Introducing Tim Birt and His Background

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 871

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Sa. All right. Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's February 24, 2018, and we have another very important episode for you today. Many of you have been following the Protect LDS Children case where Sam Young is leading the charge with 12,000, 13,000 others in a petition to try and get the LDS Church to change its policies around how it talks about sexuality with youth and adults, how it deals with messages around sexuality, how it deals with abuse, et cetera. And so we've been covering that. And on Friday we interviewed Sam Young. It was great to have him, Bishop Sam Young, to have him back on Mormon Stories Podcast. Today we have a special treat. We have Tim Burt. Is that how you pronounce it, Tim?

Tim Birt [00:01:32] Yep. Tim Burt.

John Dehlin [00:01:35] Tim is a licensed professional counselor and a licensed marriage and family therapist. And he is going to be talking to us today about three things. Number one, we're going to briefly cover sort of from a therapist perspective, in what ways LDS Church policies and teachings around sexuality are both harmful and occasionally helpful. The second thing we're going to be talking about is in what ways the LDS Church's current policies related to child protection and abuse are inadequate or harmful or need improvement. And that's important because recently, in response to Sam Young's efforts, the church has tried to make the claims that it sort of has leads the world in efforts by religions to protect children around abuse.

John Dehlin [00:02:22] And Tim has his own opinions about this. We're going to be talking about it since he sort of lives in that world. And then finally, the third thing we're going to talk about is what you LDS Church members can do to protect your children in your local congregations.

John Dehlin [00:02:37] So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Now, Tim, if you wouldn't mind, would you mind doing your own sort of formal introduction to our audience, specifically with the intent of letting them know your background and experience as it relates to these very important issues.

Tim Birt [00:02:55] Thank you. It's an honor, John, to be here with you on Mormon Stories and with our audience. My name is Timothy Burt. I'm a licensed professional counselor and a licensed marriage and family therapist. Currently, I'm in private practice in Auburn, Alabama and Columbus, Georgia.

Tim Birt [00:03:10] I have some significant experience in working on child abuse issues. For 14 years, I was the executive director of two different children's advocacy centers. And the Children's Advocacy center is the current evidence based best practice in working community response to child sexual abuse and physical abuse. It's a team coordinated response where law enforcement, child protective services, the DA's office, therapists and medical professionals get together and in a one stop shop help address allegations of child abuse. When a call comes in to community that has a children's advocacy center, the call goes to either law enforcement or childhood protective services and they agree to set up an interview, a forensic interview for children where a trained forensic interviewer will interview a child in a, in a child friendly, safe environment and that child can be found out what is happening with that child in non leading, professionally trained way that does it lead the child and uses the best things we know about interviewing children to be able to find out what happened.

Tim Birt [00:04:21] And I was executive director of two different centers for 13 years. I also have trained about 10,000 mandated reporters on what to look for on child sexual abuse and physical abuse and worked with systems to help increase their ability to detect and report abuse. I've sat through probably a thousand interviews on cases of child sexual abuse, mostly in Alabama, not in Utah, and kind of know how the process worked with that. Also worked with the Boy Scouts of America and other organizations on youth protection policies. And so that's kind of my background. A little bit in private practice right now as a marriage and family therapist and professional counselor.

Tim Birt [00:05:04] And I see clients in my office in both locations and work on issues of depression and couples counseling and work with children who are victims of child abuse and adults who are victim of child abuse and assault and domestic violence.

Tim Birt [00:05:20] I'm trained in focused cognitive behavioral therapy, which is one of the basic prognosis for treating child trauma. And I also work on LGBTQ issues and faith transitions and so forth. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I'm active, I am a nuanced person. I have a nuanced set of beliefs and I actually hold a calling in my local ward as the, as the Boy Scout committee chair.

John Dehlin [00:05:51] Excellent. Well, it sounds like you've got a ton of experience that can really help give us perspective, Tim. So thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories today.

Tim Birt [00:06:00] Appreciate it.

John Dehlin [00:06:01] Also want to give a shout out to Steve Holbrook and Nadine Hanson. Both are board members, OSF board members who have joined us. Doug's on the line. Jeralese joined us. Kristin's joined us. A lot of cool people. We want to thank all our listeners who are joining us live on Facebook. We want to encourage you to please post your comments and questions on Facebook Live because it allows these interviews to be a little bit more interactive. So. And also Margi or Margi thanks for joining us, all the way from Texas.

How the Church's Approach to Sexuality Harms Members

John Dehlin [00:06:33] Okay, so we're gonna have three parts. So the first part is I asked you to kind of prepare a list of just ways from a therapist perspective that you see the LDS Church's policies and teachings on sexuality as being both beneficial and harmful.

John Dehlin [00:06:54] And so let's begin and let's talk about the benefits first. We're going to be talking about ways the church can improve, because that's what's most relevant, I think. But why don't we start with just some of the ways that you see the church as being helpful to, you know, children or abuse victims or even just in its discussions and teachings around sexuality.

Tim Birt [00:07:18] Well, first of all, I think that, you know, the church does have a strong stance on sexuality in certain ways. And many of us who. I'm a convert to the church. I joined when I was a freshman in high school.

Tim Birt [00:07:31] My wife is fourth generation Mormon. We both grew up kind of in our 400 years, you know, in church with church teachings. And, you know, many people in the church do kind of are careful with sexuality. And sometimes that can be helpful to be careful with, you know, with who we're sexual with and at what times and making sure that's the right place and so forth. So I think that to a certain extent that the church teachings may help some. Some members to be kind of insulated from some of the consequences that may have if they didn't have any kind of teachings or values around sexuality.

Tim Birt [00:08:09] And so that could help. You know, there are people who don't have necessarily, you don't have to be a church member to have values around who you want to have sex with and so forth, certainly. But the church does have that. I think there are values that can be important that the church can teach about, you know, being respectful to other people, about waiting for sexual interaction till, you know, maybe later and you're ready now. They talk about waiting till you're married. And there's certainly people who do that. I mean, we did that. And in ways that some ways was helpful, some ways that was really problematic.

Tim Birt [00:08:47] So having values, also community. I mean, there are ways that the, you know, that children and members have a sense of community together. And they have people that have kind of the same way of thinking. They can go to dances and so forth and not necessarily feel pressured to, you know, okay, engage in sexual behavior that maybe that they are, you know, wanting to wait on. And, you know, they can go to BYU or other places where they feel like, you know, there are other people of similar values that may want to be careful about use of sexuality.

Tim Birt [00:09:21] And so I think, and also, you know, there's, there's also a connection for commitment. You know, wanting to have commitment in relationships prior to, you know, having sexuality. And you know, for their, for them commitment is marriage. And so that, in that way I think commitment can be helpful to do that. So from a, from a therapist standpoint, having values, wanting to, you know, seek commitment in relationships, having some ability to think about making those choices and delaying those choices to a certain extent till you feel ready for those, I think is important. And so I think that there are some benefits for that.

Tim Birt [00:10:02] And the church attempts to try to provide some help for people who feel like they're off track. And I think that in many of the church members minds, that's one of the purposes for these interviews and so forth.

Tim Birt [00:10:17] From another perspective, there's lots of problems, I believe and many other therapists agree with me and that there can be lots of problems with those interviews and with some of the teachings of way we present sexuality isn't more sexuality on thou should not do this. This is a commandment. God wants you to do this and so forth. That kind is the direction that the church has on presenting sexuality.

John Dehlin [00:10:46] Okay, so that's super helpful and it's good to acknowledge the many ways the church actually can be helpful. And I think I have to agree that there should be. People should be thoughtful and intentional about their sexuality. It's not something to be rushed into. They should develop their own values around it. Community support can be super helpful.

John Dehlin [00:11:10] And emphasizing the importance of committed, loving relationships is all super good. And I think the church can do a really good job at encouraging all that. So that's great. All right, now that we've done that, let's dig into the challenges. So a lot of this we've talked about before in many different ways on Mormon stories. But Tim, I want to give you your own shot at talking about messages or approaches that the church takes around sexuality, around youth, around abuse, et cetera, that can be harmful. So why don't you just go ahead and start off with the list?

Tim Birt [00:11:49] Yeah, well, one of the things I think is very challenging with the church is that it seems to have kind of a shame based approach that sexuality is sin. We hear over and over again how there's a comparison that's made from a verse in the Book of Mormon.

Tim Birt [00:12:07] Sexual sin is next to murder in importance and that really can up the ante on what people think about sexuality and so forth. So there's a lot of shame that's put on healthy, natural, normal sexual behaviors. We start off with things like masturbation. Masturbation, you know, has really, over the church's lifespan, you know, in the last 50 years or 30 years, has been something of a big focus. And you still have some teachings on LGS.org that, you know, say that masturbation is a sin, although in the new handbook of instructions, it is not mentioned. And so there are some stakes and wards and so forth who are not really looking at masturbation in that same way.

Tim Birt [00:12:52] But it is not uniform across the church. And so masturbation is one of those things that almost every teenager does and many adults still do. It's one place where we see lots of shame come down on members of the church around those things. It's a normal, natural focus that we do in many people do. It's part of growing up and sometimes into adulthood. It's part of our sexuality and stuff, part of committed relationships as well. And it's a way that we learn about our body. It's a way that we prepare to be able to explain to a spouse how, where our reaction works and it.

Tim Birt [00:13:30] How, how to we understand how our arousal works. And so one of the things that we see is shame over sexuality, some normal sexuality behaviors. I mean, I worked in the Children's Advocacy center and, you know, I can't tell you and study a lot about child sexuality. And I have a doctor friend who, who was giving me a really funny story that they were, they were trying to figure out something. A kid that they thought had autism or something like that, and there are seizures in class and they found out, no, she was just rocking back and forth. And the earliest case of masturbation has been seen actually in Veto on CT on a scan to see a child pleasuring themselves before they're even born.

Tim Birt [00:14:16] So it's a very natural thing that happens. So part of the thing that also happens is secrecy. I think that sometimes that when things are so shameful and so scary and not really talked about in the LDS Church, we don't talk about sexuality a lot. We use a lot of code words. We talk about purity and we talk about being clean. We talk about being virtuous and being modest and so forth, we use a lot of code words about sexuality and not really talking in depth about what we really mean. In the old days, they talked about petting. And I can't remember how many people in their stories have talked about, well, what's, you know, nowadays, what is Petting, we don't even know what that means.

Tim Birt [00:14:52] So a lot of times what happens is secrecy comes up, that we, you know, people become secretive about their behaviors and, oh, I've got to go talk to the bishop about it. And you also see times when members of the church just don't want to do that or they think that it's, it's different. And then they start not being honest with themselves or not being honest, feel like they have to be honest with their bishop and it doesn't make sense to do that. And so they, they start the sense of secrecy. It also can be a sense of obsession too. When something is forbidden, something is forbidden, and we make a link between forbiddenness and sexuality and sensuality.

Tim Birt [00:15:29] That can be a real problems, not for every member of the church, but for some of them. You know, some people really make that link. Almost Pavlov with his dogs with, you know, putting the meat powder in front of them and then ring the bell. And then when they, you know, took the meat powder away, you ring the bell, they still have that same response. Some people in the church develop, you know, kind of responsiveness to the, to the forbidden. Sexuality is forbidden. And so now when it's allowed, there may be that. Not that charge anymore. So those are the beginning ways that we talk about things.

Shame, Secrecy, and Sexual Repression in Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:15:59] So let me, let me jump in on those. And just around shame, I just want to add, one of the negative consequences of shame is, it occurs to me is that it always frames sexuality in a negative light instead of the sex positive messages. It's just for 10 or 15 years, anytime you hear anyone talk about sexuality, it's framed negatively. Can you talk just really quickly about how that might not be useful later on?

Tim Birt [00:16:28] It isn't useful. I mean, sexuality and intimacy is a very fundamental, beautiful part of life. And it's, it's part of human relations that we want to seek for. And so when we have this idea that there's shame around it, we have to hide. We can't talk about it in our bodies. We have to be modest. We have to cover up our bodies and we don't have our bodies covered up. Then, you know, a boy might look at us wrong and they might be getting bad ideas. There's so many intense feelings that can be put us in there. We don't teach consent, we don't teach responsibility, we don't teach, teach respect.

Tim Birt [00:17:02] We teach, this is bad. And so shame becomes attached to sexuality. And then when we talk in a minute or two about people who actually are victims of sexual Assault or abuse. And we match that with those kind of feelings. And now we think that, okay, you're responsible for all of this. Or even children or adult teenagers that have normal sexual exploration, they're trying to figure out what their body works, how it works, and how other people work and so forth. That shame comes in there. I'd like to just give you a Little statistic that 80% or 83% of children under 13 will engage in some kind of sexual behavior. So we're talking about lots of 83% of children under the age of 13,

John Dehlin [00:17:48] under the age of 13 will indicate

Tim Birt [00:17:51] in some kind of sexual behavior, whether it's masturbation or whether that's. Let me, you know, I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours. Those kind of. I'm not talking about abusive kind of thing. That they will engage as part of the developmental process in understanding something about sexual sexuality is something we learn. You know, it's part of what we learn in growing up. And so if we can't talk about it, we just say, it's sinful, it's bad, don't do it. You know, if the whole messages are around that we don't get a sex positive idea that this is something beautiful, it's something that's a.

Tim Birt [00:18:19] It's a possession, not an obsession. It's something that we need to, we work to be able to understand and value. It's something that draws us together. It's not something to be ashamed of. That's something that's powerful, though. It's like electricity. I mean, you put. Your electricity is very useful. But if you put your hand in the light socket or you grab onto a high wireline, it can really shock you. So there's ways that sexuality can be used really detrimentally and it can really hurt. But it's a powerful tool, but it's not shameful.

John Dehlin [00:18:50] And the only other thing I want to say about secrecy is that in some. Something that Sam is saying over and over again and that we've said for years on Mormon stories, is that so much shame leads to secrecy. And what secrecy leads to is lying. And so you just have so many people who just learned a lie from a very young age because they don't want to be shamed for not being able to take the sacrament and not being able to pass the sacrament if they're a boy, or not be able to go on a mission or not being kept out of the temple because that's such a public shaming.

John Dehlin [00:19:20] And so in this weird Way the church is sometimes teaching people just to lie. And you just don't want your source of morality to be the one that's actually reinforcing dishonest behavior. Where you kind of split. There's the private self that lies in the public, the private side that does whatever it does, and the public side that lies. I just think that leads to really significant mental health concerns and safety concerns later.

Tim Birt [00:19:49] It does. And one of the things we want to teach children is to have the ability to have consent that they're in charge of their bodies, they're in charge of situations where they feel uncomfortable. And so what it tells us there, if we have to be secret about things, sometimes children and teens and so forth are secret because they're trying to protect themselves. They realize this is not healthy. And so how do I protect themselves? It's almost like ptsd, an adaptive protective mechanism in the face of something that just does is overwhelming or not. Right. We do these adaptive response. So sometimes the secrecy is actually adaptive and helpful at the time, you know, because it's not.

Tim Birt [00:20:30] They're being asked questions and they're being taught things that just, just are harmful and so they're being secretive about it. But then it develops secrecy as part of intimacy and that's not okay. You know, later on in relationships, we want to be open and be able to communicate. Matter of fact, healthy sexuality is all about communication and being able to understand one person's needs and other people's world needs, be able to talk about what our needs are and be able to be unfiltered.

John Dehlin [00:20:56] Yeah. So healthy sexuality as an adult really depends on not having a shame and a secrecy based foundation to your sexuality.

Tim Birt [00:21:08] Right.

John Dehlin [00:21:09] All right, what else? What else?

Lack of Healthy Sex Education in the Church

Tim Birt [00:21:11] Okay, so we also see that we're unprepared and uninformed for healthy sexuality when it happens. I can't tell you how. If you read Sam's stories and other people's stories, almost every LDS client I've had has been some way been impacted, distracted by teachings around sexuality. Even ones that say, you know, I did great, I love my childhood, my, you know, we were, we were, we stayed away from sexuality before we were married. And you know, we did all the things right. And then what happens is when we have to slip, flip the switch and now it's okay to be sexual. Sometimes we're completely unprepared, unprepared for that, that change.

Tim Birt [00:21:52] Unprepared to understand how our bodies respond, understand how, what, what the normal response of another person is. We don't many People don't even understand their, you know, their physiology, how their what their. What their body structures are. Women, you know, don't know that their clitoris really is there, and that's part of the place that you really get pleasure. Many women don't know that, you know, only, you know, like 20 or 30% of women have orgasms in penile vaginal intercourse. And they think when they get married, well, why didn't it work for me? You know, we're unprepared to be able to understand these many of these things because we've been taught not to explore our bodies.

Tim Birt [00:22:30] We're talking not to talk about it, that it's sinful. And so. So there's naivete. There is unpreparedness, there's unperformedness, and also there's inadequacy in being able to protect ourselves when we don't learn consent, when we don't learn to be able to say, okay, this question feels weird to my bishop, or this feels weird. I'm not sure I want to answer that. Or, you know, you got to go hug your. Your Aunt Molly, you know, and hug your Aunt Molly. And we don't teach children that they can say no when. We don't model that in our faith community. We don't model it. When someone is a perpetrator, start to groom them.

Tim Birt [00:23:09] I can't tell you from, you know, being a children's advocacy center director and listen to a thousand stories. Almost every one of those stories, if you went back, somebody had some idea, something weird here, you know. Now they may not have known it to report abuse, but almost in every case, there was somebody who got an inkling that something was going on and the children didn't. Frequently are not believed. We can talk about the process of child abuse and what those things are about that we need to learn about those things that bishops and everybody and parents need to know, but we're not prepared, and we're vulnerable.

Tim Birt [00:23:45] I think we're vulnerable to being groomed. We're vulnerable for entering relationships. We're also, you know, we're so intense about being in love and waiting for sex. I can't tell you how many people will, okay, I'm gonna get married. I've got to get married because I want to be sexual or I finally want somebody to love me, and they haven't had enough relationships to learn out how to pick somebody, right? How to go through and learn about. About relationships and communication

John Dehlin [00:24:13] really quickly. This is just a side note. Your microphone on your headset is hitting the little collar shirt. So if you could just make sure it doesn't lean forward or whatever so it doesn't scrape against that. Sorry about that. Okay. Okay, so this is great. Going back to uninformed and unprepared. You know, you say words like vagina and clitoris and penis, you know, Mormons have a hard time just hearing and saying those words alone or with family members, let alone in a church context. And so, you know, one might ask, well, what role could a church possibly have in keeping someone informed and prepared about sexuality?

John Dehlin [00:24:55] Dare anyone ever say the word clitoris or penis or vagina in the chapel? My guess is that most members of the church have gone their whole lives, literally never heard those words uttered in a church setting. Now, having said that, there are churches that actually do a really good job of sex education. Are you aware of the. Of the Unitarian Universalist sex education program?

Tim Birt [00:25:19] I've heard about it. I don't know a lot about it, but I know that there are churches and different organizations that do a much better job.

John Dehlin [00:25:28] Okay.

Tim Birt [00:25:28] And they talk about consent and so forth. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:25:30] So I'm going to go ahead and just plug it. So the Unitarian Universalist church has a sex education program called Our whole lives or owl o w l. It's lifespan sexuality education. And a Mormon might, you know, be suspicious and say, oh, my gosh, they must want their kids to be sexually promiscuous and sexually deviant because they're teaching their kids about sexuality. But the truth is, and this is something Natasha's told us, and you could tell us as well, isn't it true that proper, healthy education leads to more responsible decisions on sexuality, not less?

Tim Birt [00:26:16] It does, yeah. The statistics on that is when we have good sex education, the kids are less sexual, they make better choices. And when you have abstinence only or known, it's not good. Now, parents do need to be involved in this. Parents need to start talking about sexuality, asking questions and answering questions from time. They're little, so there isn't the birds and the bees conversation. You're having the conversations all along.

Tim Birt [00:26:45] Like my child, when he was going into a new kindergarten class, was asked the question, you know, mid semester when he just moved in, where did you come from? And my son goes, looks, he fought. He says, I came from my mother's uterus, you know, so he already knew these kind of things. So we need to be able to answer questions. And part of the way to do that we'll talk about later, is that we need to ask our children questions and ask them what they think about things and find out what they know and answer questions all along. So we need to have that.

Tim Birt [00:27:22] We need to have bystander training in our congregations. We need to be able to teach consent. The church materials talk a lot about what not to do, but they don't talk about how to be responsible in our relationships. And that's a real missing piece.

John Dehlin [00:27:39] Yeah, absolutely. And so just to kind of. You went through this list sort of point by point. I just want to make sure we cover each one. So you talk about naivete, and I think that's totally true because we don't have good educations and good discussions and good comfort with sexuality.

John Dehlin [00:28:00] We go into sex really naive. And the example that often gets used are these college girls who want to remain virgins, and so they have anal sex instead of vaginal sex without any idea, number one, that that sex. But number two, that there are all sorts of health concerns with that sort of approach. Right.

John Dehlin [00:28:20] Or with people not knowing what actually leads to impregnation or not in what ways sexually transmitted diseases or infections can be transmitted without penile vaginal intercourse, et cetera. Talk about obsessions really quick and how obsessions around sexuality can be really damaging. Obsessions around modesty, obsessions around sin, sexual repression. I just have to say I saw a fascinating musical the other day called the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and I had never seen the musical before, but there's this priest who is just obsessed, a Catholic priest in the musical who's obsessed about everyone's sexuality.

John Dehlin [00:29:07] And he becomes so obsessed about everyone's sexuality and even about never having his own sexual thoughts that he becomes sexually deviant as a result of the obsession. Is that a fair connection to make in your experience?

Tim Birt [00:29:23] It is. I mean, there is a quote that says that sexuality has become transferred from a possession to an obsession through its repression. And I think that sometimes we become obsessed around it when we can't think these things. We don't think about those things. There's a reason why we think that, you know, why Utah thinks it has a pornography problem. Now, I'm not, you know, I'm not bought in the whole, you know, that pornography is the new drug or things like that. You know, pornography is a sense of disconnectedness in relationships. If. If it's causing a problem in your relationship, you can't talk, you can't ask for what you need.

Tim Birt [00:30:05] You can't enjoy erotica together. So the reality is we can become very obsessed about sexuality. And like I said, we can link the idea of it being forbidden. Okay. And so now sexuality becomes forbidden. Now when it's allowed. Well, there's a charge there anymore. Well, what do I do that's forbidden? So there is a link with that. Also the obsessions with modesty. You know, we, we have to be so modest around these things. I mean, we can't wear a two piece bathing suit because what, because the boys might look at us wrong.

Tim Birt [00:30:41] Well, who's, you know, because we're worried that men or young men can't control their sexual feelings. And they can't, you know, they'll, they'll obsess or something and they'll think about us. Well, there's big problems with that. You know, we need to be able to say they're responsible for their stuff and what I wear doesn't matter. It's almost like saying, well, you know, you're partially responsible for your rape because you were wearing, you know, provocative clothing and everyone else is responsible for their behavior. So we become obsessed about. We think that necessarily being modest is somehow virtuous, you know, that we're somehow better, that we're, that's gonna protect us.

Tim Birt [00:31:24] What happens sometimes with these obsessions, we think that we've obsessed with being clean and pure. And then we have so many of these people get married and they think that they've, you know, they made all the commandments, they were chaste, they were modest, they were all this. And now they're married and they're supposed to work fine and it doesn't work. It's really hard. And they're saying, well, God, you let me down. I did all the things I was supposed to do, and now it doesn't work.

Tim Birt [00:31:48] And then later when they learn all the things they needed to know to be able to have a relationship and about their bodies and about sexuality, they sometimes feel cheated. That's sad. You know, the church, the sad way that people that are the most faithful then later on feel like, you know, that the church or God let them down.

John Dehlin [00:32:07] I love it when you talk about inadequacies. One thing that comes to mind is just the importance of, of the connection between emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy. You know, people just think that you get married and then you just have fantastic sex all the time because two bodies are rubbing up against each other. And what many find out is that that initial excitement wears off. And that to develop a healthy, mature sexual intimacy in a marriage or in a committed relationship requires really strong, connected emotional intimacy. Not avoidance and not suppression and that sort of thing. But we don't ever learn about what emotional intimacy is. And in some ways the church can even disconnect us from ourselves and from others in terms of emotional intimacy, which then makes it really hard to have a healthy sex life. Any comments on that?

Tim Birt [00:33:06] Absolutely. Communication is the key there. I mean, one of the things that therapists will do working on sexual issues is a thing called sensei focus which we have each partner learn. Starting out with very non sexual things, maybe holding hands or giving, you know, touching or back rubs and so forth. And learning to one person giving and the other person receiving. One person being able to say, hey, this was what feels good for me. And this person being able to find, find out what works for the other person and get basically a benefit and really feel connected by giving to their one's partner and be able to communicate.

Tim Birt [00:33:45] Then we work on that to become more and more involved in different types of more intimacy things. But that's the key to feeling connected. When we feel understood and accepted and listened to, we feel connection, we feel intimacy. And so part of it is communication and being able to talk about it when we can't even say the words, when we don't even, we've never talked about it when we just have these assumptions. When people have three ways to have sex and that's the only way they do it and then it wears off and we start to have problems.

John Dehlin [00:34:15] I love it. I've got a question that sometimes people probably don't think about. How does patriarchy hurt sexual intimacy? And I've got some thoughts, but I'll ask you first.

Tim Birt [00:34:28] Well, part of it in patriarchy is that the man is in charge, okay? And it's their needs get filled. And so frequently, you know, you hear about the man thinking, okay, sexuality is about me and I'm getting my needs met, you know, and now you're my wife and so now you know, that's what I need. And so you'll obey the leader of the home. And so it focuses the connections and the needs on his needs. And the other person is supposed to be the follower. Okay, well we're supposed to listen and obey the priesthood holder. And so obviously if he needs sex, well, okay, that's what we need to do.

Tim Birt [00:35:06] And so the man's pleasure, the man's priorities, the man's things is preference to the woman, it's not necessarily equal. And he may not think about, you know, well, is my partner being, you know, fulfilled what my partner's needs? And we do have some men in the church who will, you know, Think, well, it's, you know, I need sex, and so this is part of it, and so please give it to me, you know, and so they may not understand that women need to feel cared for. They're relational. And in order for women to feel really connected and sexual and intimate, they want to be well treated.

Tim Birt [00:35:46] They want to be considered, you know, they want to be important. They want. And so that's what gets them, you know, more ready for, you know, kind of sexual contact and to intimacy. And that's what more intimacy is about. But for men, stereotypically, it's around the other way. You can see this clearly in what's men's porn versus women's porn? Men's porn is pictures. Women's porn is romance novels, you know,

John Dehlin [00:36:10] and like Highlander, right? Is that what it's called?

Tim Birt [00:36:15] I'm not familiar with all the different romance novels, but the idea in that is that, you know, sometimes he perceives my needs before I even said them, you know, and that's not what men in patriarchy are taught to do, that we're not try to find out what our communicate, what our spouse's needs are. And so patriarchy can very much feel like it's a focus of the needs of the man and kind of the repression of the needs of the woman. The woman has to be more submissive, has to be backseat. They have to be the follower. And so that can go into domestic violence as well.

Tim Birt [00:36:52] You know, we, you know, in unrighteous dominion and all of these type of things. Just the preferencing we give upon for men and women as not being equal. And it also plays out in a minute when we talk about bishops interviews and so forth. It's not the young women's president or the Relief Society president that women go talk to. They have to go talk to a man. And that's a whole different experience.

Chastity Teachings and Their Link to Harm

John Dehlin [00:37:21] Talk about the Church's teachings on chastity. We've talked about the licked cupcake and the object lessons, but talk about how the Church's approach to chastity can be really harmful.

Tim Birt [00:37:34] Chastity, the idea that there is this thing called virginity, and we don't even say that word in Mormonism. Usually we say pure. We're going to be clean, we want to be chaste. And there's so much energy built up upon these ideas that weren't very well defined, we don't know what they mean by it. And the church leaders will use these vague terms because they don't want to define them very well. And when they when people misunderstand kind of what they're meaning. And there's this whole idea that church chastity is virtue and you can lose your virtue somehow that you can lose. And so part of the problem is how we language it and also how people experience the idea of this, that this is something that you can lose, that something that your virtue is necessarily tied to it.

John Dehlin [00:38:29] And that's not good because it's not true.

Tim Birt [00:38:31] Not true, not true at all. Part of the idea is that you don't lose your virtue by some sexual act that either happened to you or you did. You know, your virtue. If there is a thing called virtue, it's character. I mean, how, what are you making on your choices? You know, how respectful are you to other people? How, you know, you know, are you acting out of selfishness? Are you not out of. That's what more, you know, in my mind, virtue is. Now, when we get into sexual abuse and so forth, it will be really apparent how problematic this is given that many, many children will engage in some kind of sexual behavior even though they're not abused.

Tim Birt [00:39:12] When you get into the abuse part of things, we know when 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 girls are sexually abused for their 18th birthday and 1 in 5 to 18 boys, I mean, it really, really can be damaging when a person that has already experienced non consensual sexual contact, you know, gets the lick cupcake piece that says, okay, now you know, you're damaged goods. And we don't even talk about repentance in that or anything like that. And we make children think that they have to repent of things that happen to them that were their victims. And we'll talk a little bit more about victimology and how, how problematic that is.

John Dehlin [00:39:55] Let's go ahead and talk about ways that the church doesn't handle sexual abuse victims and sexual assault victims properly. And this would be separate from your recommendations.

Tim Birt [00:40:07] Right, right, right.

John Dehlin [00:40:08] Yeah.

Tim Birt [00:40:09] Well, so part of the problem is that we don't give any training to bishops to really understand sexual abuse. Now, there are some exceptions. There's some really good bishops and stake presidents and so forth who have done that on their own.

Tim Birt [00:40:24] And part of, part of the issue is that like if a person comes in and says, you know, they're asked about chastity or they asked about something and they said, well, you know, you know, I let him touch me, okay, and let's say that's a, you know, a teenager and so forth, the bishop isn't, you know, first of all is talking about These things untrained, they may ask, okay, well, you let him touch me. Well, that, you know, they're thinking that's a sin. They don't have no idea to understand that he let me, let him touch me. That this person is way older, that it was an abusive situation.

Tim Birt [00:41:01] And children don't even really know how to define very well what is happening to them. And so this could very much be an abusive situation. When we look at differentials in teen pregnancy and we look at who the, who the father was, I mean, in a great percentage of that, you know, like over 40% of the time, there's an age gap between the pregnant mother and the father. And sometimes those age gaps are criminal, you know, and so just telling the girls, okay, you know, just don't, you know, just say no and don't, so forth. This is. These kind of situations are actually rape, you know, they're statutory rape or their rape.

Tim Birt [00:41:42] When we have sexual reactive children, you know, there's all kinds of sexual behavior issues in children. There's the normal sexual behavior, like masturbation. Let me see, let me show you mine. Let me see yours. Let me figure out, you know, there I have external internal plumbing. You know, how this kind of works. You know, touch, see, see what that feels like.

Tim Birt [00:42:00] Then you have the next step up is sexual reactive behavior. Sexual reactive behavior is when something's been turned on sexually in that child. They may have been touched. They may have been exposed to sexual bacterials that are out of their age range. And frequently children will try to act out what they see to make sense of it. So a child who's been touched sexually may touch another child or may touch themselves in ways that, you know, inappropriate situations. And it may come to the noise. Or they may be in situations where they say, hey, you know, I touched some. He touched me. So the sexually reactive behavior is acting out that.

Tim Birt [00:42:37] Then we have other kinds of sexual behavioral problems in children. Ones that a very small number of children actually have are perpetrating kind of sexuality on other children. But for the most part, what happens is that there is this sense of. That the church leaders don't understand abuse or assault. In assault, when you're being sexually assaulted, you may. You're in flight, flight freeze. And people think, don't understand that. But in freeze, when you're overwhelmed and you can't run away and you can't do anything about it, there are times when you actually can't speak, you actually can't fight, you actually can't do anything. And so when kimball Said, you know, you know, it's better that you had died if you know you should fight.

Tim Birt [00:43:22] It's better to have died than to, you know, to lose your virtue. It's such a problematic message. Such a problematic message given what we know about how trauma works in children. Many of these children don't know the difference of what's happening to them. They don't know that this is. This is not normal behavior. Many of them are. If they do know, later on they're threatened, you know, you tell, I'm gonna kill your dog or you're gonna be in trouble.

Tim Birt [00:43:54] Most children, children have a connection and a relationship with the abuser. And so they may be willing to endure this kind of abuse because they may be getting the most. That abuser may be giving them the most connection of anybody else in their life.

Tim Birt [00:44:12] So part of the teachings of the church doesn't understand this. We don't understand when we're teaching a young women's lesson that 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 of those girls may be sexually used already. If you ask any adult woman, ask them the right questions whether they've ever been sexually assaulted or they've had, you know, sexually harassment done, almost when you explain what that is, almost everyone will say they have. So we're not. Our church teachings aren't prepared for that. They don't. We look at the new missionary guidelines on missionary interviews. It has all these intense questions they wanted to ask. There's nothing in there to say, beware that they might have been sexually abused.

Tim Birt [00:44:54] You know, they're not asking, have you ever been touched or allowed someone to touch you? There's no proviso in there to say, hey, they might be victim of sexual abuse or sexual assault. And that's not something they need to talk to you about. Matter of fact, they need probably referred to a therapist.

John Dehlin [00:45:12] Right. So what is child abuse accommodation syndrome?

Understanding Child Abuse Accommodation Syndrome

Tim Birt [00:45:20] Okay. Child abuse combination syndrome is a paper that was written by Roland Summit back in the 80s. It's about the same type of paper as the battered child paper that came out earlier that really brought out what physical abuse was for children. Basically, the child abuse accommodation syndrome paper is a paper that every professional should read.

Tim Birt [00:45:43] We've learned more since then. But what it says is basically a child. When they're subject to abuse, especially in a familial or connective way with the person they know will keep it a secret. They will not talk about it. Even ones that are really young, they somehow know not to talk about it. Then it says they accommodate. They will Accommodate to the abuse, meaning they will learn to live with it. They will learn to interact with those people. They will not make it up. When there is disclosure, they will feel bad about it too. They will feel shame.

Tim Birt [00:46:16] Every child abuse victim that I worked with or that my therapist worked with when I was in advocacy center, we asked them if they felt responsible and shame. Even the ones who knew it wasn't their fault, they felt shame. So they're going to feel shameful about it. So what happens is they don't tell about it. If they do tell frequently, it's delayed, meaning that most outcries of child abuse are not happening right when it's happening. If it's a stranger in a park comes up to them, they don't know and it's just completely out of the boat. They might tell right away, but most inter familial or connective ones, they don't.

Tim Birt [00:46:53] And so that what happens is it starts with a grooming process. They're groomed to be able to make sure that they're not going to tell. And then over time, the sexuality becomes more and more intensive. So when there is a disclosure, it's usually delayed and unconvincing. They'll start by saying, well, he bothers me, I don't like him. And they'll think the child will think they've told their parent or some other caregiver or a church leader that they've been abused. They won't realize that they didn't get that. Now what the child will also do is wait to see what the response is from the caregiver, from the church leader, from the teacher.

Tim Birt [00:47:30] And if the teacher is, oh my, you know, I don't believe that, then they won't tell them anymore. They'll start with something really little and they'll see the response. And then they'll go further to find out what happens. So when we interview children, we'd realize the first thing that they're going to tell about us. They're going to tell us about something small. And then later on they may tell more and more and more and more. Also, children don't speak adult and adults don't speak children. We don't know this until we go to court and we listen to court testimonies and so forth. You can ask.

Tim Birt [00:48:00] That's why we need a trained forensic interviewer to interview children to find out what's happening. Now, bishops and parents and so forth don't know how to do this, don't know how to interpret children's response. You asked A child in the yes. Or, you know, has anything ever happened to you like this? The answer is usually no, because children don't answer that question. Yes. So the next thing is, it's delayed and unconvincing disclosure. The next part of it is if there are consequences in the child's life, if it's like, well, Daddy's gonna get arrested or that mom didn't believe me, or that, you know, those things that the perpetrator told me that no one believe you and you'll get in trouble, start happening.

Tim Birt [00:48:39] Many children will recant. They will say, oh, no, it didn't happen, I was lying, and so forth. Now, frequently this happens more in teenage years, especially when children are teenagers starting to, you know, well, I'm not willing to keep Daddy secret anymore because, you know, he's not letting me date people. He's not doing this. So the teenager may be in trouble already. And so now when they say these, they're not believed. And when bad things start to happen, they realize that there's a flip, that they're responsible for keeping the family together, and they have to lie to do that. So the right thing to do becomes saying it didn't happen, so the family can stay together or things can go back to normal.

Tim Birt [00:49:16] The right things to do is to tell the truth and to say it did happen. So that's the accommodation syndrome. And what it also says is that we as society get really relieved when we realize, ah, the child was just making it up or that was a misunderstanding. We're like, wow, good, we feel good about that. So the whole system can respond, you know, to support the child's denial. Now, in the Children's Advocacy center, what we would do. Let me finish one second. What we would do is when we'd interview these children, sometimes we wouldn't have enough information, know if there was a, an allegation of abuse.

Tim Birt [00:49:50] And so, but we suspected something. And then we would do what we call a forensic evaluation. And that was an extended forensic interview. In about 70% of those cases where we couldn't find out what happened the first time, we would figure out that when the child was in a safe environment, they would reaffirm. So that's the accommodation syndrome. And we need to understand that children aren't good at disclosure and that when they sound unconvincing and they change their story or things like that, children don't tell story in a straight way. That it sounds like, ah, there's nothing to it.

John Dehlin [00:50:24] I've heard several victims of abuse say that the Bishop sometimes found a way to blame them for being complicit. Can you talk about what would make a bishop possibly want to blame a victim for the abuse that occurred?

Tim Birt [00:50:42] Well, they would. They would ask, well, did you ask for it? I mean, what the situation was?

John Dehlin [00:50:48] Where were you? Did you allow yourself to be alone? Right. Were you drinking?

Tim Birt [00:50:52] Right, right. Or, you know, whether their body responded. Did you enjoy it? Yeah. Did you enjoy it? Right. Absolutely. And so part of the problem is they don't understand that there's a power differential between even the teenager and the. And the abuser. And so all of these things, One of the things we learn is that children's bodies respond when they're touched in a certain way. It just means it works. It doesn't mean that they enjoyed it, doesn't mean that they want it. Didn't mean they like it. The other thing we need to understand,

John Dehlin [00:51:19] it's almost as if enjoying it is bad too, right?

Tim Birt [00:51:22] Well, that's what they say.

John Dehlin [00:51:23] Well, actually, in treating sexual enjoyment is bad somehow. Yeah.

Tim Birt [00:51:27] Well, right, yeah. Sexual isn't bad. It's good. But it can be really complicated for victims because when they have the complicated process and working through this in therapy, when they say, hey, you know, this felt good and it didn't feel wrong, and I needed connection, and this person was actually the nicest person in the world to me, and I needed somebody to care about me. And so, yeah, I didn't know. And I went in and, you know, I.

Tim Birt [00:51:56] They felt part of it. They felt, even though they knew many, almost all of them know that they weren't responsible. Almost all of them feel shame. So in treatment, that's really tough because all of us want to say, it's not your fault, the first thing we want to say. But as a therapist, we have to be really careful with that, because as soon as we've told them it's not their fault, we've told them we can't hear you. We can't hear your story. We can't hear your perspective. And now it's not their fault, but they have to come to that realization. And so the bishop. There's no way the bishop that's untrained can do this.

Tim Birt [00:52:30] And if you have a trained bishop, like, I know somebody who's a very trained person who's, you know, a church leader, it's not appropriate for them to be doing that kind of counseling with their people. That's a. That's a. That is a dual relationship, right? Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:46] And so it's important for them to refer to a professional.

Tim Birt [00:52:51] Right. And a professional, not just LDS Family Services.

John Dehlin [00:52:54] Now aren't LDS Family Services professionals.

Tim Birt [00:52:58] I live in Alabama. I don't even know how to get a hold of LASM Family Services or somebody who would come to work at lasm. So I'm not qualified to talk about that. But my understanding is, you know, you need to refer to a therapist for a child or a teenager who's trained in an evidence based practice to deal with child trauma, like child focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or one of the other evidence based practice who's an expert in doing it, not just a normal therapist. That's what would be my recommendation. And so, you know, I don't know. There may be LDS Family Services therapists that are trained and are able to deal with sexual abuse. If there are, fine. If there aren't, there need to refer to competent people.

John Dehlin [00:53:46] Got it. What is it that makes it instinctual for many of us, and especially bishops, to not believe victims when they report? Why wouldn't we just always believe a victim when they report something? Can you just tell what it is in our psychology or what it is with the bishop that might make a bishop not believe a victim?

Tim Birt [00:54:11] Well, some of this stuff is so far out of what we normally think of as happening because child abuse and domestic violence is not something that victims talk about a lot. You know, it's kind of like the World War II victim that came back. Not victim, but soldier who came back, who didn't talk a lot about their. Express their things. It's not something that's talked about in society. We don't talk about abuse, we don't talk about that. So it's not something that normal people hear a lot about. You know, normal members of the church don't understand that one in four girls are sexually abused before their 18th birthday.

Tim Birt [00:54:42] They don't know that this is so common. It's an epidemic. And so when they hear something that's completely out of their, you know, experience base, it's like, well, how could that be happened then? Also they know Brother, you know, Jones or Brother Smith or whatever, you know, he's a good guy, he shows up for church, he pays his tithing, he loves his children. We see that, you know, she's a great mom. There's no way she could be hitting her children. You know, anyway, it's, it. There isn't a correlation between, and I can say this as a director of Children's Advocacy center, between you know, the way they look and whether they were

John Dehlin [00:55:19] responsible for abuse or how Nice they appear.

Tim Birt [00:55:22] How nice they appear? No, not at all. Not at all. And so the reality is that we, we don't want to believe this. And also when children come out and they talk about it, like I said, the first disclosures are tentative. They're testing the water and how you're going to accept it. So they may make unconvincing, you know, kind of things. I don't like. He, he was mean to me. He kind of messed with me, you know. Well, what do you mean by messed with? You know, they don't know how to ask the right questions.

Tim Birt [00:55:49] And also, children don't tell their story. The beginning, the middle, the end. They tell a little bit here and a little bit there, a little bit there. They're not trained to do that. And so when we see inconsistencies with, you know, what they're saying, oh, no, that can't be the case also, it's just really scary. I mean, how can I confront this parent? How can I call this in? You know, what's it going to do their family? I got to make sure that this is right before I call it in. So they become investigators of their own.

Tim Birt [00:56:16] And as soon as they find it, ah, this is. There's nothing here. They don't understand that their requirement is to report suspected abuse. They shouldn't be involved. And I can't tell you how many cases involving, you know, I'm not going to go into any details, but you know, how many cases involving organizations and churches and leaders and churches and so forth that messed up investigations because they do their own investigation or they don't report. And some of those cases actually, when they go to trial are harder because the mandated reporter didn't do their job.

Mandated Reporting and the Church Helpline

John Dehlin [00:56:53] So talk about what is mandated reporting and how does, and does it not play out well within Mormonism?

Tim Birt [00:57:03] Okay, so my understanding is that every state, all the 50 states, require mandated reporting of abuse. Now, most states, I believe, involves clergy, in that you'd have to check on each one of your states. Now, clergy is the most complicated mandated reporter there is. Okay? So a normal mandated reporter, like a teacher or a doctor or a therapist, anytime you suspect abuse, child abuse, no matter how you hear, hear about it, you have to report it. And what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to report it directly and personally, not refer it to someone else. You're supposed to call child protective services in the place where the child lives and law enforcement in the place where this may have occurred.

Tim Birt [00:57:48] If you don't know, just call child Protective services, just call law enforcement. They'll sort it out. Okay, so with normal mandated reporters, you have to report everything you hear and suspect. The issue around clergy is a little different because there's this thing called the priest penitent privilege, and it's a really important thing. Almost all advocacy groups for victims recognize this. If your eternal salvation, if you believe, is based on you being square with God and you go in in a confidential basis and you're worried about your eternal salvation, and you talk to your priest, your bishop, your, you know, stake president or your pastor, and you expect confidentiality, that communication is privileged.

Tim Birt [00:58:36] Now, bishops and stake presidents and, you know, branch presidents violate this all the time. They call up other people, they tell everybody what's happening there, and they can actually get sued for doing that. So the thing that a bishop or stake president learns from a person in a confessional, that person saying, hey, I did this, they can't report that. But the issue is if they hear it from the child, if they hear. If the spouse comes in and say, there's something funky going on with my husband, there's something funky going on with my cousin, you know, if they hear about it from another ward member, if they see it themselves, if they hear about it because an employee.

Tim Birt [00:59:13] Okay, well, you know, the primary teacher said that, you know, so. And so beat the child. They hear it from any other place, they have to report.

John Dehlin [00:59:21] Okay, so let's say if the abusive husband confesses it, then confidentiality is on. But if the wife or the child or another person in the ward or community reports it, then mandated reporting is on. Is that what you're saying?

Tim Birt [00:59:40] Absolutely. He reports everything he heard in that other conversation and nothing he heard in the. In the privileged conference.

John Dehlin [00:59:48] What if the child says, I was abused, but you can't tell anyone?

Tim Birt [00:59:52] No, they have to report it.

John Dehlin [00:59:54] A bishop does?

Tim Birt [00:59:55] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:59:56] Why?

Tim Birt [00:59:58] Because it's a mandated reporting. Their child.

John Dehlin [01:00:01] A child reporting it is not protected.

Tim Birt [01:00:04] Okay, the child.

John Dehlin [01:00:04] No.

Tim Birt [01:00:05] You mean a child said that they abused somebody else?

John Dehlin [01:00:08] No, a child says that they were.

Tim Birt [01:00:09] I was abused. Yeah. No, that's mandated reports. And part of the thing is we don't do informed consent on these bishops interviews. We don't. The bishop doesn't come in and say, hey, everything you talk about, you know, you know, if you tell me this, I have to report it. You know, when you or I do therapy with someone, we have informed consent. We tell them exactly what the requirements are. We don't have training for members of the church that says, you know, what the reporting requirements Are they don't know. So child, if a child comes in, says they're being abused, it has to be reported.

John Dehlin [01:00:44] And oftentimes bishops don't report.

Tim Birt [01:00:47] They don't report. Now the exception of that, the only exception that is not with a child, when someone's 42 who comes in and says, you know what? I remember my father molesting me. Now mannered reporter is a man reporter of child abuse. A child is someone is under 18. So basically someone who's 42 and says, my 85 year old grandfather abused me when I was 6.

Tim Birt [01:01:11] That is not mandated reporting. They don't have to report that, but they can encourage the victim to report it because then when the child turns 18, they get consent to be able to say how they want their abuse case handled.

Tim Birt [01:01:26] So that's one of the other provisals in there. Now most victim advocacy groups are okay with this. Now a lot of people say, you know, well, I want everything reported. The problem is that we have to have some sanctity in the idea that you can talk to your bishop about things and it stays between you and God and them. But later on we'll talk about whether these sexual victim, you know, bishop interviews are a good idea or not.

John Dehlin [01:01:52] Okay. And talk, talk really quickly about the church's helpline and why it's, it's maybe not adequate.

Tim Birt [01:01:59] Okay. Well, I've never called the church's helpline and I haven't called it recently, so I don't have any firsthand experience with it. It's a helpline that's not available for therapists, it's available for bishops. And what, it's not available for victims, right?

Tim Birt [01:02:15] Not that I know of. It's not generally posted. It's in, you know, the, you know, that handbook that's not circulated and so forth. And the directions that I've heard about it is if you don't know what to do, call the helpline. Now the problem is we haven't trained bishops to know the reporting requirements. And it's different in different states and it's different in different areas. But they haven't done state by state training. Now most congregations and organizations like the Boy Scouts, every council has a plan on what they're doing in their council. They know who to call.

Tim Birt [01:02:49] The church hasn't done that. So, so they call the helpline. And the helpline supposed to be answered by professional counselors and by lawyers. And so, you know, there are stake leaders who've told me they've called the help line and it was all about the victim. I've also heard many stories about that. It was more about protecting the confidence, the liability of the church.

Tim Birt [01:03:10] And so it's what the help line is to help the church to be the. To figure out what to do about this situation. There's portion of that's okay because the bishop may not know what to do if they come up with information. But the problem is that, you know, there is a concern that it's protect the legality of the church foremost, rather than the victim. Now, that's not what the church has just said in their. In their most recent release. And so I'd love to back them up on that, and I'd love them to have that to be their priority. But they may need to do some changes to make it show that it is apparent.

John Dehlin [01:03:46] My understanding that the people on the other end of that line are Curtin, McConkey lawyers. I don't know if that's true, but that's my understanding.

Tim Birt [01:03:55] I don't know. But it does say in the new Church newsroom release about how the church, you know, approaches abuse. That, that helpline, it has professional counselors and lawyers, and so that's what it says. But I think the church needs to do much more, and we'll talk about this a little more in a minute to make it apparent that there's a process to report abuse and that that reporting is for the victim and not to protect the legal interest of the church or the bishop.

John Dehlin [01:04:29] Right. Really quickly. Fundamental to the teachings of Jesus Christ is this idea of forgiveness. You know, repentance and forgiveness. Talk about when that can be harmful to victims of abuse, the encouragement of forgiveness.

Tim Birt [01:04:48] I never talk about forgiveness at all with any of the victims that I work with. If they bring it up, it's down the line. And the idea of forgiveness is so much coordinated in with the idea of being able to make it okay and make that person feel better and so forth. The problem is that the victim has to have boundaries, okay? Forgiveness doesn't mean that it's okay to do this again. It doesn't mean that we're able to feel comfortable to be around them again and so forth. So forgiveness is a really complicated thing. And forgiveness is not a subject that, you know, even I, as a therapist, working with people who have been victims of sexual abuse and sexual assault, I don't go there unless they bring it up.

Tim Birt [01:05:38] And then we talk a lot about it. So it's very inappropriate for, you know, if a professional counselor doesn't do that. It's very Inappropriate for a clergy member to ever talk about, you know, that the victim needs to forgive somebody. And many times they will. They will talk about the repentance process that somehow is supposed to help. Even in the church's new resources, it talks about the repentance process is there and the atonement is there.

Tim Birt [01:06:04] Well, that can very quickly become a message that, you know, there is something to repent of when you're a victim and that you need to forgive. That's part of what's. What's important. I just think it's very problematic.

Teaching Children Body Safety and Healthy Boundaries

John Dehlin [01:06:20] Another thing I want to note, and I learned this from Elizabeth Smart, is that we ought to be more cognizant within the church the fact that our messages around sexuality leave even victims of abuse to feel dirty. I don't know how much, you know, you talked about this before the lick cupcake, but it's just important to note that, you know, people ask Elizabeth Smart after she was unchained and after she was roaming around town with her.

John Dehlin [01:06:51] With her abuser and was not running away and breaking free, people asked her why she didn't scream and run away. And what she said was, the messages in the church around sexuality and purity and virginity and worthiness made her feel so dirty and unworthy, even though she knew that she was a victim, that she didn't feel like she had the value to speak out and to save herself. Am I getting that right or wrong or what have you heard?

Tim Birt [01:07:23] Absolutely. Absolutely. When, you know, Former you know, Talk by Spencer W. Kimball. The, you know, love versus lust or the miracle forgiveness talks about that, you know, you need to fight, you know, and if, you know, it's better to lose your life than to fight. There's been so many messages over time. Now we're hopefully now not sending those messages anymore. I know in my area, they don't, you know, they don't give the miracle of forgiveness. They don't do that. But that those messages are still there, that somehow you lost your virginity, that you lost this, that, you know, that it's somehow, you know, you are tainted, you're broken.

Tim Birt [01:08:01] There's something wrong with you, you know, there. If you didn't. Even if you consent to things, it doesn't change your worth, you know, and there is this whole idea that your worth is somehow equated to your virtue, which is the code word for sexual inexperience and innocence and virginity.

Tim Birt [01:08:23] And so if you don't have that, then somehow your worth is not there. And it doesn't take too many people off message or even the old message is to get there. And, and so they feel shame. And even kids, even kids that aren't in the church, I'm telling you, the kids that I've worked with who knew it wasn't their fault still feel ashamed that this had happened to them and they felt responsible. When you feel responsible, you feel like it's partly your fault. And that's hard stuff.

John Dehlin [01:08:55] Right? Talk about what we could do to help our children become educated so that they're less at risk. And the opposite of that, talk to Sam Young's concern about how unintentionally allowing a 12 year old kid to be alone with a grown man in a room talking about sexuality might actually be unintentionally grooming them, making them vulnerable to be susceptible to the abuse of others later.

Tim Birt [01:09:31] Yes. So what we want to try to teach children from a young age is to be able to ask questions about sexuality, about that it's open, we can talk about it, that, you know, even if we're a little bit embarrassed, where it's fine, we can answer questions about that. And we also want to teach children as soon as they're able to do self care, as soon as they're able to toilet, as soon as they're able to bathe, as soon as they're able to take care of most of their needs, that their bodies are theirs and they're responsible for it and they have the ability to say no, they have consent.

Tim Birt [01:10:07] Okay. So when I teach parents to do body safety kind of things, we talk about, you know, when they go to the doctor and they have the well, baby, well, child check and the doctor wants to talk, needs to look at their genitalia, that the doctor needs to ask permission and the child can say no, okay. When Aunt Susie comes over and wants a big, a big slobbering hug and the child doesn't want to, that they can say no and the parents and the adults will back them up even when it's socially awkward. That's teaching the child that they have consent, that their body is theirs and their sense of what's okay and not okay is theirs okay.

Tim Birt [01:10:46] You know, the same thing applies to when they go into a situation where an adult is asking them to do something poorly. You know, this adult comes up and say, hey, let me help you find my pup, help me find my puppy. The child says, no, I'm not going to do that, it's okay. And the parent and the adult says, okay, well, no, you need to do this, I'm going To go walk on a door and ask for help here. You know, so part of the idea is we want to teach our children that they're in charge of their bodies and they're in charge of situations, not only their bodies, but social situations that feel awkward.

Tim Birt [01:11:17] And they can say no to adults. Adults will back them up and help them. Okay, so when we send a 12 year old into, or an 8 year old, 7 year old into an interview with a bishop and the bishop asks a 7 year old, do you masturbate or a 12 year old, do you masturbate?

Tim Birt [01:11:36] First of all, that's an inappropriate question. And second of all, the child doesn't feel like they can say no to their church leader. And the church leader is evaluating their worthiness to get baptized or to move on to young women's or to go on a temple trip or to get ordained to the priesthood or be the mind Maids president.

Tim Birt [01:11:55] And so it's hard to be able to, you know, to say, well, I can, I can't say no to my priesthood leader asking me these questions. So we're not teaching consent. We're not giving the child the ability to say, hmm, this doesn't feel okay. Matter of fact, parents are sending them in there, oh, yeah, you got to go tell them, Bishop. Yeah. Answer their questions.

Tim Birt [01:12:14] So what we're doing is we're not teaching, we're not teaching consent. We're not teaching the child that they have, they have the ability to say things for themselves and that they know that caring adults in their lives are going to back them up, including. It would be good for church leaders to back them up. You know, for a church leader, a kid, to say, I don't feel comfortable for having this interview alone. Can I have my young women's leader with me? And it would be perfect for the, I mean, if we're going to do those interviews, it would be right for the division. Absolutely. Of course, you know, of course you can, you know, and not say, well, if you don't look at you do this, well, you know, I'm not sure you're worthy.

Tim Birt [01:12:48] I'm not going to give you, you know, I'm not going to give you this youth temple trip blessing, you know, because you're not willing to abide by my rules. That's abusive. It's training kids that they can't speak for themselves and they can protect themselves.

John Dehlin [01:13:01] Love it. And of course, how devastating would it be if the abusers, if the kid is not believed and the abuser is protected, that comes from a church Leader, how devastating would that be to the, to the kids future of feeling like they have any power over, you know, in their lives against abuse, Right?

Tim Birt [01:13:24] Yeah. Well, spiritual abuse and, you know, misuse of power is really horrible. I mean, because it disconnects them from their belief system and from what they hold sacred and, you know, and they don't trust. They've been taught to believe in God and God is supposed to be there for them all the time, answer their prayers and love them, this perfect heavenly parent that's always on their side. And when God's representative is the one that's abusing them, even in ways of asking them inappropriate questions. But even worse if they're getting off on the answers, tell me how that felt. Bishop Sam Young. How many fingers or things like that? It's just awful. Even worse if they are the abuser

John Dehlin [01:14:05] or a protective user. Bishops occasionally are predators, not very often,

Tim Birt [01:14:12] but yeah, there's way too many in the church in this new thing says even one case is too many. So we don't have just one case, we got thousands.

John Dehlin [01:14:22] Yeah. So children need to learn that their authority, that their authority trumps even priesthood authority. And that's absolutely, that's probably really hard for the church to ever allow to happen.

Tim Birt [01:14:36] Right, right. And the problem is too, let's say the child complains or the adult complains, they complain to the bishop, who's the person who is misusing, or they claim to the state president. Well, the state president is a person who selected that bishop, you know, and the stake president and the bishop are the person, they're responsible for their temple recommends, let's say it goes above them to the general authority. Well, the general authority is the one that's responsible for picking, you know, maybe the state president, you know, so the problem is the investigative part of this process is also the part of the process that may be going wrong.

Tim Birt [01:15:09] And it's also tied up in all this power structure over your sense of how worthy you are. If you're going to be able to go back to your heavenly Father, if you can go to the temple, if you get married, if you can go on a mission, you know, complain to them. And, you know, and there's examples now that we've heard, not in my local area, but in other areas I've heard of that, you know, the bishop says, well, you know, if you will need these, if you're not agreeing to our process, then your kid can't participate, you know, and you're, you know, maybe we'll take your temple recommend away, you know, if you complain too much. And so that's, it's just really that there isn't a process that people can complain. That's outside the ecclesiastical line of authority.

John Dehlin [01:15:53] Yeah. Now two things that I think the church is often going to say. The first is, you know, we as priesthood leaders can really help kids, counsel kids, educate them, give them a chance to repent. And so, but they're not going to do it if somebody else is in the room. And so we need that one on one confidentiality so that they feel like they can trust the disclosure. What's your response to that? And then I have a second follow up question.

The Problem of One-on-One Youth Interviews

Tim Birt [01:16:25] So the first thing is that we want to look at general principles of child protection. Okay. Even the Boy Scouts of America says too deep leadership, you know, no, no one on one contact. So we require that for scouting out of the outings. But we let the bishop be one on one. We won't let the bishop count tithing or make a bank deposit, just, just him and the counselor.

John Dehlin [01:16:47] That's a great point. I forgot about that.

Tim Birt [01:16:49] Yeah, but we, but we trust the Bishop alone with our children. Okay? Untrained and with all of his, even if they have good policies now he's raised from the time when it wasn't. So the issue is that, you know, so what we're asking for, and I agree with Sam, is we're asking for the end of one on one interviews.

Tim Birt [01:17:10] I think that, you know, I'm going to give you alternatives to that which can help the church meet its needs to educate and to be able to provide safety for the children, for home, you know, training and what they want to do. There's ways to do that without one on one things. Now there are going to be a few circumstances where the kid wants to, let's say that they are being a victim of abuse. Now the bishop and the church can be an incredible resource to help end that abuse. The child wants to come in and report abuse and it's the parent. Okay, well then you don't have the parent in the room.

Tim Birt [01:17:40] But what we're asking for is another adult of the child's choosing to be in the room. If we have to have these interviews, another adult of the child's choosing. That could be young women's president. It could be, you know, could be the young men's president. It could be their home teacher. It could be someone else, could be the other counselor on the bishopric. Now let's say the child doesn't want that and we are seeing some, some Places where the church is doing this that local church leaders are saying, we're gonna do two people interviews. And we're getting a little pushback in a couple of those places.

Tim Birt [01:18:08] The kids like, I'm not sure I want more than one person in the room, but the problem is the bishop needs to be protected. And so if it's someone of the child's choosing and the child says, I'm not sure about this, then maybe it's the counselor, you know, the second counselor or something like that, you know. So there are going to be times when it can be helpful for a youth to be able to talk to a bishop about important things like this. I think that should be sought by the youth. And then the bishop or, you know, can say, hey, we've got a policy here that we need to have more than one person in the room.

Tim Birt [01:18:41] Who would you like that to be? And that person gets trained. That's my response on how, how that is. And it's not okay to just say one person in the room. And, and because there's not a lot of accountability, you know, we don't know if there's another bad questions get asked and the person feels uncomfortable, how's the child gonna say, I'm not feel comfortable with this, Bishop? They can turn to the other person and say, oh, not feeling comfortable with this.

John Dehlin [01:19:06] I love it. Okay, well, I think this will sort of represent the end of the first part of this interview, which again was about ways that LDS Church teachings and policies sometimes can hurt both children and victims of abuse. I really appreciated this first segment. I want to thank everyone who's tuned in so far, and I just want to encourage everyone to stay tuned for part two and part three. Part two is going to be about, you know, ways that the church needs to improve from your perspective on how it approaches abuse. And then the third part will be how you know, what members can do to protect their children.

Evaluating the Church's Youth Protection Policies

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 872

John Dehlin [00:00:30] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to part two of my Mormon Stories Interview with Tim Burt. Tim Burt is a licensed professional counselor and licensed marriage and family therapist. He has a ton of experience dealing with abuse and childhood abuse. And you can go to his preamble in the first episode to hear all his experiences and credentials. We just spent a good hour, hour and 20 minutes talking about LDS policies and teachings and how they can be harmful and helpful. Now we're going to turn to a blog post that you recently made. I believe it was on Natasha Helfer Parker's blog, is that right?

Tim Birt [00:01:12] Yes. Natasha was kind enough to host that blog post on her blog, her site, and it's basically called how the Church Approaches Abuse. A professional response. Because recently here in 2018, the LDS Church put out a resource on its Mormon newsroom for professionals and for the public and for the media entitled how the Church Approaches Abuse. It's also called How Mormons Approach Abuse. It's got two different titles, one of them, but this is a response to that.

John Dehlin [00:01:48] Okay, and basically what did the church claim?

Tim Birt [00:01:53] Well, the church claims a number of things and actually I like portions of what the church says here, and I think it's wonderful. And I start off by saying basically that this is a bold statement and it basically commits them to do a number of things that I think are really good. And, and I'd like to hold them to it. And in that mind, I'd like to offer the following assessments and recommendations. The church says in one place is that one victim is too many. And it says that we're totally against abuse and we're going to work to, first of all, protect the victim and stop the abuse from occurring.

Tim Birt [00:02:32] And so that's their first priority is what they say, and that's really good. Their first priority is to help the victim and stop the abuse. They also say that, you know, on page two here, it says that we.

Tim Birt [00:02:46] That, you know, child abuse is an evil practice, that we don't condone it, that we don't tolerate it. We have a zero. We have a zero tolerance policy in which are all good. They quote, you know, some of the Savior's teachings and really try to make an emphatic statement that we're not for of use. They also make some pretty bold claims here, and those are the ones I'm kind of reacting to now. I'm all in favor of all this. I'd love to hold the church to this. They say here that as we learn of ways to more effectively decrease the potential for abuse, we implement them, so I want to hold them to that.

Tim Birt [00:03:24] They say this three or four times in different ways in this, in this article that, you know, they also make some, some claim that says that, you know, that it says that, you know, we've changed in society and we've learned more and we're growing. We're not perfect. But they said that as awareness of this scourge has grown in society, the church has been at the forefront of efforts to con, to combat that no system. Later on, they say no system is perfect or flawless. But the Church works tirelessly to prevent abuse of children and constantly strives to improve in these areas. Then here's the statement that's the zinger.

Tim Birt [00:04:01] We are unaware of any organization that does more than the church to stop and prevent abuse. So, you know, I think that it, it's fair, you know, if that's their perspective to point out if they want to, if they wanted to say, hey, you know, if they find out new ways, they're going to implement them. Well, let's talk about some other ways that other people are doing this and ways they may be coming up short.

John Dehlin [00:04:24] All right, so you put together a blog post that has 16 points that responds to the Church's statement, is that right?

Tim Birt [00:04:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:38] All right, so let's go with each one and let's just go through them.

Tim Birt [00:04:42] Okay, so the first one I say is the church does not follow basic youth protection standards, even the standards, except from Boy Scouts of America, other youth serving organizations. Many organizations have that because it mandates that. It allows bishops and church leaders to be one on one with youth behind closed doors and even more importantly, discuss sexual matters. So basic youth protection policies that we have in Boy Scouts of America and many other youth serving organizations and churches do not allow one on one behind closed doors meeting between an adult and a child. Especially don't involve sexual issues about sexuality. Now, I haven't surveyed every church in the country, but there are some who are claiming that we're one of the only churches that does that.

John Dehlin [00:05:31] Okay, so just to start with, one on one, end it, right? Because nobody else does it, not even the Boy Scouts do it. And we're not doing it.

Tim Birt [00:05:47] We do one on one meetings with youth and you know, bishops and we actually mandate that that happen. It says that, you know, we're, you know, bishops are encouraged to interview their youth on a regular basis. And so that's it, the second one.

John Dehlin [00:06:05] So just to summarize, so the church can't claim that it does more than anyone and is safer than anyone when it's doing a basic level practice that everyone knows is a no, no, and they're doing it anyway. So end one on one child and youth interviews behind closed doors.

Tim Birt [00:06:24] Right.

John Dehlin [00:06:25] All right, that's number one. What's number two?

Tim Birt [00:06:28] The church does not perform any background checks of its own of adult leaders assigned to work with children or youth background cheps for bishops, counselors or stake leaders who interview children alone.

John Dehlin [00:06:40] And I'm just going to say I went to South Mountain Community Church in Draper, Utah. They showed me all these volunteer charred workers and they made it a point to say everyone had received a background check.

Tim Birt [00:06:54] Community of Christ does it. Many churches do it. You have to have a background check.

John Dehlin [00:06:57] Universalists. It's just basic practice.

Tim Birt [00:07:00] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:07:00] Why in the world would the church not do background checks? Any idea? Is this lazy?

Tim Birt [00:07:06] Is it cheap? Well, part of the thing is that, you know, well, we've got lots of resources in this church. We do all kinds of things. We can figure out where people live and, you know, call, hold people up and get them to go do a massive project in a few minutes. So we're organized here, so we should be able to do this. But we have lots and lots and lots of members who are called to work with children. And from primary workers to nursery workers to young men's workers to women Boy Scouts people to bishops to, you know, stake leaders and so forth, there's lots of people who interview work with children.

Tim Birt [00:07:39] So that would require us basically. And people change callings all the time. It would basically require us to almost do background checks on everybody. And so. But most many churches do it. I mean, I was talking to John Hamer about Community of Christ and he says we do that. One of the problems is it takes a while to get people through not only the background checks, but the, but the training. And so it's, you know, it's harder to get youth service workers, but our children deserve it.

John Dehlin [00:08:06] Absolutely.

Tim Birt [00:08:07] And one other point I wanted to make on this is that church does participate in the Boy Scout program. We'll talk about the Boy Scout program in a minute. But the church does have the Boy Scouts, have background checks on people, and the charter organization rep from the ward has to sign off on the application to say this person's okay, but the church doesn't get those results back from the bsa. You know, the church doesn't get those results back. And so we don't even do background checks. I don't believe on bishops. Now, I've heard through the great Bounty that somewhere in the United States, maybe they're starting to do this, but it hasn't hit here, and that's not in the media yet. So if that is something the church is starting to do, good for them, but they need to do it.

John Dehlin [00:08:51] So do background checks. Number two.

Tim Birt [00:08:53] Yep. Number two.

John Dehlin [00:08:54] All right, number three.

Tim Birt [00:08:55] Okay, so no standard. The church has no standardized youth protection training for adults or workers with working with children. So these other churches and even the bsa, when you want to sign up for the bsa, you have to go through the youth protection child safety piece. You have to go through it online, answer the right questions, and you have to print out a copy of your youth protection thing before it goes, goes with your application. Okay, so many other organizations have much more robust training, and they actually have policies that you read and sign and say you're going to agree to and that you watch for other people in the church following them. So we have no standardized training or no standardized policies for adults working with children.

John Dehlin [00:09:39] All right, that's number three. Get a standardized protection training for adults working with children.

Tim Birt [00:09:46] Right. And have some process to monitor whether that's happening on regular basis. Some churches say you have to take it every three years or every two years and also have some policies. The policies are available so everybody knows what they are and what to do if you see someone else. Part of the Boy Scout training is there's a little vignette in the video that shows an adult leader for the second time trying to, you know, go take a kid to show them something off in the woods. And then one person goes up and says, hey, no, that's not okay. I've told you this once. And so, yeah, we need to have a process to be able to monitor whether we're following it.

John Dehlin [00:10:24] They should have training for kids to say, this is what abuse is and this is how to deal with it if you've been abused. But I'm just struck by when the church really cares about something. Let's just say same sex marriage.

John Dehlin [00:10:39] You know, they'll marshal recruits, they'll spend, you know, tens of millions of dollars. They'll file amicus briefs, they'll lobby at state and national legislatures. You know, they'll ask members to, like, picket and canvas door to door. Like, we've seen through the church's opposition to same sex marriage, what they do when they really care about something.

John Dehlin [00:11:04] And it's kind of making me mad because if the church really cared about these children, the abuse that's clearly happening, you would think that they would apply the same types of efforts. And not only are they not applying apparently the same types of efforts, they're neglecting even the base level of protections that any vanilla Christian or scouting organization has as a default. And it just makes you wonder, what in the crap are they doing? I don't, I'm not going to say they don't care about children, but it's, it's mind boggling to me a little bit.

Tim Birt [00:11:43] It's mind boggling. They make a point that says that they know no other organization that does more. Because I mean, I, in my blog, I said that's patently false.

John Dehlin [00:11:52] It's kind of insulting.

Tim Birt [00:11:54] It's kind of insulting. That's hard words, but for my, it's true. Now I will say this, that there are some stakes, there are some wards, there are some things that are doing some of these things. And in fact, mine does.

Tim Birt [00:12:06] Mine is some of the good guys. You know, they're actually doing many of these things, but it's not across the board. You know, my people are not doing, you know, they have parents in the room for under 12. They're asking for another adult in the room for over 12. They're getting a little pushback from some kids who says, I don't want, you know, the person in the room. But some of these people are trying to do it, but it's not across the board. And so we'll talk about in a minute what we can do at a local level to encourage this. But I'm not going to say that there's no places in the church.

Tim Birt [00:12:37] Some of these things aren't working. But it's not across the board. It's not standard. It's not coming out in general conference or on the new handbook of instructions that's available to every member of the church. You know, and when you get a calling, you're asked to sign off on it, just like in a personnel manual like you do in other churches. It's not out there.

John Dehlin [00:12:55] Yeah. Melissa writes, I'd laugh if that wasn't so sad. And Chad writes, has the church ditched the Boy Scouts of America in part due to the effort and expense of child protective measures? Now that's interesting. Go ahead.

Tim Birt [00:13:12] I'm gonna address the Boy Scout one a little bit later. Let me pick it up right now for that concept. So the church has not ditched the Boy Scouts. So what the church did as of January 1st of 2018 is it said it would no longer charter venture cruise. Now venture crews are available to anybody at 13 or older of either gender. Now the church has never allowed girls to have a venture crew that the church employs. But basically it's saying that it's not going to charter venture crews any longer and it's not going to require boys that are over 14 or 14 and above, teachers and priests, to be part of the Boy Scouts.

Tim Birt [00:13:49] Now. They can in most areas. And like in my area, we're signing everybody up that wants to and so but problem is, and I'll skip to this point when I get to it later, is that now we're having this new young men's program for the older scouts. And now they're supposed to come up with all these high adventure things and so forth. So the problem is we don't have any youth protection from the Boy Scouts anymore. No background checks for the people that are in Boy Scouts that are just working with a young men's leader.

Tim Birt [00:14:19] And even. And also we'd have no guide to safe Scouting, no safety afloat, no, you know, the, all the protections that are built into the Boy Scouts of America from years and years and years of problems where they said, okay, this was bad. We're gonna train people on this now so somebody doesn't die anymore. So the Boy Scouts is, you know, they have a problems in their organization some, but I'm a big scouter and I think they're doing a lot of good. And they, their youth protection things, they've come a long way and they're actually a model organization now. But we've given up all that now with the older boys that aren't on a scout trip.

Tim Birt [00:14:51] And so, yeah, we don't, we don't require that for boys 14 to 18 anymore. And we don't have a problem. We don't have a program where is.

John Dehlin [00:15:00] We're losing an important protection that we used to have.

Tim Birt [00:15:03] We used to. And what I'm saying is let's charter venture crews and make and keep kids and Boy Scouts until the church could come up with its own safe guide to safe scouting, its own ways to do background checks, its own ways to support high adventure programs and stuff like that. When we get to that point later on, we'll talk about.

John Dehlin [00:15:26] All right, so what's your next point

Tim Birt [00:15:27] in your next point is the LDS Church claims to have a too deep leadership policy for male adults working with youth and for youth activities. But the policy is not widely known or not followed rigorously, nor is there any monitoring program established to report or corrected breaches in this policy. And this policy does not uniformly apply to women with youth or bishops or leaders. And Also in nursery, there's a policy that says if there's a man involved, there has to be two adults in the room, but it doesn't say that for women. So this two deep leadership thing is for youth activities, but it may be out there, but I don't know of a uniform standard that trains that and requires it.

Tim Birt [00:16:11] We don't have a process to say, oh, wait, no, this kid needed a ride home, and there's nobody there. And so the young man's director gave him a ride home. Wait a minute. Wait. That was. That wasn't right.

Tim Birt [00:16:22] How do we fix that? There's no reporting mechanism to say, whoo, whoops. That was a close call. We had to do something to figure that out. So it says that they want to do a two deep leadership, which they're trying to do, but it's not uniformly done. And it's definitely not done with bishops. And, you know, that's this thing with, you know, we're only worried about men as nursery leaders. It's not there.

John Dehlin [00:16:44] All right.

Tim Birt [00:16:45] Okay. The next one is there's no uniform training that exists for bishops and state presidents on reporting abuse, maintaining confidentiality or boundaries on counseling or understanding child abuse and trauma. So we don't have that. I know of an official training program for bishops and counselors and stake leaders that do this. They're not trained necessarily on manual reporting. Now, in my stake, they are, because we have people in our state know what they're doing. They're training everybody, and they're doing a good job. But it's not uniform across the church. And if it were, you know, if there is something uniform across the church, it's not publicly available for us to look at it.

Tim Birt [00:17:25] And also about boundaries on counseling, you know, know, in my stake, they're saying, don't talk to, you know, about sexuality. Don't teach about sexuality. That's not for the parents. That's really good stuff. But, you know, we have a lot of parent bishops who are saying, well, do you masturbate? It's not in the handbook anymore, but they're saying that. And then the kid says, well, what's masturbation? And then they. That's the first place they learn what masturbation is. So. And also on counseling, you know, you're not a counselor. You. You shouldn't do counseling if you're a bishop.

John Dehlin [00:17:54] I think the church views bishops as counselors, doesn't it?

Tim Birt [00:17:58] Well, spiritual counselors. Yeah. But, you know, are they. Are they really counselors that are prepared to really deal with Marital issues. Are they really able to deal with sexual issues? Are they really able to deal with issues of, you know, you know, financial planning?

John Dehlin [00:18:15] Okay, so I would guess the general authorities would say, yeah, they. These are men entitled to the spirit of the Lord. These are men that have experience. They're called of God, and they can absolutely provide counsel as it relates to marriage because they have the scriptures, they have the Holy Ghost, and they can absolutely provide counsel about sexuality, about marriage, about personal spirituality and righteousness, about happy, healthy living. What would your response be if the general authority made that claim to you?

Tim Birt [00:18:49] Well, I went to a lot of school to learn how to do this. And no, the idea is that you're not good at providing marriage therapy unless you're trained in it. Unless you're trained in doing this. Now, you can certainly say, hey, you know, the person comes in, they're saying, I have this problem with my spouse, and I'd like you to listen, Bishop. They can listen, you know, but they're not really trained to say, well, how do you want to highlight? You know, they're likely to pull out the scriptures and say, you know what? Marriage is ordained of God, and, you know, you need to stick with that. You know, as soon as they say that, they've. They're. They're out of their depth. They're out of their depth.

John Dehlin [00:19:28] Got it.

Tim Birt [00:19:29] And they're likely to harm people. They really are. And. And if you read Sam Young's, you know, stories, I mean, there. There are lots and lots of stories out there of bishops, you know, that are giving bad advice for people and the Holy Spirit, you know, you have. You know, it's a bishop's roulette. You know, if they were so. If they had such discernment that they knew from the Lord what was right and what's wrong, they don't need to do interviews. They'll know. They'll know if you're worthy or not. You know, Lord will tell them. Now, it's a whole different thing if you want the person to say, hey, like you to assess yourself. You know, I already know because the Lord told me, but I'd like you to assess yourself. Okay, there you go. But.

John Dehlin [00:20:22] Got it. Okay. All right, what's the next point?

Institutional Failures in Responding to Abuse

Tim Birt [00:20:26] Okay, the next one is, as evidenced by the stories of Sam Young, the church has an extensive problem with inappropriate and abusive behavior by church leaders toward youth. And it's historical, and I believe it's going on now. The church is not reaching out to acknowledge, much less to address this problem.

Tim Birt [00:20:46] So part of the thing that I think we need is like a truth and reconciliation thing, like what they had in South Africa. I went to South Africa on my mission. I went before apartheid came apart and, you know, Mandela and some of those people did some wonderful thing to be able to say, you can come and speak your truth. We'll listen.

Tim Birt [00:21:03] So part of the church. The church says it's, you know, in its article that it's against abuse and zero tolerance and we're going help everything we can. But they won't publicly say, yeah, there's a problem. And they won't, you know, it doesn't seem like there's active efforts to seek. You know, every one of those stories of Sam Young. I mean, you know, they should have a committee put together to say, hey, how can we help you?

Tim Birt [00:21:26] What can we do? We met, we messed up, someone messed up here. What can we do about this? What lessons can we learn? I'd love to see the church do that.

John Dehlin [00:21:36] Now, part of the problem is Donald H. Oaks, who has more power, not less now in the church. As of the recent changes where Russell M. Nelson became president, he made Donald De Chokes first counselor in the first Presidency. Donna Chokes is on record as saying, we don't apologize. We need to seek nor give apologies. So the church doesn't have a good church track record on reconciliation, and that makes that hard.

Tim Birt [00:22:08] That's sad. I mean, it's not consistent with articles of faith. You know, faith repentance. You know, you gotta repent, you gotta make restitution. You know, we look at what the Catholic Church and other churches have gone through. You know, some of these organizations who have made mistakes are trying to, you know, follow up and, you know, make restitution. You know, and I'm not gonna comment. I'm not an expert on the Catholics or so forth, but, you know, there we go. We clearly can do better. And if the church is saying in this recent statement, when we learn of processes to more effectively protect our children and to address abuse, we do them well. Here's one you can do, right?

John Dehlin [00:22:46] Yeah. So the church needs to train its leaders better and.

Tim Birt [00:22:50] Or

John Dehlin [00:22:52] teach its leaders the limits of their expertise so that they can get refer their members to the appropriate support and then also acknowledge that there's been a big problem. Repent. Follow the steps of repentance itself as an organization, which means confessing, making restitution, and forsaking the sin and addressing the problem. Okay, what's next?

Tim Birt [00:23:19] Next is the church does not have a panel of child abuse professionals and Victims of abuse, advising its policies and helping the church to address past mistakes and trauma inflicted by church leaders on children and adults. So that's one of the best practices, is to say, okay, we may not be the best people to set our own policies. You know, if we've hurt people, we need to have some experts from the. From the. From the field come in and say, hey, can you take a look at what we're doing? You know, can we see if there's a better way to do this? And we need authentic voices, people who have experienced this, to be there and say, hey, this would have prevented me, this trauma that I went through.

Tim Birt [00:23:59] This would have made it possible for you guys to have reported abuse. This would have stopped this bishop from molesting me. You know, authentic voices and professionals in the field. There's lots of organizations the church wants to ask me. I can give you names. I can give you organizations. It needs that kind of a blue ribbon panel from outside the church to be able to assess its policies.

John Dehlin [00:24:24] You know, I guess in theory it's possible. It has that type of committee at corporate headquarters.

Tim Birt [00:24:29] It may. But the thing is, if it does, I think that it would be really good for the. When the blue ribbon committee comes through and makes recommendations that they make them public. But what would it be like if in the church news, they said, hey, wow, we realize we've had some of these big problems, you know, and this is what we're doing to address them. These are new policies we're coming out with, and here's what the blue ribbon panel says we need to do, you know, and here's the process we're going to go to help these people, you know, and maybe put some stories of what happened and how we're addressing it. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we do that?

John Dehlin [00:25:02] I almost feel like the church is kind of too much run by lawyers, because to put together a committee is to admit there's a problem, and to admit that there's a problem maybe makes the church liable for, you know, lawsuits. And so it just seems like the church runs in the other way and says, we're the best in the world. Nobody's better than us. It's almost a little bit like some political leaders we know who just sort of react in an extreme way that really flies in the face of reality.

Tim Birt [00:25:34] Well, lawsuits is, you know, one thing that, you know, part of what I want to do this is I. I care about the children in the church, and I want the church to get better. I'm not trying to just attack and tear down the Church. I really want them to get better. I care about these kids. I care about, you know, myself when I was growing up, the church, you know, I care about these. And so it's important to do this stuff. And lawsuits maybe, I mean, lawsuits really made a difference to the Catholic Church, you know, lawsuits, unfortunately, maybe. And the church obviously fears lawsuits.

Tim Birt [00:26:02] You can see that from the November policies, November 2015 policies, which many of us believe were, you know, had some legality basis on it, you know, why they did what they did. And so I think the church really does fear that. And so, you know, they can get sued a lot. You know, when church bishops don't report abuse, they can get held civilly and criminally liable. When they, when bishops, you know, release confidential information, they can be civilly liable and people are going to start suing them.

Tim Birt [00:26:33] And I hope that the Church doesn't do things that they deserve to get sued about. But, you know, sometimes legal action, you know, is how people, you know, bring organizations to change.

John Dehlin [00:26:46] Right. Everyone hates lawyers until they need one. Right? Okay. So the church needs to put together a blue ribbon panel of professionals and victims to help guide its policies. All right, next point.

Tim Birt [00:26:58] The next point comes to the professional helpline. That helpline is good that they have it there because, you know, it is really difficult to explain to bishops all the different things. Now, they should be trained a lot more, but they could have somebody to call. But one of the things it says about the health line is call the helpline first.

Tim Birt [00:27:16] Now, one of the things we learn in reporting child abuse is that you're responsible to report that abuse personally, and you don't get off the hook civilly from being sued by passing on to somebody else. So, you know, you call the hotline, the bishop calls the hotline, the bush. They say, don't report reviews. You don't report it, and then they sue you. Bishop, you're still on the line. You can get sued and the church gets sues, too. So the other concern is, though, there are many reports out there that the helpline, you know, really protects the church interests and not that, not the children's. Now, in, in their policy that they just released, you know, their, their article, the Resource on New Orleans Room, they say that, you know, that our first priority is to protect, you know, the, the victim and, you know, and to stop the abuse.

Tim Birt [00:28:01] And so if they're true, okay, it needs to be that, but we need to see some evidence about that, you know, and, and maybe there needs to be A victim's hotline that they can call, you know, so that, you know, hey, my bishop's doing this bad stuff to me. How can I, you know, what can I do about that?

John Dehlin [00:28:18] Anyway, there absolutely should be a victim hotline, not just protect the church's, you know, assets hotline. Right, Absolutely.

Tim Birt [00:28:29] So the next one, number nine, is that they do talk in their article, which I appreciate. They said since 2006, any new buildings are being built with windows on, on classrooms so that you people can see in. And then old buildings are being retrofit. And so that's good. I think that windows need to be put into almost all the window, by

John Dehlin [00:28:57] the way, at South Mountain Community Church, every room that had kids in it had just a glass. It was a door with glass. You just, you see right through it. Right. Every single room with children.

Tim Birt [00:29:09] And some of the child protective policies will, hopefully you'll link through in the bottom of this. We want to give examples of other churches that, you know, their program so people can look and see. And some of those say that, you know, if you're, you know, around a child, you have to have the doors open. You know, you can't be allowed even a closed door. So what I'm saying is that the bishop's office needs windows too. You know, any place that they're going to have youth behind a closed door needs, needs a window. And it's better to not have people, especially one on one, behind a closed door.

John Dehlin [00:29:41] Now, I was thinking about that if somebody's with the bishop and they're talking about something, even a kid with their parent and the bishop, if someone can walk through and see the person crying or they can see the bishop, you know, that. Is that a violation of privacy to have people being able to watch a bishop? What if a bishop's counseling a married couple and they're fighting and you can look in and see the couple fighting as the bishops counseling them. I just thought that might be problematic a little bit.

Tim Birt [00:30:12] Well, right, but many of the bishops doors right now have peepholes in them anyway. So, you know, if you want to stand there and look in the peephole, you can see that right now already. There is a point about that kind of a situation. I think it's a whole different thing when you're counseling, you know, two adults behind closed, you know, close closed doors.

Tim Birt [00:30:34] But, you know, if we understood that, you know, the bishop and people are going to do, you know, serious stuff, I'm open to what you're saying, and I think there needs to Be give and take on all these things. The whole idea is, though, we want to make it sure it's better that we don't have bishops and children alone behind closed doors, and we're not doing youth interviews, so we don't have to worry about that. You know, the bishops never. There's never a kid behind there anyway. So it'd be better, right?

John Dehlin [00:31:05] Yeah, definitely. I mean, it could even have a shade that it could open or close. If it's adults, close it. But if it's a kid, keep it open, Right?

Tim Birt [00:31:16] That's possible. But part of the problem is we've. We've seen other. Some churches, we've had reports of, they put these. These. These windows in, and then people are putting stuff over the windows.

John Dehlin [00:31:28] Okay.

Tim Birt [00:31:28] So that they don't get seen. So that one I'm open to discussion about. All these things are a matter of dialogue. And if we had a dialogue back and forth with child abuse professionals and with victims and with the church and trying to come up with the right thing, that's good. And if the church and all those people say, hey, this is a bit of a problem, you didn't think about this. Good. Okay, we didn't think about that, but let's have a dialogue.

John Dehlin [00:31:52] Absolutely. Okay. Number 10.

Tim Birt [00:31:56] Good. Number 10. The LDS teachings of past leaders have implicated victims responsible for their abuse and encourage members that be better to lose their lives than being a victim. Abuse of rape. These kind of teachings have not been formally dismissed or disavowed. We're kind of quietly phasing out, giving everybody who had a sexual problem a copy of the Miracle for Forgiveness or giving them that, you know, luster or love talk by Spencer Kimball. But we really need, I believe, to state what we believe in now and say, almost like they did with blacks in the priesthood, that we disavow some of these harmful teachings in the past.

Tim Birt [00:32:37] We do. I mean, that lust versus love is still referenced as one of the references on LDS.org for, you know, how to, you know, resources for parents with teens. You know, when it talks about masturbation in there and it talks about. In some of those talks, it talks about, you know, LGBT people being, you know, that, you know, it's. That it's, you know, it's a choice. And they talk about, you know, this whole thing that, you know, it's better for you to die than to lose, you know, to be raped. We just got to disavow that stuff.

John Dehlin [00:33:09] Yeah. Because it seems like what the church often does is if it doesn't like a book or a, or an old ensign or conference talk, it may get rid of it or mothball it or delete it or stop publishing the book. But that doesn't mean that for the next 40 or 50 years lessons that people remember, teachings and policies that people picked up from their leaders or from their experiences or from their parents or their family meetings, that those things don't persist in the minds and the hearts of the members. And so unless you formally say here's what the doctrine is, here's what the doctrine isn't, here are the teachings that are helpful.

John Dehlin [00:33:50] Here are the teachings that are harmful. If they don't persist written, they'll still persist orally. Right. In the oral traditions. Right. And in the books of the people, in the bookshelves of the people at home or the ensigns that the people have. So the church has to be proactive about educating, not just quietly shelf and mothball stuff if they don't like it anymore.

Tim Birt [00:34:13] Right. And I think this is a proactive effort that we have to realize that, yeah, these statements and attitudes of the past were harmful and we don't believe them anymore, we don't teach them anymore. And this is the why they're harmful. And that takes courage. It takes courage for us to learn that we learn line upon line. And the church, you know, we're learning and growing. We're, you know, we're, we're progressing and we need to be able to admit that. Now, back on the window thing, there are some congregations and stakes that doing it. My stake is trying to put a window in every bishop's office, you know, so there are people that are out there trying to do this on the, on our own side.

Tim Birt [00:34:50] So not everybody's bad guys. Some of the people are really trying to do this even without the general Church's approval. And I applaud that. And Sam applause that we're all good on those that do that. So those are the heroes.

John Dehlin [00:35:02] Okay, so let's close this point. The Church needs to be explicit about what is and isn't doctrine. Get rid of all the harmful teachings, harmful books, harmful insight articles, harmful messages, harmful General Conference talks and make people know what is and isn't doctrine around these matters.

Tim Birt [00:35:22] Absolutely. Okay, number 11, the next one. The church seems to actually to be taking actions that actively resist changing its policies on one on one, you know, closed door interviews and about youth and sexual matters. It's, you know, kind of, it's resisted calls to find alternative methods. You know, it issued this policy, you know, with Sam Basically says that, you know, basically, bishops are going to keep doing that, and they're going to ask whatever they're still inspired to do.

John Dehlin [00:35:58] And don't forget how the church tried to lobby the Utah state legislature to make it illegal for someone being interviewed by a bishop to record the interview so that bishops and stake presidents can't be held accountable for what they say. That's moving in the wrong direction. We want more transparency and accountability. We don't want to be moving the direction of protecting, you know, the power structure against potential victims. That's crazy.

Tim Birt [00:36:24] Right? So the church should be setting the example of listening to members and children who've had problems and actively say, oh, wow, there's a problem. We want to know. We're actively listening. We're seeking out that. We're gonna find out what's happening here. We're gonna listen to what you have to say. That's protecting victims. The church, in its policy here, its resource, says it's doing that, but we need to do it. We need to see it. We need to see it. You know, we need to, you know, take Sam and every one of those stories, see how we can help, you know, and ask, you know, what was there a general call from the church, you know, anyone had bad feelings and experiences with this kind of stuff, let us know. Let us figure out how we can help. You know, that. That would be great.

John Dehlin [00:37:09] All right, so stop retrenching and doubling down. Move in the direction of fixing the problem, not making it worse.

Tim Birt [00:37:18] Right. And church leaders need to read all the stories and ask for more. You know, that would be how we do it.

John Dehlin [00:37:24] Yeah. Instead of excommunicating Sam for bringing light, they should actually start their own inquiry to gather these stories. Right. Yeah. Okay.

Tim Birt [00:37:35] Number 12. The church is not proactively addressing the alienation of LGBTQ youth, addressing youth suicide, mental health challenges of youth that are overwhelmed with shame for teaching on sexuality or sexual orientation, gender, or even these kind of chastity. We're not proactively protecting those youth. This is part about protecting our youth. If we really want to deal with abuse, we really want to protect our children. You know, a child who goes in and says to the bishop, hey, I might be gay. And the bishop says, oh, no, you know, you're not. You know, you can't do that. You know, that is very harmful. And we're not. We're not reaching and protecting those kids and addressing those kinds of issues.

John Dehlin [00:38:23] Now, I've heard that special bishop training is in the works for LGBT youth.

Tim Birt [00:38:29] Good.

John Dehlin [00:38:29] But I don't know what it is or when it's being rolled out.

Tim Birt [00:38:34] Yeah, well, we hope for that desperately. And we hope to also have that openly published of what the training is so anybody can go online and watch it. You know, and so it's not just double secret behind the scenes thing that only the bishops get to see. You know, the handbook of instructions, you know, it's, it's private, you know, it's been leaked, but it's not available. You're not supposed to access it, you know, so even the rules that govern all this stuff hidden.

John Dehlin [00:39:02] Right. Cut out with the secret combinations. Right. Make it transparent.

Tim Birt [00:39:08] Right, so this next one is that one about LDS with the, with the youth with the older 14 to 18. The point I didn't make on that one is that the church has never applied the BSA youth protection standards of background checks. You know, no one on one contact too deep leadership, you know, sign off from the local congregation. Youth training, you know, or training for all adult leaders. That's done every year or every two years. They've never done that for adults working with girls. They've never done it for adults working with, with primary kids or nursery kids. Now there is supposedly this no one, you know, too deep leadership. No one on one with primary and some primary and some nursery leaders, especially if there's a man involved. But it hasn't done this across the board, so he needs to do that.

John Dehlin [00:40:04] So at least make your policies across the board as good as the Boy Scouts policies.

Tim Birt [00:40:09] Yep, yep.

John Dehlin [00:40:11] All right. Number 14.

Tim Birt [00:40:12] The church doesn't provide any bystander training or child safety training for adult members or children.

John Dehlin [00:40:20] What's bystander training?

Tim Birt [00:40:21] Bystander training is a new kind of concept where we teach people to say, hey, let's look out in our environment and see what's happening. It can't started with the whole sexual assault or physical assault kind of thing, you know, and people making bad comments to other people and sexual harassment that people were trained what to look for and how to respond. Because sometimes the victim has a hard time responding or the person that's, you know, in there and says, okay, you know, I'm the nursery leader and this kid had a blowout and I've got to take him and so forth. And you know, they're, they don't know what to do, so they grab the kid and take him to the restroom or whatever, alone.

Tim Birt [00:40:56] And, you know, there isn't somebody that says, hey, wait, you know, when I was doing that training, it kind of told me that we shouldn't do that. Can we do something else here? Or you know, somebody who is saying, hey, you know, you're, you know, you're not. That kind of what you're talking to the kid about is not really how we're supposed to do that. So by trainer, trainer asks everyone to be part of the solution.

Tim Birt [00:41:17] You know, we're all agreed into what the solution is and so we don't do that. We also don't provide any uniform training for youth. About what? No, about child abuse, about, you know, about consent, about respect, about physical abuse, about how to report, about that it's okay, you know, body safety. We don't have any uniform. All these training manuals and all these things for lessons for kids. The kids do it. Say your prayers, pay your tithing, read your scriptures. We hear that, you know, 10,000 times from the time they're, you know, you know, a nursery kid to the time they're 18, how many times do they hear, let's talk about consent, let's talk about body safety, let's talk about being able to, you know, deal with that.

Tim Birt [00:42:01] So there are good programs and you were talking about the ones that, you know, that they have in other churches. That would be a good thing to do.

John Dehlin [00:42:10] Absolutely. Okay, so bystander training so that people know how to see abuse going on elsewhere and how to, how to help

Tim Birt [00:42:20] it or breaks in policy. And it's not just abuse, you know, it's like, you know, yeah, this is not, we're supposed to do with one on one, you know, take the kid into the bathroom alone, you know, say, you know, think about that. So the next one was number 15 is that there's no formal publicly stated policy or practice to hear honor acknowledge, admit problems of teachings and practices. So we don't have a policy on how we're going to handle it.

Tim Birt [00:42:48] You know, now there is an informal policy. If you have a problem, you talk to the bishop and the bishop, if the bishop is the problem, you talk to the stake president, the state president talks to the general authority, but it isn't publicly available and isn't publicly stated on. This is, this is our grievance process. This is how you file a grievance against, you know, the, the bishop or the stake president. You know, this is the process that gets, it gets looked at.

John Dehlin [00:43:16] So yeah, so, so just as

Tim Birt [00:43:22] you

John Dehlin [00:43:23] know, the, the US Has a very clear legal structure where lower courts appeal to higher courts and, and it's known how laws can get overturned and decisions can be challenged. There needs to be a formal process for handling any problems that might occur. And so often in a patriarchy, just it's hard for anyone to be able to give feedback or have any power influence because patriarchies just tend to clamp down and stamp out questions or problems. Right, right.

Tim Birt [00:43:57] And in this case, it's really doubly bad because the people who are investigating the problem are also the people that are responsible for your temple recommend, for your eternal salvation, for your worthiness. They're the common judge in Israel.

John Dehlin [00:44:15] Yeah. And that can. And I'm sure that the general authorities would say, well, these are good men that aren't trying to hurt anyone. And in theory, that's true. But we all know DNC, what is it 121 about unrighteous dominion.

Tim Birt [00:44:29] When someone gets authority, they're immediately exhibit unrighteous dominion. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:37] And we all have heard stories about bishops that have abused their authority and can. And so there needs to be this channel where people can report, just like at BYU with the honor Code office. You know, if you don't want to report, you know, sexual assault of yourself because you're worried that the honor Code office might kick you out of BYU for reporting the assault that happened to you, you know, there needs to be some separate channels so that reporting doesn't influence ongoing status.

Tim Birt [00:45:09] Right. And public. And policies need to be public. You know, when you look at some of these other churches, their youth, their training, you know, they get a copy of the policy. You read it, you can read it online. You're supposed to sign it before you're allowed to be a youth service worker. You know, you're supposed to sign the policy for your bishop. It's available, publicly available on the website. You can see what the policies are. Members know what standards people are supposed to be held to.

John Dehlin [00:45:34] Exactly.

Tim Birt [00:45:34] That's not, that's not available here.

John Dehlin [00:45:36] That's right. All right, what's your last point?

Tim Birt [00:45:39] My last point is that the LDS Church youth protection policies are significantly less comprehensive than the standards of any other churches.

John Dehlin [00:45:48] So the claim that we're better than everyone in the world is just patently false. It's kind of egregiously offensively false.

Tim Birt [00:45:55] It's egregiously offensive.

John Dehlin [00:45:57] So who does this better? Who does this better?

Tim Birt [00:46:00] Almost everybody. Now there are some church. Almost. There are some churches out there that don't have it. You know, I. When Child Advocacy Center. I can tell you there's some places that don't have their act together. But, but they're.

Tim Birt [00:46:14] But that statement is not the case. And it says right there, they say, look, when we learn of more effective ways to prevent, not just to deal with, to prevent child abuse, we implement them. Let's hold them to that standard. Church do it. That's great. That's a great sentiment. I believe it. I support it 100%. But you know what? You know, I'm gonna list, I'm gonna ask John on the, as part of the notes for the show, you know, a bunch of other child protective things. We need to add the Universal, Unitarian Universalist to that list. I don't have those down there yet. And we can add more to the list.

Tim Birt [00:46:50] But just go through, I mean, church leaders just go through all those other things and members go through them and see, yeah, there's whatever most other people doing or the standards in this are there. We're definitely not a best, a model of best practice. And it says that we should be. So let's do it.

John Dehlin [00:47:09] I love it. Okay, so those are Tim Burt's, Timothy Burt's 14 Fund 15, 16 fundamental points of how the church can respond more effectively to abuse and protect children and LGBT people, etc. And protect itself and its leaders.

Tim Birt [00:47:30] Right, Protect itself. That's one of the things that most. It's just not about protecting children. It's about protecting bishops. I mean, bishop has a hard calling. When they realize they could be sued and go to jail, you know, and that there may be harming kids, it may be hard to get bishops. You know, we need to be able to have these policies to make it possible for good people to be bishops and also for the bishops not to get sued and for children not to get hurt. This protects the church. It protects children, it protects bishops. It's a win win. It's a win win for everybody. And the church is signed up that they want to do it.

John Dehlin [00:48:03] So do it.

Tim Birt [00:48:04] Just do it. And if you could, you could you post as part of the show notes some of these links to these other churches like Community Christ United Methodist, United Methodist Church has a thing called Safe Sanctuaries. They're great. They got their act together. I mean, and you know, Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church, United Years of Christ. I've got the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake Lake in here. We need to put the Unitarian Universalists in there. Let's put a whole link of it and let's. There's clearly thing. And if they, if they want to know child abuse professionals that can, you know, be part of that thing, you know, reach out to a bunch of them and we can give you references.

John Dehlin [00:48:41] All right. So we'll make sure and ask Cody to include some of the links to some of these other churches in the show notes so that we can help. All right. Well, that ends part two of our interview. We've still got about 31 people hanging on. Want to thank those who are hanging on. It's so great to have you. Aaron writes, thank you guys for having this conversation. Marianne writes, if a couple wants privacy, they can sit on chairs against the wall that is closest to the door. No shades. That can go poorly if the bishop is a problem. Jessica writes, I didn't see Jesus doing interviews for baptism or Alma or anyone for that matter. Where did they even get the idea for interviews? Yeah. So we're grateful for those who are tuning in, who have questions or comments. We're grateful for that.

Practical Steps Members Can Take to Protect Children

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 873

John Dehlin [00:00:31] So this ends part two of our interview with Timothy Burt. And what we now would like to do is start part three of our interview where we talk about ways that members can protect themselves and protect their children from harm and from abuse. So, Tim, why don't we go through these really quick?

Tim Birt [00:00:57] Thank you. The first one is I ask people to consider having a meeting with your bishop or stake presidency. Inform them of the issues that. About the current policies, if you're agreeing with Sam, and sign a petition, you know, share that with him. Share the links to all the stories, and just ask for parents to get involved with your church leaders and to have a conversation with them. That's number one, the second part.

John Dehlin [00:01:22] So let me just. I'm going to just repeat these. So meet with your bishop and stake president and inform them and to teach them. Now, that's hard because we're in a system where our leaders aren't used to being questioned. They're not used to advice in many cases, and we're not used to feeling empowered that they want our feedback. Right, Right. So that's hard.

Tim Birt [00:01:45] So we can be examples for our children, though. We can be examples for our children to stand up and say, hey, we're there to protect you. We're there to talk to power, to talk to authority, to talk to difficult things. And we'll be an example for that. Because children are going to need the ability to be able to stand up and question people who may be potentially mistreating them. And sometimes that requires talking to people that it's hard to.

John Dehlin [00:02:14] So we need to be advocates for our children.

Tim Birt [00:02:16] Right.

John Dehlin [00:02:16] All right.

Tim Birt [00:02:17] So the second thing is share your own story. If you have your own story of how these things didn't go well, you know, what your experience was with a child, interview with your experience with, you know, feeling guilt over masturbation or when you went in, or, you know, that, you know, you felt like a lick cupcake or your own story of sexual harassment and so forth with your bishop, because it's hard for them to say, well, these things don't happen. Say, it happened to me, it happened to me. And if it did that when you say, it happened to me, it's hard for them to say, oh, this isn't a problem. Yeah, it was a problem for me. So I need you. I'd like to ask you to be respectful to my children. So share your second point is to share your stories, if you have them.

John Dehlin [00:02:56] Share your stories, because that. It's often. That's the whole premise of Mormon stories, that stories have an impact. They touch people emotionally, they hook people, they get people's interest. And stories have a way to change hearts and minds that sometimes logic and evidence don't. Right, so share your stories. All right, that's number two. Number three.

Tim Birt [00:03:18] Number three is don't support. If you don't support the practice of one on one interviews, tell your bishop you don't support that and that you would prefer not to have your, your child, you know, in interviews discussing sexuality or worthiness and that you're uncomfortable allowing your younger underage kids to be interviewed alone or asking appropriate questions and informing them that you will not consent or allow the church leaders to do, to request those with your children.

John Dehlin [00:03:47] And I've done that in the past and I think that's great. However, I hear there's some members receiving negative repercussions for doing that. Have you heard that?

Tim Birt [00:03:56] Yeah, I have.

John Dehlin [00:03:58] Like kids being told they can't go to the temple, or parents having their temple recommends being removed. Like people being told they're not worthy. What have you heard?

Tim Birt [00:04:06] I've heard that. I've heard that it's not happened in my stake, but it's happening in other places. Yeah, I've heard that that is happening. And so I say go up the line, you know, and then you're responsible for you and for your interaction with them. And so you're setting an example for your kids and you don't have to consent to, to these kind of practices. So what I say in the next point is that, you know, suggest to your local leaders viable alternatives that are used, in other words, and stakes to support the spiritual development of youth that don't require young one on one youth interviews, but that may help them feel like they're doing their pastoral role.

Tim Birt [00:04:47] Okay, so the first one of that is don't do youth interviews at all. And if the youth wants to go to the temple or have a calling and he wants to do it, let him do it. You know, if they want to do this and they, you know, you can say, hey, you know, as part of this, we'd like you to, you know, it means that we're, you know, you're hoping to, you know, follow the direction of the church. And that's what this is involved in. They say, ah, I want to do this, let them do it. If they won't, you know, sign up for that, the next thing is let's look at some alternatives.

Tim Birt [00:05:20] One alternative may be, you know, asking the bishop, if he needs to provide interview questions, to submit them in writing to you, his parents, you review them and the ones that are okay, give them to your kid and your kid can answer them and put them in a seal and open and send them back. You know, if asked to go back and forth, that's fine. So it is gives them the opportunity to get the information they feel they need. That doesn't require a one on one interview. It doesn't have require you interview at all.

John Dehlin [00:05:45] And it allows the parents to review the questions.

Tim Birt [00:05:48] Right. And so parent says this is inappropriate, it's good. So if that doesn't work, you can have the ask the bishop and the stake president to interview the kids. Not interview, but talk to the kids in groups and saying, hey, you know, got to go to the temple. You know, the temple is important because of this, this and this. And you know, we like you to feel good about going to the temple and these are the things we'd like you to think, feel good about. If there's, all of you are good about that, sign up. If anybody doesn't feel good about that, you know, you know, you don't have to come and it's fine. You could, you know, have basketball game or whatever like that and you don't have to come, but you could set the standards in groups without having to have one on one interviews.

John Dehlin [00:06:23] Okay. These are very creative thoughts. Yeah.

Tim Birt [00:06:27] So, so another then if that doesn't work, you could sit down and discuss with, hey, look, one on one interviews don't work. I know you want to find out about, you know, how they're doing. Do you have a way, does a kid have a way to be able to do that? Let's come up, let's be creative. We just don't want this one on one thing. We just don't want to have to be this interview thing. What do you think we can do? Have a dialogue, Have a dialogue about them. So that's the last part of it. So.

John Dehlin [00:06:51] Okay. And I'm just gonna say that I don't know that the church is comfortable with people coming up with their own little approaches and ideas. I like the spirit of what you're suggesting, but we're so freaking correlated. It's like a McDonald's cheeseburger has to be the same in China as it is in the US and the same with the church. The church has to be run the way it's run everywhere that it is run the same way. And so I'm guessing that this is just a creativity that members and leaders aren't used to.

Tim Birt [00:07:23] It probably is, but there are some Congregations and wards are doing stuff like this. There are.

John Dehlin [00:07:28] That's awesome. All right, good. Well, let's hope that people can do it.

Tim Birt [00:07:31] The next thing is if the bishop or church leader insists on interviews, they don't go for this creative thing that we don't have to have an interview. Then we suggest that, you know, the parent or an adult of the child's choosing are in the room. Okay. And that we, you know, and it could be it be the parent or, you know, that somebody of the child's choosing. Now in my stake, they're doing this and there is some little pushback, some from kids who don't want, you know, their mom in the room. I wouldn't want my mom in the room if I had to talk about things.

Tim Birt [00:08:06] But I shouldn't have been talking about those things in the first place because I shouldn't have been talked about it. I shouldn't be asked about them at all. But so we're asking to say, okay, if we need interviews, it's two people in the room, one of the child's choosing on the rare circumstance that the child's not requesting the interview or a meeting rather than the church, because a lot of these interviews are requested by the church leader, not the kid.

Tim Birt [00:08:28] And the rare things, hey, I really need to talk to bishops about something. Okay, then what we suggest is that the child suggest who else is in the room. And if they don't suggest anyone, then the bishop can say, okay, it'll be the second counselor. Now, if it's women, a woman, we're saying, hey, it'd probably be good to have maybe some women involved, but that's really gonna shake the boat, but that'd be great.

John Dehlin [00:08:51] Why should women be involved?

Tim Birt [00:08:52] Yeah, I think they should. And I think actually bishops shouldn't be interviewing young 12 year olds, you know, girls. I think that the young women's leader should, you know, discuss with them. Hey, do you feel good about going to temple? You know, how things going? Okay, we need to let bishops know that they're civilly and criminally responsible if they don't report abuse correctly. And they're also civilly responsible if they divulge confidential information. And they can get sued, and they have been sued, and it costs them and the church a lot of money. So don't you know what you're doing?

John Dehlin [00:09:26] Okay.

Tim Birt [00:09:27] Okay. So the next one is consider asking a church leader if they will commit to follow basic church child protective songs and never do one on one. Just ask them, will you commit to do this? You know, and see what they see. And they'll have two deep leadership. Will you commit to follow these standards?

John Dehlin [00:09:44] Nice. Okay, Commitment pattern.

Tim Birt [00:09:46] Yep. And the next one is prepare, invite

John Dehlin [00:09:49] and follow up as I was talking.

Tim Birt [00:09:51] Absolutely. The next one is consider asking bishops and church leaders not to provide sex education to your children. To not tell them what masturbation is. To not, you know, if they feel they have to talk about, you know, do you live the law of chastity? What the current handbook says is that the only question you ask, you don't follow up. But that's not true. Because if you look at the new interview standards for missionaries, it basically says go in detail. And it also says that, you know, if they've had one of these or these kind of violations, they have to have this waiting period. And if they've done some of these things, they're ineligible for missionary service.

Tim Birt [00:10:28] They're really doubling down on some places. So. But on little kids and teenagers, you shouldn't do any, you know, sex education in a one on one interview. Be five closed doors. Now in our state, we're not doing that. The bishops have been told not to do any sex education. Definitely not. And that's good.

John Dehlin [00:10:46] I love it.

Addressing Masturbation, Sexuality Education, and Mental Health Referrals

Tim Birt [00:10:47] Okay, so next one's a masturbation. You know, masturbation is a hot, is a really difficult one because most members of the church think that masturbation is still sin. Church Handbook of instructions doesn't say anything about masturbation, and that's deliberate.

John Dehlin [00:11:01] But the strength of the youth pamphlet says, don't arouse your passions.

Tim Birt [00:11:06] Yeah. And so that makes people think it's masturbation. There's lots of people like in my stake who thinks that's not that. But there is a mixed message. And there is some, like I said on LDS to order. There is one thing that does say that masturbation is a sin. But it's a, it's, it's, it revert refers to that love and lust talk from Kimball way back.

John Dehlin [00:11:25] You're basically saying, declassify masturbation as a sin.

Tim Birt [00:11:30] Yep. And if the bishop asks about that, say, find it in the handbook, show it to me. Because they can't.

John Dehlin [00:11:37] Yeah, yeah, okay.

Tim Birt [00:11:39] It's a personal matter. It's an important personal matter that people, you know, most kids do it. You know, all these kids, you know, they, you know, they masturbate, they go back, they try, they swear it off, they do this, they do that. Kids have killed themselves over this. Kids have had problems in marriage, you know that you come and you say, well, I Masturbated, you know, because I didn't, couldn't finish and I have to confess to my husband and, you know. Okay, so.

John Dehlin [00:12:07] All right.

Tim Birt [00:12:08] Okay. Next one is consider that you want to discuss the damage has been done by youth to youth by uninformed teaching about sexuality. I think that, you know, it's good to be able to let bishops know that, you know, that it's not okay to talk about these sexuality things. Especially, you know, you don't know that they're victims. Many lessons that are taught are profoundly damaging. Lip cupcake. I'm just saying, can you talk to your bishop and your young women's leaders and say, hey, we have a real problem with this lip cup, the holes in the board, those kind of teachings, and we want to make sure those aren't done in our ward. What can we do, have a dialogue? What can we do to not have that kind of thing? What can we do to teach about consent, respect and responsibility?

John Dehlin [00:12:55] All right, so help educate your church leaders about harmful and less harmful approaches to law of chastity.

Tim Birt [00:13:03] Right. And then the next part of this component of talk, our itch point is that have mental health professionals available to take referrals for, you know, people that need to do marriage counseling issues around sexuality abuse. And they need to be qualified. You know, if you're referring somebody who's, you know, had sexual abuse issues, you need to refer them to somebody who, to a therapist who has training.

John Dehlin [00:13:28] How do, how does the layperson or bishop know the difference between a qualified therapist or coach or an unqualified therapist or coach?

Tim Birt [00:13:37] Well, the first one is that they're. The most basic thing is that they're a licensed therapist in the area. The second thing is that we do need to develop some resources for bishops and stakes to be able to have a list of qualified people. And, you know, professionals can kind of suggest some criteria for that. You know, that they have some training in evidence based practice that deals with, you know, responding to child trauma. You know, do they have training in child focused cognitive behavioral therapy? Do they have training in one of the other evidence based practices to treat child trauma? Do they know anything about it?

John Dehlin [00:14:13] What I don't think people understand is that just like you wouldn't go to, you know, a podiatrist for brain surgery, just, just because a dermatologist went to med school doesn't mean they can, you know, perform a vasectomy. Well, psychology and marriage therapy and those sorts of things. Just because you're a psychologist or a licensed clinical social worker or a Marriage and family therapist doesn't mean you're an expert in evidence based treatment of PTSD or obsessive compulsive disorder or trauma. Those things are specialties that you want a specialist. And childhood sexual abuse or post traumatic stress disorder are specialties. And you don't want to just get any generic depression or anxiety therapist, even if they're licensed to be dealing with issues that merits a specialty. Isn't that true?

Tim Birt [00:15:13] Absolutely. And so the church has lots of resources and can reach out to professional groups. I mean, Mormon Mental Health association, they can reach out to the, the sex therapist, they can reach out to others and say, and develop lists locally of people to refer to. Every stake should have that every day should. And they should know the criteria to look for and have conversations with those. They don't have to be church members.

Tim Birt [00:15:39] Yeah, that's right. And if you don't know, if you don't know, go to. If you have a children's advocacy center. In Utah, they're called a children's justice center. If you don't know, go to them. Because a children's advocacy center, they have criteria and training. And one of the criteria to be a children's advocacy center that you know, meets the, meets the standard is that you have to have referrals to qualified mental health professionals who have training in dealing with child sexual abuse treatment. So your local children's advocacy center will know the people in your community. And not all communities have one, but many do. So check and see if you've got a children's advocacy center or children's justice center and they'll know.

John Dehlin [00:16:18] That's great.

Tim Birt [00:16:19] Or you can call the National Children's alliance, which is the organization that certifies children's advocacy centers, to find a children's advocacy center in your area or region.

John Dehlin [00:16:29] All right.

Tim Birt [00:16:30] Okay. The next one is ask. Consider asking church leaders to hear accounts of how the church and its leaders have hurt people in the past. Consider asking them to read Sam's stories. You know, if they don't think it happens, have them. Have them read Sam's stories or tell them your own stories or tell them your own stories. I went over that one last time. Okay, now the next k is women leaders to be involved when, you know, when women need to discuss sexuality. And that's a big ask. But it's not. It's obvious.

John Dehlin [00:17:00] I think, although it's not a foregone conclusion that just having a woman there will make the discussion better.

Tim Birt [00:17:06] No, it's not. Because the problem is that, that you Know, we need some training for people. And so that would require lots of training for all the people that are in the room to know how to deal with that and, you know, and to see who it is. So there are some challenges with that. But the idea of it, of, you know, having a woman have to go to a male to talk about some of these sexual issues, about, you know, domestic violence, about, you know, child abuse, about, you know, you know, these kind of things, it's hard, really hard.

Tim Birt [00:17:37] And so we need a better way to deal with that. You know, one way maybe include some more women, you know, but it probably is refer people to qualified professionals. But having a dialogue of how we can make it easier for women to, you know, to discuss these things if they feel like they have to. And I'm talking about more when the woman wants to come to them rather than when they're saying, okay, you know, we need to interview this, you know, 14 year old girl. Right, right. Okay, good. Okay. The next one is we talked about before. Consider doors in or windows in Bishop's doors.

Background Checks, Bystander Training, and Reforms

Tim Birt [00:18:14] I think we had a good discussion about that earlier. Plus and minuses about that. Secondly, consider having all members that are allowed to work with youth have a criminal background check, also a central registry check. So it's not just criminal background check, but it's a central registry. Most states, you know, the Child Protective Service Agency does its own investigation when child abuse is there. There's a criminal investigation, there's a child protective investigation. They have a central registry of people who've been found to be responsible for abuse. It's different than a criminal investigation. So sometimes you're on the central registry, but you didn't get put in jail.

Tim Birt [00:18:50] Central registry makes it so that you can't get a job as a teacher. Okay. We should be checking those registries too. Okay. And it requires an extra process and also, you know, so. And having them have the background check before they start to call in.

John Dehlin [00:19:05] Right. So check the registries, do the background checks, make sure people are vetted.

Tim Birt [00:19:10] Right. And so what can you as a member do? You can ask the bishop, hey, this person's just been called to be the young women's, you know, mimate teacher. She had a background check. This man has just been to teach the, you know, the 17 year old boys. He had a bad background check. If not one of the things we could do, which is kind of controversial, is we could say, hey, Bishop, I'm not sure I can sustain them until they've had a background check.

John Dehlin [00:19:37] Got it. Okay. And you mentioned the windows and the doors, keep the doors open kind of thing, right?

Tim Birt [00:19:47] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:19:48] Okay. Yeah, we talked about that earlier. Okay. Is there a last point?

Tim Birt [00:19:52] Yeah, there is. I would like in every ward, in every stake in the church, for a number of members to step forward and say, hey, this is important to us. You know, what would happen if 30 or 40 members of the ward went to the bishop and said, hey, we got some concerns about this child interview stuff. We've got some concerns about how we're talking about lick cupcakes. We're concerned about background checks. Got some concerns that we don't have a policy.

Tim Birt [00:20:19] What would it be like if in every ward, in every stake in the church, you know, 20 or 30 or 10 members came forward and talked to the bishop and talked to the stake president and said, hey, we want to do better.

Tim Birt [00:20:32] We want to follow this policy that the church just came out with and said, we're trying to find new ways and implement them. What would happen to the church if we were willing to go forward and talk? So I'd like to encourage every church member or even if you're a former member and you've got friends or, you know, kids or nephews and nieces that are in the church, you know, to be willing to speak up.

Tim Birt [00:20:54] We need to speak up for our kids because they can't speak up for themselves. We're unwilling to speak up for them. We let them down.

John Dehlin [00:21:06] All right, well, any other final things you want to say? Because this has been super useful. I've had several. You know, we did this on a Saturday afternoon, so a lot of people aren't hanging out on Facebook, but we've had several people who have tuned in say this is one of their favorite episodes. This episode's so important. Thank you for having this conversation. So, Tim, I know that people are really appreciating the fact that you would share your extensive expertise with us. I think you've given us great advice. What final things do you want to say as we close?

Tim Birt [00:21:38] Good. Well, there will be resources, hopefully posted on the show, notes here of both these recommendations that I have. So you can, if you. If John, you can have that link too. And also the responses to how the church approaches abuse, my response to that, and also the resources of other organizations and churches who have child protective policies. And also Sam Young, Sam Young has a, you know, a good petition and a website has stories there. Also, there's a brand new website being put together by Leslie Butterfield Harrop that is a stories for, you know, women and men that have had domestic violence problems and talked to the bishop and said, hey, you know, and things have gone wrong there.

Tim Birt [00:22:26] And that's unrighteousdominion.org you can brand new site, you can put up. It was under another thing earlier that you can put, you know, read the stories and post your own stories. So part of it, just like Mormon stories, we need to share our stories and we'd be willing to share with those who we care about, because that's going to protect children. Thank you, John, so much for the opportunity to let me come on. And it's just a pleasure. Your, your podcast has made a big difference in my life and, and I just want to appreciate what you do and the honor of us sharing our stories.

Tim Birt [00:23:00] And we need to be able to hear our kids stories. My kid one time, he's in college now, but he told me, dad, I don't want to go to young men. I don't want to go to this fireside. They're just going to talk about masturbation. That broke my heart. You know, we need to stand up for our kids. Let's do it.

Closing Reflections and Final Thoughts

John Dehlin [00:23:16] All right, Timothy. Well, this has been wonderful. I've learned so much. Leslie writes so important. Thanks for the insight. Jessica writes, loved his recommendations and I joined with my listeners in just saying thank you, Timothy. You've done a real service for us today really quickly. For those who listen to us live or asynchronously, I just want to tell you thank you for your support. Thank you for listening. There are different ways that you can keep Mormon Stories and the Open Stories foundation alive.

John Dehlin [00:23:48] Of course, donors keep this all possible because we have to pay the staff for the work that we do. So if you donate, thank you. If you don't, please go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button at the top right of the screen and you can donate 10, 20, 30, 50, $100 a month, whatever you can afford. Just know those donations are tax deductible and they go towards keeping the podcast alive and the staff employed that keeps the nonprofit functioning.

John Dehlin [00:24:19] But there are also other, many other ways you can support the Open Stories Foundation. Mormon Stories. You can like us on Facebook. You can give us a positive review and a positive rating on the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page. You can share these episodes on your wall with other people. You can share this episode of Timothy Burt with your leadership, share it with your bishop, share it with your stake president, share it with young men's, young women leaders. Just say, hey, there's this expert that's been interviewed who's trying to help you as leaders, not get sued to protect the children. And you can share this episode with them.

John Dehlin [00:24:58] I think that'd be great. You can also follow us on Instagram @MormonStories. You can follow us on Twitter ormondstories. You can just tell your friends and family about us. There's just all sorts of ways you can support us. And most importantly, go to itunes and give us a positive rating on itunes because those itunes reviews are super important. So thank you for everyone who's joined us. Thank you, Timothy Burt, and thanks for everyone who helps keep us alive. We hope this has been useful. Please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com if you have any questions, questions or suggestions or ideas. We really value your input and we love you guys. Thanks again for everything. And Timothy, we hope you'll join us again soon on Mormon Stories.

Tim Birt [00:25:49] Thank you so much.

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