It makes a difference to have a second adult. So we were calling for two changes. One, that there's no one on one interviews. There should always be a second adult, preferably the parent. But the second thing we're calling for is no sexual questions. So if you have two adults in that room and you're asking sexual questions, you're now shaming the kid in front of two people as opposed to one. So both those things need to happen. But yes, I'm glad they're talking about this now. I find this interesting. When I first looked at it, I thought, how dishonest is this survey? How disingenuous is it? Because asking the question makes it appear that all the interviews are supposed to have two people. Or it is the policy of the Church to have two people, but it is not the policy. It's if they're allowed. Most of the interviews are still one on one because there's no directive to make it a two deep leadership. In fact, there's not even any directive to notify the parent that the interview is taking place. None. The bishop is under no obligation to let the bishop or the counselor or the high counselors or the state presidency, all the people can interview that child. There's no requirement that the parent even be notified. But we didn't read the Church's statement about this. So after they published this article, they reached out they received a statement from the PR department for Daniel Woodruff and I just want to read what he said. Periodic interviews, and this is at the top of that article by Channel 2. Periodic interviews with a child or trusted adult present is one of the many considerations to help children remember their baptismal covenants and to follow Christ. Periodic interviews with a parent or trusted adult present. That is not the program. But that's what he said the program is. If the child desires, then the adult can make it. The leader can make a decision if they're going to have somebody. But he makes it sound like the program is to have a trusted adult. So either he's being dishonest, portraying the program not the way it is, or there might be something else happening with this survey that they want to communicate. They want to make this change of no one on one interviews. But they can't because of our movement that we have been so public that if they suddenly change and say no more one on one interviews, they are going to have mud on their face because they were forced in a corner to do this. So it could be they want to make this change. They're starting to do it by making statements like this that aren't in policy. This is not the policy. So they're either gaslighting us, probably are gaslighting us, but I guess I'm not too have. Don't have too much of a problem with this being gaslit if in fact they do stop allowing one on one interviews all alone. So I'm not sure what's going on here, but they're making statements that kind of absolutely mislead. But maybe they're doing that on purpose because the change is coming.

Should a Second Adult Be Present During Interviews

John Dehlin [01:17:44] Natasha, do you feel better if a parent or some other second adult leader is in the room when a child is interviewed? And can you imagine scenarios where that actually either doesn't help or makes it worse?

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:18:00] Well, I kind of go back to my poop scenario. You know, it's just all still poopy. But yeah, obviously if you have two adults in the room, the likelihood of the most pernicious type of sexual abuse to happen is as much is lessened. Right. So there's, there's less likelihood of a predator being able to sexually abuse a child behind closed doors.

Guest [01:18:25] So.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:18:26] But at the same time we're still not addressing it doesn't. Having two people in the room like both Joelle and Sam have said very clearly doesn't address any of the issues we're really concerned about. There's still super huge potential for Shame, Huge potential now to be shamed in front of two adults. The gender doesn't really matter. The sex of the person asking the questions doesn't matter as far as the potential shaming potential of the questions of themselves.

Joelle Kastix [01:18:52] So

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:18:54] it reeks of the church not really being interested in trauma informed congregations. And there are many resources for churches to become trauma informed. Our church really hasn't become interested enough to really put into policy and into practice the many suggestions and things that there are out there. Because again, children and adolescents need good community, they need good adults, they need people who care about them. They need to be able to go to a bishop and say, something is happening in my home that I'm afraid to tell anybody else or a young woman's leader and say, hey, something happened to me that I'm really scared to tell my own mom about. Those are definitely roles that people in church communities can play. And there are lots of wonderful ways that people can respond appropriately when a child or a minor leads into needing support from a community's adult members. And that support does not have to happen behind closed doors with one person. It can happen in trauma informed ways and it can happen in ways where appropriate. Resources are then given to that child or family system that needs our help. But to bring children in for some type of measurement idea that you're going to be deemed good enough or not good enough by some arbitrary form of measurement that we've decided and that we have our own biases and that we have zero trained professionals doing, it's just harmful and abusive to begin with. So all of these like little ways of trying to make it better still leaves us in a space of our children being abused.

John Dehlin [01:20:40] If I'm an 11 or a 13 year old kid that's masturbating, I'm not sure it's helpful to have the young men's president or the young women's president or a primary teacher there also knowing and also being a part of that conversation. I also was really intrigued by something you said the other day in our discussion, Natasha. You actually said it's not a parent's business if a teen masturbates. Did you say that?

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:21:08] Absolutely, I said that, Yes.

John Dehlin [01:21:11] A parent might say, whatever my kid does, it's my business.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:21:15] Well, I would highly and strongly disagree with that. I think we all have a right to our privacy regardless of our age. Go ahead.

Joelle Kastix [01:21:24] I have a 13 year old and he's getting to an age that it's his own business if he masturbates. As long as he's not hurting himself or anybody else. I agree with you, Natasha.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:21:34] And this idea that somehow we become individual agents at age 18, it's kind of like the same idea with marriage. This thing happens and all of a sudden everything shifts. And that's just not how humans are. I mean, we are developmentally spectrumed humans. And so things start happening. What you know about your child or expect from your child at 2 should be very different than what you know about your child and expect from your child at 14 on all different kinds of areas and including especially their sexuality and allowing them privacy and allowing them information and having them decide what they will or will not share with you as part of what they need in a home setting so they can launch into adulthood in good, boundaried, respectful ways.

Joelle Kastix [01:22:23] So, yeah, speaking of privacy and stuff like that, I'd like to go back to the question, John, that you brought up when you talked about having the two adults in the room and how adults are. They're weird about talking about sex. And when we have, let's say we have two adults in the room and we're talking about these, these worthiness interviews. And if an adult is in the room with my son, there's a power differential. And he has a lot more power to ask my son anything he wants because he has ultimate power in there. And my son is, doesn't have. He can't push back as much because he's, you know, he's. He's outspoken with me, but with other adults, he tends to be shy. But if I'm in the room there, what do you want to bet that there won't be any sexually leading questions asked? Because another adult's going to be, first of all, wrapped around the axle, asking my son if he masturbates in front of me? Because adults are weird about talking about sex in front of other adults because now there's not that power differential now that I'm in there, especially if it's not a bishop, if it's a youth leader or whatever, and it's not someone of a higher level, all of a sudden, those sexually leading questions, they're not gonna. It shows that these worthiness interviews aren't about worthiness or aren't about the sexual health of a child. It's about power, because once you put the parent in there, all the power goes away. You can't, you can't ask these questions anymore because adults get all wrapped around the axle talking about sex. And I mean, if Natasha's in there, no bishop's gonna go in there and talk to her kids about masturbation because she has a lot of power. But they might talk to her kids about it because they have power over her kids. These interviews aren't about sexuality, they're all about power.

Guest [01:24:20] Hey, John.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:24:21] Oh, go ahead, Roger.

Guest [01:24:24] You know, these. Joelle and Sam and Natasha have made compelling cases. To make it a little more, to make this interview interesting, let me put on the hat of a priesthood leader. Not that I agree, because I've already disagreed, but let's make this interesting. I have been ordained a bishop. I have been given the keys of inspiration and revelation. And I've been asked by a prophet of God to ask these questions appropriately. And I will. And I. And I'll receive revelation because I'm supposed to care for my flock. Prepare them. Prepare them for what? Prepare them for adulthood. Prepare them for temple attendance. And of course there are. Yeah, we've had 1 or 2% of our bishops foul up and go to prison. But that's only 1%. That's only a couple. The vast majority of us have great success within our congregations and I feel very comfortable doing this. Well, what do you have to say to that, Sam?

Sam Young [01:26:07] Well, I would say, I would like to. I'd like to refer you to a page on a website where there's a thousand stories of bishops who thought they were doing the right thing and it was very harmful to those children. Educate yourself to see what damage you can be causing to those children. In addition to that, let's say you ask no questions whatsoever with regards to a sexual nature, but you have one on one interviews. You in effect are default grooming that child not for yourself, but for other pedophiles that are in the congregation or in the school or in the community that that child becomes accustomed to. It's okay to meet with somebody of authority all alone behind closed doors. You know, pedophiles are really smart. They're around us, we don't know who they are. Most of them abuse all kinds of kids before they're caught. There was a conviction here a month ago of a man that was 60 years old. How many people had he abused? Including many in the Mormon Church because he was in a community where it was a safe hunting ground or a fertile hunting ground of kids that had been normalized to it's okay to talk to a man behind closed doors. And if you talk about sex, boy, that's really default grooming for that pedophile. Where, geez, it's okay to go behind closed doors with a grown man. And talk about sex. So there's some things I would suggest and protect yourself. Going behind a closed door all alone in today's environment, that's dangerous for you. If somebody makes an allegation against you, you have no defense. You do not have defense in today's modern world.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:28:01] I'd like to second a lot of what Sam is saying that, you know, I do think that, Roger, your presentation is exactly how most people feel in the mainstream Mormon world. You know, like, these are good men. These are people who are trying to help our kids. I've been given this responsibility, which I take very seriously. And this is why I hold the leadership of our church responsible for becoming trauma informed. Because I don't think most lay people, they're just trying to kind of do what their church is telling them to do. And so. But there's really no excuse for the top 15 and the top 70 and the top auxiliary leaders to not understand or know that these are issues that they should probably be delving into a little bit more. And they are definitely. They have people who inform them and who are able to educate them. And there should be psychologists in the mix. There should be people at LDS Family Services. There should be all kinds of people who are raising red flags about this. So the excuses are no longer things that I'm interested in when it comes to our main leadership and why they're not being much more adamant about these issues and training the lay clergy that are very vulnerable as a population, which are our engineers and our plumbers and our electricians and our people who are just out there working, trying to lead good Mormon lives. So that makes me very angry. And what I want to second also is this grooming idea that both Joelle and Sam have brought up. What we are doing, we are not sitting down a child who first of all doesn't have the intellectual capacity to consent, even if we did sit down with them. But it's not like we're sitting down with them saying, hey, by the way, this is what this process is going to be like. These are the types of questions that you're going to be asked. These are the, you know, are you interested in being in this kind of interview? I mean, that's like basic consent 101 for anything I do as a therapist or anything a doctor does or anything. And we just don't do that. We just bring them in. We say, okay, you're going to be part of this process. A child is just brought in by their parents. They're asked questions that they don't know are coming and they're expected to answer. We don't have a script or a narrative or a role modeling for kids to be able to say, that's none of your business, or I don't want to talk to you about this, or I'm uncomfortable, or why would you ask me that? No, it's. We are role modeling from a very early age. This power differential of I as an adult, get to ask you a question in the name of God, no less, and you better answer or else you're not going to be able to participate in our community. So that does set them up. Even in the best of circumstances and even with the most, like, neutral questions, it sets them up to deal with other adults in that particular way. I don't have a right to my voice. I need to respect an adult's authority, and I need to answer questions and do what adults want me to do, regardless of my own discomfort or my own consent, because those things have never even been taught to me. So we have very poor boundary teaching with our children and with our adolescents in Mormon culture. And that's something that parents should take very seriously as part of the their responsibility to educate themselves about that and not allow our church community to trump their own parental authority in letting these things happen over and over and over again. Because it does heighten the risk of other possibilities, even if you have a great bishop, even if you have a bishop who didn't ask sexual questions. That's why I'm saying this whole process is rotten to begin with. It's just rotten. The best of circumstances.

Concerns About the Church's New Interview Policy

John Dehlin [01:31:47] And I'm kind of bewildered again in the area of Harvey Weinstein of MeToo of Spotlight. It'd kind of be like the Catholic Church announcing a priest mentorship to Young boys program, you know, in the wake of Spotlight. Joelle, is that an unfair. Like, the timing of this is kind of outrageous. Natasha, you're laughing.

Joelle Kastix [01:32:08] Yeah, yeah, it's exactly.

Guest [01:32:11] It.

Joelle Kastix [01:32:12] It's weird.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:32:13] It's like.

Joelle Kastix [01:32:13] So we have this problematic interview process. We have this pioneer, Sam Young, who's rallied all these people against it, but we decided we're gonna extend it. Yeah. Because we're gonna extend it, and we'll just throw someone else in the interview. It's weird. I just don't get it.

Guest [01:32:32] You secularists, you know, you try to put down us priesthood folk. When my stake president called me to be a bishop, he said, whom the Lord calleth, he qualifies. In other words, the Lord qualifies me. I can do this mistake here or There. Yes, yes, we can keep lists of these bizarre questions, but we do pretty good. After all, we have 66,000 missionaries out in the field. Field. And they're worthy. I mean, we're doing a good job. You secularists, you know, you know, you're like a dog with a bone. You just can't let go of that.

John Dehlin [01:33:21] So we've got to wrap up.

Guest [01:33:23] Will somebody answer me?

John Dehlin [01:33:25] We've got to wrap up in five minutes. Roger. I wanted to just get to a

Guest [01:33:28] couple say that we're just getting interesting.

John Dehlin [01:33:32] Okay, sorry. Those are good points, Roger. The next question that's there is the church says, are you aware of the new church policy allowing parents to sit in on youth interviews with members of the bishopric? Yes or no. And this is really interesting because whether it's with the church's essays, the church's change on the, the November 2015 policy. In the modern era, the church has this weird practice of implementing policies or changing policies. And maybe they do it with the press release in Mormon newsroom even though they're not supposed to use the word Mormon. Or maybe they sort of send a memo out, but they don't do things like do a huge general conference address where everybody in the membership knows what the policy changes are. And we find out that that's intentional. That with the gospel topics essays. We've been told by the church historian that actually the church didn't want all the members to read those gospel topics essays. They wanted them to be out there for public denial, plausible deniability reasons, but they didn't want all the membership and leadership infected with the information about church history. So really quickly, super brief, are anyone happy or surprised that this question's in there, that the Church is asking if members are even aware? Let's start with you, Sam.

Sam Young [01:35:00] Well, yes, I'm glad it's there because it does raise more awareness. Like I said, it's disingenuous to me because it wouldn't be disingenuous if they'd add two follow up questions. Are you aware that the bishop or the bishop's counselors or anybody else has no obligation to even notify a parent that they're going to interview your child? And then another follow up question question, are you aware that a second person is only allowed in the room if the child wants somebody else in that room? So I'm glad the question's there, but it kind of gives the wrong impression.

John Dehlin [01:35:35] Really quickly because I know we're almost out of time. I'm just going to summarize the Rest of the questions they go on to ask, what are your preferences regarding the following topics that could be covered in an interview with your primary child? It includes challenges in their life, positive things in their life, their spiritual development, progress towards youth achievements, their relationships with family members, and worthiness is explicitly one of the options it goes on to ask. One purpose of the interviews is to help youth establish a trusting relationship with the priesthood holder. And it asks, how important would it be that your child establish a trusting relationship with the priesthood holder? And then finally it asks, overall, are you in favor of or opposed to the proposal to do interviews with children ages 8 through 11? And it gives three very much opposed, neutral or very much in favor. And then it asks for open user feedback. Natasha, since you and Joelle have hard stops, I'm going to give you guys the first last word. We're clearly all kind of down on this idea. I read a few of these last questions. Natasha, what do you want to leave us with in terms of your final thoughts in this matter?

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:36:49] Well, I would just repeat that I would hope we'd become much more trauma informed as a community. I do think that there is a role for church community members to be positive influencers in the youth and minors in our community. How that is done is through building relationships, through programs, through activities, not through one on one interviews that are led by the adult with leading questions about worthiness. I think that even different personality kids, some kids might feel really like it's nice to go and visit in a setting. Some kids might have a lot of anxiety around that. So again, we can't just assume that because we want kids to have good relationships with ecclesiastical leaders, that we're going to come up with one way of doing that and that's going to be the result. I think we need to be much more developmentally oriented and understand child development in ways if we really want to produce good programs. And as far as your comment about that, you know, the church acting like, you know, are you aware that this is happening? It's a classic gaslighting move and I'm very tired of my church acting a gaslighter role. They have not been forthcoming with our membership about changes that they've made. They've not taken opportunities to really educate and use their vast resources, vast financial, technological and all kinds of resources that they can use to first of all educate themselves and second of all to train and communicate with the membership at large on issues that affect people on the ground in very drastic ways that can have lifelong effects. So I expect a Lot better from my church going forward.

John Dehlin [01:38:47] Yeah. All the church needs to do is have several general conference talks where they say church leaders never ask any sexual explicit question ever to any child, youth or adult leaders. Never. You are never to be alone with a child or a youth or an adult. They could fix all this with just several general conference talks and some very severe policies. And they don't. Natasha, you're a treasure and a gift to the LDS Church, to Mormons, to us. Thank you so much for joining us today on Mormon Stories.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:39:18] Thank you for having me, John. Thanks to everybody for all your comments. It was a joy.

Sam Young [01:39:22] Thanks, Natasha.

John Dehlin [01:39:23] Thanks, Joelle. We want to give you a final word before you have to bolt. We were so grateful. We want to have you back on Mormon stories. Tell your story. But why don't you just give us your parting thoughts, including the church saying, hey, members, we want to make sure you understand that there are these policies when they've actually never told the members.

Panel Closing Thoughts and Practical Recommendations

Joelle Kastix [01:39:42] Well, first, you know, when it comes to the worthiness interviews, I think that the first thing that everyone can do is teach our children that your worthiness is not in what you do. Your worthiness is who you are as a human being. And you were born perfect and God made you perfect. And what you do and how you measure up in the eyes of a church does not make you worthy. You are worthy because of who you are. And that's how we teach our children to become healthy and self empowered and well armored against sexual predators and bullying and all that stuff. And I think we should have zero tolerance against any type of closed door interview. We should have zero tolerance against these sexual questions because they're all about power and they open the doors for predators. And the fact that the church is gaslighting membership under the guise of openness because what the survey is doing is it's trying to say, hey, we're listening to people. But really, you know, I've learned a lot in this interview and they, you know, if it's gaslighting, it's gaslighting, you know, and you gotta, you gotta take the church for how they've acted in the past. And if they, you know, we know that it's only because of Sam and the hard work that he and everyone else that's worked with him that has gotten the light to the light of transparency on these interviews. And if the church tries to say that they've been doing it all along, we have to make sure that we continue to shine that light of transparency on what's going on And I don't see that continuing to put a band aid on a festering wound. But just by tweaking these interviews is going to make any changes. And we need to empower our children in their inherent worthiness and not subject them to these kinds of interviews.

John Dehlin [01:41:43] And finally, since we know the Mormon Church listens to this podcast and in fact, makes changes based on the efforts of podcasters and activists and bloggers and professionals. Joelle, what message do you want to give the Mormon Church around how they are acting in the state legislatures around sexual abuse and sexual predators? What do you want to tell the church directly?

Joelle Kastix [01:42:05] You know, the number one way to stop abuse is to allow survivors to come forward when they are ready. And the number one way to do that is to empower them to use the civil justice system. And shutting down state laws is never going to work. And I will continue to work to empower victims to come forward. And we will continue to work in state legislatures and fighting like happened in Arizona. Ugly. And it will only continue to embarrass the leaders of the Mormon Church who came forward publicly. And I certainly hope it won't happen again.

John Dehlin [01:42:39] Well, Joel, as a Mormon, ex Mormon, post Mormon, I am so grateful that you're out there fighting on our behalf and on the behalf of Catholics and evangelicals and Jews and all the religious traditions and even secular folk. Thank you for fighting to protect our children, our youth, our adults. What's your organization? How can people support you?

Joelle Kastix [01:43:01] I'm on the board of the Zero Abuse Project. We're a nonprofit that works towards advocacy and helping survivors find healing. And I'm also leader of Stop Survivors Taking on Predators. But you can find most stuff about me at the Zero abuse project. That's zeroabuseproject.org.

John Dehlin [01:43:16] all right, Joel, keep up the great work. We'll have you get on soon. Okay.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:43:20] Awesome.

Joelle Kastix [01:43:21] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:43:22] All right, Roger, you're such a wise, experienced, sagacious human. Give us some final thoughts in summary. I always love having you on,

Sam Young [01:43:35] and

John Dehlin [01:43:35] I'm sorry we weren't able to fully explore and entertain some of your innovative ideas in this interview.

Guest [01:43:44] Okay, first of all, the Mormon Church and its leadership will continue to press for their right and obligation to interview number two. The scholars and the intellectuals and the activists are winning this fight. And. But that doesn't mean that the church will go away on this issue. But. The victories have changed, and they've changed because we have Mormon Stories podcast number three. Number three is John. I am stunned, and I am dumbfounded that the church would put out that survey. What? You know, why? After all that they have gone through, why don't they just let things calm down and cool. This is just putting Kendall on the fire.

John Dehlin [01:45:11] And it's almost like they're punking us. They're kind of, like, playing with us

Guest [01:45:14] a little bit, or somebody else has done it, but if they have done it, it's kind of like, you know, yeah, we will show you. And there. There is that tough guy mentality among the leadership of the church that they're not going to back. And there are conservative members of the church who are rooting them on. And tell them, don't let. Don't. Don't let these guys, you know, hoodwink you. It's a war that we're in. Now, this interview today, I like. I like Joel's experience. I mean, she's like Teddy Roosevelt. She's in there. You know, she's in there getting gored as a matador. And Sam is still. Well, you know, Sam is now a historical figure. And Natasha, you know, how can you basically beat her? And, John, I used to think there would be a footnote written about you. Then I thought, well, there's going to be a paragraph written about you, and then maybe a chapter written about you, but if you continue on, there will be a book written about you. It's an incredible time to be a part of this. I never thought this would happen. And. And we never thought that there would be priesthood leaders coming out and saying, cool it on excommunications now and have that. I mean, you know, John, what do you think? I mean, big guy, you're throwing it at him. Throw it down, baby. So those are my thoughts.

John Dehlin [01:47:17] Thank you, Roger. You're always very generous and supportive, and I appreciate. Helps keep me going a little bit. Great to have you on. Let's go have lunch in just about 10 minutes. How's that sound? All right. Sam, I want to end with you because you're still fighting this fight. So please give us your final thoughts and also tell us about the next steps for Protect Every Child. Protect all children. I'm missing the name now. You got to forgive me.

Sam Young [01:47:44] Yeah. Protect every Child. Well, give you my thoughts. Where's my lunch invitation in 10 minutes?

John Dehlin [01:47:54] Sam, you're welcome to join us.

Sam Young [01:47:57] Let me see if I can book a flight. Okay. Well, first of all, I think it's been a really interesting discussion. You've had experts, and I'm not one of the experts, but we've had wonderful experts here. I loved Roger's questions He was asking be great to explore those more. This thing of being trauma informed. I had never heard that term until maybe six, eight months ago and I now realize I'm still working to get trauma informed. But the church is definitely not trauma informed. The leaders are not trauma informed. And those last questions where they were saying what should be some discussion, the preferences in the discussions that the 8 to 11 year olds hold. I read that now and recognize that those questions, just the topics that they're asking, should we discuss with kids those are not trauma informed. Like the one that says to discuss their relationships with family members that can harm the most vulnerable kids. Why do we want to harm the most vulnerable kids? It's not trauma informed to be asking kids from somebody that's totally not trained about relationships with their family. For instance, and here's why. There are going to be kids that are being abused by family, maybe a sibling, maybe a grandpa, maybe a dad, maybe a stepdad. But generally a child can't say I've got a bad relationship because we're having sex. They're not going to say that they can't. There's several reasons and if Natasha was here she could explain them better than Nate. But there are so many stories of kids being so traumatized because they felt like they were not obeying the law of chastity because they were being abused at age 8 or 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 or 13 or 14, 15 and felt like it was their fault and they had to protect the perpetrator. They'd been threatened over it. And yet here we're going to potentially talk to them about their family relationships. Well, if somebody's asking me as a kid about my family relationships, hey, I got a great relationship with my dad, my mom and I have no abuse going on. I'm not at risk here. But our kids that are most at risk we are going to be harming with that just indicates they're not trauma informed. Let's see. Now what I would like to say here is to anybody listening that is concerned about the safety of our children. There are big reasons why we all ought to be concerned. Whether we're a Mormon or Catholic or not Mormon or Catholic or any religion, we should be concerned about every single child in our society when they are abused, when they're not protecting them from abuse, not preventing abuse. The low hanging fruits. If we're not preventing this. Sex abuse of children cause massive damage to the child and it costs society billions of dollars to deal with the outcomes of children being abused. If you're concerned about protecting abuse. I would like to, number one, look at your own. These institutions you're involved with, whether it's the Mormon Church or the Presbyterian Church or whatever church you're going to or other institutions, look at it. If they do not have state of the art safety protection programs and policies, get your kid out of that organization. Don't risk them being damaged for their whole life because usually it is decades for kids to recover, if they ever totally recover from sexual abuse. So parents, number one, protect your child. Don't let them participate in an organization that doesn't have strict policies to protect them. Number two, and when I'm talking about policy, it's policies that protect them. Like two, deep leadership, always having transparency, that everybody knows what the policies are. You don't even know what, what all the policies are. In the Mormon Church. We know some of them, but a lot of it, they hide. So transparency, training, there should be training for everybody that works with kids, for bishops, for adult leaders, for parents. There should be training about sexual abuse. There should be accountability here. And I won't go into the details of accountability, but all those elements should be in place in the institution your child is protected participating with. Number two, any institution, Mormon Church, jump on the bandwagon here. We will cheer you on if you are changing this, your policy to actually be to a parent or another trusted adult in every interview. Yes, I'll cheer for that. Take the lead on this and any other institution. Start implementing policies to protect the children now. Because if you don't, that threatens your survival, frankly, and threatens the children in your organization. Love it. And then finally, what are we doing? Well, so this year we've changed our name to Protect Every Child. Our focus is not just the Mormon Church, but it still remains a big focus. We are encouraging people to raise awareness by climbing a mountain and unfurling a banner. Hundreds of people have now done this. We're in the process of lighting all those stories up and posting them on the Protect Every Child website, which a number of them are there now. But I encourage you do that now. Climb a mountain or a hill or your driveway or get on the top of your house and wave a banner and take a picture or a video and then share it with us. Share it on social media. We have two big things coming up here. July 24th to August 3rd, I'm going to be in Salt Lake City. We're going to have 10 days of climbing mountains, hills and maybe even some driveways. And we invite you to participate in that every Night. We're going to have a temple side chat like we did last year during the hunger strike. But anyway, feel free to come down and participate in that. We're going to publish a schedule if you want to come, climb with us. If you can't come climb with us. Climb your own driveway and post that flag. And finally, and this is the big one, John. This is the huge one. There are women's marches. Good for the women, marching for women's rights. There are pride parades every single year. There are LGBT folks marching all the time. Good for them. It's accomplished a ton of awareness and ton of good things. There are other organizations that are marching, but nobody is marching for our children. I cannot find any other major march for the benefit of children to stop sexual abuse, to stop sexual abuse in the institutions in the United States. We're seeing all these institutions have these scandals, scandal after scandal. The Mormons, the Baptists, the Jews, the Scientology, Jehovah's Witness, one little church after another. The Baptists, the Southern Baptist was convention. Hundreds of stories of abuse. We need to stop those now. We ought. It's time that the adults stood up for our children. They're not going to march for themselves. They don't understand what's going on, but they're the ones being abused. We have a major march coming up. March or October 5th in Salt Lake City, please. If you're anywhere near Utah, near Salt Lake City, actually, we've got people flying in from all over the country. But if you're anywhere near Salt Lake City, plan to join us. Last year, we had 1,000 people at our march that generated worldwide publicity. It raised awareness to a huge degree. This year, our goal is to have 5,000 people at our march. Now, if we have 5,000 people that march, it's going to get even more attention than last year. The news media likes to cover, you know, they don't like to cover that your kid got interviewed about masturbation and that screwed them up. They don't like to cover that. They like to cover people. If we have 5,000 people there, it's going to be huge. It will put the Mormon Church and every other institution under the magnifying glass of, look, we need to change these things. So that's the big thing. Look at October 5, 2019, just a few short months away. Come to Salt Lake. Join us for this march for the children.

March for the Children and Upcoming Advocacy Events

John Dehlin [01:56:40] All right, Sam, that's exciting stuff. And we just really appreciate your leadership, your pioneering efforts to protect the children. No one will be able to doubt that you and your supporters were influential in saving Mormon children and youth and even adults from abuse. And we can't thank you enough.

Sam Young [01:57:02] Well, thank you, my friend, for putting a spotlight on this too. I really appreciate your support to protect

John Dehlin [01:57:09] children and this is your idea. So thank you so much, Sam, for making this interview happen today.

Sam Young [01:57:14] Thank you, John.

Closing Thanks and Listener Support

John Dehlin [01:57:16] All right, listeners. You guys, thanks so much for listening. Thanks for supporting us. Please keep up the support, please. Thanks to everyone who financially supports Mormon Stories. If you're not a supporter and you value our coverage and you value our role as prophets, seers and revelators to helping the Mormon Church improve in the latter days, please consider a monthly donation. 10, 50, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford. We're tax deductible, we're transparent in our finances, and all the money you donate goes to support our mission, which is to provide resources and community and information support for people experiencing or impacted by a religious transition. We love what we do at the Open Storage Foundation. We're grateful for our board, we're grateful for Cody Layton, his post production help, and we're grateful for everyone who supports us. So please spread the word. Give us a positive review on Facebook. Give us a positive review on itunes. Please spread the word. Share, support us. Support Sam and Natasha and everyone who's doing good work. We appreciate it, everybody. You guys take care. Stay in touch and we'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care. Thanks again, Sam. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber. Subscriber@mormonstories.org. Rabbit Hole an album chronicling the heartaches and rewarding discoveries of her Mormon faith crisis. You can purchase her album on itunes or by visiting mindygledhill. Do. Actions.

Sam Young [01:59:13] But it doesn't matter

Joelle Kastix [01:59:17] now it doesn't

Sam Young [01:59:20] matter

John Dehlin [01:59:22] now it's all just poison in disguise.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:59:38] The sky.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.