Church takes action against Mission President
A man becomes mission president and mistreats his Sister missionaries. The church takes swift action to remove and excommunicate him.
Violadiva
Violadiva is an oxymoron, a musician, a yogi, a Suzuki violin teacher, a late-night baker of sourdough breads, proud Mormon feminist, happy wife of Pianoman and lucky mother to three.
So glad to see this. Yet I can’t help but notice how, until this story broke, they let him quietly skulk away with his good name intact, and they let the blame for his aborted mission fall onto his WIFE, as if her illness were to blame. If not for the #MeToo movement, if not for McKenna Denson, to this day, his wife would still be shouldering the blame for his sins. I understand the need to protect the sister missionaries’ identities from being recognized as his victims, but the church really did a horrible thing to his wife, letting all this fall onto her like that. I am really, really glad that he has been called out by name.
I’m glad they dealt with this by removing the guy, but it really bothers me that there is no mechanism (that I know of) for missionaries to report abuse by their mission presidents through “proper” channels. The article mentions a sister taking the “unusual step” of calling the stake president of her home ward. If I understand correctly, unauthorized calls like this would generally be against mission rules.
I know a sister who was abused on her mission and finally reported to a family member, although she’d been told by her president that she’d be sent home if she mentioned anything to them. Even her family couldn’t figure out who in the church to report to for a while, eventually contacting a sympathetic general authority through friends of friends of friends. (I’m not sure why police weren’t involved. What the guy was doing was illegal, albeit in a country were rule of law is lax.) The church leadership did intervene, but only to move the sister out of the mission, leaving most people there to believe she’d been sent home early. The mission president apparently received some kind of serious talking-to, but was allowed to serve another six months or so until the end of his term.
(Just to clarify, it was the mission president who was the abuser in this case.)