Safety, Secrecy, and Sacredness

Today we continue to mourn the loss of Tom Kimball, guide at the Kirtland Temple, and former employee of Signature Books. The big shock for many of us who knew Tom was that he had, unbeknownst to most all of us, abused many young girls over the years. Now we have so many more reasons to mourn. We mourn for his victims, who carry the burden and scars of his abuse. We mourn for his family, who endured the fallout from his abuse and the problems of living with a husband, father, and relative who lived a double life. We mourn for his long struggle with his own illness that led him to abuse innocent girls and women and ultimately to take his own life.

This problem is bigger than Tom and those whom he grievously wounded. Unfortunately, it is a pervasive problem. In the Restoration movement, we carry a legacy of problematic relations between the sexes and problematic relationships between adults and children. It is important to note that I speak from the perspective of one who does acknowledge Joseph Smith's history of polygamy and problematic sexual relationships with women and girls as young as fourteen. That fourteen year old girl whom Joseph Smith married was, as sad historical irony would have it, Helen Mar Kimball.

Helen married Joseph in May of 1843. When her father first raised the possibility of her marrying Smith, she was appropriately angry: "My first impulse was anger . . . my sensibilities were touched." But she trusted her father, a man who failed in his responsibility to protect his vulnerable child: "I knew he [father] loved me too well to teach me anything that was not strictly pure." When she agreed, she rightly still felt betrayed: "My father had but one Ewe Lamb, but willingly laid her upon the alter [sic]." She was plied partly with the promise of salvation and exaltation for her family and kin. As Joseph promised her, "If you [Helen] will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation & exaltation and that of your father's household and all of your kindred."

Whatever anyone thinks about polygamy as a religious principle, I hold the position that this should never have happened. Joseph Smith and Heber C. Kimball committed a crime against the innocence of young Helen. I have a 15-year-old daughter. There is no way in hell I would hand her over to an adult man for any such or similar purposes, even with the promise of salvation and eternal life. I would thrust back the scoundrel who made such a proposition and condemn him to the fires of hell. That is my understanding of a righteous course of action, and I will stand or fall by it.

In my view a lot of the problems that Restorationists have had with gender and sexuality hark back to the way polygamy was mishandled. Polygamy, secrecy, and manipulation of the vulnerable were not infrequently shrouded in a veil of sacredness. Even the rites of the temple were implicated in these crimes. For everything we cherish about the Restoration, the taint of these crimes remains, as does the legacy of this secrecy and control. In the LDS Church, the Restoration branch with which I am most familiar, priesthood leaders privately interrogate children about their sex lives in minute detail. The Church has struggled with surrendering control over the sexuality of children in this way, so implicated in the LDS idea of the sacred it is.

Unfortunately, as in the days of Nauvoo polygamy, today this culture of secrecy and sexual control continues to provide cover for adults to perpetrate sexual crimes against children, whether it is the priesthood leader who delves a little too much into the details of a child's masturbatory habits, or the Church failing to cooperate with law enforcement when a member/perpetrator is trying to avoid being appropriately charged with a sex crime. The problem is pervasive, and it must stop. One sure way to improve the situation is for the LDS Church to discontinue interviewing minor children. Period. That would help break the cycle of abuse. It would discontinue what is essentially a pattern of more or less deliberate sexual grooming of kids.

For this cause Sam Young, a former bishop who took up the cause of getting the Church to end the practice of interviewing kids in private about their sex lives, was ex-communicated by the LDS Church. That is how badly the Church wants to protect its prerogatives in this regard. To its credit, it did take some measures, but they were incomplete and insufficient. The LDS Church is not truly committed to the safety of its children, and this is one reason why I no longer affiliate with the LDS Church. I was born in the covenant. I am from multi-generational pioneer stock. I served a mission. I attended BYU and earned two degrees there. I married in the temple. I served in bishoprics and young men's presidencies. Once I fully understood the risk of submitting my kids to these interviews, and the entire unhealthy culture of sex in the LDS Church surrounding those interviews, I could not in good conscience continue to attend the LDS Church with my children.

For these reasons and more, this news about Tom is devastating to me, and it raises so many questions. Was Tom abused? Many abusers were themselves victims of abuse. Was his abuser a priesthood leader? Did he confess his sins to his bishop, only to have his bishop sit on that knowledge and not notify authorities? We have to ask ourselves--to what extent did Tom's Mormonism facilitate or aggravate his crimes and tragic end? At the very least this terrible revelation must force those of us who knew Tom to recommit once again to ending the cycle of abuse. Sexual predation must not be a problem of such great magnitude for the Restoration movement. The legacy of Helen Mar Kimball, the crimes of Tom Kimball, and every other similar tragedy and crime of this movement oblige us to do better.