I hope they call me on a mission.....

(…when I have molested a kid or two!)

This post begins with a distortion of an LDS children’s song. Yet as twisted as my humor is, this post deals with a serious issue….one that I had to face as a missionary.

On another internet board I found the following post:

I am furious and very confused. Here is the situation:About 4 years ago a friends daughters were sexually abused by an older cousin. The cousin was 15 years old at the time. He not only abused my friend’s girls, but also the daughters of another mutual cousin. The abuse happened repeatedly over the course of about a year. It came to light, it went to court. The boy pled guilty and was sentenced to some sort of counseling. He never completed the program. Fast forward to today. His record has been expunged, and he has submitted his papers to go on a mission. Apparently his priesthood leaders think he is worthy to go. My friend has written a letter to the missionary board, but if what the local leaders have said is any indication, it won’t matter- he is going. She is sick about it. She feels it is a slap in the face to their family, and it is a danger to the community wherever this pervert may be sent.*I* thought the whole raising the bar thing would have eliminated the possibility of a person like this ever serving a mission. I DONT UNDERSTAND!! If he gets a mission call, she is going to the newspapers. Thoughts? What can I do? She is about ready to leave the church over this!

On this posting board there was outrage but also an undercurrent of “forgive and forget”.
I don’t know if it is because the Mormon Church has had to ignore clear evidence that Joseph Smith was a sexual predator or the morbid desire by Mormon leaders to suppress the male sex drive but the LDS leadership has a habit of covering up sexual misconduct among male members from time to time. Much of it depends on where you are and who you are but I’ve always wondered: If I had to deal with a sex offender as a missionary, how many of them are out there?

Here is what happened to me:

While serving as a zone leader, one of the elders in my zone was a cheerful yet somewhat impulsive fellow we will call Elder X. Elder X and I were in the Missionary Training Center at the same time and knew each other from our brief visits there (I was in another group). He was so cheerful that he had the mission nickname “Happy” so I was able to get along with him just fine. When I became his zone leader and had to deal with him several times a week, I began to notice that he could have temper problems and that he had impulse issues. I had NO IDEA that he had molested a girl before his mission! That information was kept from me.

Fast forward almost two years later. I was at Ricks College and in my apartment one day when Elder X (now Brother X) shows up at my door. After a few pleasantries, we get to talk alone and I discover he is running from the law on bad check charges. I contact another former missionary who served with him and we get him to agree that he has to return and face his mistakes but not before he informs us that he has been in trouble with the law once before his mission for trying to fool around with an underage girl. I was stunned to find that out! Here is a guy with a criminal record and they let him become a missionary!

So did his mission reform him? Sadly, no. I was informed that he was convicted of lewdness with a child in the mid-1990s….ten years after his time as a missionary. He is a registered sex offender. The terrible thing is that the LDS Church knew about his record! He was invited into member’s homes…homes that had young children. I wonder now if he did anything while his companions were looking the other way. I knew that one Elder in our mission was sent home two weeks early for looking down the shirt of a ten year old girl. Did our mission president keep tabs on Elder X to make sure he wasn’t doing the same?

I know that the vast majority of young men that serve missions would never do anything like this, but since I came into contact with one who did...I wonder how many are out there that no one knows about.

I get a lot of flak from active LDS members because I want to tell the entire truth about the LDS Church. I feel that their omissions of historical facts lead to a secrecy that permeates Mormon culture and leads to other secrets being kept as well. It’s bad enough not to tell converts about Joseph Smith’s sexual obsessions but when you keep secrets about LDS missionaries who have close contact with the public, it should be criminal act for which the leadership should be held responsible.