Porter resigned as White House staff secretary after his former wives, Jennifer Willoughby and Colbie Holderness, accused Porter of abusing them, as has been all over the news this month.



The wives also said that they had said the same to bishops in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (often known as the Mormon church) years before, and the men did not believe them or did not help these women in such great need.

The neglect of and practice of abuse, often sexual abuse, are problems that plague the Mormon church and have since its beginning.

In the cases of the ex-wives, Holderness gave the Daily Mail a photo of her with a black eye that Porter admitted he took, telling that media company that her bishop did nothing for her.

“It wasn’t until I went to a secular counselor at my workplace one summer and told him what was going on that he was the first person, and not a male religious leader, who told me that what was happening was not OK,” she told the Daily Mail.

Willoughby told The Intercept that when she talked with her bishop about the problems with Porter, the bishop responded by considering public relations for Porter.

“Keep in mind, Rob has career ambitions,” he said, as Willoughby told the media outlet.

Willoughby wrote in a blog post last year: “When I tried to get help, I was counseled to consider carefully how what I said might affect his career. And so I kept my mouth shut and stayed.” Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free

Generally, just in the past five years, sexual abuse cases have been rampant.

Last year, there was former bishop Erik Hughes who was sent to prison for sexually abusing teen boys; a similar sentence for Darran Scott, a high priest, for the same thing; and Judge Thomas Low who, with the rape survivor in the room, praised the abuser Keith Robert Vallejo, also a former bishop. Low called Vallejo an “extraordinarily good man.”

And there was MormonLeaks’ 316-page report with instances of child sexual abuse over nearly six decades.

The year before that, more than 20 men filed lawsuits against the church alleging that the organization and the Boy Scouts of America covered up sexual misconduct performed on them.

And a fifth individual filed a lawsuit against the church in accusations of sexual abuse while in the organization’s “Lamanite Placement Program,” also called the “Indian Placement Program.”

In 2014, in a lawsuit in Hawaii against the church, two men said they were sexually abused as children for two years on church-owned property. And yet another former bishop, Michael Wayne Coleman, was arrested and charged for allegedly luring a minor for sexual exploitation.

In 2013, bishop Todd Michael Edwards got three years for molesting two teenage girls.

Also, in 2010, former bishop Lon Kennard Sr., was charged with 43 felony counts of sex abuse and sexual exploitation of children, being sentenced to three terms of five years to life in prison the following year. In 2008, bishop Timothy McCleve was sentenced after pleading guilty to sexually molesting children. In 2001, the church paid a $3 million settlement to Jeremiah Scott after he filed a lawsuit against the church, accusing an attempted coverup of sexual abuse.

A webpage from the nonprofit Mormon Stories Foundation titled “Stories about child/sexual abuse in the LDS church” links to nearly a dozen-and-a-half stories related to the issue.

And at least sex issues go back to church founder Joseph Smith, who had sex with perhaps seven females who were 18 or younger (young even for that 1830s and ‘40s era) and perhaps 11 women who were married to other men. The church itself has admitted that Smith had a teen bride and was married to other men’s wives.

What other cases are out there?

Let’s not even start in this column about bishops’ invasive interviews with children about sex that is so much a problem that Sam Young, an active Latter-day Saint and a former bishop himself, is leading a popular petition about it. Or the church’s approaches and stances towards LGBTQ+ folks, including a Nov. 2015 gay policy wherein 32 suicides by gay LDS youth that reportedly occurred a mere three months later.

What are conscious but devout LDS left to do to either double down in their faith or leave it? They promise in the temple ceremony where they believe they learn to reach the highest heaven that they need to be willing to sacrifice so much for the church, they must die for it, if necessary.

Even beyond that, they promise to give all their time, talents, resources and assets to the church. Anyone 56 years and older in the church could have promised in the ceremony for their own salvation to be willing to slit their own throats if they tell the secrets of the temple ceremony.

While the literal motion of doing that in the temple is gone, keeping these cult commitments secret is still a promise.

Talk about culture wars.

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