The news stories over the past week of the alleged sexual abuse of a young LDS missionary by her Missionary Training Center (MTC) president have rocked me. It is horrific. It is sobering. My teenagers are asking me about “rape rooms” in the MTC. (Talk about a conversation I never thought I’d have.)

There is also deep sorrow for the way this sister missionary has been treated, ignored and disbelieved. It feels like not only was she molested by a trusted church leader, but she was revictimized by the institution of the church. The church did not leave the ninety and nine and go after the one. They did not protect the lamb. They circled the wagons, barred the door and shut her out.

She’s been talking about this for more than 30 years. Thirty years. No one believed her. I ache for her, for the other victims who have yet to come forward — as surely they will — and I ache for an institution that acts as if it would rather protect its image than its vulnerable.

Last week, the LDS Church’s Public Affairs Department threw gasoline on the fire. The first official response came across as tone-deaf, calloused and utterly devoid of compassion or empathy. In fact, it felt like it was victim-shaming, victim-blaming and wagon-circling. After all, she only served “briefly” and “nothing could be done.”

Do you blame her for leaving a church that refused to listen for more than 30 years? I don’t.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement and the sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church, you would think the LDS Church would have learned a thing or two.

Jonathan Bernstein is a crisis-management expert. In 2002 he got a frantic phone call from an archbishop, his spokesperson and a church attorney about an unfolding Catholic clergy sex-abuse scandal.

“How do we stop the inferno,” they wanted to know. As reported in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press in 2013, Bernstein said: “I told them that they needed to do three basic things — total candor, total transparency and total humility. They said, ‘Thank you very much,’ hung up, and I never heard from them again.”

They didn’t listen, and the crisis continued for quite some time.

I know I am not alone in feeling that the LDS Church’s initial insensitive response to this crisis has done some real damage, to victims and to themselves. The church has been working to eliminate the stigma of missionaries who come home early. Now, that’s undone with a single news release.

There have been numerous messages of love and support to those who are survivors of abuse but now, it feels like a message has been sent that you’d better hope your abuser is not well-known or up the ranks of the church hierarchy. We’ve heard repeated stories about leaving the ninety and nine and going after the one. It feels like there’s a qualifier now — that only some “ones” are worth loving and supporting and going after. And accountability? All personal, but zero institutional. (The second news release was better, but the damage had been done.)

How can we bear one another’s burdens and mourn with those who mourn if we don’t believe them?!

I don’t understand why the default reaction of so many is to disbelieve. What would it take so that the default reaction becomes one of believing? False accusations happen — they’ve happened to me — but they are still so incredibly rare that it should never automatically be assumed that stories of abuse are false.

In 2013, Dieter F. Uchtdorf, then a member of the LDS First Presidency, said: “To be perfectly frank, there have been times when members or leaders in the church have simply made mistakes. There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles or doctrine.”

This is one of those times.

God will never call us to defend the indefensible.

(Photo Courtesy Holly Richardson)