Summary
Jennifer Roach shares survey data as well as her insight as both a mental health provider and a clergy sexual abuse survivor, on the advantages and concerns of bishops’ youth interviews.
This talk was given at the 2020 FAIR Annual Conference on August 7, 2020.
Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she was an ordained minister in the Anglican Church.
Transcript
Introducing Jennifer Roach
Scott: Our next speaker is Jennifer Roach. She earned a Master of Divinity from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she was an ordained minister in the Anglican Church. With that, I’ll turn the time over to Jennifer Roach.
Jennifer: Thank you, Scott, for that kind introduction. My name is Jennifer Roach, and I am a mental health therapist from Seattle, Washington. I’m a new member of this Church; I was baptized about 18 months ago. Prior to that, I was ordained as an Anglican minister. I gave up my ordination the day before my baptism. I have two loves: one is theology, and one is psychology. I love seeing how those two interact, how theological beliefs form practices, and how those practices impact the mental health of individuals. So today, I’m coming to talk about the subject of youth bishop interviews and some of the nervousness that surrounds those when it comes to the possibility of sexual abuse.
Now, before I really started working on this topic, on this talk, I spent two weeks reading as many of the stories as I could find of people who have been through bishop interviews and it hasn’t gone well for them. So, I don’t come to this unaware of the pain that is in this subject for some people. And I just want you to know that upfront; I have that in my heart as we go. So, we will split our time up in this way: first, I have some words of introduction about sexual abuse in a faith context and what its impact is. I have some new original research to present, as well as four reasons why I believe youth bishop interviews are a positive factor, they’re a protective factor for kids, or at least some kids. I have some recommendations, and then I’d be delighted to take your questions.
Clergy Sexual Misconduct and Abuse–Amy’s Story
So, we start by talking about clergy sexual misconduct and clergy sexual abuse.
This is Amy Simple McPherson. Amy Simple McPherson was born in 1890 in Ontario, Canada, and she converts to Pentecostal Christianity in 1907, part of the Azusa Street revivals that were sweeping North America at that time. Shortly after, she’s married, and she and her husband go to China to become Christian missionaries. Amy falls in love with the work. She realizes that she knows how to draw a crowd and she knows how to keep their attention. She’s very good at preaching. She’s a bit of a novelty; she’s this young, pretty, white woman working in China, and she plays up the novelty to the hilt. She’s very dramatic, she’s very animated, and people love her, and she loves the work. If you think maybe of a mix of like Billy Graham and Kim Kardashian, that’s Amy.
So, they’re in China, her and her husband, and he dies of dysentery. At that time, there were a lot of young women working in China as missionaries; they were either married or single. There wasn’t really a social script for a young widow to stay, so there was no possibility for her to stay in China unaccompanied, even though she was good at the work and really liked it. So, she returns back home. She’s living in Los Angeles at this time. She marries, and the couple has a few children, but Amy still has that kind of evangelical itch in her. She really wants to do the work.
A Plan
So, she hatches a plan. She decides she is going to be the first woman to drive across the United States unaccompanied. And it’s actually in 1918, during the flu pandemic, that she does this. She buys a Packard convertible; you can see it pictured there. She calls it the Gospel Car. She hand paints scripture verses and gospel messages on the side of this car. And her plan is she’s going to drive across the U.S. holding talks about her experience of being the first woman to complete this feat. But really, it’s just an attention-getting device. What she really wants to do is give gospel presentations. And so she does, and people love her, and she loves it.
She reaches the East Coast; she drives back home to Los Angeles. She and her husband and their children try to settle into a suburban, expected life, and Amy just cannot settle. So, she hatches a new plan. Her new plan is that she’s going to become the first woman to obtain a radio broadcast license. And she does. She actually pioneers the genre of religious radio broadcasting, the pattern which is still somewhat followed today; it’s Amy who laid that pattern down.
Well, the radio show turns into a Church. The Church turns into an entire denomination of Churches; they’re called the Four Square denomination. They still exist today, 8.8 million people in 146 countries. They do remarkable charity work, and they love Jesus. Few women before or since have accomplished what Amy has accomplished in the religious world. And at this time in her life, she is greatly loved in Los Angeles where she lives.
Amy’s Disappearance
And then one day, Amy disappears. This is May 18, 1926. This is a picture of May 18, 1926, the day it’s Ocean Park Beach in Southern California, you might know it better as Venice Beach. You can see in the background that’s the Santa Monica Pier; it had been built ten years earlier. And so what happens is Amy goes to the beach, and a few hours later, nobody can find her. And her friends search for her and can’t find her.
They gather a larger search party which is pictured here; two people actually die in the waves searching for her that day, and her body is not recovered. So, the search goes on for about two weeks. All this time the church, her denomination, they’re putting out statements about her being presumed drowned, and everyone in Los Angeles knows who she is and everyone is aware that she’s missing.
Well, two weeks go by, her body is not recovered, a local newspaper reporter starts to get a little bit suspicious, and he starts printing articles in the paper pointing out some of the inconsistencies in the story that her church is putting out. And as the story unfolds, Amy wasn’t drowned at all; she faked her own death. She and a married man ran away together, got a hotel room in Carmel, California, and hid out for five weeks.
Misconduct & Abuse in Every Church
As reporters kept asking questions, kept printing things in the newspaper, the couple realized this plan could not last forever. So, they make a new play. Amy is a woman of many plans; you make a new plan. He drives her just across the border in Mexico and lets her out about a mile outside of town. The plan is Amy’s going to walk into town, find the first person that she meets, and explain to them that she got kidnapped and has been held in the Mexican desert these five weeks and she finally got to break free and here she is.
She returns to Los Angeles with a hero’s welcome, but it does not take long for the story to fall apart, and life and faith were never the same for Amy or her husband, the man she had an affair with, his wife, their children, her church, or the entire denomination that she led. It actually takes that denomination many decades to recover from the damage that Amy does, and it speaks to their resilience and the light of the gospel that they have available to them that they were able to do so and are still in existence today.
So why do I tell you this story? Well, if the ending was a surprise to you, it’s probably only because of the time period or because of Amy’s gender. We don’t tend to think of women being the ones committing clergy sexual misconduct, but the story illustrates a point, and the point is abuse happens, misconduct happens in every church, no matter how unexpected it is. And today’s stories go quite a bit further than the story of Amy.
Current News Stories of Clergy Sexual Abuse
Stories that we have been hearing about in the news that involve leaders and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and these stories prompt a wide variety of responses; it’s a very delicate and troubling issue. And because those local leaders have sometimes been bishops, it has given some cause to be skeptical about what happens in bishop interviews and should a bishop be spending time alone with young people, especially. People who are concerned about the potential for abuse in these interviews are right to be asking the questions. They’re logical questions, and the consequences of clergy sexual abuse are serious.
And this is the movie Spotlight, which if you have not seen and you care about the issue of clergy sexual abuse, it is required viewing. True story about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. It is not rated PG, and for very good reasons; it deals with very disturbing content. At one point in the movie, one of the characters who has been abused by a priest tries to articulate what it is like to be on the receiving end of abuse from somebody that represents God to you. So, I’m going to read you the quote, though I have cleaned up the language a little bit for this audience.
Spiritual Abuse
He says,
When a priest pays attention to you, it’s a big deal. He asks you to collect the hymnals or take out the trash, and you feel special; it’s like God is asking you for help. So maybe it’s a little weird when he tells you a dirty joke, but now you’ve got a secret together so you go along. And then he shows you a dirty picture and you go along. And you go along and you go along and you go along until one day he asks you for a sexual favor, and you go along with that too because you feel trapped because he’s groomed you, and how do you say no to God, right?
See, it’s important to understand this is not just physical abuse; it’s spiritual abuse too. And when a priest does this to you, he robs you of your faith. So you reach for the bottle or the needle, and when those don’t work, you jump off a bridge. That’s why we call ourselves survivors.”
And certainly, it’s not just the Catholic Church; it’s our Church too, right? And full disclosure, it happened to me as well.
You could read all about it if you wanted; it was on the front page of my hometown newspaper, The Modesto Bee, along with many other news outlets. I grew up outside of the Latter-day Saint Church, and in the Church where I grew up, one pastor after another sexually abused teenagers. So, not only do I know the prevalence of abuse and the damage that it does as a mental health therapist, I know it in my own life, in my own body, in the lives of 20 of my peers.
Research on LDS Youth Bishop Interviews
So, knowing that, my purpose here today is to talk to you about youth bishop interviews. You might assume that I’m going to tell you that they’re terrible, that they’re wrong, that they’re bad, and that they all should stop. Not quite. I know people who hold this belief, and I know and love and respect them, and I understand why they hold it. I don’t share it, and I’m going to explain to you why.
First, we’re going to look at some new original research that has been done.
687 adults were surveyed for the Uplift Bishop Youth Interview Study. If you’re unfamiliar with Uplift, they are an online discussion group, probably a similar audience to what the FairMormon audience is; they’re people who are trying to remain faithful, but they’ve got some questions. There’d be some significant overlap, there’d also be some significant differences in those two audiences, but they’re not that much different than perhaps those who are listening today. Uplift collected this data over a 10-month period in 2018 and 2019. I was not involved in the data collection, but they have been kind enough to let me use this for my presentation.
So, 687 adults; not every adult was asked every question, and not every question that’s asked gets responded to. So we don’t always have 687 responses. I wish that we did. So, who is in this dataset?
The Age Factor
Well, if we start with age, 50% of them are between the ages 35 and 55. 75% of them are aged 35 and older, which means most people in this data are at least 17 years removed from their own experience of being interviewed by a bishop. But that 50% that’s making up ages 35 to 55, presumably those are the people who are raising teenagers and are having to rethink these issues.
When I received this data, the first statistical test that I ran was “How does age impact how they’re seeing this issue?” I thought for sure the older people were going to tend a little bit more conservative and not want to see change, and the younger people were going to tend a little bit more willing or eager to see change. Age is not a factor at all in this survey. Could not have surprised me more. Gender was not asked in this survey, I wish that it had been. It might prove to be helpful, although I thought age was going to be helpful, and it was not.
Faithfulness Factor
And so, how do these people describe themselves and their relationship to faith?
Well, 70% of them call themselves active believing members. They were not given a definition of what that means, and the assumption was the categories were self-explanatory. About 9.5 percent are less active believing, 8.5 percent are active non-believing, about 7 percent are less active non-believing, and 5 percent were former members. That’s sort of how that breaks down.
So, we start by looking at people’s experience with bishop interviews. Just a note, in our Church, change does not happen because of survey data, and this is not intended to be a petition for change. This is a snapshot of what people are feeling and thinking about this issue. So, the question is, should interviews continue as they have done, including asking questions of chastity? 56% of our respondents say yes. This number is made up of just over half of the participants describing themselves as believing in some way; they’re either believing active or believing less active. The remaining 44%, they don’t really possess any belief, and they still believe that interviews should continue and continue asking about chastity.
Responses
Here are some comments from some of the respondents: “As a convert at age 16, my bishop interviews were absolutely invaluable to help me repent of sexual habits.” Another says, “As a youth, I made decisions based on knowing I would be held accountable.” A third, “When I was young, I was so afraid to share my problems. In a way, I wanted the bishop to ask me more specific questions. I felt so confused about what I was doing and if it was moral or not, but I didn’t know how to talk about it, and apparently, nobody else did either because they never brought it up.”
So, in this category, this 54% of people people who say, “Yeah, these interviewers are good, and they should continue,” you do see a lot of conflict, a lot of comments from people saying it was really hard or it was really embarrassing, but I can see the good in it now.
And this may be the most interesting chart of all when you compare it to our next one.
These are people who say the interviews should either not continue or not contain questions about chastity, made up of 90% active believing members and only 10% combined from every other category. Let me say it a different way: people who do not have a testimony of the restored gospel are more likely in this dataset to be in the 56% that say interviews should continue, than our active believing members. That should give us some serious pause. There’s a lot to consider here.
What are the Numbers
So, we’re looking at 90 percent of 44 percent of 687. What are we actually talking about here? It’s 271 people. Not exactly, not everyone answered every question, but if you extrapolated it out, that’s what you would get. It’s 39% of the total population that was surveyed. How that relates to the general population of the Church, I have no way of answering that question. I think it’s a good question, I don’t have any way to get at that data. Remember, this is the Uplift survey, this is surveying people who self-identify as folks who have questions. I think they’re an ideal group to talk about this issue with because you’re probably going to get the leading edge of critical thinking on it.
So, my interpretation of the 44%: these are good people, they want their Church to be stronger and better. They are not detractors, they’re not trying to tear the Church down, but they’re worried and they don’t know what to think necessarily about these bishop interviews. They don’t unintentionally want to put their kids in danger, they love their children and they love their Church. I read them as good-hearted people. My concern is that they might not be seeing some unintended consequences that would come if teens were no longer allowed access to these interviews.
Four Reasons For Bishop’s Interviews
So, I’m going to pause reporting to you on research and give you my four reasons why I think bishop interviews should actually continue.
Developmental Level
Number one: it’s appropriate for a teenager’s developmental level to be talking about this stuff. They are dealing with these issues already, we are not introducing these issues to them, they already are dealing with them. Most people would agree with that statement.
So, the question becomes, does the conversation have to be with someone outside of their own family? And then, if that answer is yes, does it have to be with a bishop? And those are kind of the main sticking points here. And there’s some research that helps us out, not from the Uplift data, but from a social psychologist, James L. Furrow. He’s one of the founders of Emotionally Focused Therapy, and he did some research on decision-making between religious and non-religious teenagers, and how teenagers learn to make good decisions. And so, he asks, does it make a difference if youth can speak with a non-parental figure about sensitive issues such as sexuality? His research says a resounding yes. For the best outcomes, youth actually need three non-parental adults who can help them contextualize their religious worldview into their lives.
This, in no way, downplays the role of mom and dad and the importance of the family, it just recognizes that during adolescence, students are starting to sort of look up, look around the world, and they need to know that it’s not just their family who’s seeking to live out these principles, but other adults who know and care about them are doing it too. It’s no longer enough just to live out the faith of mom and dad.
What Matters to Kids
So, we see from Furrow, at least three non-parental adults. But does it have to be a bishop? It’s a fantastic question, and to be fair, Furrow is not looking at the Latter-day Saint context, he’s looking at a broad mainstream Christian context. But his research would say yes, best outcome, it has to be someone who’s in the bishopric. And here’s why: he says young people have to know that their issues are important to the highest level of leadership. He points out that teenagers have an intuitive sense about the issues that are important to their leaders and the issues that are not, and it matters to them that their top leaders care about their own specific concerns.
So, why should it matter to a full-grown man called into the bishopric that some kid in his ward is struggling with sexualized thoughts or actions? Well, according to Furrow’s research, it matters quite a lot to that kid. The kid will have a better outcome if he knows the highest level of leader in his faith community actually cares about the thoughts of a teenage kid. The cynical view here is, of course, that a middle-aged man would only care about teenage struggles if it were for his own gratification, but cynical is easy, and it misses some deeper undertows.
Expectations and Support
So, a common battle cry that you will hear in discussions from people who are against these bishop interviews is that they really act as grooming. And grooming is a process through which an adult readies a teenager to receive sexual abuse. But intent is required. Grooming is not any conversation about sex, it has to have an underlying intent to move toward abuse. Just asking a teenager about sexuality is not grooming. If it were, every time a parent or a therapist or a medical doctor has a conversation with a teenager about sex, it would be grooming, and clearly, it is not.
Furrow goes on to say the best outcomes for teenagers also happen when two other things are present: one, they are held to high expectations, as long as those expectations are reasonable, and two, they’re supported in telling the truth, even when it’s difficult. It doesn’t have to be consequence-free, but the teen has to feel like they’re loved and known and dealt with without shame. These things are true in families, of course, and the best version of this happens in families. We would never say that that does not matter, but it matters in their faith context too, and in their teen years, it’s increasingly so.
Peers Are Getting This Support
Second reason why I think these interviews are helpful is, their peers are getting this kind of support.
One of the things you will hear people say, especially in online discussions about this, is that Latter-day Saints are the only Church where teenagers are expected to sit and talk about sexuality, and that’s just complete nonsense. I’ll explain why that’s true in a minute. The situation is sort of complicated because the non-Latter-day Saint Church is not a monolithic thing. You could break it down a million ways, but I’ll break it down Catholic and Protestant.
In the Catholic Church, teenagers are absolutely expected to sit in private and have conversations about sexuality. They call this confession, and it happens on a far more regular basis than it does for Latter-day Saint teens. It’s essentially analogous to what’s happening; those conversations are happening in private. Anyone who tells you we’re the only people who do this, they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Protestant teens have a bit of a hybrid situation. On the one hand, they are not generally allowed access to the top leadership in their Church, especially the girls, so they miss out on this element that Furrow is talking about where they get the benefit of knowing that the top leaders care about what’s going on with them. In Protestant Churches, there’s no expectation that their top leadership, their pastors, have any concern about their day-to-day struggles.
Protestants
Some quotes from a group of Protestant teenage girls: One girl says, “The pastor of my Church would have no idea who I am. He might know my parents, but he wouldn’t know me if I ran into him in public.” Another says, “Well, I guess I would talk to him, meaning the pastor, but doesn’t he have better things to do than to talk to a high school sophomore?“
So, Protestant teens aren’t getting the benefit of getting the conversations at the top level, but they absolutely are having these conversations with the sort of junior level of leadership that is over them, and it often happens without parental knowledge or permission. In one non-scientific survey of Protestant leaders, the general consensus, over 80 percent, was that to refuse to talk about issues of chastity or sexuality with kids is to abandon them and to abdicate the responsibility over these kids that are in their care.
Most of them, 60%, said they were entirely comfortable having these conversations, with one provision, and that provision is that the kid is allowed some privacy and that there are enough safeguards in place that the adult is not going to be accused of doing something, meaning there’s an open door, there’s something like that. So every Church is struggling through this. We are not the only Church who’s dealing with this issue, by a long shot. When the anti-bishop interview folks say that, they really just have no idea what they’re talking about.
Differentiation From Parents
Reason number three: It allows for appropriate differentiation from their parents. The normal task of adolescence is that you have to go from being completely dependent on your parents to eventually becoming this fully independent adult in your own right, and there’s a careful dance throughout adolescence of closeness and independence. This is why parents and teenagers fight, right? But the adolescent must differentiate from their parents, and the religious adolescent must learn to grow from their childhood faith that is based in great part on their parents’ faith, to one where they have their own direct relationship with their religion or Church. And youth interviews, though not intentionally, are one way in which that happens.
In childhood up to around age nine, the goal is really for parents to have a strong attachment to their kids, right? Everything we know about developmental psychology says kids are not going to progress through that time of their life without a strong attachment, and that changes around age 12, where what kids really need is a secure detachment, not an abandonment, not by any means, but a time when a child can learn to act on their own while still having their parent as a safety net. The holding on is easier than the letting go. I’m the mother of a 19-year-old, I can attest to that. But if you want your teens to grow up into being healthy individuals, you have to let go.
High Expectation
What does it mean for a teenager in our Church to grow into being a fully adult member? Well, adult members in our Church who would like the full benefits of being involved are expected to give account to their bishop on certain behavioral markers, including issues of chastity, on a regular basis. This is a high-expectation religion, and teenagers should be allowed to experiment with that reality as soon as it’s appropriate, meaning as soon as there’s something to talk about. Because if they are to stay in this Church, that will be their reality: high expectations. So, a youth interview with a bishop gives them a chance to experience this and play with it while still having the safety net of their parents.
Disclosure of Abuse
Fourth reason why I think the interviews are good: disclosure of abuse. So, most sexual abuse victims do not disclose their abuse in childhood or in their adolescence. The average age of disclosure is 52. That’s first disclosure. That statistics comes from the organization called Child USA, the national think tank on child protection. So, bishops are probably not going to have a kid walk into their office, plop down, and say, “Here’s what’s going on with me.” When adolescents do disclose, 75% of the time it’s accidental. They didn’t actually mean to do it, but what happens is they say something that doesn’t quite add up to the adult that they’re speaking with. So, while bishops are not directly asking about abuse, asking about chastity is close enough that some kids are going to accidentally disclose.
But when bishops are so afraid of asking the next question or asking any probing questions because they don’t want to be seen as abusers, it’s very hard for that kid to disclose. I know we feel weird about it, right? About bishops, middle-aged men alone in a room with teenagers, asking a probing question about something a kid just said on such a sensitive area. I get it. But the asking of the questions themselves is not abuse. In the rare situation when a teenager does decide to disclose on purpose, it’s almost always done in a very tentative way. They’ll put a little piece of information out there, and they’ll wait to see what your reaction is. Usually, that piece of information is something small enough that they could take it back if they needed to.
My Experience
This was my experience, actually. I made a decision that I wanted to disclose about my sexual abuse. I had read the book Macbeth in school, and Macbeth is about a lot of things, but one of them is about the danger of keeping secrets and how it destroys you from the inside out. And I was incredibly moved by that, and I decided I wanted to disclose. But even me, who was in this kind of unusual situation of deciding to do it, I did it in the most teenage way possible. And that is, I identified a leader in my church at the time, a man who was working with the youth, and I gave him one little piece of information to see what he did with it. And it was a test. And he picked up that little piece of information and asked some follow-up questions. And it did not happen all at once. It actually, I think, took about five or six hour-long conversations before I had breadcrumbed enough information that the only conclusion he could come to was that I had been sexually abused.
My Advice to Bishops
So, my word of advice to bishops is that if a kid gives you a piece of information that makes you suspicious or that doesn’t quite make sense, follow up on it. Ask the next question. You will run the risk of asking too far. You will run the risk of that kid or his parents being angry at you for asking questions. They might hate you for it. You will run the risk of someone thinking that you’re only asking questions for your own titillation. You might be incredibly misunderstood and blamed, and I am sorry for that reality. It is the risk you took when you became a leader. And as a former teenager who was in the midst of abuse, I implore you: If a kid gives you some information in the chastity part of the interview that doesn’t make sense or that seems like a breadcrumb, follow up, ask the next question.
One note here: What often comes up in the conversation with people who are against these interviews is they will say, “Well, bishops aren’t therapists. How will they even know what to do with that information?” And it’s true, bishops are not therapists. I’m a therapist. I know exactly what therapists can do, and they don’t do what bishops do. Our roles are very different. Let your bishop off the hook for not being a therapist and let him be a bishop.
More From the Survey
Back to our Uplift data, the next most significant question that comes up is not did something inappropriate ever happen in a bishop’s interview, because the answer is yes, we already know that, you can go read all the stories. The question becomes how often are abusive things happening in interviews, and that turns out to be an extraordinarily complex question to gather data on. It’s very hard to nail this down.
In our data, it’s very clear that there is a large percentage of people who believe that asking the chastity question word for word as it is written is, in and of itself, sexual abuse. I do not believe that it is. When we look at the data, and people seem to be saying that, we have to consider one of two possibilities. One is that in their own bishop interviews or maybe with their children, they were still so in their innocence that even asking, “Do you obey the law of chastity?” was a scandalizing question to them. That’s one possibility. The other possibility is that they have a belief that talking to teenagers at all about chastity should be off limits, no matter what the lived experience of that teenager is.
One person says, “We should provide privacy on this issue and don’t believe it is something the Church should be speaking into.” The critique of that is, of course, something like, “Even if teenagers are struggling through issues related to sexuality, we should abandon them and leave them to struggle alone. The Church doesn’t care.” And clearly, that is not the message that we want to send.
Understanding the Data
So, in our data, when we just asked the question, “Has anything inappropriate ever happened to you in a bishop’s interview?” the number is actually extraordinarily high, way beyond what you would expect. So, we had to control for the people who mean they were asked the chastity question word for word and they found that offensive. Once you take that group out, you get a number, and I’m going to tell you what that number is and run the risk that you will misunderstand and that this number will get repeated as something that it is not. It comes with a lot of caveats.
So, the number of people who say they were asked something inappropriate in a bishop’s interview, and they did not mean the chastity question word for word, in our data, three percent. That number has a lot of questions attached to it. What we don’t know about that three percent is: were those just awkwardly worded questions that the bishop was kind of probing? He had no intent on grooming, had no intent on abusing; he’s just trying to figure out what the lay of the land is. Or was it a bishop just trying to find out the extent of what a teen is even talking about because the teen is apprehensive to spell it all out for him, so he has to find the contours of the edge and goes too far. It also could have been a bishop who was looking for an accidental abuse disclosure and asks a question that the kid is offended by because abuse is not happening.
The Starting Point
So when I say three percent, that is a starting point. There’s no way in this data to analyze it in any way that gets some of those answers removed. Further research would be needed to figure out what that number is. And I want to be extraordinarily clear, this number does not mean three percent of interviews are abusive. It does not mean three percent of bishops are abusers. It does not mean three percent of Latter-day Saint kids have been abused in bishop interviews. It means there’s three percent of interviews that probably should be looked at to see what actually was happening here. They say that good research just provides more questions, and there you go.
Possible Changes
So, in the survey data, some potential changes were offered. Again, I don’t offer these as “here’s what we should do.” I will give you my thoughts, but just as a snapshot of what people are thinking.
Strict Guidelines
Number one: There should be very strict guidelines for what bishops are allowed to say. One commenter suggests the law of chastity should have a set definition the bishop reads from. He should not be allowed to say anything else. Any follow-up, and he’s excommunicated. It’s pretty harsh, but it’s also followed up by another commenter who observes “It’s really difficult to be a bishop and offer any advice that’s helpful without knowing the details, and sometimes you have to ask questions.” Fair enough, right?
The Church has been offering advice on this topic for ages. This is a pamphlet from 1981, where the Church offers two paragraphs. This pamphlet is called Counseling and Interviewing Guide for Bishops. They offer two relevant paragraphs here. I’m not going to read them. The first one basically says sometimes you’re gonna have to be specific because your interviewee might want to be vague. The other one essentially says and you need to be age appropriate about what you’re asking. The Uplift data actually touches on this a little bit when asked if respondents believe that it’s appropriate to ask more specific questions to seventeen-year-old young men preparing for their mission. Almost everyone says yes, of course, more detailed questions for them than maybe a 12-year-old.
Second Adult Present
So other suggestions that are offered, that there should be a second adult present. This is a common one, but like everything else on this topic, it’s pretty complicated. For people who believe the chastity question is in and of itself inappropriate, that does not solve their problem. One respondent says, “How could it be better to have two adults asking my daughter inappropriate things? It’s still abuse; it’s just being done by two people now, so it doesn’t really solve that problem.” But still, 64 percent of people say it might be a good idea, and the current Church Handbook absolutely allows for this.
But in our research, almost everyone agrees that having a parent there makes it a little bit more difficult for teenagers. 75% say a kid’s gonna be less likely to open up. One commenter says “No one wants their mom next to them if the bishop is going to ask you about sex.”
Another respondent put it this way, “The more people you put in that room, the more I’m gonna smile and feel the pressure to say the right things, even if they’re not true.” Just a note, the current handbook also says anyone, not just teenagers, anyone, may have a second adult with them in an interview at any time.
Only Use Law of Chastity Language
Another change that is offered is bishops should just ask, are you obeying the law of chastity? If the kid says, what’s the law of chastity? Bishops should end the interview, call in the parents, or phone up the parents and say, you need to explain to your kid what this means. This is a parent’s job, not a bishop’s job, and they end the interview there.
I admit that I see some wisdom in this, but the hole in it is pointed out by one commenter who says the problem is when the youth doesn’t understand what chastity is and you end the interview and call in the parents, tell them they need to instruct their youth on this subject, you’ve actually created more problems.
Now the youth feels embarrassed because they’re being forced to have a conversation with their parents about sex, and worse, this youth now has to explain to all his buddies why he can’t advance because the bishop wouldn’t let him. Now the other youth ask why and it opens up embarrassment even further than just having a simple conversation of pulling out the For the Strength of Youth book, read a few sections, re-ask the question, done and move on. My word of recommendation would be parents, if your child is preparing for their first bishop interview, please have a conversation with them about what the law of chastity entails.
Conclusion
Recommendations for Parents
In conclusion, I have some recommendations for both parents and bishops. Parents, the responsibility of raising these young people is squarely on your shoulders. The Church has empowered you the freedom to sit in on those interviews if you want to. They have specifically invited you to do so, but please consider that your teenager might need a few moments to say some things to their bishop that they’re not ready to say to you yet, and they might need a chance to develop their own relationship with their high expectation Church.
Recommendations for Bishops
Bishops. Jesus tells a story about the shepherd who leaves 99 sheep and goes out and looks for the one, and in our context today, the one in my thinking is the young person who might disclose abuse. If you are able to, maybe be brave, maybe hear what they have to say. But what Jesus doesn’t talk about in that story is that the 99 might get real mad about it and it puts you in an impossible situation. And there’s a lot of voices that will tell you that asking teenagers hard questions is equal to abuse, and it’s not. You might actually be saving their life.
As someone who was the one lost sheep, I beg of you, listen to the Spirit, and when a kid says something that doesn’t add up, have the courage to follow up the question, or if they give you a tiny breadcrumb of information, be willing to receive it in a way where they will be willing to tell you the next piece. Bishops, I do not envy you your job, but it might make a world of difference in the life of one lost or scared sheep. I thank you for your time and attention, and I would be delighted to answer questions.
Audience Q&A
Scott Gordon:
Welcome, thank you, thank you for that very interesting and enlightening talk. I really appreciate your time. I have a few questions here for you, of course. The first one is, How scientific was the Uplift study? Was it a self-selecting group? How were they invited to participate?
Jennifer Roach:
Yeah, absolutely a self-selecting group. It’s not in true experimental form, right? This is survey data, people who self-selected to take it. It leaves lots of room open for additional research. I hope that someone takes it to the next level, takes that challenge up.
Scott Gordon:
Okay, How significant is confidentiality and confession to youth, and how likely is it for youth to open up to parents or friends if there’s no confidentiality that’s suggested.
Jennifer Roach:
Yeah, that’s a subjective question. I think it depends upon the youth. I think there’s some youth who would be very open if the bishop said, “Hey, we need to loop mom and dad in on this. This is an issue where you need some family support.” I think there’s plenty of youth who would be more than open to that, and I think there’s some that would not,who would say, “I’m not ready to talk to my mom about this yet,” and the bishop has to use his wisdom and how that’s going to go down.
Scott Gordon:
Yeah. So here’s another one: What are your thoughts on some of the suggestions to modify interviews such as putting a window on the bishop’s door or allowing a young women’s or young men’s president to be present?
Jennifer Roach:
Yeah, I think if a youth wants that, wants the young women or the young men’s president to be there, if that makes them feel more comfortable, absolutely. And you know, some of our data shows you put more people in that room and that kid is not talking. I do like one of the suggestions that comes up of girls being allowed to have their bishop interviews with their young women’s president and I admit I see some goodness in that, and for a while that’s actually kind of the position I landed on for a minute. But the research from James Furrow says kids need to know that the highest level leader that they can actually touch in their faith community, that that person actually cares about their issue, and the young women’s leader, the young men’s leader are extraordinary people, but they’re not the top leader of a congregation. Why not give kids the full benefit of being able to know that their concerns matter to that person who’s in the top spot?
Scott Gordon:
I appreciate what you say about breadcrumbs because when I was bishop, I had a situation, and looking back after it finally all came out, I was able to identify, “you’ve been trying to tell me this for a while, haven’t you?” Yeah, and, and I wasn’t picking up on it for a long time, and I finally did and we worked on things.
Jennifer Roach:
Yeah, most kids will not disclose as teenagers and when they do, almost always if it’s deliberate that’s how they do it, but most disclosure is actually accidental.
Scott Gordon:
Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Interesting question: What brought you to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?
Jennifer Roach:
That is too long of a story for right now. The short version is, I read the Book of Mormon and it ruined my life in all the best ways.
Scott Gordon:
Excellent. So in today’s fatherless America, might the absence of fathers in the home cause teens to seek out father figures in the form of male clergy with whom they then might develop a relationship of trust that gets them both into trouble?
Jennifer Roach:
For a long time research has been done trying to identify what are the common characteristics of abusers and most of that research comes to the conclusion that they’re from all walks of life, they’re from all characteristics, so most of the research now has shifted to what are the common characteristics of potential victims? Father outside of the home is absolutely one of them, right there, there’s just no question about that, that some kids are going to seek that out and when they meet with a Church leader who also has certain proclivities, that’s just a disaster waiting to happen.
Scott Roach:
As someone who teaches accounting, which most people think has absolutely nothing to do with social sciences, I always think of the fraud triangle where you have opportunity, you have pressure, and you have a rationalization, and it seems like that plays the same kind of role in this thing.
Jennifer Roach:
Yeah, absolutely. Most research on abusers says first-time abusers were not actually seeking that out. They didn’t wake up and say, “I’m gonna find a kid to abuse today.” It was just a perfect storm. They found a relationship with a kid where that worked and then they carry on their pattern.
Scott Gordon:
That makes sense. So to summarize, you are suggesting that bishops’ interviews asking questions about the law of chastity in an appropriate manner is a good thing to continue?
Jennifer Roach:
Yes.
Scott Gordon:
And that will help our youth transition through to adulthood?
Jennifer Roach:
Yeah, the people who say that asking the question itself is abusive, I don’t see that. I think it’s a protective factor for kids who were like me, kids who were actually being physically or sexually abused, to open up a private place.If I would have had in my context another Church leader who said, “hey once a year or once every six months we’re going to sit down and talk about some things in private,” I would have spilled, and I was never given an opportunity for anything like that. So yes, absolutely, I think it’s good and it’s a protective factor. I get why people are upset about it but I think you would throw out an awful lot of baby with the bath water.
Scott Gordon:
And I think that by having regular contact, the bishops develop their relationship first, so that when things come up, there can be some element of trust. Here I’m speaking from my own experience and you’re the speaker. I think that sexual abuse is a huge violation of trust in my mind, and so when you have that violation of trust, you have to have somebody else you trust. With that I thank you for attending and coming and speaking about this very difficult subject. Thank you very much.
Jennifer Roach:
Thank you for having me.
Endnotes & Summary
In her 2020 FAIR Conference address, Jennifer Roach—an abuse survivor and licensed therapist—offers a faith-informed perspective on responding to sexual abuse within Latter-day Saint communities. Drawing from psychological research, scripture, and lived experience, she explains how abuse impacts victims’ perceptions of God, trust, and spiritual identity. Roach challenges myths that hinder healing and affirms the Church’s doctrinal resources for fostering resilience. She urges members to avoid simplistic fixes or theological explanations for trauma and instead adopt a Christ-centered approach that includes listening, long-term support, and encouragement to reconnect with spiritual practices. Her talk provides both practical strategies for ministering to abuse survivors and a powerful witness of the Savior’s capacity to heal.
All Talks by This Speaker
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Talk Details
- Date Presented: August 2020
- Duration: 54:41 minutes
- Event/Conference: 2020 FAIR Annual Conference (FairMormon)
- Topics Covered: Sexual abuse, Abuse recovery, Trauma and faith, Healing through the Atonement, Clergy abuse, Trust and spiritual identity, Ministering to abuse survivors, Misapplied repentance, Shame and blame, Theodicy and suffering, Latter-day Saint theology, Long-term support, Psychological impact of abuse, Empathy in Church culture, Mental health and spirituality, Gospel-centered healing, Listening and validation, Doctrinal responses to trauma, Grace and restoration, Church culture and trauma care
Common Concerns Addressed
Bishop interviews are grooming or inherently abusive.
Roach distinguishes between grooming and respectful inquiry, citing clinical standards and intent.
LDS bishops are uniquely problematic.
Many Christian denominations conduct private youth interviews; LDS practice is not unusual.
Bishops aren’t qualified therapists.
Bishops don’t replace therapists; their role is pastoral, and their support complements parental and professional help.
Apologetic Focus
Protection through structured support
Value of spiritually aligned mentorship
Risks of abandoning private interviews for fear of misinterpretation
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