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I am sick of Mormon women not being believed about abuse.

I can’t even count the number of first-hand accounts I’ve heard at this point, and I only started paying attention a few years ago. Easily dozens. Probably hundreds.

But they all go the same way. A Mormon woman is a chaste, obedient, temple-worthy, nurturing woman. She gets married in the temple, moves in with her brand-new husband, and desires to start her eternal family. Within mere weeks or months, it becomes obvious her husband is angry, controlling, and abusive. He usually quotes Church authority about men presiding and women hearkening to justify the behavior.

She doesn’t like it, but she tries to accept it. She has been taught that she must protect her temple marriage above all else. She has been taught that her husband is the leader of the home, and she needs to respect his authority. She has been taught that if she just prays harder, submits harder, follows traditional gender roles harder, the problems will go away.

They don’t go away. They get worse.

But she stays silent. The consequences of speaking up are too terrifying. I can’t tell anyone. No one will believe me. It will destroy my social standing. It will destroy my financial security. I don’t want to ruin his life. If I do, if he finds out, he will hurt me. I will lose friends and be shunned from my ward family.

Church Teachings On Divorce

She starts running stealth searches on LDS.org, looking for help. What she finds is talk after talk that decries divorce and the selfish and worldly dissolution of family. They proclaim Temple Marriages as gold standards, protections from the evils of the world. Sometimes the speakers remember to include one fleeting sentence or paragraph of “except for cases of abuse” … but no one defines what abuse looks like. She can’t map their vague and perfunctory words onto her experiences.

So she reads and re-reads Dallin H. Oaks on divorce.: “I strongly urge you and those who advise you to face up to the reality that for most marriage problems, the remedy is not divorce but repentance. Often the cause is not incompatibility but selfishness.” He then cites social science, stating that most couples who think about divorce but stay married are happy with that decision five years later.

Message she takes away? Ok, so, I need to stop being selfish, keep repenting, and wait at least five years, to be sure that this marriage is bad.

But maybe someone, a trusted confidante, refers her to Jeffrey R. Holland instead.

“I would not have you spend five minutes with someone who belittles you, who is constantly critical of you, who is cruel at your expense and may even call it humor. Life is tough enough without having the person who is supposed to love you leading the assault on your self-esteem, your sense of dignity, your confidence, and your joy. In this person’s care you deserve to feel physically safe and emotionally secure.”

But technically, he was just talking about dating, not marriage, she thinks. It’s my fault for not catching this sooner, and so now it’s my fault that I’m stuck. Not even this justifies ending a temple marriage.

Or maybe someone points her in the blessed direction of Chieko Okazaki. Who spent decades begging church leaders to hold perpetrators and themselves to the highest gospel standards, begging teachers to think about the unintended messages of their lessons, begging victims to seek professional and spiritual help.

“Think of a woman whose husband beats and rapes her. What feelings go through her mind as a Relief Society teacher [or Bishop] explains that it is the wife’s responsibility to maintain the spiritual atmosphere in the home and to support the priesthood? To these confused, despairing children and adults in pain, the teachers speak with the voice of the Church. Such messages have a great potential for increasing their pain and despair.”

Yes! Exactly! But, well, actually, that’s too strong. My husband just screams at me, or gives me the silent treatment for weeks on end, or blames me for all of his problems, or isolates me from friends and family, but it’s not nearly as bad as rape and sexual abuse. This talk was only about sexual abuse. I just have normal marriage trouble.

But maybe, gracefully, in a moment of frantic prayer, she feels the overwhelming love of God, that she is a beloved child who He does not want to be miserable. She starts to take tentative steps to action.

Mormon Spiritual Practice On Divorce

Beginning to grasp how bad it is, the woman turns to the first source she can think of: the source she is supposed to trust, the source she has been told to consult, the source she thinks might be able to offer an independent assessment and maybe refer her to counseling – her Bishop. After all, if she’s going to defy the Priesthood Leadership in her home, i.e. her husband, she had better seek the permission of the next Priesthood Leader in her life.

Many Bishops handle this moment with grace. They label the husband’s behavior as unrighteous dominion, as unacceptable, as abusive, as spiritually destructive. They refer the woman to a hotline or a shelter or a therapist or a lawyer. God Bless those Bishops.

But many, many, many Bishops do not. They’re not adequately trained to handle it. Bless their serviceful hearts, but they have no experience in mental health, in domestic violence, in counseling. Hopefully, the Bishops’ own marriages are happy – but that means they have absolutely no frame of reference for toxic relationships. And the Handbook flat-out tells Bishops that they are never supposed to advocate for divorce. And so the Bishops parrot all of their religiously-driven, well-meaning, culturally-mired, utterly-destructive instincts.

“I know Brother [Husband]. He’s a good man and a successful businessman and great contributor to our ward. This must be some sort of misunderstanding. Are you sure you’re not overreacting?”

“I encourage you to attend the temple more often as a family, and to seek healing together. I know God brought you together. Divorce is never in God’s will. Through God all things are possible.”

“I’ve been in this position for a long time, and I’ve never yet seen a situation where there isn’t enough blame to go around on both sides.”

“Maybe Brother [Husband] feels threatened by all the time and attention you spend with your kids [or siblings, or book club, or friends, or coworkers]. Have you considered cutting back on that, and dedicating more time and attention to him and your home responsibilities?”

“This may seem silly, I know, but a lot of men express quiet frustration to me that despite all of their stressful work and all they do for their family, their wives don’t appreciate them. Have you considered losing weight, or having sex with your husband more often? That has an incredible healing and bonding power.”

“Have you stopped and considered what you may be doing to trigger your husband’s behavior?”

And in that moment, women crumple. A Priesthood Leader just spiritually advised her to try harder, and to keep blaming herself. He echoed and reinforced every single doubt she had been telling herself for years. When a Priesthood Leader has told her she’s overreacting, the last thing she’s going to do is call the police.

Maybe she eventually finds the strength to leave anyway. But overcoming all of the general psychological difficulty in breaking off a relationship, plus the hurdles of dissolving a temple marriage, plus ignoring official Priesthood and perceived Apostolic advice – it’s nothing short of an Olympic feat.

The Rob Porter Story Typifies Everything Wrong With Mormon Men Not Believing Abused Mormon Women

All of this background is why I’m so infuriated about the story that broke today, about Rob Porter (a Mormon, and White House senior staffer) physically abusing both of his Mormon ex-wives, starting on both of their honeymoons, and continuing for years.

Because the story isn’t actually about Rob Porter. I don’t care about Porter and his relationship history. I don’t care about the political consequences for the Trump Administration. I don’t care about how this fits into some broader #metoo narrative.

I care about how buried in the story are subtle references to exactly the Priesthood-non-believing-behavior I’ve seen dozens of times.

Let’s look at the story:

“She was trying to get help, and nobody would help her,” [the first wive’s friend] in Idaho said.

So, a Mormon woman was ignored while trying to discuss her abuse, presumably in her ward or to her Bishop, in Idaho. That’s a story I’ve heard before.

“The pull of the institution of marriage was still strong.”

Presumably the journalist is referring to just how deep-seated Mormon belief is in preserving Temple Marriages at all costs.

And the kicker:

One summer, when she was interning at a federal agency, she had access to a counselor through her job. “When I explained to him what was happening, he had a very different reaction from the Mormon bishops,” she said. “It was weirdly validating to hear that from somebody else.” Speaking about the counselor, she said, “He was very concerned to hear Rob was choking me.”

Read between the lines there. She had told multiple Mormon bishops, and none of them had validated that her marriage including descriptions of physical abuse were bad.

Second wife has the same general story – and remember, this is from within the last decade. When she had already at one point obtained a restraining order.

She described Porter’s anger issues to a lay official in the Mormon church. She said the official had told her to think carefully about what she said publicly about Porter’s behavior. “Keep in mind, Rob has career ambitions,” she recalled the [presumably Bishop] saying.

She went back to Porter for a while, before eventually divorcing in 2012. She then offers the single best description of emotional abuse I’ve read.

“I was a ghost of a person,” Willoughby said, noting her robust social life before her marriage. ”That was very drastically no longer allowed to be part of my life, because the anger or the stress and argument that I would have to endure wasn’t worth it. Slowly, over that first year, I gave up being myself. I prioritized emotional survival.”

And to all of this, as the story broke, what did Sen. Orrin Hatch say? Sen. Orrin Hatch, former boss of Rob Porter, and one of the public’s most visible faces of old-generation conservative Mormonism?

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, one of Porter’s previous employers, told the Daily Mail that the allegations against Porter came from “character assassins.” “It’s incredibly discouraging to see such a vile attack on such a decent man,” Hatch said. “Shame on any publication that would print this — and shame on the politically motivated, morally bankrupt character assassins that would attempt to sully a man’s good name.”

He backpedaled, somewhat, later today. He reiterated how wonderful Rob was, but then said “Domestic violence in any form is abhorrent and unacceptable.” Cynical me assumes some female Mormon press staffer rushed to do damage control.

But the point here is that first reaction. The first reaction that devout Mormon women with photos, with witnesses, with police and FBI reports – well, they just can’t be believed.

Stop it. Now.

Condemn it from the pulpit. Describe abuse in detail. Doctrinally enshrine it as unrighteous dominion. Offer lessons in Relief Society and Young Women. Proclaim from the Temple-tops that God’s plan of happiness does not require marital martyrdom and misery. Explain that divorce often is the best solution. Respect restraining orders. Provide resources and Church welfare support and everything you can to help women get out.

And when a woman confides in you? Believe her.