December 2018

An open letter to Bill Reel and the Mormon Discussions team:

I wish I could say that I was shocked by your response to my letter of concern about the platform you are choosing to give to convicted “Exponent embezzler” Suzette Smith. Sadly, however, it is an extraordinarily typical example of how Mormon men are trained to respond to the victims of any given Mormon bully.

Your willfully-obtuse defense of a serial financial predator, your victim-blaming, and your self-righteous gaslighting of appropriate cognitive and emotional responses as petty refusal to forgive are exactly the same tactics many of us have come to expect in the bishop’s office. But your refusal to see past your own “valued friendships” and your own susceptibilities, in order to empathize with those that Smith has repeatedly, willfully, knowingly harmed is a startlingly disappointing response, especially from someone who has built a brand around the idea that the church fails members when it responds in exactly this way.

Suzette Smith didn’t accidentally take a few dollars to pay medical bills. She didn’t siphon off a few thousand dollars to buy food for her kids. She stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, fought discovery of her crimes every step of the way, still refuses to disclose the full extent of her theft (she may not even *know* the full extent of her theft—who can keep track of over 600 separate transactions?), and betrayed the trust and stole the money of thousands of her individual “sisters.” For heaven’s sake, the very logo she is using on your platform was purchased with funds stolen from the Exponent II.

Nobody is trying to “force as much hurt” on Smith, or on anyone. Nobody wants to cause her, or anyone, “further deep damage.” Your vilification of those Smith betrayed and the community she willfully harmed is a masterpiece of Mormon-passive-aggression worthy of a gallery wall, but as you obviously know, it is also disgusting, “gaslighty,” abusive nonsense. I have no affiliation with or investment in the Exponent II beyond an occasional guest post and a subscription to the magazine, but Smith’s betrayal of the community cuts me to the core. If you genuinely believed in holding those who harm others accountable, as you claim, you would not allow a woman who acutely harmed the Mormon feminist community to claim to represent that same community. If she felt any true remorse for her betrayal of those who also “considered her a friend,” she would never dream of referencing her “work in the Mormon Feminist community” to promote a podcast aimed directly at the community she willfully harmed. “Forgiveness” does not and can never mean that an abuser is entitled to a platform, a position of authority, or the right to “represent” the people who they harmed ever again–let alone before the criminal investigation of their crimes even concluded. And trying to invoke “forgiveness” or accuse those who have been harmed of petty and mean-spirited attacks when they ask for even a minimal amount of accountability from their abusers isn’t just offensive, it’s cruelly and willfully re-traumatizing victims via gaslighting and emotional abuse.

You and the Mormon Discussions team have apparently chosen the side of the bully, and are actively helping her to continue to victimize those she wounded. Given your own stated position on the harmful protection of known abusers, this is particularly disappointing.

If you choose to align yourself with your own friend rather than the victims whom she continues to harm on your own platform, obviously there’s nothing we can do to dissuade you. But I genuinely hope that you will take a few moments to consider the deeply familiar, deeply ironic, and deeply harmful patterns you are replicating here. Your response to the actions of a serial and unrepentant predator that abused the trust of her community and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from her “friends” is heartbreakingly predictable. As long as progressive Mormon communities continue to sacrifice victims on the altar of enabling and protecting well-connected and public-facing abusers in the name of “forgiveness,” they cannot claim to be any different than the institution they critique.

Sincerely,

Olivia Meikle

Becky Reid Linford

Jenny Marshall Latu

Katrina Baker

Erin Wright-Parsons

Miriam Murdock Higginbotham

Annie Dredge Kuntz

Sidni Jones

Marisa McPeck-Stringham

Marta Silver

Emily Benton Heaton

Norienne McBee Christensen

Elizabeth Siler Moore

Malena Crockett

Marissa Benson

Marie Tuft-Leighton

Kate Kennington

Ashley Groesbeck

Margret Jones Tonks

Cylinda Rickert Areno

Tessa White