In a time of heightened attention to sexual abuse in the Mormon community, leaders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints delivered a $50,000 donation to the Children’s Justice Center, a state run organization that helps victims of child abuse.
Five top LDS Church leaders were present to deliver the donation at the Salt Lake office of the Children’s Justice Center, all of them women.
After presenting a check, the leaders made themselves available for comment.
Sister Jean B. Bingham is the Relief Society General President, the church’s organization for adult women. She said addressing child abuse is a top priority for her and that female leaders are uniquely equipped to discuss abuse.
“We’ve all had that experience as a woman, having to be careful about where we are and who we are with,” Bingham said.
Earlier this year, the LDS Church updated its abuse guidelines in response to a number of accounts of local Mormon leaders failing to protect victims of abuse.
Bingham said that because many female leaders are also mothers, like herself, they can be uniquely attuned to what abused children may be going through.
“We may have a little bit better feeling of what a child needs for […]
Near as I can tell from the documents offered, there are six cases, not seven (the seventh is a case of battery of and on an adult that clearly resulted in a conviction). Another involved a church leader, but not in a church setting, and may have been a false accusation. A further one involved a non-Mormon perpetrator at Scout camp (I remember this case from the news), and only indirectly involves the Church (presumably it was an LDS Scout troop). Two of the other cases were pending decisions. One case involved events from nearly 40 years ago. Only one of these cases seems extreme enough to be outraged over. If this is the available evidence, then it isn’t even a blip on the radar compared the Catholic Church’s problems. Sadly, here in Utah the child abuse and child sexual abuse problem is far more strongly associated with the parental drug abuse epidemic, as my CASA volunteer wife has discovered in her three years helping children in the program.
Thanks for this. As I said I got this from a Mormon woman who sent me a story by local media, so I assume some on the news staff were also Mormons. Then I came across the Sam Young story, the Mormon bishop with such strong views on this issue. I appreciate your fleshing this story out a bit, and am not surprised at what your wife has discovered.
For what it is worth another Mormon reader, this morning, a man this time, sent me an email about Mormon specific porn, something called Mormongirlz. I haven’t had time to check it out, so no idea what that is. I have several hundred readers in Utah, some of whom apparently are Mormons.
This is not something to which I am paying a great deal of attention, but it is on my radar now thanks to Mormon readers.