Unspoken Wounds: Child Sexual Abuse in the Mormon Church
⚠️ Content Disclaimer: This blog post is written from the perspective of a licensed mental health therapist who works directly with trauma survivors within high-demand religious systems. This post is not an attack on individual belief or faith. It is an attempt to shed light on the very real and often silenced trauma that has occurred within religious institutions. Attempts to minimize, debate, or invalidate the existence of CSA in these settings can be retraumatizing. Survivors deserve spaces to process their pain without being dismissed or gaslit. If this post challenges your current worldview, I encourage you to sit with that discomfort and approach it with curiosity rather than defensiveness. The purpose here is healing, not contention. If you do not resonate with this blog post, know that there are other people who do.
As a religious trauma therapist, I work with many adults who grew up Mormon and other high-demand religious environments, and are now unpacking deep, complex pain. These experiences cannot be fully captured by a single word or phrase. They often leave trauma wounds, spiritual betrayal, identity confusion, and decades of silence.
CSA in religious settings like the LDS Church can be especially damaging because of the added layers of spiritual authority and teachings that reinforce obedience, shame, and silence. These topics can be difficult to sit with with, whether you are a survivor, or if you are a member/ exmember trying to reckon with the presence of CSA in religious settings.
What Is Child Sexual Abuse?
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is not always what people imagine. While it can involve overt acts of physical violation, CSA also includes a wide range of behaviors that exploit or violate a child’s bodily autonomy, emotional safety, or sense of self. In religious environments like Mormonism, abuse is often wrapped in spiritual authority, fear, and shame. Then making it especially difficult to recognize or report.
CSA can include:
Physical contact: Any sexual touch involving a child, including fondling, penetration, or coerced activity.
Verbal abuse: Inappropriate sexual comments, questions, or threats directed at a child, even in “formal” settings like bishop interviews.
Emotional manipulation: Using guilt, fear, or religious language to control a child. This may include threats of divine punishment or using scripture to pressure silence.
Spiritual abuse: When faith or religious authority is weaponized to justify, excuse, or conceal abuse, such as being told forgiveness is more important than accountability.
Inappropriate Comments: Making comments about a child’s developing body. This can also include asking a teenager to share intimate details about their dating life, like in a “worthiness” bishop interview.
CSA is not only about what happened, it is about how it impacted the child’s ability to feel safe, seen, and in control of their own body and story. In high-demand religious systems, abuse is often woven into accepted practices and goes unnamed for years, sometimes decades.
Why CSA in Religious Organizations Like Mormonism Is Uniquely Harmful
Survivors often describe the abuse as just one part of a larger system that kept them stuck, silent, and ashamed. Some of the specific dynamics include:
Bishop interviews with children and teens: These private meetings, often between adult male bishops and minors, involve questions about sexual thoughts or behavior and have been widely criticized as inappropriate and retraumatizing.
Reporting handled internally: Abuse is typically reported to church leaders. Bishops (who are untrained in trauma and often not mandated reporters) may not recognize, minimize, dismiss, or fail to act. They are instructed to contact a church-run abuse hotline staffed by attorneys (rather than mental health providers), whose main concern is protecting the institution, rather than the victim.
Spiritual manipulation: Survivors may be told not to “gossip,” to forgive their abuser, or that talking about what happened will hurt the Church’s reputation.
Purity culture and victim-blaming: Teachings about modesty and sexual sin often lead survivors to believe they were responsible for what happened to them.
Generational Trauma in Mormonism
The harm does not start or stop with a single experience. It is often reinforced by beliefs and behaviors passed down through generations.
Generational trauma refers to the transmission of trauma responses, survival strategies, and belief systems from one generation to the next. These patterns are passed through family dynamics, unspoken rules, and institutional systems, even when the original trauma is not directly discussed. In Mormonism, generational trauma can show up from:
Historical legacies of polygamy: Early LDS polygamy shaped gender roles and family systems that emphasized secrecy, hierarchy, and obedience to male priesthood. Women were valued for submission and childbearing, while children learned that questioning authority was spiritually dangerous.
Early history of teenage brides: While child marriage, including polygamy, may have been normalized in some communities, it was deeply rooted in power imbalances. Girls often lacked the autonomy to give meaningful consent in polygamous marriages. These were often not equal relationships. This history contributes to a generational pattern in which adult–child power dynamics, particularly involving older men and teen girls, were normalized under the guise of faithfulness and divine authority. While there are modern members who would not condone these practices today, the legacy of minimizing consent and autonomy continues to ripple through LDS teachings about gender roles, obedience, and sexuality.
Obedience and perfectionism: Members are taught to “follow the prophet no matter what” and to “be perfect like Jesus,” leaving little room to question harmful behavior, even when it causes direct harm.
Silence and shame as survival: Families impacted by abuse, sexual repression, or fear of religious failure often suppress difficult truths. This creates a culture where harmful behavior is minimized, denied, or spiritualized.
How Abuse Becomes Normalized
When survivors share their stories, they often say, “I didn’t know it was abuse.” Some may not have been physically harmed, or possibly told by leaders and family that what happened was normal or deserved. In high-demand religious cultures, CSA is often normalized under layers of doctrine, purity culture, and spiritual hierarchy. This can include:
Power: The Church is a patriarchal system where male leaders hold ultimate authority over families, spirituality, and personal worthiness. Questioning them is often equated with questioning God.
Sexuality: Sexual development is heavily policed. Children are taught that sexual thoughts are sinful, masturbation is a serious transgression, and modesty is a moral duty. This sexual shame makes it difficult for victims to identify abuse, especially if it is subtle or spiritualized.
Obedience culture: Members are taught from a young age to obey Church authority, avoid contention, and defer to priesthood holders. This can train children to override gut instincts and remain quiet, even when something feels deeply wrong.
Spiritual power imbalances: These do not only occur when a leader is the abuser. They also happen when a bishop or priesthood holder mishandles a disclosure of abuse. Survivors are often spiritually gaslit, told to repent, or pressured to forgive. Because bishops are viewed as divinely appointed, survivors may hold what the leader says in high regard, feel spiritually unsafe, or believe that speaking up would be rebelling against God.
Body surveillance: While children do not wear Mormon garments (e.g. underwear worn by adult members of the Mormon Church who have been endorsed by local leadership as “worthy”), they are socialized from a young age to dress in ways that mimic garment coverage. Instead of allowing adolescents the autonomy to decide their own clothing preference, modesty teachings emphasize specified clothing directed by the church. For many, this ends up being a spiritual obligation that prepares them to “be worthy” of wearing garments as adults; which then creates a culture of body surveillance. Over time, this conditioning can erode bodily autonomy, making it harder for survivors to identify boundary violations, especially when those violations are minimized or spiritualized by trusted adults.
Lack of comprehensive sex education: The Church provides minimal, shame-based sex education. Children are rarely taught about consent, boundaries, or healthy sexuality; which leaves them unable to recognize abuse or lacking the language to describe it.
Purity interviews: Closed-door interviews between adult male bishops and minors about “chastity” are normalized and encouraged. Because of the setting, imbalance of power, and purity expectations, these meetings are often deeply inappropriate and traumatizing, especially when children don’t fully understand what they are being asked, or if the child does not understand their own bodily functions and development.
Untrained leaders handling disclosures: Bishops are not therapists or child welfare professionals. Yet they are often the first, and only, person to hear an abuse disclosure. Without proper training, they may minimize abuse, fail to report it, or prioritize Church image over child safety.
Forgiveness and repentance over safety: In LDS culture, there is pressure to forgive, even when the abuser has not taken accountability. Survivors are told to “move on,” while perpetrators are embraced if they express remorse. This prioritizes spiritual redemption over justice or survivor wellbeing.
Why Survivors Stay Silent
Silence is not a coincidence, it happens to be part of the system. Survivors often remain quiet because:
They fear damaging their family’s or the Church’s reputation
They were taught that questioning or “talking back” to leaders is sinful
They never received language, education, or safety to name what happened
When reporting abuse to church leaders they were directed to repent
They were told to forgive or forget before they even processed the trauma
They internalized the belief that they were the problem
As a result many survivors do not recognize or speak about their abuse until adulthood, if they do at all.
The Long-Term Impact
Even after leaving the Church, survivors often carry lasting trauma:
Religious trauma symptoms: Anxiety, intrusive memories, fear of authority, and spiritual distress
Body disconnection: Shame around sexuality, discomfort in their bodies, and confusion around consent or autonomy
Complex PTSD: Especially when CSA is layered with spiritual betrayal and identity suppression
Delayed recognition: Many clients don’t name their experiences as abuse until years/ decades later, usually because they did not know it was abuse at the time
What Healing Can Look Like
Some survivors stay in the Church. Others leave. Both deserve support. Search for support that can help you:
Understand how spiritual systems contributed to trauma
Rebuild a sense of safety, body trust, and emotional regulation
Process betrayal from family, leaders, or God
Reclaim your body, voice, and boundaries
Name what happened without shame, minimizing, or spiritual bypassing
Healing is not about forgetting. It is about reclaiming your story and moving forward on your own terms.
If you are a survivor, or struggling to reckon with the presence of abuse in a religious organization, it is valid to feel confused, angry, or numb. These reactions make sense in the aftermath of systemic betrayal. There is space for all of it in the therapy room; grief, rage, doubt, and healing.
Reach out to start therapy or to learn more.
📰 Articles & Investigative Reports
Mormon Church accused of covering up sexual abuse — Associated Press (2022)
Mormon sex abuse 'help line' discouraged police reports — Axios (2022)
Push to Require Clergy to Report Abuse Stalls in Mormon Utah — Associated Press (2023)
What Constitutes Child Sexual Abuse? — Psychology Today (2022)
📘 Books
Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman, M.D.
Pure by Linda Kay Klein
#ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing by Emily Joy Allison
📣 Advocacy & Survivor Organizations
Disclaimer:
⚠️ The content on this blog is intended for informational and educational purposes ONLY and should NOT be considered a substitute for professional mental health care, diagnosis, or treatment. Reading these posts does not establish a therapeutic relationship.
If you are currently in crisis, experiencing thoughts of harming yourself or others, or are in need of immediate support, please call 911 or contact a crisis line such as the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 (U.S.) or access your local emergency services.
These blog posts are written to explore topics like trauma, religious deconstruction, cults, identity development, and mental wellness in a thoughtful and compassionate way. They may (or may not) resonate deeply, especially for those healing from complex trauma, but they are NOT meant to replace individualized therapy or medical care.
