Original subtitles

Oh, wow. That is beautiful.

And still amidst it all, I can't deny

that God exists, you know?

♪ ♪

And I'm, like, still mad

that they took God away from me.

I just feel like everything is loaded now, you know?

Like a sunset isn't just, like, a beautiful sunset.

It's, like, somehow tainted.

I used to just think God is good.

God is great.

You know, he created the Earth and the heavens

and loves me unconditionally,

and if I just follow his plan, everything will work out.

And I'm hearing more and more and more

about people that follow his plan,

and it was a map to nowhere.

And now I have to, like, start rebuilding

my connection to God with a completely different map

and no compass and no idea where to go

or what direction.

You know, I'm not sure what the next chapter will be,

but I just feel sad that I wasted so many years

trying to be a good Mormon rather than just

trying to be a good person.

The house is on fire, and if we don't pull

these bodies out, there's going to be devastation.

I get DMs, I get emails, I hear over and over and over

how the Mormon Church

has affected and hurt so many people.

People are not born gay. Period, end of discussion.

- The guy that was teaching conversion therapy

for and on behalf of the church

was actually gay all along.

Like, if there's one message I want to make sure

gets said over and over and over,

you cannot heal the gay out of a person.

You just can't.

- While I didn't experience conversion therapy,

I know a lot of people that did, including Ben.

I heard that Ben had a story that was

really critical of the church.

You know, so many people reach out to me, Shane,

and, like, you and Ben are the people in my life.

And I'm hearing stories from everyone all around the world,

and I'm not sitting down and hearing

the most important stories.

Would he be open to sharing it with me?

- You know what? I don't know.

- What scared me so much about Ben's story

was that what he was talking about was so dark,

and that was just a reality that was overwhelming

for me to face. So I pulled away.

- I told my bishop when I was 14

and also mentioned some sexual abuse

that had happened by my neighbors.

He didn't tell anyone, not even my parents,

but put me into conversion therapy at that time.

- Seven years into my marriage,

I told my eternal companion

about my desire to be with men.

She told me if I left,

I'd never see our daughter again,

so I stayed for eight more years.

- My father confronted me and asked

if I had same sex attractions.

I denied it, but he scolded me for being effeminate,

and my church bishop told me to control my mannerisms.

- Deep down inside, I knew something

just didn't feel right.

I ended up coming out to my mission president,

and that was a horrible idea.

- He would ask questions like, do you masturbate?

Do you watch pornography?

Are you sexually pure?

And if not, what have you done?

There was still a part of me that

was wanting to destroy

that feeling that I had towards men.

So I had discovered conversion therapy.

It feels more like an expression of faith

to go to conversion therapy.

That's what motivates a lot of these men.

That's what motivated me.

I didn't want to go to conversion therapy.

And being forced into a camp to deprogram me,

it struck the fear of God in me.

The next four years were the worst four years of my life.

- I felt like I had to really fit

this mold of, like,

what a perfect little, like, Mormon boy is.

- I don't want to be that disappointment

and ruin my whole family lineage.

Because that's the whole thing.

If you don't finish your mission,

you disappoint not only yourself,

but your whole lineage.

♪ ♪

You know, when he kept saying, like,

letting down his entire lineage,

like, I just know that just rang so true to me.

I mean, that's how I feel every day,

because I don't know why they tell that to us so much.

But, like, ugh,

it's like we're holding up, like, the weight

of all of our ancestors by our behavior here.

And we're sold it, and we just readily, readily buy into it.

♪ ♪

I remember specifically when I realized that Ben

was in Shane's life to stay.

I remember we were in London on a trip together,

and he confided in me that he and Ben had said I love you.

The few things Shane told me about Ben

was that he is successful and smart

and came from a very, very active Mormon family,

and he just kind of alluded to that he had been

really traumatized and abused by the church.

And I remember hearing it and just not wanting to hear it.

It's made me realize how much of my knee-jerk responses

are not my own, but what I've been trained

to believe and do by virtue of being,

you know, raised in the Mormon Church.

I mean, I have believed preposterous things

in the name of religion.

Mormons started originally back east.

The first vision happened in Palmyra, New York,

through Joseph Smith.

Joseph Smith claimed he was visited

by angels who showed him and only him gold plates

with ancient texts telling him the story

of Jesus's second coming in America.

Well, my whole life, I heard stories

about Joseph Smith being tarred and feathered

because he was a prophet, and he was saying

things that the people didn't want to hear.

They were reluctant to accept the gospel.

But the truth is, he was tarred and feathered

because two brothers found him sleeping

with their 14-year-old sister.

That's why they were run out of town.

They were run out of every town that

they inhabited because the townspeople

didn't want polygamy.

They didn't want Joseph Smith and his charlatan ways.

When Joseph Smith was killed in Illinois,

Brigham Young decided that they were

going to move the pioneers out west

and create a new Zion in Utah in a new land

where they would live and be able to worship

freely without persecution.

This historical story of persecution

is something that's deeply embedded in the Mormon

belief system even today, and the idea of it colors

how we see ourselves versus the outside world.

This is a process.

It's hard to detangle yourself from the identity

that you crafted for your entire life.

And it reminds me of who I was when I first

heard Ben's story, because those instincts

kicked in way more than, wait a second,

that's not right.

I should ask him more questions about it.

♪ ♪

Ben said he is ready to talk with me.

Today, driving up there, I would hope that

I'm in a place to talk about this now.

I know that whatever he was going to tell me

is probably going to be a lot,

maybe more than I could handle.

♪ ♪

Do you want to get in your high chair?

Ah!

Should we try this?

Let's try banana.

♪ ♪

- A little taste test. - Oh.

- Oh, good job. - Mmm.

Yay.

Such a big girl.

- I mean, I've known Heather for five years.

I don't know how she's going to respond to my story.

I don't know what level she's at

to look at the church in that way,

because it's hard.

Even if you've left the church, there's still an element of you

that that's been a part of your life forever.

What I've learned, that I feel like

it's true for most people,

they don't like their beliefs to be challenged.

And I know with Heather, it's not been easy

for her to walk away. Can I get this?

Oh, let's go get the door.

- Hello. - Hi.

- Hi, come on in. - Hi. Hi, Dorothy.

- Say hi. - Hi, love.

How are you? It's so good to see you.

Hi. How are you?

Oh, my gosh, Ben, you look so good.

Thank you. You do too.

- Hi, baby. - Hi.

- How are you? - Good.

- How are you? - I'm good.

- Good. - It's so good to see you.

- Good to see you. - I'm glad to be here.

I'm going to go put her down for a nap.

I'll just be upstairs.

Let's just go sit in here.

- I know I said it before, but you've just been

on my heart and mind so much.

There's something I never have told you.

When you first started dating Shane,

I Googled you and looked you up,

and I found an interview you had done...

Yeah.

On some of your abuse in the church.

Mm-hmm.

And I didn't want to listen to it.

I just didn't want to believe it could be true.

- It just scared me. - Yeah.

It's difficult to hear these things.

Like, I didn't want to believe it was true either.

I spent most of my life running from my truth.

The thing that you and I have in common is our religion.

I mean, you say our religion in common, but our identity.

Our identity.

There's no separation between

your church community, your school community,

your neighborhood. My whole world was right there.

I am from American Fork, Utah.

I am the fifth of eight children.

The first neighborhood I lived in,

it was just a small community.

And the town's primarily Mormon,

so everyone that I grew up around was Mormon.

My family is very religious.

The religion bled into sports and school.

That started as soon as I can remember.

I don't even know that I looked at things as

so much being like a neighborhood.

It was more like if you were a part of our ward.

There's a ward that's, like, your geographical area

that you go to church with on Sunday,

and then there's a stake,

which is also a geographical area,

which is made up of multiple wards.

So wards, that was supposed to be like your extended family.

So if they were in your ward, you could trust them.

I never had that pure childhood experience.

Because when I was four is when I first

was sexually abused by this man.

His name is Jess Hurtado.

Mm, Ben.

It lasted till I was nine.

The first time I remember being abused,

I remember being in my Sunday school class,

and a man coming in and getting me and another girl

and taking us to a field by the church.

And I can just remember his face

being right there above mine.

I would have been laying on the ground looking up to see him.

I don't remember physically everything he did.

I just remember crying.

I remember looking at the girl next to me, and she was crying.

God.

And I can never get that image out of my head.

Jess was a member of our ward.

I knew who he was from church.

And as long as I was home by a certain time,

I pretty much ran free in that neighborhood.

And so it wasn't always at church

or taking us from church.

It could have been when I was out playing,

and I got taken into this man's house.

♪ ♪

Sometimes I was abused alone.

Sometimes I was abused with other kids.

Sometimes I remember multiple adults being there.

But was this Jess guy always there?

Yes, Jess was always there.

I didn't tell anyone because

I believed that I had committed

sin that was next to murder.

Because even though I was abused,

I had had sexual relations with other people.

I've always viewed that as something

that I've needed to repent of.

And then being taught by my abusers

that if I were to speak out,

I would get excommunicated.

So while I didn't fully understand what

any of that meant, I grew up my whole entire life

fearing that if anybody knew that,

I would be separated from my family.

What we're taught in the Mormon church,

they use this metaphor of, like,

no empty chairs at the table.

And that chair at the table is supposed to represent

you and your family in heaven.

Most of my life, I have lived in fear

of being separated from my family.

So I was so terrified of ever talking about it

or ever saying anything to anybody,

'cause I viewed it in the way that it was in my head.

It was like, it was a sin, right?

And if I told anyone, like, I would eternally

be banished from my family.

♪ ♪

And so the abuse continued.

Oh, my gosh.

- This is one time I remember being taken

away from church by Jess.

And it was presented to me as like a Sunday school lesson.

And...

♪ ♪

He was there with another girl.

And I remember Jess and a couple other men

on each side of him. I don't know who they were.

They were all, like, dressed in temple clothes.

And it being taught to us

as it was like a Sunday school lesson,

that this is what, like, marriage looks like.

And she had, like, the veil, like, pulled over.

This little 12-year-old girl?

♪ ♪

And he married her.

And then said, this is what we do after we get married.

- And he raped her. - Oh, my gosh, Ben.

♪ ♪

I'm so sorry.

Um, can I take a break?

Yes.

♪ ♪

That's a complicated answer.

I had been abused until I was nine.

In my teenage years, I knew I had attraction

to, like, men, but my whole context

of how I view everything is within

the framework of the church.

I felt like I was born with a challenge

that I needed to endure in this life,

and I somehow needed to overcome that

so I could remain a member

in good standing in the church.

When I was 23, I came out.

It wasn't like a powerful moment for me of,

like, oh, I'm gay, you know, telling that to my parents.

It was more of a heartbreaking experience for me.

So when I told my parents, I approached it as something

that needed to be fixed.

My two choices were therapy to correct my sexual attractions,

or the consequences of not doing that were to, like,

be eternally separated from

my family and from my church.

So then I went to conversion therapy.

My parents ended up contacting my neighbor,

whose name is Dean Byrd.

At the time, and for many years,

he was the unofficial aficionado for, like,

the LDS church when it came to same gender attraction.

What is clear is that some people can and do change.

The risk for harm is not any different

from any other intervention.

I didn't know anything really about conversion therapy,

but to me, it was like,

this is how I'm going to save my soul.

I'd go in. I'd talk about my attractions.

They said, you know, maybe these attractions

never go away, but you can reduce them.

The stupid thing they told me is it's like petting a dragon.

It may be fun, and it may be exciting,

but eventually the dragon will turn on you.

Things didn't seem to be getting better.

I didn't stop trying to meet guys.

I felt like I was ping ponged back and forth

between living more of a gay life

and then also going to church.

So these two parts of myself were just battling

back and forth for years.

I honestly believed from some of my conversion therapy

that my attractions or being gay

only existed because of the abuse.

So I truly believed that,

if I healed from the abuse,

I'd be straight.

That you'd heal from the gayness?

Yeah. So...

Honey.

The church felt like where I would do that.

It was like, over and over again,

sexuality, the abuse,

go fix yourself and you can rejoin us.

It was taught to you, too, because we teach in the church

that if you are gay, when you die, you won't be.

Yeah.

It'll go away the minute you die.

That's how I felt.

That's what the doctrine says.

- It is an earthly affliction. - Yeah.

- I just knew that, like, part of the reason

my life had gone the way it had gone

is because I had suffered trauma.

And so I was trying at that point to deal with that.

I decided I'm going to get the help that I need.

I know I was abused,

and I'm going to start reporting it.

And that's when you started disclosing what had happened

- to you as a little boy. - Mm-hmm.

Well, how did that go over?

It was hard.

I reported what I just told you to the bishop.

And Jess was a member of my parents' stake at that time.

- And you named him. - Yes.

And what happened?

When I reported that, my bishop had told me

that he was concerned because he was still

a member of their stake.

And I don't know, I guess he was probably calling people,

but he obviously escalated it to the stake president.

And my dad was in the stake presidency.

Oh, jeez.

So he ended up going with the stake president

to Jess's house to confront Jess.

They told Jess that I remember being abused by him.

And Jess said

he must have me confused with someone else.

Tell him to call me, and I'll clear it up.

And that's where it stopped.

That's what they came back and said to you?

Well, I had an expectation that people would take action,

and they didn't.

♪ ♪

When I reported, and I'm talking to people,

I'm really looking them to guide me

on how to handle this situation.

I didn't even think at that point

to take whatever information I give them

and report it to the police.

The most important thing to me was to resolve it

through the church.

Why didn't they take that information and do something?

Why didn't they give it to the police?

Why didn't they discipline Jess?

And when no one took action

and no one helped me in that journey,

and they put it all back on me,

I felt like there was nothing I could do.

I felt helpless. I felt like no one cared.

After that, I never wanted to talk about Jess again.

I was devastated.

The focus wasn't Jess.

The focus wasn't, like, let's take these people down.

Let's do this. The focus was my sexuality.

How do we get you to be spiritually whole again?

Was there a part of you that was just, like,

you guys are missing the point?

Yeah, absolutely.

I was upset about it, and it was really shocking to me

because going into that was, like,

these are spiritually chosen men who will

guide me to spiritual safety.

- And protect you. - And protect me.

And I 1,000% believed that, like,

with every single fiber of my being.

Jess as a heterosexual, head of household, dad

serves the image and purpose of the church.

Growing up, I believed that the head of the household

direct your family to eternity, to salvation, and all that.

So you did not take down the man of a family.

The church was more important to protect than the children.

People never understand why we go back to, you know,

the place where we were abused, but that's the only place

we are taught to look for answers.

It's the only structure and plan we were ever given.

And I honestly didn't think that

I had the answers for myself.

After I reported my abuse,

they told me to make it to heaven

that I needed to repent for being gay

and for acting out on it.

Looking back, it was healing me enough

so that I could go through a disciplinary council.

The disciplinary council is a public flaying,

cataloging everything you've ever done wrong.

Yep.

And that you should be repentant for.

When you've done something more egregious

than just a bishop at the local level can handle,

and that would be any sexual sin,

12 church leaders from the general geographical area

sit at a table in white shirt and tie,

and they're allowed to ask him any question they want,

and they often do,

and it's basically a purging of every sexual sin

in front of 12 men that you've may

or may not have ever met before.

Then they excuse you and convene and discuss

amongst themselves what they believe

the appropriate punishment should be.

And a disciplinary council can result in disfellowship,

which is abstaining from the sacrament

and church callings, excommunication,

or nothing at all. Go home and go with God.

This is kind of a summary of the disciplinary council.

Oh, my gosh.

And you can just read, like, kind of what the summary

was from their perspective.

It doesn't say anything about the abuse in the context

of, like, punishing Jess.

- The lifestyle you have lived these past years

is not who you really are.

It will be very important for you to continue

to walk toward the greater light.

To completely forsake the past,

you must now stay completely clear

of any and all triggers that could tempt you back,

that could harm your progress on the path to

the full light of the gospel.

Reading it, it's like because of the gospel

and because of us, you're going to be able to be forgiven.

- It's just plug and play. - Right.

This is how we deal with anything

- that doesn't fit the mold. - Yeah.

And it's victimizing you all over again.

All over again.

But at the same time, I felt like I had sinned

and I needed that repentance.

I let that be the focus too.

I believed this was my path back to the kingdom of God.

And you believed that because you were taught it...

Yeah.

And everything and everyone in your life

reinforced it to the point where

you're willing to give up your future and your sexuality

just to get let back in through the doors.

Yeah.

But everything that I was writing in my journal

was like, I'm miserable. I'm unhappy.

I feel so lonely, but this is what God wants me to do.

I was so proud of myself that I was able to make it back

to the temple, but it came at a cost

that wasn't worth it for me.

And if I look at what my life might

look like in that context versus how I'm living it now,

I don't want that.

No one would want that for you.

It's an emotional prison.

I finally got to the point where I just broke.

I couldn't do it anymore.

And finally told myself,

you're gay, and that's OK.

I felt free.

At that point, I just left the church,

- and I started dating. - Daddy.

Yeah.

Wait.

Dorothy, do you want to go outside?

Come here. Let's put your sandals on.

Come here.

You want to go say hi to the horses?

Yeah? What does the horse say?

Neigh.

- Neigh. - Oh, good job.

When I had gone back to church in 2012,

these gay friends posted a bunch of pictures on Facebook.

And in these pictures was the most beautiful

human that I'd ever seen.

And though I didn't know this at the time,

I just kept thinking, where were you when I was gay?

Which is funny.

And I never saw him again after that.

- Oh, wow. - OK, look.

You see the horses?

- So fast forward four years later,

we matched on Tinder, and he accepted all of me.

And so I felt like Shane's the first person

I ever was able to truly be myself with.

We haven't been apart since then.

- OK. - All done.

Should we go back in?

- OK, let's go. - Hi.

If you were to go back in through the doors

today and say, I have a beautiful daughter,

a companion who I love and cherish,

and I want to be active in the church,

we know what they would say to you.

Yeah. I'm not welcome.

The fact that Jess seemed to have more value

than I did because he was a straight, married man,

let's protect him. I don't understand that.

We can believe that it happens in other religions,

but it can't happen in ours. We're the true church.

Right.

We have the spiritual guidance.

We have the true prophet.

We have the modern day revelation.

And they can't fully open the door to that happened.

And if it did happen, it happened when I was a kid,

and it was bad, but it doesn't continue anymore.

The fact that these things happen to me as a child,

now, because I'm an adult, they seem to not matter.

How many times was it reported before?

How many church leaders knew?

Had they taken action and had they done the right thing,

could it have saved me?

Could it have saved other kids from being abused?

Because that's how I'm thinking about it.

Where is this motherfucker? Like, for real?

He still lives in their stake.

He's still walking among the living?

Yes.

He could come up to my house today.

I cannot believe that, Ben.

I didn't feel like there was any justice.

Jess was in their congregation.

Home with his kids and dinner,

eating dinner and, you know, testifying in church.

And going to church on Sunday.

- Yeah, probably teaching kids. - Yeah.

So I never felt safe publicly talking about this.

I have never named him outside of reporting.

But I have a friend who did take Jess on.

- Who was abused by Jess? - Yes.

And accused him publicly?

And did take on the church in a sense.

When?

My friend Ginger took Jess on in 2017.

There was a local news article

that came out about someone

who had won a civil case against Jess.

And I felt vindicated.

♪ ♪

I didn't know her before that, but I reached out to her

and said, thank you for sticking up

and standing up for herself and in that case.

♪ ♪

Doesn't that make you feel like everything

- I've said was true. - Yes.

- Let's go get him. - Yeah.

And it encouraged me to keep speaking.

- Yeah. - Naming Jess.

So when I found that information out,

I sent it to my parents.

And I said, look, Jess is capable of doing

this type of stuff to people, and it's now on public record

that he did.

Well, now what do you think?

And they took that article, and they went

and they met with the stake president

and said, he's in our stake.

He's got this evidence against him now.

And then in 2019, they started pursuing

disciplinary action with Jess.

♪ ♪

So on the church level, excommunication.

That's, like, the worst you could get.

If you get excommunicated, your baptism,

your temple covenants, everything that you've done,

it's erased.

But they said this person's repenting,

this person did this, but they're trying to do better,

everyone would have been on board with that.

He'd still be an active member of the community

and go to church.

♪ ♪

Talking to the stake president,

I said, what I would like you to do

is take all the information I give you,

all the information anyone else gives you,

and I think you should turn this information

over to the police.

That's what you should do.

He said they couldn't do that.

How are you still not taking legal action against him?

Even if you can't press charges against him,

you can provide all this information to the police.

Why are you not doing this?

I don't think they're interested

in doing the right thing.

I think they're interested in protecting themselves.

♪ ♪

I've reported to the church, and Jess

still lives in my parents' stake.

And one of the reasons that the church

can get away with it so much

is because they have an attorney.

The church has directed them to poke as many holes

as they can in the victim's story

and discredit them so much to where

they can't stand a chance to protect

the good name of the church.

They are a billion dollar institution.

No lone voice stands a chance...

- No. - Against that system.

These stories are hard to tell. They're hard to hear.

And I just- I'm like, with you 100%.

I'm so grateful that we were able to have this conversation,

and I do feel like it was long overdue.

And I want you to know that I believe you

and I want to be here for you,

and I want to fight the people that hurt you,

and I wish I had protected you sooner.

♪ ♪

And I'm sorry.

Thank you.

And you don't need to apologize.

I do. But I love you.

I love you too.

And it's a journey, and it's a journey for everyone.

♪ ♪

Gosh, that was overwhelming to hear.

That was a lot.

♪ ♪

I just feel like crying.

♪ ♪

It's like all his dreams came true,

but he's still so sad, you know?

And there's still so much pain.

And I want to help ease that.

♪ ♪

I feel like I'm pulling back layer by layer,

and there were so many layers to Ben's story

that I just can't even-

I just can't process what to do next.

The church, because there's so much familiarity

and so little questioning of people's integrity,

if you're a member of the church,

we assume that you are honest, right, truthful,

and fair and true in all things.

You know, we believe that about each other.

And so to think that that type of evil

is lurking and able to, like, hide in plain sight,

it just made me question my entire childhood.

I went to church in my ward,

and it was always these charismatic guys

that would have all the kids over for sleepovers,

and the kids would say, he's coming out

and sleeping with us on the tramp.

And we think, oh, he's such a nice guy.

I mean, there was a youth leader throwing

Kool-Aid parties all the time,

and we were all encouraged to attend.

And it turned out, years later, that guy had been

molesting girls in the ward.

You heard stories, but you just thought

not to me and not to mine.

And I just think that when you are in a church

that values obedience over everything else,

it is a safe haven for adults to take advantage of children.

♪ ♪

If this happened to Ben, it could have happened

to thousands of children.

It happened from when I was six till ten.

He abused me for a long time.

He was, like, giving me just really weird vibes.

He kept being like, tickle my back.

And me, no, I don't want to.

And you go through things like what I went through

as far as being raped, the immediate thing

that happened was my dad called the bishop.

I went and made an appointment with my bishop.

I remember telling his bishop,

hey, he's done this to me.

I went to the bishop and I said,

this happened to me. I didn't pursue it.

It wasn't my fault, but it happened to me.

My bishop was probably the closest,

one of the closest people to God in my mind,

and I trusted him.

- He first lectured me on the importance of modest dress

and standards and then counseled me

to hurry up and get married so I'd stop being

a temptation for the young men.

- Family members confessed abuse to their bishops,

and it was allowed to continue for years because the bishops

aren't required to report it.

The bishop believed him.

He never asked for my side of the story.

The bishop basically talked me out

of pressing charges.

- The church does not care about crime.

They're not reporting crime.

They're not concerned with local law enforcement.

They're concerned with their set of rules

and their church laws.

They're concerned about sin and compensation for sin.

And I think that is a scenario that allows predators

to hide in plain sight.

- As Mormons, we're taught that your bishop

is there to serve your temporal,

spiritual, emotional needs.

He can save your family. He can save your marriage.

He can protect your child.

He can use God's wisdom and God's help

to solve the problem.

I know when we had crises

in our home or with our family,

the first call was always to the bishop,

and he'll help us know what to do.

Men are allowed to ask you

any question they want to as they go around.

- My whole life, I assumed that the criminal authorities

were never involved because

nothing bad was ever happening.

I think that we are trained to just look the other way

because no one ever talks about it.

And if they do talk about it,

we tend to just not believe them.

I feel guilty that I was so naive,

and I feel repulsed that I cared

so little to look any further than what

my church leaders told me.

I just took everything they told me as fact.

Man's laws are nothing compared to God's laws.

The police aren't going to take as much action as my bishop is.

My bishop speaks for God.

He's going to keep me safe.

He's going to guide us through this.

He's going to make sure that we can,

you know, do this the right way.

So why are the bishops

not reporting crime to law enforcement?

When somebody is physically abused,

whether it's a child or a woman or anybody,

when a bishop hears that,

they have to call the bishops hotline.

So there's a hotline that only bishops have access to.

There's a church hotline

you call for pretty much anything.

- Call the helpline when you believe there has been abuse,

and you need to talk with someone

who can answer basic questions about this grievous problem.

- The helpline stands at the center of an elaborate system

to divert child sex abuse complaints

away from law enforcement, and instead send them

to attorneys for the church.

- They have lawyers on staff 24 hours

to kind of triage calls.

- Yeah, so the church's law firm,

the hotline would just basically give them advice,

but most of that advice

amounted to helping them bury it.

- Even if you have experience dealing with abuse issues,

to protect the child, yourself, and the church,

you must call the abuse helpline as often as needed.

- Now what we're going to do is we're going to

read the protocol for abuse helpline calls

that is not public information,

that is not shared with all church members,

and I think it's scandalous.

The first question is,

did the abuse happen on church property?

Question number two, does your call concern

child sexual abuse which may have occurred

at a church-sponsored activity?

I mean, it's obvious that the focus is

on things that would be most likely

to make the church liable.

♪ ♪

I can wrap my mind around an institution or a corporation,

like, protecting its interests, but I cannot wrap my mind

around a church instituting a system

where you call lawyers

to help with your abuse and thinking that that is,

you know, what Jesus would do.

I'm pretty sure Jesus would not, you know,

have a law firm suffer the needs of his disciples.

And there's a big disconnect there for me.

♪ ♪

It should be when someone reports a crime,

you call the local authorities.

And then if you need spiritual help

or guidance after you've reported it to the authorities,

then call us.

The last person in that equation

should be a law firm that's there

to serve and protect the interests

and reputation of the church.

Someone needs to serve and protect

the interests of the children that are being passed around.

♪ ♪

- Nick Jones is a former bishop

in the Mormon Church.

Bishops never get up and step down

from their position, ever,

and they certainly don't do it during testimony meeting.

It was a really big deal.

- Hi, Nick. - Hi.

- How are you? - Good. How are you?

Doing well.

I just watched your video for the first time

of you at the pulpit. Yeah.

I had never seen it.

I know it went kind of viral,

but I thought it was just, like,

balls of steel, very, very cool.

And you rarely see that.

Well, thank you.

Just doing what you feel is the right thing to do.

Sometimes it looks like courage, right?

It looked like courage.

I think it took a lot of courage.

I mean, I have never spoken to a bishop

that has left and, like, spoken on the other side.

I mean, how long had you been a bishop when you left?

- Two and a half years. - Two and a half years.

Two and a half years.

I saw things that I just was like,

this is happening. What?

You know, eye opening on a number of levels.

Because when you're a bishop, you see it all.

You see the inner workings of it all.

And, man, it just didn't sit well with me.

I was a bishop for three weeks.

Like, my third Sunday, a 17-year-old girl

came to me who just had sex, like, the night before.

- Oh, my God. - And she just felt terrible.

And she's just bawling.

And then she asked me this question

that just triggered me.

She says, well, don't you need to know the details?

Come to find out, the previous bishop

is asking details. Did he orgasm?

Did you orgasm? You know?

That made my stomach sick.

But she looked at me like, you don't need to know?

And I'm like, no, I don't want to know.

- When I look back at my childhood,

I got called in when I was a teenager all the time

because my bishop kept having this spiritual impression

that I was masturbating,

and he just wanted to make sure I wasn't.

I mean, even though I was in a closed room

with a 50-year-old man who was my dad's best friend

directly asking me about masturbating,

I made a choice right then and there

to not feel weird about it and not make him creepy

because that's the last thing I wanted is

to feel that way about my bishop.

I didn't want to be critical of him either.

I knew that wasn't allowed at all.

He's our bishop.

You know, you didn't ask to be put in that position.

I'm assuming you got zero training in that position.

Zero.

I mean, I'm shooting from the hip.

- I've never done this before. - No idea what to say.

- I've never had a 17-year-old in my life

and how to deal with that.

The system is set up to give ordinary men great power

with zero training.

So your dentist pays his tithing,

shows up to church, has well-behaved kids,

and, all of a sudden, he finds himself

bishop of a ward.

And he's just a dentist, and now he's dealing

with sex abuse and crime.

And he has zero training, zero instruction,

except a hotline to call.

So when you were a bishop, did you have access

to, like, the helpline for sex abuse?

- Or what was that? - Yeah, the helpline.

It's crazy.

I had a guy in the ward

whose ex-wife called me saying,

my ex-husband is a pedophile, and he's in your ward.

And I had an email from his daughter telling

of all the abuse he did.

I ended up calling the hotline and I asked them,

- I said, look, what do I do? - Well, yeah.

- I talked to the Kirton McConkie law firm.

- Kirton and McConkie is a renowned law firm

in Salt Lake City.

I happen to know it on a personal level

because one of the arms of Kirton and McConkie

is dedicated to, like, policing and protecting

the word Mormon and the trademarks

of the Mormon Church.

So when I tried to sell sweatshirts

and mugs with the word Mormon on it, you know,

they swooped in and sued me.

- I talked to McConkie maybe three or four times,

plus text messages, and he basically said, bishop,

you're pushing your limits now.

You cannot do anything unless you have proof

of abuse and it's coming from somebody

who you have stewardship over.

Well, his daughter lived in Texas,

and she was grown at this time.

So unless the daughter actually filed a report,

I couldn't do anything.

This is just a guy who's just a bad guy,

and the church basically just said, no,

you can't do anything about it.

- It's not right. - It's wrong.

It finally got to the point where

I just couldn't do it anymore.

A convicted pedophile in my ward.

His wife died of COVID when she had her fourth baby,

a girl. Four girls.

And she's dead, and he lives with four girls.

Served seven years in prison.

And he calls me at 1:00 in the morning,

says he wants to throw his baby out the window

because he can't take the crying anymore.

What did you do?

- Put on my suit and went to his house.

- Did what bishops do. - Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, that's what we do.

You know, when we're in, we're in.

- Did you give him a blessing? - Of course.

Gave him a blessing.

Gave him the best advice I knew how to give him.

Well, yeah.

- I mean, it still haunts me- still haunts me to this day.

He's on FLOODLIT now.

And what's the other guy who raped his daughter?

Stake presidency member.

And they're on there.

I put them both on there.

So that's like a pedophile list within the church?

- 100%. Yeah.

Members in the church who have been convicted

of forms of pedophilia, whether it's child pornography

or actually acts of sexual abuse.

Wow.

When Nick first mentioned FLOODLIT on our call,

I thought it was some program that the church had instituted

in order to keep track of sexual predators

within the church and to keep their members safe.

And I thought, wow, how progressive.

Oh, so this is not run by the church.

367 times LDS officials allegedly hid abuse.

Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.

I'm only through, like, the As.

I'm not even- there's so many.

I didn't have any idea that abuse

was so prevalent in the church.

I heard about stories,

but never in numbers like this.

This guy was inseminating virgins with his sperm.

I mean, what the fuck?

And it got dismissed with prejudice in 2021.

He admitted to it.

He admitted to it, and it got dismissed.

A lawsuit filed by multiple families accusing

the church of covering up sexual abuse.

- Yeah, these families claim the LDS church leaders

knew that one of its own members was abusing children

but did nothing to report the crime.

- This church knew that these girls

were being sexually abused and the subject

of pornographic videos.

The Mormon church did nothing to stop the rapes. Nothing.

- Was well known within the church

that Paul Adams was abusing his children

and referred to this abuse as Paul Adams misbehaving.

These bishops were told

to keep this a secret for seven years.

- Family babysitter Michael Jensen

sexually abused her four and six-year-old boys

for two months back in 2008.

- How do you forgive something like that?

I don't think that I'll ever be able to forgive him.

- Five other families and nine children

are suing the LDS church.

Their attorneys argue LDS church members

actively covered up the abuse,

which continued for over five years.

- This Mormon church tried to say

that the church had a religious right

to conceal sex abuse of children they knew about

and children they cared for.

- Woman sexually abused for years by her father

when she was a little girl is now suing the Church

of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

- She was told, along with her mother,

not to disclose, not to report it.

How is it right that so many people knew what was happening

and just let it happen?

- It's almost like they cover up sex abusers,

and the system functions to cover up crime.

♪ ♪

- There was never a time that I remember not being abused.

My earliest memories are of abuse.

They reinforced to you as the victim and child

a code of silence to protect him.

- Oh, absolutely. - No one called the police?

Mm-mm.

And I feel sad that I was part

of the problem for so long.

And I guess I know how devout I was

and what it would have taken for someone

to make me think or feel differently.

And I know deep down that that's what we're up against.

And I'm scared that I'm not enough.