High Councilman arrested for filming a woman getting undressed

[The Nehor]

6 minutes ago, rockpond said:

Again, I'm not an expert on what constitutes "grooming", I was attempting to explain what I understand to be the common "anti-one-on-one interview" position.  And I don't think it requires collusion.  I think it is based on the idea that the interview process could condition kids to be comfortable being alone with an adult and discussing sexual matters.

What do I imagine goes on in the interviews?  Over the nearly 5 years that I did youth interviews, I never went beyond "Do you obey the law of chastity?"  But I was serving as a counselor.  I think that many bishops stick to just that question.  But some do not.  Some ask for more detail.  And I've heard enough anecdotal experiences from fellow church members that I think there is an issue that ought to be addressed with respect to discussion involving sexual matters.  I'd love to see the Brethren add some handbook clarification and boundaries on these youth interviews.

That is not grooming either unless there is a plan by the person to exploit, manipulate, or abuse the youth. The idea that kids become comfortable discussing sex with adults is pretty laughable. Is a parent having a “birds and bees” discussion with their child also a grooming event now?

[rockpond]

2 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

That is not grooming either unless there is a plan by the person to exploit, manipulate, or abuse the youth. The idea that kids become comfortable discussing sex with adults is pretty laughable. Is a parent having a “birds and bees” discussion with their child also a grooming event now?

This is the first line from the Wikipedia page on "Grooming":  Child grooming is befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a child, and sometimes the family, to lower the child's inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse.

Do I think that is the intent of most bishops?  Certainly not.  But are some bishops pedophiles?  Yes.  Could they have such an intent?  Possibly.  Extremely rare, but possible.

 

 

[Tacenda]

9 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

That is not grooming either unless there is a plan by the person to exploit, manipulate, or abuse the youth. The idea that kids become comfortable discussing sex with adults is pretty laughable. Is a parent having a “birds and bees” discussion with their child also a grooming event now?

I'm surprised that you'd answer this way. You don't see a problem with talking about sexual things alone with a youth? What gives the church the right to do that? With having volunteered so much time as a CASA and perhaps elsewhere, it seems odd to me. Or I'm misinterpreting your comment.

[The Nehor]

2 minutes ago, rockpond said:

This is the first line from the Wikipedia page on "Grooming":  Child grooming is befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a child, and sometimes the family, to lower the child's inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse.

Do I think that is the intent of most bishops?  Certainly not.  But are some bishops pedophiles?  Yes.  Could they have such an intent?  Possibly.  Extremely rare, but possible.

So we should be incredibly paranoid and imply there is an epidemic of bishop predators just to be safe. We also need to implement my plan to take children away from parents so they can be raised by the state with perpetual two deep adult monitoring. You know, just in case.

Throwing out hypotheticals can be valuable but you cannot live your life by the possibility of rare events. We irrationally assign fear based events as dangerous based more on fear of malice than we do their likelihood. Many people refuse to go in the ocean because of a phobia of sharks even though it is more likely they will drown because sharks are scary. A child predator is scary but assuming everyone is one is insane. You take a greater risk of injury to your child taking them to church in your care then you do by letting them interview with a bishop. Are people going to stop going to church or driving in general? No.

[rockpond]

5 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

So we should be incredibly paranoid and imply there is an epidemic of bishop predators just to be safe.

No.  Of course not. 

5 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

We also need to implement my plan to take children away from parents so they can be raised by the state with perpetual two deep adult monitoring. You know, just in case.

I get this is sarcasm but two deep parenting is the preferred model.

5 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Throwing out hypotheticals can be valuable but you cannot live your life by the possibility of rare events. We irrationally assign fear based events as dangerous based more on fear of malice than we do their likelihood. Many people refuse to go in the ocean because of a phobia of sharks even though it is more likely they will drown because sharks are scary. A child predator is scary but assuming everyone is one is insane. You take a greater risk of injury to your child taking them to church in your care then you do by letting them interview with a bishop. Are people going to stop going to church or driving in general? No.

Agreed. 

[The Nehor]

5 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I'm surprised that you'd answer this way. You don't see a problem with talking about sexual things alone with a youth? What gives the church the right to do that? With having volunteered so much time as a CASA and perhaps elsewhere, it seems odd to me. Or I'm misinterpreting your comment.

I do not see a problem with it, especially if the child wants it. I know of many cases where a teen or child talked to a bishop about something terrible that happened at home they would almost certainly never have shared had a parent been present. I consider them a safeguard.

I also do not believe bishops spend a lot of time going into sex in in-depth discussions in youth interviews. I have heard unsubstantiated anonymous stories about it but I have also heard stories about young women being thrown out of the Temple into the Great Salt Lake for refusing to marry someone (quite a throwing arm you must admit). It is the same thing with the anti-vaxxer hysteria, the occult hysteria, the D&D game hysteria, the Harry Potter hysteria, the Salem witchcraft hysteria, the post-9/11 Islam hysteria, etc. Harm occurring is very rare, emotion is built up around outright lies, exaggerations, and fabrications, and people wring their hands demanding they be made safe at any cost from their paranoid delusions. When confronted with how insane their delusions are they fall back on a refrain of how it is always better to be safe. I point out other ways to be be safe that would be inconvenient or even actively harmful to them and I am accused of being ridiculous.

There is also I suspect a kind of virtue that is felt championing these causes. It is easy, requires little time or effort, and makes people feel like a champion. This is, I also suspect, why these myths survive. A bored and unspiritual person who makes minimal sacrifices for others does not find much comfort in their faith. Then you say that Harry Potter or D&D or vaccines or whatever is a clear satanic threat. It galvanizes. Suddenly you are not someone who is not doing anything to help their fellow humans. Now you are a crusader fighting the ultimate evil. People point out the evil is made up. The brain refuses to accept it because it would cut off their easy drug supply of imagined holiness and rightness. Doing real Christian service is hard. Railing against the imaginary is easy and it is easy to find others also taken in. Then you have a sense of community and the people rally together to “spread the word”. Lives are wasted, innocuous or even helpful things are vilified, and the perpetrators are led gently to hell as they try to turn grey to black and eventually white to black. Or, as C.S. Lewis put it even better:

Quote

“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything -- God and our friends and ourselves included -- as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”

Child abuse is real. Youth interviews without parents are actually more likely to expose it than cause it. There is a reason CPS often interviews children without parental consent and often without parental knowledge. I want these interviews to continue because children trapped in abusive homes need a safe space with someone they can trust and who generally loves them to be able to speak out. And yes, I have seen this happen a few times. In one case the bishop knew I had some knowledge of how the system worked and asked me to help him structure how and when to get CPS involved to minimize further harm to the children. Seeing the abuser in church later was one of the few times in my life that I had the urge to violently assault someone in church. It is not a good urge but it feels so justifiable to inflict on someone only a fraction of the pain they throw out everywhere they go leaving a trail of destroyed lives in their wake. Inflicting pain seems pure, a desperate attempt to disturb their stupidly smug complacency.

I think of this Great Gatsby quote when I watch people spreading misery:

Quote

I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

[The Nehor]

25 minutes ago, rockpond said:

I get this is sarcasm but two deep parenting is the preferred model.

Having two parents is the preferred model but having the two parents always there at all times to monitor the other is not.

[rockpond]

41 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Having two parents is the preferred model but having the two parents always there at all times to monitor the other is not.

I get that.  But since your reply to me was dripping in sarcasm, I replied accordingly.

We want to protect children everywhere.  But we do the best that we realistically can do.

[Hamba Tuhan]

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

It is the same thing with the anti-vaxxer hysteria, the occult hysteria, the D&D game hysteria, the Harry Potter hysteria, the Salem witchcraft hysteria, the post-9/11 Islam hysteria, etc. Harm occurring is very rare, emotion is built up around outright lies, exaggerations, and fabrications, and people wring their hands demanding they be made safe at any cost from their paranoid delusions. When confronted with how insane their delusions are they fall back on a refrain of how it is always better to be safe. I point out other ways to be be safe that would be inconvenient or even actively harmful to them and I am accused of being ridiculous.

There is also I suspect a kind of virtue that is felt championing these causes. It is easy, requires little time or effort, and makes people feel like a champion. This is, I also suspect, why these myths survive. A bored and unspiritual person who makes minimal sacrifices for others does not find much comfort in their faith. Then you say that Harry Potter or D&D or vaccines or whatever is a clear satanic threat. It galvanizes. Suddenly you are not someone who is not doing anything to help their fellow humans. Now you are a crusader fighting the ultimate evil. People point out the evil is made up. The brain refuses to accept it because it would cut off their easy drug supply of imagined holiness and rightness. Doing real Christian service is hard. Railing against the imaginary is easy and it is easy to find others also taken in. Then you have a sense of community and the people rally together to “spread the word”. Lives are wasted, innocuous or even helpful things are vilified, and the perpetrators are led gently to hell as they try to turn grey to black and eventually white to black.

Exactly this!

[rockpond]

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Harm occurring is very rare, emotion is built up around outright lies, exaggerations, and fabrications, and people wring their hands demanding they be made safe at any cost from their paranoid delusions.

This exaggeration about their position isn't helpful either.

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

There is also I suspect a kind of virtue that is felt championing these causes. It is easy, requires little time or effort, and makes people feel like a champion.

This is not, in any way, an accurate description of Sam Young's experience.  You can disagree with what he's done but you cannot say that it "requires little time or effort".

 

If you want others to stay in the realm of reality with their statements, you ought to model it yourself.

[The Nehor]

3 minutes ago, rockpond said:

This exaggeration about their position isn't helpful either.

This is not, in any way, an accurate description of Sam Young's experience.  You can disagree with what he's done but you cannot say that it "requires little time or effort".

 

If you want others to stay in the realm of reality with their statements, you ought to model it yourself.

If reason would talk them down from their irrational posturing I would stick with that but since the position is almost entirely emotional that needs to be deconstructed too. People hate it when you do that to them but nothing else works and they are causing harm and should be stopped.

I am not talking about Sam Young. I am talking about his followers spreading the narrative. It takes effort to lead a movement but precious little to spread misinformation on its behalf.

[rockpond]

2 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

If reason would talk them down from their irrational posturing I would stick with that but since the position is almost entirely emotional that needs to be deconstructed too.

Again, this is an inaccurate representation.  The Protect LDS Children movement has gone to great lengths to put data behind their position.  Over 1,000 stories documented on the website.  While I admit that these accounts have not been cross-examined, if you have data to counter them, go ahead and present it.  But to declare that their position is "almost entirely emotional" is as fair as claiming that the argument in favor of one-on-one interviews is also "almost entirely emotional".

[Hamba Tuhan]

Just now, rockpond said:

Over 1,000 stories documented on the website.

'You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means' -- Inigo Montoya.

[rockpond]

4 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

'You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means' -- Inigo Montoya.

Definition of document:  record (something) in written, photographic, or other form.

I am using the correct word.  Just because I am not using the definition you *want* me to use, doesn't mean I'm using an incorrect word.

Edited November 6, 2019 by rockpond

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, rockpond said:

Again, this is an inaccurate representation.  The Protect LDS Children movement has gone to great lengths to put data behind their position.  Over 1,000 stories documented on the website.  While I admit that these accounts have not been cross-examined, if you have data to counter them, go ahead and present it.  But to declare that their position is "almost entirely emotional" is as fair as claiming that the argument in favor of one-on-one interviews is also "almost entirely emotional".

I could make it 1,010 by tomorrow if I were so inclined. 1,100 if I did not use much creativity.

[rockpond]

1 minute ago, The Nehor said:

I could make it 1,010 by tomorrow if I were so inclined. 1,100 if I did not use much creativity.

That you might be willing to make false statements has no relevance on the 1,073 experiences currently documented.

[The Nehor]

1 minute ago, rockpond said:

That you might be willing to make false statements has no relevance on the 1,073 experiences currently documented.

Yes, it does. I could easily do it. So could anyone else. People lie all the time.

Also since you are being pedantic about documenting being the correct work I would argue it is “1,073 alleged experiences currently documented”.

[Calm]

8 minutes ago, rockpond said:

That you might be willing to make false statements has no relevance on the 1,073 experiences currently documented.

However, that there were multiple people saying they had submitted multiple fake stories without ever being questioned is relevant, is it not?

[rockpond]

6 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Yes, it does. I could easily do it. So could anyone else. People lie all the time.

Also since you are being pedantic about documenting being the correct work I would argue it is “1,073 alleged experiences currently documented”.

People also tell the truth all the time.

And yes, they are alleged accounts.  I identified them as such earlier.  Sorry I didn't include that again in my subsequent reference.

[The Nehor]

I just visited the site and read twelve stories, the most recently submitted. I found one that might be credible. I especially liked the one where a youth Sunday School teacher allegedly raped someone and after he was found out the church “transferred” him out of the state. I think someone is writing fan fiction based on what they read about a Catholic abuse story. Another one has dad standing outside a boy’s room for hours every night and when he hears a sound he rushes in and pulls off the covers in case his son was masturbating. Daily worthiness interviews.....yeah. Oh and then one where a guy was punished with the “rite of disfellowshipment”. I also found two that were almost identical and probably written by the same person. Got unreliable narrator vibes from most of them as well.
 

Yeah, I reject this collection as evidence of anything.

[rockpond]

1 minute ago, Calm said:

However, that there were multiple people saying they had submitted multiple fake stories without ever being questioned is relevant, is it not?

Yes.  I have admitted, time and time again, that I don't believe every story on there is truthful.  But I do believe that many are.

The point, from @The Nehor, that I am countering is the claim that those who want to end one on one interviews have taken an "almost entirely emotional" position.  I don't believe that's true anymore than those who are in favor of continuing one on one interviews are taking an "almost entirely emotional" position.

There are both emotional and logical arguments on both sides of this issue.  I am opposed to ending one on one interviews but I don't dismiss the arguments against as being "irrational posturing".

[Tacenda]

5 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Having two parents is the preferred model but having the two parents always there at all times to monitor the other is not.

How about 2 leaders?!? Geez...

[Danzo]

7 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

How about 2 leaders?!? Geez...

Having two leaders present all the time is difficult as well.

The other day I arrived to cubs scouts early.  All of a sudden, boys started arriving! What was I to do? there wasn't another adult there and the boys just kept coming! I was about to run away screening when another adult arrived. Tragedy averted.

it was close, for a full 4 minutes I was the only adult in a room full of 8 and 9 year old boys. 

They were in danger!

Where was Sam Young?

If only he were there to protect those young, innocent boys from the terror of being in the presence of one adult!

 

[Tacenda]

Just now, Danzo said:

Having two leaders present all the time is difficult as well.

The other day I arrived to cubs scouts early.  All of a sudden, boys started arriving! What was I to do? there wasn't another adult there and the boys just kept coming! I was about to run away screening when another adult arrived. Tragedy averted.

it was close, for a full 4 minutes I was the only adult in a room full of 8 and 9 year old boys. 

They were in danger!

Where was Sam Young?

If only he were there to protect those young, innocent boys from the terror of being in the presence of one adult!

 

I'm talking about the one on one worthiness interviews. And that doesn't include a youth that asks for an interview alone. 

[Danzo]

1 minute ago, Tacenda said:

I'm talking about the one on one worthiness interviews. And that doesn't include a youth that asks for an interview alone. 

Honest question, 

When you want a worthiness interview do you ask for others to come in and listen?