MormonLeaks: Former Mormon Mission President Admitting to Inappropriate Interactions with Women

[bsjkki]

The Salt Lake Trib article has been updated and more information has been added since its initial release. The fact her singles ward Bishop remembers her making accusations but didn’t believe her and didn’t tell anyone has been added.

Edited March 22, 2018 by bsjkki

[bsjkki]

Did Bishop serve in any other calling after his MTC calling? It seems like his church service just stops but I may be missing information.

[jkwilliams]

5 hours ago, smac97 said:

A troubled soul, but not "disturbed?"

Holy cow.  What a hairsplit.

For the umpteenth time, I did not intend to disparage her.  Can we get past the indignant-finger-pointing-at-the-thought-crime-of-using-a-term-you-subjectively-dislike schtick, and get back to the topic?  Please?

Oh brother.  In her interview she references her "violently sexually abusive" step-father (p. 25) who was also a pedophile (pp. 33, 38), which is why she says she went to see Bro. Bishop.  She says that Bro. Bishop "hurt" her 33 years prior, that has "struggled for 33 years," and that she "need{s} an apology" (pp. 26, 63).  She says that he "destroyed {her} faith and testimony" (p. 27).  She acknowledges Bro. Bishop's comment that she "had had a tough life" (p. 27).  She states that she had been raped and had a baby and given it up for adoption (p. 28).  She says that after she returned from her mission she "ha{d} not healed" from Bro. Bishop's abuse of her (p. 29), which is why she claims to have spoken with Elder Asay.  She calls herself "a broken woman because of the things {Bro. Bishop} did" (p. 31).  She asks him "{h}ow many other young women in the Church have been destroyed like {her}" because of Bro. Bishop (p. 32).  She tells him that he "ha{s} no f***ing idea the pain {he has} caused {her}" (p. 41).  She speaks of "young vulnerable women, broken women" and includes herself in that characterization (pp. 41, 42).  She says she was "a victim of sexual abuse as a child" (p. 43).  She said repeatedly told Bro. Bishop, that she had threatened to kill him, that she "{has} a gun" (pp. 44, 47), and that another woman had also threatened him, and that he "should probably hide" (p. 43).  She states that she categorically "cannot trust men" (p. 55).  She tells Bro. Bishop that she "ha{s} never recovered" from what he did to her (p. 56).  She says she has "suffered tremendously" from what he did to her (p. 58).  She "absolutely resent{s}" all priesthood leaders because of what Bro. Bishop did (p. 63).  She calls herself "a freak magnet" and she "refuse{s} to let anyone near {her}" (p. 64).  She says "I am damaged" several times (pp. 64-65).  She says she has "no desire to even pretend ... to trust again ever anyone."  (p. 65).  

Can you perhaps accommodate the notion that a person might read these things and conclude that this woman is troubled?  Disturbed?  I don't see a huge difference between these two.

Okay.

-Smac

I think you are misunderstanding me. We don’t know she was disturbed before she met Joseph Bishop. This isn’t some hair-splitting vendetta.

[Calm]

46 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

The Salt Lake Trib article has been updated and more information has been added since its initial release. The fact her singles ward Bishop remembers her making accusations but didn’t believe her and didn’t tell anyone has been added.

Thank goodness, I was disappointed I was so sloppy to miss that.

[Calm]

7 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

I think you are misunderstanding me. We don’t know she was disturbed before she met Joseph Bishop. This isn’t some hair-splitting vendetta.

She actually said she had been living a healthy life, but then she described herself as ordinary, but very flattered by his attention and telling her she was amazing..

"I joined The Church. Ilived ... Avery good healthy life. Went on a mission. All Iwanted to do was serve the Lord. That is all Iwanted to do. 

And you singled me out the very first day. The very first day you asked me to bear my testimony. And then the next time the missionaries met you asked me to give the prayer. And then you would call me out of class, the other missionaries were teasing me calling me teacher's pet, and Ican't record, oh, ridiculous things. But Iwas so flattered. Ithought Iwas so special. And you told me that I was special. That even though I had been abused that the Lord loved me. And that Iwas going to be amazing.

I w a s n ' t a m a z i n g . I w a s n o t h i n g . I w a s n o o n e . I w a s j u s t a m is s i o n a r y . I w a s j u s t like all the other kids, well 21 year old, 19 year old, trying to serve the Lord. And you took that away from me. And then you tried to rape me. "

https://mormonleaks.io/wiki/documents/f/fd/2017-Joseph_L_Bishop-Transcript.pdf

Edited March 22, 2018 by Calm

[Calm]

42 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

Did Bishop serve in any other calling after his MTC calling? It seems like his church service just stops but I may be missing information.

"Near the end of his administration at Weber State, he received a call from the Church to be the president of the Buenos Aires North Mission in Argentina, the same country he had served in as a young man. After his mission, the Church again called him to serve, this time as president of the Missionary Training Center in Provo. After his three-year assignment there, he accepted a position as associate professor at Brigham Young University. That position allowed him time to do some meaningful research, the results of which are directly reflected in this book. He later served two additional missions for the Church, one as the area welfare agent for Central America and one acting president of the Samoa Apia Mission."

https://www.amazon.com/Peace-be-unto-thy-Soul/dp/1608614808/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521498084&sr=1-3&keywords=Joseph+L.+Bishop&dpID=51XckS%2B%2BsiL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

[bsjkki]

8 minutes ago, Calm said:

"Near the end of his administration at Weber State, he received a call from the Church to be the president of the Buenos Aires North Mission in Argentina, the same country he had served in as a young man. After his mission, the Church again called him to serve, this time as president of the Missionary Training Center in Provo. After his three-year assignment there, he accepted a position as associate professor at Brigham Young University. That position allowed him time to do some meaningful research, the results of which are directly reflected in this book. He later served two additional missions for the Church, one as the area welfare agent for Central America and one acting president of the Samoa Apia Mission."

https://www.amazon.com/Peace-be-unto-thy-Soul/dp/1608614808/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521498084&sr=1-3&keywords=Joseph+L.+Bishop&dpID=51XckS%2B%2BsiL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

Thanks

[jkwilliams]

43 minutes ago, Calm said:

She actually said she had been living a healthy life, but then she described herself as ordinary, but very flatter by his attention and telling her she was amazing..

"I joined The Church. Ilived ... Avery good healthy life. Went on a mission. All Iwanted to do was serve the Lord. That is all Iwanted to do. 

And you singled me out the very first day. The very first day you asked me to bear my testimony. And then the next time the missionaries met you asked me to give the prayer. And then you would call me out of class, the other missionaries were teasing me calling me teacher's pet, and Ican't record, oh, ridiculous things. But Iwas so flattered. Ithought Iwas so special. And you told me that I was special. That even though I had been abused that the Lord loved me. And that Iwas going to be amazing.

I w a s n ' t a m a z i n g . I w a s n o t h i n g . I w a s n o o n e . I w a s j u s t a m is s i o n a r y . I w a s j u s t like all the other kids, well 21 year old, 19 year old, trying to serve the Lord. And you took that away from me. And then you tried to rape me. "

https://mormonleaks.io/wiki/documents/f/fd/2017-Joseph_L_Bishop-Transcript.pdf

That was what I remembered. Maybe I was misinterpreting smac, but it seemed like he was suggesting she was "disturbed" before the events in question., which I disagree with. Suppose you broke your leg in a skiing accident. You wouldn't expect anyone to say, "Well, someone with a bad leg should never have been skiing." In this case, the statement was that Bishop preyed on a "a vulnerable and disturbed young woman ." I'm just saying that she was obviously vulnerable at the time of the events, as any sister missionary would have been, but I'm not seeing any reason to say she was disturbed at that time. She appears to consider herself a troubled person now.

Maybe it's just that I'm sensitive to these issues because someone very near to me was molested as a child and carries a lot of emotional and psychological scars, even 50 years later. But I would suggest we not call victims "disturbed" at the time of their abuse, whether or not they complied with their abuser. 

[jkwilliams]

6 hours ago, kllindley said:

You don't see her description of her sexually violent alcoholic father (step father?) As a possible source of disturbance?

Of course it's a possible source of disturbance. But, based on what she said, there's no evidence of actual disturbance until after the abuse. As Calm noted, she said she was living a normal, healthy life until the abuse happened. My only point is that it's unwarranted to say she was a "disturbed young woman" before she met Mr. Bishop.

[jkwilliams]

5 hours ago, rockpond said:

Maybe the news of Bishop’s Dec 2017 confession will be enough to prompt the church to show a little more compassion to the victim.  Oh wait... they likely knew that already.  Church leaders were happy to go along like nothing had happened, continuing to sell his books, until MormonLeaks broke the story. 

I’ll reiterate what I wrote yesterday... I really hope that President Nelson will use this as a defining moment of his presidency and make some significant changes in the church.  

It sounds as if the church was unaware he had confessed to the police. Seems really strange to me that he would confess to the police but not to "outside legal counsel" or to church authorities. I'm not sure we can say the church "knew [about the confession] already." In fact, I think if they had known he had confessed, at the very least their legal counsel would not have allowed them to make the statement they did.

[Hamba Tuhan]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

"He later served two additional missions for the Church, one as the area welfare agent for Central America and one acting president of the Samoa Apia Mission."

What is an 'acting president' of a mission?

[jkwilliams]

3 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

What is an 'acting president' of a mission?

It happens when a mission president suddenly has to step down, usually because of illness. For example, I served in the Bolivia Cochabamba mission. In 1982, there were two missions in Bolivia: La Paz and Santa Cruz. The mission president in La Paz became ill and went back home to Utah. The president of the Santa Cruz mission became 'acting president' of the La Paz mission, as well. Later they moved the mission home to Cochabamba, and it was just one mission for 6 years or so.

[jkwilliams]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Thank goodness, I was disappointed I was so sloppy to miss that.

From the Tribune article:
 

Quote

But the bishop, who asked not to be named, said in an interview with The Tribune that he didn’t believe her, nor did he tell any superiors.

”I felt the allegations were groundless,” he recalled this week. “They were so farfetched and not internally logical.”

It takes a lot of vetting for a man to be approved for a position like MTC president, the Mormon lay leader said, “which made her story very hard to believe.”

 

That is really disturbing. She wasn't taken seriously because the benefit of the doubt goes to someone in Bishop's position. This deference to authority is one of the facilitators of sexual abuse, whether in the church or out.

ETA: This part isn't much better:

 

Quote

 

Hawkins said officials “listened carefully to the claims being made, and then this was immediately reported to the Pleasant Grove Police Department.”

According to a Pleasant Grove police report, however, that report was about the woman’s threat to kill Bishop, which she told an officer had been a joke. The church did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday on whether it had forwarded her sexual assault claim to a law enforcement agency with jurisdiction over the MTC.

 

 

Edited March 22, 2018 by jkwilliams

[Gray]

7 hours ago, smac97 said:

Only if "defending him" = "declining to publicly condemn him based on crappy evidence."

Now that there is, apparently, competent and probative evidence against him, I have changed my position.

Have you noticed that?

Not really.  She really did use false pretenses to lure him into a private, one-on-one "interview."  That's not "conjecture." 

She really did repeatedly reference her previous threats to murder him.  That's not "conjecture."

He really is 85 years old, and was recovering from a heart attack at the time of the "interview."  That's not "conjecture."

And pointing these things out is not a "defense" of Bro. Bishop.  It is a critique of poor evidence.

"His confession" is crappy evidence.

Yep.  Seen it.  I've changed my position according to the contents of this story (and the KUTV story), which I find to be substantially more competent, probative evidence.

As opposed to the "interview," which I found to be crappy evidence.

Thanks,

-Smac

I disagree with your characterization that the previous evidence was crappy, but the issue seems moot now, since we both agree he looks guilty. Thanks.

[Gray]

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

That was what I remembered. Maybe I was misinterpreting smac, but it seemed like he was suggesting she was "disturbed" before the events in question., which I disagree with. Suppose you broke your leg in a skiing accident. You wouldn't expect anyone to say, "Well, someone with a bad leg should never have been skiing." In this case, the statement was that Bishop preyed on a "a vulnerable and disturbed young woman ." I'm just saying that she was obviously vulnerable at the time of the events, as any sister missionary would have been, but I'm not seeing any reason to say she was disturbed at that time. She appears to consider herself a troubled person now.

Maybe it's just that I'm sensitive to these issues because someone very near to me was molested as a child and carries a lot of emotional and psychological scars, even 50 years later. But I would suggest we not call victims "disturbed" at the time of their abuse, whether or not they complied with their abuser. 

She had previously been victimized by her step-father, so she was already very vulnerable. Predators tend to single out vulnerable people for abuse, sadly.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Gray

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, Gray said:

She had previously been victimized by her step-father, so she was already very vulnerable. Predators tend to single out vulnerable people for abuse, sadly.

Vulnerable, yes. I'm questioning the assumption that she was disturbed already before the events.

In all a very sad story. Clearly, what happened has affected this woman's life in a very negative way. This authority figure, who speaking for myself, missionaries implicitly trusted, took advantage of her vulnerability and trust.

[Gray]

Quotes from the Assistant Dean of Students, Jan Tyler, who worked with Bishop at Weber. It looks like this guy has been a creep for many decades.

https://cdm.weber.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/WSU_OH/id/64/rec/57

Quote

JT: I felt that he was a person without a sense of morality, of what was right and wrong. He was almost amoral.

JS: You don’t mean that in a sexual sense but in an ethical sense?

JT: Just in the way he dealt with people.

JS: Like making commitments that he didn’t intend to keep, that sort of thing?

JT: Yes. And he would intentionally lie. On occasion he would tell me something and then he would say, “if anybody asks me, if you don’t keep this confidential, if someone comes back and asks me, I’ll tell them I don’t even know what they’re talking about.“

 

Quote

JT: Well, I became aware that he would be talking to other faculty members about whether or not I was a competent person. And students would come to me and say they had been called in about me. He would always say to students now this is confidential. I just thought that kind of behavior was so unprofessional, and so destructive, and it really created a very difficult atmosphere under which to work.

JS: Was he shooting at you, was he shooting at the program, or both?

JT: Both, and at one point I learned in the rumor mill that Bishop had a list of enemies, and that I was on the list and I was the only woman. So I followed the rumor clear to Dean Hurst; it was supposed to have come from him who got it straight from Bishop. So I made an appointment with Dean Hurst and confronted him with this rumor. He was absolutely amazed that I even had that information, and he did not deny it. I made an appointment with President Bishop to talk with him about it. He would not see me so I ended up seeing his sidekick, Dwight Burrill, and he not only told me that it was true, that I was on the president’s enemy list, he proceeded to read the rest of the list to me. And after about the third name I stopped him and said, “That is information I don’t want and I think it’s absolutely childish that this kind of thing is going on among grown-ups.” It was incredible to me that this was even happening and it was at that point that I started referring to the whole atmosphere there as Webergate. And it became a pretty common reference.

 

Quote

JS: What about the charges of the wiretapping and those sorts of things, do you think these are true charges?

JT: Oh yes, I found out about those after I had engaged my lawyer. I filed under Title IX Executive Order and Title VII, Title IV and Equal Pay. The NEA on the national level got involved and I engaged a lawyer.

JS: Who was your attorney?

JT: Senator Darrell Renstrom. Soon after I engaged my lawyer another colleague in student personnel also engaged a lawyer. Our two lawyers were talking and comparing the facts that concerned our respective situations and the other lawyer revealed to my lawyer that wiretapping was going on. It was really shattering because that very day I had an appointment with my lawyer to bring some information and when I got to work my whole office had been gone through, all my files, my desk, everything. And I realized it could have been paranoia on my part, but I suspected that if in fact my phone wasn’t being tapped, my conversations could have been listened to which was very easy to do because of the way the phones were arranged in the office. It got to the point, especially after that conversation with my lawyer, that I had no significant conversations on my phone. I’d always go to the pay phones in the Union Building.

 

Edited March 22, 2018 by Gray

[Gray]

2 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Vulnerable, yes. I'm questioning the assumption that she was disturbed already before the events.

In all a very sad story. Clearly, what happened has affected this woman's life in a very negative way. This authority figure, who speaking for myself, missionaries implicitly trusted, took advantage of her vulnerability and trust.

I don't see any reason to think she was disturbed coming into the MTC. I can't imagine the experience of having been victimized in your home, going on a mission and feeling like you're in a safe space, and then being victimized again, by someone purporting to represent God.

[jkwilliams]

Just now, Gray said:

I don't see any reason to think she was disturbed coming into the MTC. I can't imagine the experience of having been victimized in your home, going on a mission and feeling like you're in a safe space, and then being victimized again, by someone purporting to represent God.

Exactly. I don't know what it was like for others, but when I was in the MTC (the same month the abuse apparently happened), there was a lot of emphasis on obeying "with exactness" what your priesthood leaders tell you to do. I remember once when I was in Bolivia, our Area President came to speak to the missionaries in our city. My companion and I were both quite ill, but we hadn't seen any church leaders since we had arrived 16 months before, so we literally got out of our sickbeds to attend this meeting. The Area President spent 45 minutes loudly berating us missionaries for our lack of commitment and laziness. At one point, he paused and said, "I'm sure some of you are thinking that I'm not referring to you, but I am." That night, we went back to our house and talked for a long time about what he had said. We both knew we were working very hard, to the point of illness and exhaustion, and my companion was one of the most faithful and committed church members and missionaries I had ever known. But within an hour, we decided he must be right, and we weren't very good missionaries, after all. That's the power an authority figure has to change your perception of who you are. I can't imagine how she must have felt when this man, whom she trusted completely, asked her to do these things. Did she think it was her fault? Did she think there must be some righteous motivation behind his actions, or he wouldn't do it? I don't know, but my heart breaks for the hell he put her through.

[Maestrophil]

8 hours ago, Gray said:

The coverup always makes it worse. Always. A lesson the Catholic church failed to learn for decades and decades.

So true.  I pray that the church did not take action because of Bishop's deceit/lack of disclosure and not as a cover up BUT IF IT IS SO, I hope we are willing to look past our desire to have it not be so, admit the failure/deceit, and the church will cut his kind of cancer out wherever it may exist.  

Edited March 22, 2018 by Maestrophil

[rockpond]

31 minutes ago, Gray said:

I disagree with your characterization that the previous evidence was crappy, but the issue seems moot now, since we both agree he looks guilty. Thanks.

I happened to have the recording playing in my car yesterday evening — I went back to listening to it after reading the claims of dementia and medication.  But Bishop is very coherent in that interview.  He speaks clearly, at the end he is talking about his testimony, he refers back to comments me had had made 2.5 hours earlier in the interview and how they relate to what had transpired in the interview since that point. 

The evidence was good. 

[Duncan]

I wish there was some kind of follow up to these cases, like will he and Rob Porter and others get exed? I know the Church typically doesn't broadcast it but these are national news now and maybe it would do something to restore the good name if the church said, yes this happened but the member in question has been disciplined.

[jkwilliams]

4 minutes ago, Maestrophil said:

So true.  I pray that the church did not take action because of Bishop's deceit/lack of disclosure and not as a cover up BUT IF IT IS SO, I hope we are willing to look past our desire to have it not be so, admit the failure/deceit, and the church will cut his kind of cancer out wherever it may exist.  

Often, things are swept under the rug not because the people involved condone what happened but because they want to "protect" the institution (and I'm not singling out the church here). A lot of the issues in the Catholic Church stem from leaders wanting to protect the church from bad publicity, so abusive priests were quietly reassigned in the hopes it would all just go away.

[jkwilliams]

6 minutes ago, Duncan said:

I wish there was some kind of follow up to these cases, like will he and Rob Porter and others get exed? I know the Church typically doesn't broadcast it but these are national news now and maybe it would do something to restore the good name if the church said, yes this happened but the member in question has been disciplined.

Is spousal abuse grounds for excommunication without a criminal conviction? In the old days, they used to announce excommunications in church meetings. When I was a freshman at BYU in 1983, a young woman in our ward (who I knew well) became sexually involved with a young man. She was definitely vulnerable, and IMO, he was a predator who took advantage of that vulnerability. She confessed to the bishop, and he announced in a church meeting (I'm pretty sure it was priesthood meeting) that she had been excommunicated. These days, it seems the only way you find out that someone has been disciplined is that they share it themselves.

[CV75]

16 hours ago, smac97 said:

I noticed that.  I assumed it was a slip on her part, as she immediately corrects herself by saying "VHS player."

Let's not make her an "offender for a word."

Or anyone else, for that matter.

Thanks,

-Smac

Simply a point of fact that I found interesting. There are more that should be investigated if this is to be taken seriously, without drawing hasty conclusions about the observer or the observed.