By, John Dehlin
Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
John Dehlin
Introduction and Episode Overview
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[00:01:09] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I am your Host as always, Dr. John Dehlin. It is August 21, 2019 and today we have kind of a really sobering, probably very disturbing, but very important topic that we need to address.
[00:01:33] So I'll just jump right into it. Some of you may or may not know that last week Mormon Bishop and current Stake High Councilman from Holiday, Utah by the name of Steven Murdoch was caught in a Tennessee mall in a clothes store taking pictures of a woman who was undressing there.
[00:02:01] This is in Nashville, Tennessee. The woman is named Alondra Alcala. The woman looked up and saw the phone and the camera peeking up over her dressing stall and she confronted Bishop Stephen Murdoch and Stake High Counselor Stephen Murdoch. She ended up slapping the phone out of his hands, running to mall security and charging him with the police with ultimately taking illegal pictures or voyeurism.
[00:02:33] And just last Sunday, as a result of the news reports, Stephen Murdoch was released from his position as Stake High Counselor in the Utah the Salt Lake Olympus Stake where he lives in the Utah Olympus 8th Ward in Holiday, Utah. And we're grateful that news outlets are finally covering the story.
[00:02:58] At first it was only local kind of Tennessee news that was covering the story. But it took several days and then finally a courageous reporter from Fox 13 News here in Salt Lake covered the story and we were very, very grateful for that.
[00:03:17] His name is Adam Herbitz. And then yesterday the story finally broke and the Associated Press and the Salt Lake Tribune and others began covering the story. The reason why we're doing a podcast about this is because the reporters have not obtained what I think is the most crucial part of the story, and for me, the most crucial part of the story is that the Mormon Church played a very important role in covering up Bishop Stephen Murdoch's history of harassment and abuse.
[00:04:03] And ultimately through this cover up allowed him for two years to remain in a position of significant influence which allowed him to victimize other people and ultimately likely allowed to this latest, you know, this latest incident of voyeurism in the mall in Nashville, Tennessee.
[00:04:30] So just to give you an idea of what we're going to talk about today, we're straying a bit from the normal Mormon stories format. I won't be interviewing anybody, but what we're going to be doing is I'm going to be reviewing for you a report that I've written up after interviewing directly 20 people who have relationships with Stephen Murdoch, have or have had relationships with him. I've communicated with the victim, Alondra Alcala. I've interviewed several former co workers of, of Stephen Murdoch. I've interviewed ward members who lived in Stephen Murdoch's ward while he was bishop, members of his ward, members of his stake, people that worked with him, co workers at the highest levels.
[00:05:25] And I've even communicated directly with some of the victims that he harassed and abused, according to these reports, in the workplace. And I'm going to be telling you kind of a play by play full story of what's happened, what Stephen Murdoch's history is, and also the church's role in covering this up and enabling future victims.
[00:06:01] So that's what we're gonna be doing today. And it's not something I'm excited about, it's not something that I'm happy about. It's not something that I wanted to spend my time researching and covering. And I want to begin with just a huge disclaimer that we really can't talk about this story without beginning by expressing deep sympathies for all of the victims of Bishop Stephen Murdoch. And we'll be telling you about these victims throughout this report, but also the family members of Stephen Murdoch. So Stephen Murdoch is married, he has several children, and as a public figure who has received media attention before, it's excruciating for family members to be drug into very public media circuses, as it were, especially when the topics are sensitive or controversial or even scandalous and damaging.
[00:07:04] And so I don't do this with glee and I want to set a tone by just saying we express deep sympathies for the family members of Steven Murdoch. For the victims of Steven Murdoch. And I meant even say Steven Murdoch himself.
[00:07:19] This is not something that is fun for anyone. And the only reason, you know, I'm really doing this story is after speaking with Bishop Murdoch's co workers and with his victims, they are all outraged at how the Mormon Church has covered up this story and how they've dealt with the story in the media since it's come out. And we're going to be getting into that as well. And so, and so thank you for everyone who's joined us on Facebook Live.
[00:07:54] I invite people who wish to share comments or questions or anything that they want to say during this story. And I want to invite anyone who wants to share this story to please feel comfortable doing so only for the purpose of building awareness. Because the only way that we know how to get the Mormon Church to change and the only way that we can protect future victims is by speaking openly about these sorts of things. And we know that the Mormon Church cares a lot about its reputation and its legal risk.
[00:08:39] And we believe that it also cares about the safety of its members. And so we hope that you'll do your best to kind of share this story on the Internet and we'll get the word out. And I just want to be clear. Our focus isn't even even though we'll be talking about Bishop and High Councilman Steven Murdoch, our goal is not to shame him.
[00:09:04] We do feel like these sorts of things need to be talked about publicly. But we believe he is a, a sick man who's not well, who needs treatment. And so, you know, our focus on Mormon Stories tries to be on systems, not on people.
[00:09:24] So we are even going to be try to be as humane and as kind as we can to Bishop Murdoch, Stake High Councilman Murdoch, as we talk about the story. So I've pasted into this into the description of the story, a link to my Mormon Stories article that I've just released. You're free to open that up and read through it as we're talking today. I will be using that article as the basis for our discussion today.
The Arrest and Initial Reports
[00:09:57] So here we go. So on. Let's see. On August 14, 2019, I, John Dehlin, began receiving reports about a former Mormon bishop and current holiday Utah Mormon Stake High counselor named Steven Murdoch, who was arrested last week in Nashville, Tennessee for illegally video recording a woman undressing in a fitting room.
[00:10:28] The basic facts of the story, the initial story, as best as I can gather them again after having spoken with over 20 people directly involved, including the victim, are the following. On August 13, 2019, Steven Murdoch and as I understand it, both his wife and other family members were at the H and M store at Opry Mills Mall in Nashville, Tennessee.
[00:10:56] Apparently, Bishop Stephen Murdoch was was standing at a dressing stall and guided a woman named Alondra Alcala into one of the dressing rooms. It seems like he was possibly posing as an employee But I'm not for sure about that.
[00:11:16] But he sort of guides her into a dressing room for her to try some clothes on. As she begins undressing, she notices an iPhone pointing down at her from the top of the dressing room, which was held by Bishop and Stake High Councilman Murdoch. Immediately, she moved to a stall, noticed that Murdoch was doing this, saw him trying to delete the photos from his phone, and was able to slap the phone out of his hand, grab it, and he ran to a security person, I believe, in the store with the phone.
[00:11:48] By her account, quote, I was kind of cornering him, kind of grabbing his arms, and I did watch him delete photos of me on his phone. Thankfully, I was able to slap it out of his hand and take it and run out. According to an affidavit, Stephen Murdoch's wife, Amy, asked Alcala not to call police and suggested that things be settled without police involvement. I'm not sure if that's true, but that's what Alcala says, which has been unsettling to a lot of people.
[00:12:19] Once police arrived, Bishop Stephen Murdoch was arrested and he posted bail after his arrest. And he's back in Salt Lake City, as I understand it, and he's been seen by his neighbors walking around the streets of Holiday, Utah.
[00:12:36] As soon as this story hit the news, some of my listeners reached out to me requesting that I report on the story. They were angry about two things. These listeners had children who recently were interviewed by Bishop Murdoch during the time that he was serving as bishop in the holiday, Utah Olympus 8th Ward in Salt Lake City, in the Salt Lake City Olympus stake. And these parents were furious, number one, that their children had sat alone with this man for worthiness interviews about sexual matters in his bishop's office.
[00:13:20] And they were just disoriented and confused and angry that an entrusted Mormon leader would act in such a violating way. And they were sickened to think that this bishop had been sort of acting as an inquisitor alone behind closed doors, grilling their kids about sexual matters, their sexual worthiness, when he himself, as we know now, had this long history of sexual grooming, of being a sexual predator, of sexually harassing women. And, you know, when they reported to me of voyeurism. But secondly, they were deeply concerned that at the time of his criminal act, he was an active Stake High councilman in the Holiday, Utah Stake, Holiday, Utah, Salt Lake, Olympus Stake, and that he would continue to have access to vulnerable children, youth and women in his stake if he.
[00:14:15] If this was not reported on. So it Took me a couple days because honestly, I want to be careful about these types of stories. I don't want to falsely accuse anyone. And honestly, I don't revel in scandal. I don't revel in shaming people. I've been publicly shamed and accused of really awful things. And so it's kind of traumatic for me to even, you know, entertain these sorts of stories, frankly, because at a very fundamental level, I don't.
[00:14:49] They make me sad, they make me sick, they make me uncomfortable, and I don't want to hurt people. But once, you know, but I, you know, once it came out of the news, I felt like at least it was fair to share the story. So I shared the story on Facebook.
[00:15:10] And by the way, after reading it and reading Alondra Alcala's report and the fact that he was actually charged, you know, with voyeurism, I felt like there was enough credible evidence to at least share the story. So I shared the story on Facebook and immediately went viral. Last time I checked, it was shared over 129 times on Facebook. And that's just the direct shares that I was able to see. Who knows how many indirect shares.
[00:15:37] And immediately friends of Steven Murdoch, ward members of Steven Murdoch, stake members of Steven Murdoch and co workers of Steven Murdoch began reaching out to me to provide additional details for the story. And they're super disturbing. And so what I'd like to do now is share with you all the information that I've gathered after directly communicating with these people who reached out to me again, including the victim.
[00:16:07] So here's the evidence, and this is disturbing trigger warnings for those who've been harassed or abused or who are triggered by these sorts of things. This is disturbing stuff. So please turn this off if children are around, turn this off if you are easily disturbed by these sorts of things, practice self care. And if you need to take breaks or pause or skip portions, I encourage you to do all of those things.
Pattern of Reported Misconduct Before the Bishopric
[00:16:42] So here we go. From the 20 people that I've spoken with, here's what I've been able to gather. Several of these interviewees reported that Bishop Stephen Murdoch has long been known for inappropriate behaviors such as giving long hugs, making inappropriate sexual comments, and, you know, displaying sexually grooming behaviors at church, at work, in private parties, and with friends for a long time before he was made bishop, while he was made. While he was bishop and after he was bishop and while he served in the Stake High Council.
[00:17:31] Something that was told to me by a firsthand person involved. And this is something Very sensitive. That I only report for one reason, and I'll clarify. It was reported to me that Stephen Murdoch participated in a one plus year extramarital affair before he was called as Mormon Bishop of the Olympus 8th Ward. And again, I am not mentioning this to shame people who have extramarital affairs. I'm not standing in judgment over that. This fact is mentioned for only one reason.
[00:18:09] It is odd that Stephen Murdoch was called as a Mormon bishop after he had engaged in an extramarital affair, which we have no evidence that he had ever repented for or received any church discipline for. And again, I would not be speaking about this unless I had firsthand knowledge that he had been involved in this affair.
[00:18:35] And my guess is, is that many orthodox Mormons would not feel comfortable working with a bishop who had had an unrepentant extramarital affair only a few years before becoming bishop. Especially because Mormon bishops sit in judgment over people who are involved in extramarital affairs, including disciplining, you know, disfellowshipping or excommunicating people who are involved in extramarital affairs. So this would have put Stephen Murdoch in a position, if he ever did, oversee disciplinary councils, either as a bishop or as a Stake High Council member.
[00:19:15] If he presided or was involved in these sorts of disciplinary councils, which he most likely was, as most bishops and Stake High Councilmen are, it would have put him in a position of being deeply hypocritical for being involved in any of these sorts of tribunals, which I, of course, am opposed to.
[00:19:38] And I'm also not in favor of shaming people who are involved in affairs. That's not why I'm bringing this up. It's more about trying to talk about the institutional problems within Mormonism that enable and lead to abuse. So the biggest problem here that we're highlighting, that we'll talk about at the end, is the Mormon Church's assertion that people in Mormon callings are called of God, and specifically that Mormon bishops are called of God.
[00:20:12] You know, receiving a letter from the prophet of the Mormon Church himself. As I understand it, how could it be that God inspired the stake President and the prophet of the Mormon Church to call Stephen Murdoch as bishop when he had had an unrepentant extramarital affair and, you know, as it's reported to me, allegedly, but from a source with direct firsthand knowledge, how can that be?
[00:20:42] And what does that say about the church's insistence that Mormon Church leaders are called by inspiration and are led by inspiration, especially when bishops are Given such a high level of trust, Mormon church leaders in Mormon wards give bishops incredible amounts of trust. And bishops sit alone with children and women and couples counseling them and as judges in Israel, judging them for their sexual indiscretions, for their behavior.
[00:21:14] How can it be that this man made it through the church inspiration, sort of infrastructure to be allowed to be in this position? So that's one of the major things that has been reported to me by multiple witnesses. Secondly, or thirdly, Stephen Murdoch, Bishop Steven Murdoch has had a long history of sexually harassing and at times groping women in the workplace. This is before. During, before his time as bishop, during his time of bishop and after his time as bishop as a member of the Stake High Council. So through a number of sources, I've been provided with the names of several workplace victims of Stephen Murdoch who claim, and I've spoken with several of these victims personally.
[00:22:02] They claim to me that Steven Murdoch harassed or groped them in the workplace. So that's, you know, that's evidence that's been provided to me by the victims themselves now and by many co workers who witnessed this harassment. One source wrote, quote, or reported to me, quote, every work party, he would hug, rub on my breasts and touch my behind every damn time. He ended up crossing the line more than once with other women.
[00:22:37] It was crazy. And this is very sensitive. It was crazy. This is reported by one of the people I interviewed who had, who firsthand witnessed this. It was crazy how Amy, his wife, would just sit and watch. It finally came to the point where I would avoid him at all costs. And again, this means in kind of workplace settings or in parties related to work.
[00:23:02] This is sensitive because I think for sure Amy Murdoch, his wife, is going to be a victim here. But so many people were disturbed at the report at the mall where she quickly seemed to try and settle this crime or this incident by avoiding police interaction. Many people were just wondering how could his wife have jumped to his defense and tried to avoid police involvement? Of course, what wife wants their husband to be arrested in a very public, invisible way. So it would be natural for her to be very scared about this. But people were just wondering, why was there a pattern here? Had she.
[00:23:45] Was she used to protecting him in some way? But here was additional information about Amy's past witnessing an involvement in Stephen Murdoch's serial harassment and groping of women. Other points made to me by witnesses. It has been reported to me that Stephen has a type, had a type in the workplace and in his wards where he sought out women who were short, very thin, pretty by description, and who are in their early twenties, oftentimes recent graduates of college who were young in their careers, eager to please in the workplace and desirous to be approved of and to succeed.
[00:24:33] There were also indications that in his grooming behavior he would try and find people who had been victimized and who were more vulnerable. According to other reports, whenever Stephen was confronted about his sexual behaviors as a, quote, faithful, married Mormon man, quote unquote, he would assure his friends and co workers that Amy Murdoch, again Steven's wife, had full knowledge of his behaviors or past indiscretions. And he would tell people that Amy was fine with his behaviors. Now, again, I'm not saying that's true, and I'm not saying that even if he had that impression and even if there were some evidence to that that Amy was anything other than a victim here, but he did tell people, multiple people, that whenever he would act out sexually, that his wife knew and was okay with it.
[00:25:29] Here's where the church starts to really get involved. In 2013, Stephen Murdoch was called as a Mormon bishop. Again, after this affair, after, as a reported affair after, you know, groping and harassing several women. And again, for those who don't know anything about Mormonism, being a Mormon bishop is one of the most sacred and sensitive positions within Mormonism.
[00:25:59] They are allowed to sit alone with children, with 8 year olds, with girls and boys, alone with teenagers, men and women, boys and girls, vulnerable youth and. And many Mormon bishops see it as their job to grill young boys and young girls about masturbation, about where they touch themselves, about sexual activities that they were involved in in high school or in college.
[00:26:27] And if any of you have followed Sam Young's work in the Protect LDS Children or the Protect all children or Protect Every Child movements, we know that some of these bishops, especially if they have a proclivity towards sexual indiscretions, would grill these children or young women or men to get lurid detail about any sexual activities that they had been involved in, with questions like, where did he touch you? Did you orgasm? Was it inside or outside the clothes? Did you know? Did he orgasm?
[00:27:02] Asking really graphic, horrid details. And so of course, if you marry this role as bishop, trusted bishop with this practice of bishops being able to sit alone with children and youth and young adults asking them graphic sexual questions with the potential of some of these bishops or stake presidents or mission presidents to be themselves perpetrators or harassers or groomers, it is a sickening combination. And now we know that Bishop Stephen Murdoch in 2013, you know, inexplicably defying what we would expect to be discretion or inspiration by Scott Bowie, his stake president. So Scott Bowie is an insurance salesman in Holiday, Utah. He was the stake president of the Salt Lake Olympus stake.
Alleged Behavior During His Time as Bishop
[00:28:02] He calls Stephen Murdoch to be bishop in the Olympus 8th Ward. So moving to his time as bishop, Stephen Murdoch. I've communicated with ward members who lived in the ward when Bishop Murdoch was bishop. And at least one or two of the people that I spoke with reported that they would receive long, unwanted, non consensual hugs from Steven Murdoch when he was bishop, that Bishop Murdoch would tell his ward members multiple times that he had a great sexual relationship with his wife.
[00:28:48] He would tell, in this case, one ward female ward member that when he was alone with her, but also when she was with him and her husband, and both she and her husband felt like it was uncomfortable, like it was sort of grooming behavior.
[00:29:05] And both she and her husband had reactions that his behavior was weird and uncomfortable. They reported that he would text women as a bishop inappropriately and make inappropriate texts as bishop. Another ward member reported to me that Bishop Murdoch would stare inappropriately at her chest and make inappropriate comments and again, text her inappropriately with strange texts.
[00:29:37] So all of these things happened are reported to me from people who were ward members, one, while Stephen Murdoch was their bishop. But I think what's most disturbing is what Bishop Stephen Murdoch did in the workplace while he was serving as bishop. And so today, this morning, I was finally able to speak with one of his final victims at a company that he worked for.
[00:30:09] The company was called nfp. It's a multinational corporation that deals with things like insurance, as I understand it. And this victim reported to me the following, that while Stephen was serving as bishop, as she joined NFP as an employee, Bishop Stephen Murdoch would do his best to try to keep her after hours to work alone with her. She reported that Bishop Murdoch did his best to give her an impression that he had more authority over her and more jurisdiction as a boss than he really did, which was something that she didn't discover until a little bit later.
[00:31:03] She reported that Bishop Murdoch would explicitly use his position and title as a Mormon bishop to both ask her questions, detailed questions about her private sex life, and he even engaged in grooming behaviors where he would. He would shame her about her private sex life on the job, using his title as bishop to try to groom her. So it was sort of this, I'm a bishop. I'm a righteous man, but I'm going to ask you sexually explicit questions, but I'm going to try and shame you about any private sexual behaviors that you're involved in, even though you're not a member of my ward. But I'm also going to.
[00:31:58] And she reported this to me. He would show her pictures of himself without his shirt on. He would stroke her legs, bare legs, under the table during business meetings. And he kind of the most disturbing incident that led to this particular victim actually reporting him to employees, to her supervisors, is that during a business meeting in front of clients, Bishop Stephen Murdoch, you know, got a hold of her phone, unlocked phone, and while he was in front of clients, searched her phone to find inappropriate pictures that were private and took pictures of those private photos so that he could keep them and use them for whatever purpose.
[00:32:59] And again, all of this happened while they were in the presence of a client. And this particular victim knew this because when she got her phone back, Private pictures of her were showing on the phone that he had just grabbed from her and used.
[00:33:21] And so. And so, you know, basically this. This victim ended up reporting him to authorities, and it led to his being fired from the company nfp. Incidentally, this victim said to me, as she was considering Bishop Stephen Murdoch's time alone with young girls in the bishop's office, she wondered, I can only imagine the things that Bishop Murdoch talked about with girls in his bishop's office privately, alone, or the way he tried to touch them when he was serving as bishop. So.
[00:34:08] So that's kind of what he did as bishop in the workplace while working for a company called nfp. So here's where the Mormon Church gets more involved in even more direct ways. So in March of 2017, one of these victims filed a report with the management at nfp.
[00:34:45] And very quickly, fortunately, The NFP took swift action, and Steven Murdoch was terminated now in March of 2017. Now, here's definitely the most crucial part of this story, because our focus is on the LDS Church, the system and the procedures and the policies in place within the LDS Church that protect abusers at the expense of the abused and that allow future people to be victimized.
[00:35:30] So three people, two of them being employees of nfp, and then one other person related to one of the victims, who were all faithful members of the Mormon Church, went to Stake President Scott Bowie and reported to him in detail, according to these three reports, reported to.
[00:36:00] And I have direct knowledge of one of, well, all of them through, you know, secondhand knowledge of two of the reports with someone who is directly involved, and then third with someone who is directly involved of the reports. And so imagine three people come to Stake President Scott Bowie and say Bishop Stephen Murdoch was recently fired from his job for sexually harassing women.
[00:36:29] Scott Bowie was given details of the sexual harassment so that there would be no uncertain terms as to what he was accused of. And completely inexplicably, President Stake President Scott Bowie retained Bishop Murdoch as bishop for another five months. Months. So for another five months after being fired for sexual harassment, after this long record of inappropriate sexual behaviors, you know, allegedly, according to all the firsthand witnesses and victims and friends and co workers of Bishop Stephen Murdoch, he was retained as Bishop for another five months to be able to meet alone with young girls, young boys, young teenage girls, young teenage boys, young adult women, women in bad marriages, in vulnerable positions.
[00:37:25] He was allowed to continue with these as Bishop for five months. Then again, completely outrageously and inexplicably, in August 2017, five months after Bishop Murdoch was fired, Bishop Murdoch was released by Stake President Scott Bowie after four years of service as Bishop.
[00:37:53] But then he was immediately called into the Salt Lake Olympus Stake High Council, a position of either of even broader influence, where he would be able to interact with at a higher level at the stake level instead of the ward level, with multiple wards instead of a single ward.
[00:38:15] He was able to serve there for another two years until last Sunday when he was released only after this entire news story had become public. And ironically, in Stephen Murdoch's position as a Stake High Councilman, he would have been able to sit in these disciplinary councils where men and possibly women were tried for inappropriate sexual behavior and or marital infidelity, which according to reports, he himself had been involved in without repenting, and he would have been able. Or missionaries who had come home early from missions because of sexual indiscretions.
[00:39:02] Stake High Councilman Murdoch would have been able to sit in judgment over these people and even disfellowship or excommunicate these people from their colleagues. So why in the world did President Scott Bowie retain Stephen Murdoch into the Stake High Council after three separate, active, faithful Mormons had gone to him to report his long history of sexual abuse or harassment or groping of women in the workforce? It's just really inexplicable.
[00:39:48] So who knows what happened during those five months that, that Murdoch, you know, Bishop Murdoch was able to remain as Bishop? Who knows what happened during the two years that he was able to go from ward to ward to ward within his stake, speaking to youth and to adults about the law of chastity and Other things, whatever private relationships he was able to have in the stake, whether it's girls camp or young men's or young women's, you know, who knows what.
[00:40:19] What he did there while he was serving in the Stake High Council. But what we then know, you know, if we bring it up to modern times, we know that August 13, he was charged with voyeurism in Nashville. He was arrested, he posted bail for secretly taking photos of Alondra Alcala while she was undressing.
[00:40:44] And then to just follow the timeline, August 14th, you know, the news reports started coming out about Stephen Murdoch's arrest. August 16th, I posted, you know, in the Utah Facebook Mormon context, the story which, which made it go viral on Facebook. And then of course, on August 16th, thank goodness, Fox 13 News of Utah reported on the story.
[00:41:10] And. And then on August 18, Stephen Murdoch was released from his calling. Now, if I can, I'm going to go ahead and play a recording of his release and we're going to just briefly talk about it because for some people that has been, you know, for some of the warden stake members who were around the warden stake when Bishop Stake High Councilman Murdoch was released, you know, they had real concerns about how he was released. So fortunately, several of the ward members in Bishop Murdoch's ward sent me the audio recordings of his being released. So I'm going to go ahead and just play that for you now.
[00:42:05] Here goes. Brothers and sisters, the state presidency has released my brother Stephen Murdoch, as a member of the Salt language statewide council. We propose that we all raise our hands and express our appreciation to him for his service and our support to him and his family. This time. Those who don't, please. So please summon your.
Release from Calling and Community Reaction
[00:42:39] So that was a recording of Bishop Stephen Murdoch being released from his calling as stake high Councilman just a few days ago. And I'll just read some of the reactions of the ward and stake members who were there when they had to hear these remarks. So one, one of these ward members was wrote. He was released today, but we were asked to give a vote of thanks to a, quote, great man, unclose, quote. I did not raise my hand because, quote, what in the actual hell? Close quote. Now, this person was not in his ward, so it must have been in a different ward. And it may have been a different audio recording that this happened.
[00:43:23] But this ward or stake member was deeply concerned that they were asked to raise their hand to give support to a great man, meaning Bishop Stephen Murdoch, by, I'm only guessing, either the stake president or a stake High councilman who released him in that ward, another person wrote, quote, the current stake president asked his ward today to forgive him and talked about repentance. So in one of the wards in the stake, the stake president asked the ward to forgive Stephen Murdoch and immediately started talking about the importance of repentance, which is deeply problematic to victims of abuse when Jesus and the atonement are immediately invoked in repentance.
[00:44:09] Language is immediately invoked when people are potential or actual victims of sexual abuse or harassment, et cetera. And then a final member of the ward and or stake wrote, the stake president, stood up, got teary and announced that Steven Murdoch has been released and then asked for a show of support for his service, him and his family by raising our hands.
[00:44:35] I just plan to keep my hand down and say nothing but tying support for his family in with support for his service. Of course we support the family, but why not just announce his release? It hurt. So again, one of the ward members felt very traumatized by the stake president asking ward members to provide support to the perpetrator or the abuser, Stephen Murdoch.
[00:45:04] And it was very triggering for this ward member. So, you know, that's how the church has handled it. At least that's how they handled it on Sunday. We'll talk about how they handled it in the media in just a second.
[00:45:18] A couple other just points that I've gathered through my interview of over 20 victims or ward members or co workers with Steven Murdoch. One interviewee noted that Steven Murdoch has a personal relationship with Mormon prophet and President Russell M. Nelson and with President Nelson's daughter, Marjorie Nelson Lauder. And this interviewee wondered if the way that the church has treated Murdoch over the years has anything to do with President Russell M. Nelson's relationship with him. Now, I can't confirm directly that President Nelson and his daughter have a relationship with Steven Murdoch, but it has been reported to me by people who are friends with or ward stake members with Steven Murdoch.
[00:46:07] So that's an interesting twist that we can pursue or not. And then finally, a different co worker from Steven Murdoch who worked with Stephen after Stephen left NFP in a different company, reported to me that Stephen was recently fired from yet another company in addition to his termination from NFP a few years back.
[00:46:34] Now, the source related to me, they did not. We were not able to confirm that he was fired or terminated for sexual harassment, but they clearly indicated based on his workplace behavior that they would not at all be surprised that he had a history of sexual harassment. So again, another co worker from a separate, more current employer confirmed to me directly that Stephen had been fired from yet another company afterwards and that he engaged in behavior, displayed behavior that was very inappropriate in the workplace, all while he was serving as a stake high counselor, you know, in a stake after President Scott Bowie had been warned from at least three different sources that he had a history of sexual harassment in the workplace.
[00:47:27] Stephen Murdoch has removed any access to his LinkedIn profile. He's clearly minimized his social media profile, as has his family. And that's kind of the information that I have from again, these 20 plus witnesses who have direct knowledge and information about all this stuff. So I have a million comments from, I have a million comments from people who are listening and I am going to go ahead and read a few of them right now.
[00:48:13] Jared Egley, who's been on Mormon Stories, who has been abused by someone reportedly by Jared's account, who has currently remains as bishop, just writes, hey John, thanks for getting this out. Jared obviously is disturbed about how his abuser remains as a bishop, even though he's reported that to a stake president. Jared, you know, anyone who wants to please, please check out Jared's, Jared's story on Mormon Stories podcast. Amy Germer writes, such hypocrisy. Jenna writes, so glad you are discussing this. It needs to be talked about. Jared writes, and they asked the congregation to pray for him during his difficult times. Seriously, why can't people see this?
[00:48:56] So Jared's speaking about how inappropriate bishops and stake presidents can be, insisting that members move immediately towards forgiveness or support when people are dealing with the trauma of abuse. Crystal, I'm not going to read that yet. I don't want to just do a total pile on.
[00:49:16] I will go ahead and wait to read some of these comments until after I kind of give my summary because I don't want this to be a pile on. And a lot of the comments are actually very understandably, very tough towards Bishop Murdoch. So I'm just going to jump to questions that I have for the Mormon Church and that I hope reporters will pick up on.
Key Questions for Church Leadership
[00:49:39] And I would ask any of you to please send this blog post and this podcast interview to all the reporters you know, to the Salt Lake Tribune, to the Deseret News, to ksl, to Associated Press, to the Wall Street Journal, to New York Times. Please, please do your part to call on reporters to report on this cover up because I've got all the evidence. I actually have witnesses who are willing to speak anonymously to reporters.
[00:50:11] So please help me get this word out. But these are the Questions that I would ask the Mormon Church as a result of this and the long history that we know of with the church? Number one, why was Stephen Murdoch called as a Mormon bishop by President Scott Bowie? Stake President Scott Bowie after what has been reported as a one plus year extramarital affair for which there's no indication that, that he ever repented or received church discipline and in spite of the fact that Murdoch had a history of sexually harassing women in the workplace prior to being called as bishop. Mormon church leaders teach members that bishops are called of God.
[00:50:53] The Mormon prophet signs the letter calling bishops to the office of Bishop. You know, did God make this call? Did God want Stephen Murdoch as bishop of this ward? And if not, how did President Bowie miss this crucial fact during the inspiration process?
[00:51:12] And what does this mean about the Mormon Church's ongoing insistence that its leaders have inspiration, have discernment and exercise that inspiration, discernment in callings and is it legal and moral and ethical and, and does it compromise members safety to continue teaching this doctrine of discernment and inspiration from leaders? That's question number one. Question number two is why was Bishop Stephen Murdoch retained as bishop for five additional months after President Scott Bowie was informed from three different faithful sources that Bishop Murdoch had been terminated for sexual harassment and the groping of a co worker? This again, this gave Bishop Murdoch five additional months of direct access to children and to youth as bishops.
[00:52:07] So what was stake President Scott Bowie thinking when he did this? We really want, we really need to know this because this is one of the most crucial parts of the COVID up. And I'll just say people in the know are really concerned about whether Scott Bowie is going to be the fall guy.
[00:52:30] You know, just like other church leaders in the past, whether it's John D. Lee or with the polygamy, with the Post manifesto polygamy stuff of the early 1900s, you know, many are worried that Scott Bowie is going to be the fall guy.
[00:52:45] We'll talk more about that in just a second. Question number three is why was Bishop Murdoch released after only four years of service? Traditionally bishops serve. Mormon bishops serve for free. Five years. This shows that Bowie felt like there was something that required an early release of Bishop Murdoch. So in a way it sort of proves that Murdoch, that Bowie knew that Murdoch, that there were problems with Murdoch, but inexplicably, so that's something. Question number four is did President Scott Bowie consult Mormon Church headquarters, area authorities, higher church level leadership, general authorities, or most importantly the Curt McConkie law firm?
[00:53:29] Did he consult with any of them when he released Bishop Murdoch one year early, or when he received three independent reports from faithful members that Bishop Murdoch had been fired for sexual harassment on the job. If so, what was the recommendation of Curt McConkie or of the church leaders?
[00:53:55] And if he didn't report this to Curt McConkie or church leadership, why did he fail to report it? And many of us feel like it's impossible to imagine that Scott Bowie would receive three independent reports of sexual harassment and not tell his upline his leadership. So either he's corrupt. I mean, I don't know what else to think because certainly he can't ignore three independent reports from faithful members. So it would cause one to wonder whether either a, he was corrupt or complicit. And by all reports, he was a very strict by the book stake president.
[00:54:37] Either that or he didn't believe or he did report this up the chain. And if he did, I think reporters need to really get to the bottom with documentation of what was reported to Curt McConkie, what was reported to area and general authorities, and what was their advice? You know, question number five. Why was Bishop Stephen Murdoch immediately called to serve as a Stake High Councilman by President Scott Bowie, a position of increased visibility and influence, even though he was released as bishop one year early?
[00:55:12] And again, even though he had been told by three separate faithful sources that Murdoch had been terminated for sexual harassment? We're just befuddled by that. And I think reporters need to get to the bottom of that question because that is again, how future victims are made vulnerable. So instead of like this being made public, ward and stake members being warned, law enforcement officials being involved, investigations being held to make sure that ward or stake members hadn't been victimized by Steven Murdoch, keeping it quiet and putting him in a position of further and increased responsibility. So now he's talking to stakes. He's at a stake level instead of a ward member.
[00:56:01] Now he's traveling around multiple congregations having the imprimatur of an approval of the stake presidency, which is a higher level of authority. And we all know that Stake High Council is a precursor to stake presidency. Member, you know, how in the world could Bishop Murdoch have been allowed to stay to be called into this position and to remain in it for two years, again questioning this doctrine of discernment and inspiration that we're taught that our leaders have, that our leaders are called of God? Number six, why have so many witnesses reported, including Stephen Murdoch himself, that that Amy Murdoch was okay with Steven Murdoch's sexual indiscretions Maybe this is true, but maybe Amy's been misrepresented.
[00:56:52] Why was Stephen Murdoch telling people this? Maybe he was lying. Maybe he was abusing her. My guess is undoubtedly Amy Murdoch and her children are all victims to Steven Murdoch. But, you know, we have to say that both with the recent arrest and with at least one other account and by Stephen Murdoch's own words, there's an impression that somehow Amy became either a conscious or an unconscious enabler to some of his behaviors. But hopefully that's not true. We will see. And regardless, we will say that Amy Murdoch has to be a victim in this.
[00:57:38] Some have doubted the account from Alondra Alcala that Amy Murdoch immediately sought to prevent her reports from going to the police. If Amy Murdoch did try and prevent Alondra Alcala to. From going to the police, why did she do that? And what other incidents has Amy known about and or covered up for for Steven Murdoch?
[00:58:05] Number eight, to what extent is Amy Murdaugh the victim of an abusive, smooth manipulating husband and father versus complicit in apparently serial harassment and abuse? Number nine, how many other victims of Steven Murdoch are out there? How many of these victims, ward members, stake members, co workers, community members, people in his neighborhood, other people?
[00:58:29] How many of these victims could have been spared if Stephen had. If Bishop Murdoch had been released as bishop when President Bowie knew that he had been terminated from his job for sexual harassment, was it President Bowie and the Mormon Church's responsibility to warn family and friends and community members? Was it when they knew that Murdoch had been accused of sexual predatory behavior?
[00:58:58] The church is really tough on apostates and warning members about apostates and preventing members from talking to apostates and disfellowshipping excommunicating apostates for as simple things as like starting a support community or speaking on Facebook about credible problems with church history? Why is it that the church is so ferocious in convicting and marginalizing and alienating and excommunicating and disfellowshipping, you know, honest members who express concerns about church history or doctrine publicly, and yet they're so laxed with convicting and prosecuting and investigating members that are accused of. Of really egregious acts of sexual abuse or harassment. It's really inexplicable. We're going to talk about that in just a second.
[00:59:52] But why did the church not do a full scale investigation? Or if they did, what was the verdict? What did they find? What methods did they use to do the investigation? Number 10, has Stephen Murdoch made secret videos of visitors to his house, of neighbors?
[01:00:11] Has he engaged in voyeuristic acts in his neighborhood or in the workplace? In what other ways has Stephen Murdoch violated people's privacy and acted as a voyeur or as a sexual predator? Number 11, how will Mormon Church members be protected from Stephen Murdoch in the future?
[01:00:30] So a lot of these perpetrators like Joseph Bishop remain, or Sterling Van Wagenen, they remain members of the church in the future. They end up getting callings in the primary or callings into Stake Presidency or stake High Councils or whatever.
[01:00:47] And ironically, LGBT Mormons have been flagged with asterisks for decades just for reporting same sex attraction, as we learned with Benji Schwimmer, never having engaged in any same sex sexual activity at all. It's so stunning that the Mormon Church has flagged with asterisk the records of LGBT people.
[01:01:13] And yet in so many instances, like with Sterling Von Wagner, Joseph Bishop and others, they have not been flagged with asterisks to prevent people like Stephen Murdoch from serving in the future in callings with youth, callings with children, callings of influence. And again, Joseph Bishop, Sterling Von Wagner and Lowell Robinson are all three examples that I know of where the church has allowed known accused abusers to go on and serve in influential church callings. And we'll talk about that in just a second.
[01:01:52] So how will the church protect members in the future? From Stephen Murdoch, number 12. How do the doctrines of Jesus Christ's atonement and repentance apply to, you know, situations like this? How fast should we, you know, how fast should we be pressing victims or ward members to forgive?
[01:02:23] How fast should bishops or stake presidencies, you know, forgive and allow as fully repentant people who have shown the behavior of kind of being, you know, of being predators? You know, we know that, you know, child abusers and serial abusers repeat.
[01:02:46] And that's why governments often flag people as, you know, on a sexual registry. But, but in the Mormon Church, from all the different accounts I've heard of abuse over the years, bishops and stake presidents, rush victims and ward members to hurry to the place of forgiveness and compassion and repentance on the part of both victims, ward members and perpetrators, to sort of wipe clean the offense and to keep it quiet and to not involve policemen and to not talk about it. And my question and concern is how do these doctrines of Jesus Christ and the atonement and repentance apply to victims and perpetrators when we know that such resolutions often leave current and future victims at risk vulnerable for being abused more?
[01:03:40] 13. How many other abusers like Murdoch have been protected and promoted by Mormon Church leadership? What other children, youth and women are currently vulnerable to leaders whose abuses have been covered up in the past sort of by this boys club within the church? 14.
[01:03:59] Does Stephen Murdoch's reported relationship with Mormon Church President Russell M. Nelson and his daughter Marjorie Nelson louder have anything to do with how Murdoch was enabled and empowered and protected over the years or of how the media has handled this story at present? Maybe there's no relation. Maybe there is. I think that's worth investigating.
[01:04:24] Again, why was Stephen Murdoch fired from his most recent job in addition to his job with NFP, are there other victims? 16. Does Stephen Murdoch have any other legal convictions or charges on his record? 17. And finally, what type of psychological support will the Mormon Church give, you know, Murdoch's victims, Murdoch's family, ward and stake members who are traumatized by all of these events? You know, to what extent we know how the church oftentimes tries to silence and cover up these sorts of things, to what extent will the Church start providing with its, you know, honestly, hundreds of billions of dollars in resources?
[01:05:11] Can the church start implementing support and resources for therapy and counseling for victims and for family members and for Stephen Murdoch himself? So many times I've heard about the Church quieting an instance of sexual harassment or abuse and providing no harm, credible therapy or counseling to either victims or perpetrators. And when I say therapy or counseling, I'm not talking about LDS Family Services that oftentimes provides therapists that do not follow proper ethical guidelines, that do not provide the sort of treatment that's empirically supported and evidence based and that oftentimes violate privacy rules and disclose information about their parents to the bishop or stake president.
[01:06:03] You know, in so many ways, the Church's relationship with LDS Family Services has proven to be fraught. And so when will the Church, Mormon Church, start providing credible, reputable, trained, expert therapy resources to both victims and perpetrators so that we can have more healing?
[01:06:24] So thank you for your patience so far. We're not done yet, but I promise what we're going to talk about soon is perhaps most important at all about the church's cover up and the PR and the damage control by church spokesman Eric Hawkins. But I'm going to highlight six problems that I want to highlight that I think the Church really needs to take a deep look at and the reporters need to focus on because we're focusing on systems, not on, you know, individuals here. So problem number one, you know, the church has a history of not doing background checks and proper training for its bishops and leadership, its stake presidents and its clergy.
Systemic Problems With Church Oversight and Vetting
[01:07:13] So is this idea of following the spirit and discernment and, you know, call people that, you know, you know, without proper background checks, without proper vetting, you know, is the church properly vetting and training its leadership? And is, you know, is that a problem?
[01:07:34] That's problem number one. What can the church do to better vet and do background checks on its leaders and to train its leaders so that we don't have more of this? Number two, a second problem is the Mormon Church's long history of protecting and promoting abusers at the expense of past and future victims.
[01:07:54] When abusers are not held accountable by the church in a way that notifies church members of the risks, that protects abusers, that invalidates victims, it opens up the way for future victimization. And we have several recent cases of this that we've covered on Mormon stories and that have been covered elsewhere. Lowell Robinson, Go to the episode with Chris Swallow on Lowell Robinson.
[01:08:25] Several individuals who had been sexually abused by Lowell Robinson went to Lowell Robinson went to church headquarters and let Elder Earl Tigny know that Lowell Robinson had sexually abused them because he was about to serve as a mission president for three years. Earl Tigny ignored those reports. Lowell Robinson went on to serve as a mission president for three years over other young men. He went on to serve as a stake president, and then he went on to serve in the primary, as I understand it, after the church had received multiple reports of sexual abuse by Lowell Robinson. How in the world did that happen? Joseph Bishop, we know that he sexually.
[01:09:13] He admitted to sexually groping McKenna Denson in the MTC in Provo in the 1980s. We know that McKenna Denson reported this to church leadership, including general authorities. And we know that Joseph Bishop went on to serve in multiple colleagues, including colleagues in the Sunday school, long after it had been reported to the church that he had sexually abused a woman in the MTC while he was president of the mtc. Again, Sterling Von Wagner, we know that he sexually molested, according to Sean Escobar's report and his own admission, we know that he reported Sean Escobar as a young teen, that eventually this was reported to church, to bishops, to stake presidents, that everyone was told to let it go, that they needed to support the repentance process and the appropriate channels, and that Sterling Von Wagner went on to serve as the stake High Councilman again after sexually abusing Sean Escobar.
[01:10:12] And he went on to be hired as reports have it given to me. Sterling Von Wagner went on to direct the Sacred Mormon Temple videos after the church knew that he had sexually abused at least one person. And again, where was the spirit of discernment and inspiration, you know, with the church general authorities that work with Sterling Van Wagenen on the temple videos. And then finally we know about Michael Jensen in West Virginia, the young Mormon boy who sexually abused several youth before his mission. The church knew about that. He went to serve his mission and the church didn't warn anyone. And he went on in West Virginia to sexually abuse more victims later.
[01:10:56] A horrendous account that you can read about from vice and from other sources. So the church needs to stop protecting abusers, find a way to warn Ward and Stake members and stop shaming and invalidating and silencing victims. And they need to get members to report all of these offenses to police immediately, instead of having a 1-800-hotline where Curtin McConkey advises members and bishops to not involve police in these matters. Problem number three is that the Mormon Church continues and perpetuates this teaching that leaders are called directly by God through divine revelation and that church leaders have the gift of discernment. And I'm just editing this document as I talk about it.
[01:11:51] Mormon leaders are not called by God through inspiration. That's impossible because far too many have turned out to be abusers. So that's dead. Mormon leaders do not have the gift of discernment. If they did, Lowell Robinson, Joseph Bishop, Sterling Von Wagner, Michael Jensen and Stephen Murdoch would never have been called and promoted and protected within, you know, the church hierarchy. So such teachings of discernment and revelation encourage members to trust and defer to and give their power to these leaders beyond anything that is healthy.
[01:12:33] It makes members more vulnerable to abuse. It makes church leaders, it makes church leaders over these people again, like the general authorities who must have covered up for Lowell Robinson or Joseph Bishop or Sterling Van Wagenen, like President Bowie and whatever other general authorities were involved. This teaching about Mormon leaders being inspired of God and having discernment and inspiration, this teaching has to make it so higher level church leaders are reticent and afraid to punish and release information about these offending leaders when the abuse happens because they're scared that members or the media will start to question the inspired nature of Mormon church callings and church leaders gifts of discernment and inspiration.
[01:13:24] So again, with the desire to protect the church's name and its reputation and its power, these teachings around inspiration and discernment of church leaders leads to the abuse problem. Number four, this continued practice of the Mormon church leaders sitting alone with children and youth behind closed doors and conducting worthiness interviews. Number one, they should just scrap worthiness interviews because a Mormon leader should not be able to judge an individual's worthiness, especially when we know they have their own skeletons in their own closets. But the church needs to never allow a man to sit alone with a young woman, a young girl, a young boy, a female youth, a boy, even a young adult, a young bishop or a stake president or church leader should never be able to do that.
[01:14:22] And so with that, that needs to be fixed. And so we call on the church to stop these one on one interviews permanently. And the church's recent changes that made it so parents have the option of joining leaders or their children or their youth in these interviews does not go far enough. Because how many parents don't know about that rule and how many kids don't feel like they need to involve their parents? And how many instances of abuse will happen in that situation?
[01:15:03] Number five, I believe that in some ways many of us are victims, that even Steven Murdoch and so many others are victims of a culture within Mormonism that is obsessed with sex, that Mormons are sexually repressed. Mormon leaders are sexually repressed. They're obsessed with sex, they're obsessed with talking about sex. And I believe that this shaming and this obsession and repression with sex leads to a church wide culture of lying and deception amongst youth and adults. It creates this. In some ways the church teaches its members to lie. It allows people probably like Steven Murdoch, to create these split lives which where they're doing all sorts of unquestionable things privately, but then creating the appearance of faithfulness in public.
[01:16:00] There's this internalized shame that gets driven into people. And I think that the church's culture around sexuality and its obsession with masturbation and pornography creates unhealthy, covert sexual behaviors and shame, even amongst church leadership, and especially amongst church leadership, which cannot in any way, I imagine, be healthy for the climate and the culture. So I'm not excusing Stephen Murdoch or others, but I do think the church needs to change its culture around sexual obsession, sexual repression, shame and lying and hiding and all that stuff. And then finally, problem number six, the church has this clear tendency to care more about its reputation than the health and safety of the membership.
[01:16:52] Which is why the Church would suppress stories like this and others which why PR reps would gaslight and try and downplay. It's why Curt McConkie would always counsel bishops not to talk to lawyers, to not go public, to not talk to police.
[01:17:09] And it's what would allow the promotion of predators like Stephen Murdoch and others at the safety and the expense of ward, stake and community members. And again, I'm just disgusted by the Mormon Church's tendency to pr, it's PR arm, to gaslight and deceive the public regarding the facts, the depth and the merits of these types of stories. And let me just end by addressing that specifically.
[01:17:37] Once this story started reaching the press, we were super excited. Again, the victims, the co workers, all the witnesses and victims and friends that I talked to who knew Stephen Murdoch. What was deeply disturbing was to read the church's PR response to these stories.
[01:17:58] So again, the AP puts out a story, Daily Beast puts out a story. Other, you know, the Salt Lake Tribune and KSL finally put out a story. And what we read from church PR spokesman Eric Hawkins was deeply disturbing to me and to the victims and to, you know, the other people involved.
[01:18:22] And this is what was written in one of the articles that I linked to on the Mormon Stories podcast page, Quote, church spokesperson Eric Hawkins confirmed Monday that Murdoch was a high counselor and former bishop with the church.
[01:18:39] And then this is the crucial part, the article reads. Both are volunteer positions, said the spokesman. I'll talk about why that's problematic in just a second. Then it goes on to say, Hawkins goes on to say this type of behavior is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated from any church member. Hawkins said when local leaders learned of the arrest and charges, he was meaning Murdoch immediately removed from all responsibilities. Here are the two major problems with PR spokesman Eric Hawkins for the Mormon church. Number one, what Hawkins omits is the fact that higher church leadership knew about Stephen Murdoch's troubling pattern of sexual harassment as early as 2017, but chose to retain and even promote Murdoch to a position of greater responsibility after his firing for sexual harassment.
[01:19:39] And, you know, I had, you know, gotten word around through my Facebook article, which, which I know the church reads and pays attention to because I've been told from inside church sources that the church pays attention and reacts to every Facebook post I make. But in that Facebook post I made, I made it clear that Stephen Murdoch had a long history of sexual harassment.
[01:20:12] And again, we know that President Scott Bowie, at a minimum, knew about Stephen Murdoch's past from three different independent, faithful sources. But it is really hard to believe that other church leadership didn't know about president about Bishop Murdoch's firing from nfp. And so, you know, it's likely that Hawkins is not being honest about what the Church knew and when it knew it and that it basically gave the impression that the church, you know, immediately fires people when they learn about these sorts of problems. I don't think it does. But the other thing that was deeply troubling for those who read was Hawkins attempt to downplay the sacred and powerful role of Mormon Bishop and Stake High Counselor as volunteer positions.
Victim Statement and Listener Responses
[01:21:06] Anyone who's been Mormon or has existed in the Mormon universe knows that according to Mormon doctrine and policy that bishops and Stake High Councilmen are called of God directly by inspiration by leaders who have the spirit of discernment and that the calling of Bishop comes with the letter signed by the President and prophet of the church. So to dismiss and downplay publicly the role of Bishop or of Stake High Councilman as merely a voluntary position feels like gaslighting. It feels deeply disingenuous. And I just want to call on Eric Hawkins and the Mormon Church to redact or clarify that statement because it feels deeply disingenuous to me and to the victims of Bishop Murdoch and to all the other people that were influenced by Bishop Murdoch and other leaders when he used his mantle of Bishop to groom people like he did with the victim that I talked to that led to his firing.
[01:22:22] After reading Eric Hawkins statement, one of Bishop Murdoch's victims expressed the following concerns. Number one, she was surprised that this story had not received more in depth, thoughtful coverage from the media within Utah, particularly exploring Stephen's long history of sexually mistreating women and the role of the Mormon Church in protecting and enabling Bishop Murdoch. Why have journalists not looked into this problem? It's a big question. They've had many, many days to do it. I'm not a reporter and I've been able to uncover this stuff. I posted on Facebook immediately about this cover up and that Stephen, that the stake President knew about Bishop Murdoch's firing from sexual harassment.
[01:23:12] Back in 2017, I posted about this on Facebook. Why have no, no media people investigated this issue? This victim of Bishop Murdoch expressed this concern. She also worries that the church has been successful in either suppressing or manipulating this story with replacement. That was her first concern. The second concern of one of the victims was she said that she would like to see Bishop Stephen Murdoch and the LDS Church held accountable for protecting Bishop Murdoch, Stake High Councilman Murdoch and others who do these sorts of things because according to the words of the victim, she wants to see a Mormon world, an LDS Church world where predators are not protected by multi billion dollar organizations, by PR spokespeople who are savvy and who work to manipulate the media and downplay church leadership involvement again at the expense of victims.
[01:24:16] So again we call on the Mormon Church to start being far more responsible in how their PR department does damage control and tries to influence the media and or gaslight or influence members or the general public. So you know, in conclusion, in summary, we are asking that those who are paying attention to this story, news media, reporters, whoever, we are asking the following, you know, through this case study, how can the Mormon Church improve its leadership, its policies and its practices to prevent such cover ups and or mistakes from happening again? And secondly, how can the Mormon Church better prepare its members to protect themselves from potentially abusive leaders?
[01:25:11] We hope that that can happen. That is why we're doing this episode. It's systems, not individuals. I and those who are behind me, the victims and the co workers and the friends involved with Steven Murdoch we welcome any additions or corrections to this report. You can go to a link on Mormon Stories podcast. The link is mormonstories podcast.org podcast Steven Murdoch that's S T E V E N Murdock D O C K Please send us your questions or comments additions.
[01:25:51] If we've made any errors, we will correct them with evidence. Our intent is not to shame or mislead anyone, including Stephen Murdoch or his family, but to provide the Mormon Church and the public with a thorough case study so that the Church can learn to do and be better.
[01:26:08] If there are any additional victims or friends or family or ward members that want to add to this story about Steven Murdoch, we are welcome to receive your confidential reports. You can email us@mormonstoriesmail.com but most importantly, where are the reporters? If any news reporters, Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News, ksl Associated Press, New York Times, Wall Street Journal if any news reporters would like to obtain further details about this story, please reach out to me@mormonstoriesmail.com I will provide you with the name of all the witnesses who are willing to go on the record. Some of them have already said they would, but they want to do it anonymously.
[01:26:56] I will provide you with that information so that you will have all the information you need to provide this with the global coverage that is necessary to not allow it to be swept under the rug. So so that is this episode. I appreciate those of you who listened. I'm going to go to the comments now just to kind of get a sense for the comments that have been made.
[01:27:22] We have had lots and lots of comments. I apologize that I'VE been so busy relating the report that I haven't been able to include the comments so far. We've had over 229 comments so far. I encourage all of you right now to please share this story. We've got 202 people that are live. If those of you will please share this story right now live on Facebook, it can be made known throughout all the memberships of the church, the PR, news reporters, etc. It can help spread the word so that we can do better.
[01:28:02] I think that that will be an important way that we keep things like this from ever happening again. Now I will do my best to read some of the comments and involve our listeners. And by the way, I'm just going to add a final note. This is something that I have as a P.S. to this article that I need to finish writing, but I personally would be remiss not to take time during this story to reflect on how I, John Dehlin, and I, as a man and men in this world and women in this world, have all been complicit in creating environments, workplace environments, church environments, personal environments that support patriarchy that I and others have either participated in or supported patriarchal systems throughout our lives.
[01:28:56] We all, including myself, including John Dehlin, have played and play a role in enabling patriarchal abusive systems. Even when the patriarchal systems are doing their best to care about victims and to believe victims and to report perpetrators, we still live in an environment Post Harvey Weinstein Post Me too.
[01:29:21] We still live in a world where women feel disempowered, where women are not in are paid less, where women are not in positions of leadership and church leadership and corporate leadership like they should be. And ultimately, where women do not feel safe reporting, you know, abusive experiences to co workers into management.
[01:29:44] Many, many of the victims that I talked with did not report the abuses of Steven Murdoch to their employers because they felt like they wouldn't be believed or they were scared about the repercussions that would happen. And so, you know, just like we're all, all of us who participate in racist systems in some way bear responsibility for racism that happens even if we're not using the N word or explicitly treating people in racist ways. We're still racist in the sense that we participate in these types of systems. We are all complicit in sexism to the extent that we participate in sexist systems where women are marginalized, women are mistreated, and women don't feel safe.
[01:30:34] So I need to do better. I need to look at what I can do to in my own power, in sphere of power and influence, to do better, to see what to know what I've done wrong. I've made mistakes in my life in many ways, in all sorts of ways. So I'm going to try and be more thoughtful about this.
[01:30:55] I'm complicit. We're all complicit, and we need to be more thoughtful. And I would call on listeners to do their part to empower women, strengthen women, promote women, enable women, pay women more, and create workplace and social and cultural and Mormon and religious environments where women are empowered and children, where they feel safe to report and where they feel believed when this type of thing happens. So that's sort of me trying to do my best to take responsibility and to call listeners to do that as well.
[01:31:30] So many comments. I'm not going to read them all, but I'll start. Martine writes, my immediate past stake president Oscar McConkie III, son of Curt McConkie co founder Oscar McConkie Jr. Drilled it into our oh my gosh, that comment just disappeared. So I some of these comments are disappearing as they're being made and that is awful.
[01:31:52] So Martine, if I can find a way to get your comment back, I will. Let's see. Sarah writes, good point about sexual inhibitions, dual identities and shaming. Let's see. Oh my gosh, we are having several really harassive, harassing people making comments. And and I'm really disgusted by some of the comments that are being made. So as we're talking, I'm gonna have to go in and moderate some of these comments because they're egregious.
[01:32:34] So please forgive the egregious and abusive commenters that are commenting. Let's see. I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead and end this episode now. I'm going to thank everyone for their participation. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to go back later and probably do a follow up to this episode. I may include experts or professionals or other people, but I'll also do my best to read and comment on comments from my listeners because these comments are coming in way too fast. They're scrolling past my eyes. There are several people who are being abusive in these comments and I want to be able to do this thoughtfully before I respond.
Closing Thoughts and Call to Action
[01:33:19] So this has been my report of Voyer and Bishop and Stake High Councilman Steven Murdoch's case, which attempted to be a case study in how the Mormon Church ignores and covers up abusive behaviors, protects abusers at the expense of victims. And again, I would just call on all of you to do your part to spread the word. Talk to journalists, share the story with journalists, share this on your webpages, share this in your Facebook groups, Twitter feeds, Instagram. I would love to see over a hundred people share this recording right now and or the Mormon Stories podcast blog post wherever they can so that the word can get out.
[01:34:05] And again, heartfelt love and support to the Murdoch family, Amy Murdoch and the children. Do not they deserve love and respect during this time. Please let's rally around them and show them love and support. Let's be kind and loving to the family.
[01:34:27] Even Bishop Murdoch. Let's realize that he's sick. Let's all figure out how to get him help. Let's show him compassion and love. Let's not lash out at him. Let's not try to harm him or shame him, but let's get him support and help, medical help, however he needs. Let's get him help and support. Let's not shame President Scott Bowie.
[01:34:52] Let's help get him the support he needs to come clean. To be honest. Let's invite him to share with us his reasons for why he did what he did. I would invite him to reach out and clarify the record if there's something that needs to be clarified. I will gladly do a follow up episode on Mormon Stories with any facts that I've gotten wrong based on any evidence that people have. But let's show Scott Bowie love and mercy.
[01:35:22] But let's call the Mormon Church to account. Let's ask the Mormon Church and its PR arm to come clean about what it knew and when it knew, how it handled this, who's to blame and let's hold the Mormon Church and its system accountable such that they change their systems and policies according to this blog post and this episode, such that this type of abuse stops and the Church stops protecting abusers, starts promoting and believing victims and stops doing what it can to do cover ups to enable current and future victims. So that's what we're calling on. I ask all my listeners to be loving and charitable and responsible and how they behave to this.
[01:36:12] Please email us with any questions or concerns@mormonstoriesmail.com Again please set the record straight further. Victims, future victims, potential other victims. If you have been victimized and you want to share your story, if there are other cases you're aware of with evidence of COVID ups of abuse in the Mormon Church, please email me@mormonstoriesmail.com. we'll do our best to cover other stories like this until the Church goes far enough to correct and right these wrongs again. We call on the Church to reinstate Sam Young. They should have never excommunicated Sam Young. They should have promoted Sam Young to general authority and made him the patron saint of protecting children within the Mormon Church.
[01:36:58] We call on the Church to apologize for how it's treated Sam Young. We call on the Church to embrace Sam Young's recommendations with Protect Every Child or with Protect LDS Children when Sam Young marches at church headquarters in October. And by the way, Sam Young is doing a march in October during General Conference to protest the Church's treatment of children and protection of abusers over the abused. I call on all listeners right now to show up during that march to march with Sam Young and protect every child.
[01:37:34] And we call on church leaders to march with us. Wouldn't it be beautiful if. Wouldn't it be a beautiful sign of love and compassion to victims for the Mormon Church to suspend General Conference, to empty out of the conference center and to show fellowship and partnership and brother sisterhood with Sam young and protect LDS child and that we have a 20 or 30,000 person march through the streets of Salt Lake City to show solidarity in our collective need to protect children?
[01:38:09] You know, if the Church will do that, they should. If they won't, I hope that every listener of Mormon Stories podcast within my Sound of My Voice will show up with Sam Young with Protect Every Child and march with us during General October General Conference of 2019 to help encourage media and the Mormon Church to make, you know, the noise and the, and the changes necessary to hold perpetrators to account and to protect victims in the future.
[01:38:48] Thank you so much for listening to Mormon Stories. Thanks to all the people who support Mormon Stories. Thanks to Sam Young and all the listeners. Most importantly, thank you to all the victims of Stephen Murdoch who have been willing to communicate with me directly.
[01:39:05] Thank you to the former and current coworkers. The former, they're all former now, the former coworkers of Steven Murdoch that have been able to give me the evidence and the information so that I could do this case without, you know, with evidence.
[01:39:20] So many people have put their trust in me. I've worked hard to maintain their confidentiality. But thank you to the victims, co workers, ward and stake members and friends and family members of Steven Murdoch who have trusted me with their stories and their evidence so that we could present this case study and ultimately help the Church change its system and protect more current and future victims. So thank you to everyone. Thank you to our listeners. Thank you to everyone who shared this episode. Now as I refresh this episode on Facebook to see how many shares there are, there's been 32 shares, which is okay, but I would love to see over 100 shares so that this story goes viral.
[01:40:06] And please share it on Instagram, please share it on Twitter, please share it in Facebook groups, please share it everywhere. Because that is the only way the story is going to go viral. The news media is going to cover it and we can, you know, uncover the church's cover ups and, and prevent future, you know, make restitution for past cover ups and prevent cover ups in the future. Thank you everybody. I love you. I appreciate you. Peace and healing to all the victims.
[01:40:41] Peace and healing to all the warden stake members, all the co workers, all the listeners. Peace and healing to everyone. Let's heal and grow within Mormonism and post Mormon and in ways that just prevent abuse and promote healing and growth throughout the world. Love you guys. We'll be doing follow up episodes on this very soon. I can't thank you enough for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast and we'll see you all again very, very soon. Take care everybody. You're losing your religion.
[01:41:21] You second guess your own existence. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org. Rabbit Hole an album chronicling the heartaches and rewarding discoveries of her Mormon faith crisis. You can purchase her album on itunes or by visiting mindygledhill.com.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
Audio
SUMMARY: While I am pleased to finally see extensive news coverage of Mormon Bishop/Stake High Councilor Steven Murdock’s voyerism story, I feel strongly that the reporters are missing the most important part of this story: basically, that Mormon church leadership explicitly knew of Bishop Murdock’s history of sexual harassment as early as 2017, but chose to ignore the reports, kept him in as bishop for several months after the firing, and eventually “promoted” Steven Murdock to the Stake High Council in spite of at least three different direct reports regarding his pattern of behavior.
The following report comes from personal interviews with over 20 individuals who have personal relationships with Steven Murdock, either as friends, co-workers, neighbors, or ward/stake members.
Disclaimer: In advance, we begin by expressing deep sympathies for all of the victims of Bishop Steven Murdock, as well as the family members of Steven Murdock – none of whom deserve to be dragged through a public story like this. Our biggest hope is that all of the victims, Steven Murdock, as well as his family receive the support they need to heal and grow from these experiences.
The Report
On August 14, 2019 I began receiving reports about a former Mormon Bishop and current Holladay, Utah Mormon Stake High Councilor named Steven Murdock (55) – who was arrested last week in Nashville, Tennessee for illegally video recording a woman undressing in a fitting room. News stories can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here,
The basic facts of the initial story (as best as I can gather them) are the following:
- 8/13/19 – Steven Murdock and his wife, Amy, were at an H&M store at Opry Mills Mall in Nashville, TN.
- A woman named Alondra Alcala was guided by Steven Murdock (posing as an employee?) into a dressing room to try some clothes on. As Alcala began undressing, she noticed an iPhone pointing down at her from the top of the dressing room (held by Murdock).
- Alcala immediately moved to the stall that Murdock was in, noticed him trying to delete the photos from his phone, then slapped the phone out of his hand, grabbed it, and ran to store security with the phone. By her account, “I was kind of cornering him, kind of grabbing his arms, and I did watch him delete photos of me on his phone. Thankfully I was able to slap it out of his hand and take it and run out.”
- According to an affidavit, Murdock’s wife, Amy, asked Alcala to not call police, and suggested that things be settled without police involvement.
- Once police arrived, Murdock was arrested. He posted bail after his arrest.
Steven Murdock at the H&M
As soon as the story hit the news, some of my listeners reached out to me requesting that I report on the story. They were mostly angry because:
- Steven Murdock recently served for approximately 4 years as the bishop in the Holladay, Utah Olympus 8th Ward in the Salt Lake Olympus Stake. Ward members were confused that an entrusted Mormon leader would act in such a violating way, and sickened to think that their children and youth had sat alone with Bishop Murdock, behind closed doors, being assessed as to their “sexual worthiness.”
- They were deeply concerned that as a Stake High Councilor in the Holladay, Utah Salt Lake Olympus Stake, Murdock would continue to have access to vulnerable children, youth, and women in his stake.
As soon as I shared the story on Facebook, the story went viral (Facebook shows that my post was shared 129 times). Immediately thereafter friends, ward members, stake members, and co-workers of Steven Murdock began reaching out to me to provide additional details to the story (which are quite disturbing). I have now directly communicated with over 20 individuals who know Steven and Amy Murdock personally, and the details that have been reported to me include the following:
- Several reported that Steven Murdock has long been known for giving “long hugs,” making inappropriate sexual comments, and displaying “grooming behaviors” at work, with friends, and at church.
- It has been reported to me that Steven Murdock had at least one 1+ year extramarital affair BEFORE he was called as a Mormon bishop of the Olympus 8th Ward – by someone with firsthand knowledge of the relationship. This fact is not mentioned here to condemn or shame. It is only noted as an oddity, given that Steven was (only a few years later) called as a Mormon bishop, without repenting or receiving any church discipline for the affair (to anyone’s knowledge). My guess is that most orthodox Mormons would not expect their bishop to have had an unrepentant extramarital affair only a few years before becoming bishop. I also guess that that top leadership certainly would not approve of such a calling, which perhaps calls into question the perception and/or teaching that Mormon Bishops are called of God (Note: I have been provided with the name of the person with whom Steven is reported to have had an affair from a person with direct knowledge of the relationship).
- Steven Murdock reportedly has a long history of sexually harassing and at times groping women in the workplace.
- Through a number of sources, I have been provided with the names of several victims who claim that Murdock harassed and/or groped them in the workplace, some of which have now confirmed these facts to me directly.
- From one source: “Every work party he would hug, rub on my breasts and touch my behind. Every damn time! He ended up crossing the line more than once with other women. It was crazy how Amy (his wife) would just sit and watch. It finally came to the point where I would avoid him at all costs.”
- It has been reported to me that Steven has a “type” – described as women who are short, very thin, “pretty,” and are in their early twenties.
- According to reports, whenever Steven was confronted about his sexual behaviors as a “faithful, married Mormon man,” he would assure his friends and co-workers that Amy Murdock (Steven’s wife) had full knowledge of his past indiscretions, and that Amy “was fine with his behaviors.”
- In 2013, Steven Murdock was inexplicably called as a Mormon bishop (one of the most sacred, and sensitive positions within Mormonism) by Mormon Stake President Scott Buie. Olympus 8th Ward. Salt Lake Olympus Stake.
Stake President Scott Buie - I have communicated with at least one ward member under Bishop Murdock who reported receiving long, unwanted, non-consensual hugs from him as bishop. This person also indicated that Bishop Murdock felt it important to tell her her multiple times (both while her husband was present, and while she was alone with Bishop Murdock) that he (Bishop Murdock) and his wife Amy had a “healthy sex life,” which felt like an inappropriate disclosure to she and her husband given the context, and his particular “grooming” style.
- Another member reported to me that Bishop Murdock would stare inappropriately at her chest, and send her inappropriate texts that her husband also felt were strange and inappropriate.
- I just got off the phone with one of Bishop Steven Murdock’s final workplace victims (a recent college graduate at the time in her early 20’s). She reported to me that while Steven was serving as bishop:
- Bishop Steven Murdock would try to keep her after hours to work alone with her.
- Bishop Steven Murdock would use his position/title as a Mormon bishop to shame her about her private life, and to wield undue influence over her as someone who was raised Mormon, all while continually trying to instigate sexual conversations in the workplace.
- Bishop Steven Murdock would show her pictures of himself without a shirt on.
- Bishop Steven Murdock would stroke her legs under the table during business meetings.
- When considering Bishop Steven Murdock’s time alone with young girls in the bishop’s office, the victim wondered, “I can only imagine the things he talked about with girls, or the way he tried to touch them.”
- In summary, this interviewee, along with several interviewees that I’ve now communicated with directly, report feeling harassed and terrorized by Bishop Steven Murdock.
- In March, 2017 – One of Bishop Murdock’s victims filed a formal report about his harassment, which led to Bishop Steven Murdock being terminated from his job with NFP .
- Concerned about Murdock’s access to youth and young women, it has now been confirmed to me that THREE SEPARATE FAITHFUL LDS CHURCH MEMBERS promptly reported Steven Murdock’s firing and details of the harassment to President Scott Buie. Nonetheless, and totally inexplicably, Bishop Murdock was retained by President Buie as a Mormon bishop for five additional months after his firing.
- August, 2017: Approximately 5 months later, Bishop Murdock was finally released by President Scott Buie (after approximately 4 years of service – even though Mormon bishops normally serve for 5 years). Again, inexplicably, President Scott Buie called Steven Murdock into the Salt Lake Olympus Stake high council – a position of even broader influence – where he served for another 2 years. Ironically, part of Murdock’s responsibility as a Stake High Councilor was to participate in disciplinary councils of adults in his stake who were accused of marital infidelity and/or sex outside of marriage.
- Side Notes
- Bishop Murdock was replaced by Bishop Trent Murray, who remains as bishop of the Olympus 8th Ward.
- November, 2017: President Scott Buie was released as Stake President, and replaced with President Keith White.
The Needless Victim
- August 13, 2019: Steven Murdock was charged with voyeurism in Nashville, as a result of his secretly taking photos of Alondra Alcala while she was undressing in a mall dressing room.
- August 14, 2019: News reports began emerging about Steven’s arrest.
- August 16, 2019: I posted the news story of Steven’s arrest on Facebook. The story went viral on Facebook within the Utah/Mormon community.
- August 17, 2019: Fox 13 News of Utah reported on the story.
- August 18, 2019: Steven Murdock was released from his calling.
- Audio of Steven Murdock’s release from the Stake High Council.
- Comments from ward/stake members who were present during the announcements of Steven Murdock’s release:
- “He was released today. But we were asked to give a vote of thanks to a “great man.” I did not raise my hand because ‘what in the actual hell?’ (Not his ward)”
- “The current stake president asked his ward today to forgive him and talked about repentance.”
- “The stake president stood up, got teary and announced that Steven Murdock has been released and then asked for a show of support for his service, him and his family by raising our hands. I had just planned just to keep my hand down and say nothing. But tying support for his family in with support for his service!?! Of course we support the family! But why not just announce his release? It hurt.”
- One interviewee noted that Steven Murdock has a personal relationship with Mormon prophet and president Russell M. Nelson and President Nelson’s daughter, Marjorie Nelson Lowder – and wondered if this relationship had anything to do with the church’s treatment of Murdock..
- I have just been informed by another source that Steven was recently fired from yet another company …. in addition to his termination from NFP a few years back. The source related that Steven was not terminated most recently for sexual harassment, but clearly indicated (based on Steven’s worplace behavior) that he would not be surprised at all that Steven had a history of sexual harassment.
Steven appears to have removed any access to his LinkedIn profile.
The main questions of interest pertaining to the LDS/Mormon Church include the following:
- Why was Steven Murdock called as a Mormon Bishop by President Scott Buie AFTER a reported 1+ year extramarital affair, for which there is no indication that he ever repented, nor received church discipline, and in spite of the fact that Murdock had a history of sexually harassing women in the workplace PRIOR to being called as bishop? Mormon church members are taught that their leaders are called of God. Did God make this call? How did President Buie miss this crucial fact during his “inspiration” process?
- Why was Bishop Steven Murdock retained as bishop for five additional months AFTER President Scott Buie was informed from three different faithful sources that Bishop Murdock had been terminated for sexual harassment/groping of a co-worker? This gave Bishop Murdock 5 additional months of direct access to children, youth, and women in a one-on-one setting to discuss intimate sexual matters.
- Why was Bishop Murdock released after only 4 years of service? Typically Mormon bishops serve 5 years.
- Did President Buie consult Mormon Church headquarters, higher level church leadership, or the Kirton McConkie lawfirm to consult with on this matter? If so, what was their recommendations? If not, why did he fail to report/consult?
- Why was Steven Murdock immediately called to serve as a Stake High Councilor by President Scott Buie – a position of INCREASED visibility and influence – even though he was released from Bishop one year early, and even though President Scott Buie had been informed by three separate faithful sources that Murdock had been terminated for sexual harassment? A Stake High Councilor is a position of great respect and authority within a Mormon stake, and this position provided Murdock with additional power, influence, and access to victimize more ward/stake members.
- Why have so many witnesses reported, including Steven Murdock himself, that Amy Murdock was “ok” with Steven Murdock’s sexual indiscretions? Is this true, or has Amy been misrepresented?
- Is it true that Amy Murdock immediately sought to prevent voyeurism victim Alondra Alcala from notifying the police of Murdock’s behavior? If so, a) Why, and b) What other “incidents” does Amy know about, and has Amy covered for?
- To what extent is Amy Murdock the victim(s) of an abusive, smooth manipulating husband/father, vs. complicit in the apparently serial harassment/abuse?
- How many other victims of Steven Murdock are out there? How many of these victims could have been spared if Steven had been released as bishop when President Buie knew that he had been terminated from his job for sexual harassment? What is the responsibility of the Mormon church to warn family, friends, and community members when they know a sexual predator is amongst the membership?
- Has Steven Murdock made secret videos of visitors to his house, including friends of his children or ward members who came to visit his house, or of neighbors?
- How will Mormon church members be protected from Steven Murdock in future years? How will his membership records be annotated? What callings will be be allowed to hold vs. not hold?
- How do the doctrines of Jesus Christ’s atonement and repentance apply to repeated sex offenders within Mormonism? Should known sex offenders be “forgiven” within a church context, when we know that repeat offenses are highly likely?
- How many other abusers like Murdock have been protected/promoted by Mormon church leadership? What other children, youth, and women are currently vulnerable in similar ways?
- Does Steven Murdock’s reported relationship with Mormon Church President Russell M. Nelson and his daughter, Marjorie Nelson Lowder, have anything to do with the church’s treatment of Murdock to date, or of who this story has been handled in the media?
- Why was Steven Murdock fired from his most recent job in addition to his job with NFP?
- Does Steven Murdock have any other legal convictions or charges on his record?
- What type of psychological support will the Mormon church be giving the Murdock family and ward/stake members who have been traumatized by this event?
To be clear – our desire in coming forward with these details is NOT to shame the Murdock family. Instead, it is to shine a light on long-reported Mormon Church practices of:
- Problem #1: A lack of appropriate background checks and training for Mormon clergy. Is the “follow the spirit” approach used in priesthood training something that ultimately amplifies these types of problems?
- Problem #2: The Mormon church’s long history of protecting and (at times) promoting known abusers at the expense of past and future victims. When abusers are not held accountable by the church in a way that also notifies other church members of the risks, this opens the way for future victimization. For additional examples of this behavior, see the recent cases of:
- Lowell Robison – Allowed to serve as mission president and stake president AFTER numerous reports of sexual abuse.
- Joseph Bishop – Sexually abused a female missionary in the Mormon Provo Missionary Training Center, and was allowed to continue serving for years in church callings without any punishment.
- Sterling Van Wagenen – Allowed to serve in various callings, including Stake High Councilor and director of Mormon temple videos, after it was known by the church that Van Wagenen had sexually abused at least one child, and after Van Wagenen had engaged in numerous extra-marital affairs with both men and women?
- Michael Jensen – Allowed to serve as Mormon missionary after a long history of sexually abusing children. This enabled Jensen to abuse many more victims.
- Problem #3: The Mormon Church teaching members that leaders are called directly by God through divine revelation. I believe that such teachings encourage members to trust, defer to, and empower leaders far beyond what is healthy. This teaching makes members more vulnerable to abuse. It also makes church leaders much more afraid/reticent to release an offending church leaders when abuse happens – for fear of members questioning the inspired nature of Mormon church callings and leadership.
- Problem #4: The continued practice of Mormon Church leaders sitting alone with children and youth behind closed doors conducting “worthiness interviews” that often entail the discussion of sexually explicit content. This practice becomes a grooming playground for perpetrators like Steven Murdock.
- Problem #5: A general culture within the Mormon Church of sexual obsession, repression, and shaming that leads to a church-wide culture of lying, deception, split lives, internalized shame, and (at times) extremely unhealthy covert sexual behaviors – even amongst church leadership.
- Problem #6: A clear tendency of the church to care more about its reputation than the health and safety of the membership, which would lead to the suppression of stories like this, the protection and promotion of perpetrators like Steven Murdock (at the expense of the safety of ward, stake, and community members), and the tendency of Mormon church PR to gaslight and deceive the public regarding the facts, depth, and merits of the stories.
PR Damage Control, Deception, and Gaslighting by Mormon Church Spokesman Eric Hawkins: Finally, I and many of the victims were deeply disturbed to read Mormon Church PR Spokesman Eric Hawkins attempt at damage control with this story by claiming that the church has a zero downplaying the sacred and extremely powerful role of bishop within Mormonism. In this article, Hawkins is quoted in the following ways:
“Church spokesperson Eric Hawkins confirmed Monday to WKRN-TV that Murdock was a high councilor and former bishop with the church. Both are volunteer positions, said the spokesman.” “This type of behavior is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated from any church member,” Hawkins said. “When local leaders learned of the arrest and charges, he was immediately removed from all responsibilities.””
There are two major problems with these statements:
- Hawkins omits the fact that higher church leadership knew about Murdock’s troubling pattern of sexual harassment as early as 2017, but chose to retain and even promote Murdock to a position of greater responsibility after his firing for sexual harassment.
- Hawkins appears to try to downplay the sacred and powerful role of Mormon bishop and Stake High Councilor by referring to them as “volunteer positions.” According to Mormon doctrine and policy, the men in these positions were called directly by God, and were not voluntary.
This feels deceptive to me, and to the victims who were under the influence of “Bishop Murdock.”
After reading Eric Hawkins statements, one of Bishop Murdock’s victims expressed the following concerns:
- She was surprised that this story had not received more in-depth, thoughtful coverage within Utah, particularly exploring Steven’s long history of sexually mistreating women, and the role of the Mormon Church in protecting/enabling Bishop Murdock. The victim worries that the Church has been successful in either suppressing and/or manipulating this story with reporters.
- She would like to see Bishop Steven Murdock and the LDS Church held accountable for protecting people who do these sorts of things, so that predators aren’t protected by multi-billion dollar organizations.
CONCLUSION: In summary, we are asking the following via this deeply unfortunate case study:
- How can the Mormon church improve its leadership policies/practices to prevent such cover-ups or mistakes from happening again?
- How can the Mormon church better prepare its members to protect themselves from potentially abusive leaders?
I/we welcome any additions or corrections to the details in this report. Again our intent is not to shame or mislead, but instead to provide the Mormon church and the public with a case study from which the church can learn to do/be better.
If any additional victims, friends, family or ward members would like to share their experiences with Bishop Steven Murdock, please email us at: mormonstories@gmail.com
Also, if any news reporters would like to obtain further details on this story, please reach out to me at: mormonstories@gmail.com.
John Dehlin
P.S. I would be remiss to not take the time during this story to reflect upon how I have been complicit in ignoring or supporting abusive patriarchal systems throughout my life. We all (myself included) play a role in enabling such systems, where women: a) feel dis-empowered, b) are harassed, and c) do not feel safe reporting their experiences to management. I hope that I (and each of us) can do our part to make the world more safe for women in the workplace, in our churches, in our communities, and in our homes. I encourage all men who read this story to consider the same sort of introspection.
99 Responses
This is an incredibility sad report. I hope more facts can come out, so we can see more clearly what his local church leaders knew or did not know. I find it hard to believe he didn’t have a church court after having an “affair”, as reported here. My half century activity in the church as shown me that the church will take some kind of action on membership for an affair.
There are over 16 million church members. These kind of things are going to happen. However, for the size of the church and the number of incidents we know about like this, it represents a very small fraction of membership. For example, 16,000,000 x 1% = 160,000, .5 = 80,000, .1 = 16,000. Even if this happens once in a eternity it is incredibly sad. I’m very sorry for those who have been victims of church related abuse.
Now, some are going to dislike my comment because of how they feel about the church. Others, will see that the church has a very small problem with this type of behavior.
The fact is that the church is a leader in teaching and maintaining high morals. The vast majority of church members are living a Christ centered life. Let’s be fair and acknowledge this.
My Friend, if you believe these are isolated cases in the Church, then you are sorely mistaken. My childhood Bishop was a pedophile, and even after being reported to the Stake President, he was called as a Bishop elsewhere to continue his sexual abuse on other children. This is a similar pattern that we are seeing over and over. It appears to be the case in this instance as well. No action taken against this “good brother” to perhaps save his family embarrassment?
A simple internet search for “sexual abuse cases and settlements involving the Mormon Church” will give you hours of disturbing reading. Literally hundreds of cases are documented.
If you prefer a book try reading “The Sins of Brother Curtis” –but be forewarned, it will deeply sadden you to see how the Church protected the abuser and had no regard for the multiple child victims… (much like the recently settled case of Mormon sexual abuse in West Virginia.)
This is a foul stain on the church… heck look at the recently leaked KirtonMcConkie files dealing with the same issues–
It is an evil calculation when how to best protect the Church’s precious image trumps reaching out to help the victims. Unfortunately over and over we see just that happening.
Teancum, you really believe there are 16 million LDS members? I’d be surprised if there are half that number, and still surprised if half of those are active. Anybody who got baptized and walked away after three sacrament meetings is a “member,” and anybody born after 1909 who did not formally resign is a “member.”
Wonderful comment Teancum.
The problem is the church tells their people that bishops are called by God through the power of discernment. So, either God sometimes calls pedophiles and abusers or there really is no power of discernment and these men are called based on the best hope that a SP has that the bishop they called is a good person. This is where the problem lies; members believing their bishop is called by God and placing unwavering trust in that person because God put them in that position.
Before I make my statement, I’d like to say, that what happened was horrible, and inexcusable, but everyone here judging this man, a sinner just the same. We all are in one way or another. Whether is a million little ones, a few big ones, or somewhere in between. I think that it is only fair to consider that some people need a certain amount of responsibility. Have you met this man? Have you considered that maybe he could be a good-hearted man, dealing with challenges of his own? Or was it easiest to see all of the bad? I like to believe that the church will call a man, or a woman, into a position as much for their benefit, as it is for others. If you are not a member of the faith, which I assume most people on this page are not, you may not understand the church’s beliefs. One of which is repentance. God sees all of his children as equals and feels strongly that people can improve and better themselves. I’d like to consider that God had foreseen his challenges and wanted to give him all of the help that he could. I’d like to think that God called him to serve in the callings that he did, to strengthen his testimony, and give him his best chance of fighting the temptations of this world. I am not here to excuse his actions but, provide my insights as to why a church might have a man, believed to be so evil in such a place of leadership. Everyone here has made mistakes, big, small, no matter. I don’t feel that this matter pertains to you, nor I, but between this man, this woman, and God. Yes, there will be consequences for his actions, but on earth, and in the eyes of God. But I hope you can all see, regardless of the size or magnitude of sin, a sin is a sin, and judging this man for his, is yours. Leave it to this girl, her family, and this man and his. To law enforcement on earth to judge him, and for God to do so afterword.
i think you are missing the point of this article
Thank you for this. “Judge not” is lost on all of us to varying degrees. You are missing the point of the post, which makes what you said all the better.
We all make mistakes, big and small but we don’t all commit crimes. He committed a CRIME! The culture within Mormonism is to not pass judgement on anyone and allow only God to do that. However, this mentality breeds a subtle acceptance of this type of criminal behavior. Just your explanation that we all make mistakes, Mr. Murdock may be having problems, and we shouldn’t pass judgement proves this unhealthy mentality. HE COMMITTED A CRIME!
Because the church enables sexual predators by not doing background checks, by promoting men in authority even when they know of their indiscretions and by allowing these men one on one access to women, youth and children means the church is NOT a leader in teaching and maintaining high values.
And to say that “These kinds of things are going to happen” minimizes the situation. If the church were doing everything in its power to background check leaders, not allow one on one interviews, and have a good system to report abuse, maybe your comment would hold more weight. I wonder if you would still make the same statement if it was your daughter abused by this man. “Oh, no biggie dear, these things happen.”
And the fact that you think the good church members need a shout out for being good is alarming. I’m a church member and the only thing I care about is the church doing everything in it’s power to protect it’s members. Please dont feel like you have to point out how awesome I am and how awesome many other church members are when there are real people hurting because the church failed to protect them when they could have.
Kristen I agree. Thank you.
The fact is the church has been engaged in a long standing relationship with problem #6 as outlined above by John. That immorality is hardly the hallmark of a “moral leader”. I’m fine with being fair but in order to identify what that looks like we’ve got to be honest above all else.
His relationship with the prophet is exactly what protected him. Those with certain pedigrees are treated much differently than the common member!
Remember, this is a church that still hasn’t condemned Joseph Smith for seducing 8th graders and other men’s wives while they (men) were serving missions. Sounds like God may have ordered him to do this or threatened to have him killed by an angel.
The man is a psychephile and, as such, most likely his wife is as much a victim of his grooming as anyone.
Thank you Kalli Hiller for introducing me to this concept. A great help in how I see the world.
https://cryingoutforjustice.blog/2018/02/15/the-male-domestic-abuser-is-a-psychephile-a-sexual-offender/
If the subject interests you read his books. Don Hennessy is the director of the National Domestic Violence Intervention Agency in Ireland. The idea of “coercive control” and “grooming grown women” the way a pedophile grooms children are both ideas that need to take grasp here in the US like they have in Ireland.
I get that Mr. Hennessy wants to use the stigma of pedophilia to condemn mental abuse. But I wish he hadn’t tried to use Latin root words so haphazardly.
Pedo=Child. Phile=Lover of/Enthusiast for. So, “pedophile”=Lover of Children (illicitly, of course)
Psycho=Mind. Phile=Lover of/Enthusiast for. So, “psychophile”=Lover of Minds.
Wait, what??
We don’t need to invent fancy-sounding nonsensical new words to describe the awful behavior of men who control the minds and actions of their spouse. What’s wrong with “manipulator,” “mental abuser,” “narcissist,” or good ol’ fashioned “creep,” “jerk,” or “a–hole”?
I think you haven’t read his books. He uses the word to say that a psychephile acheives what he wants by befriending the woman’s mind. In other words, he uses the fact that the woman loves him to groom her and to brainwash her in order to reach sexual control.
Man-splaining
or mansplaining
or whatever word (readily accepted or fanciful) you choose to describe this condescending behavior
He was a neighbor of ours growing up. My sister experienced someone taking pictures with a flash in the middle of the night a few times outside her bedroom window. One time they left their footprints in the snow outside the window. My sister experienced quite a bit of anxiety for quite a while. This was before home cameras, cell phones, etc. Now I’m wondering if this person was Steve!
He was in Nashville picking up his son from his son’s mission.
Also, Steve tried to pay the mall security cash to get his camera back before he was arrested.
The Mormon church is based on secrets. The Book of Mormon was secret. Polygamy is a secret practice. The Temple is secret. Growing up as a Mormon girl, at family reunions a meeting of my Aunts and Uncles would be held to talk about the Mountain Meadow Massacre in secret. They wanted to talk about it in secret because ancestors participated in that event. SECRETS !
My heart aches for this family. Even Steven Murdock. The leaders and Steven Murdock are both at fault. I feel for this innocent girl who was just shopping at H&M.
The Mormon Church will continue to allow this behavior because this pattern has been set from the first day the church was started.
Are you by chance a decendant of John D Lee? I am and we had those same family reunion meetings!!!
John, I agree with your comments on the damaging nature of sexual repressions, shame, lying and hiding that members suffer. My cousin-in-law is a former Bishop. At some point several years ago he was involved with a woman he met online. I don’t believe he was ever with her in-person. The woman got him to do something sexual on web-cam (I don’t know and don’t care to know what). She was a professional scammer. She recorded the “session” then blackmailed him. Over the next several years he paid her several thousands of dollars per month over years to keep it quiet. He made up lies to “borrow” money from friends and family that he never paid back. Sold his home, drained savings. He bankrupted his family over it. They have nothing now, all over the shame and to maintain appearances. It’s all coming out now. I have only sympathy and compassion for him over what this woman did to him, but have disgust for him for paying this blackmailer hundreds of thousands of dollars, destroying their family financially over his need to play the part of the perfect man/family.
John,
There is a reason why journalists use language like suspected, alleged, and accused. Allegations can be false and stories manipulated. McKenna Denson is a perfect example of this. Not only for your own protection but for the benefit of exactness in language you should distinguish from facts and allegations.
PHAEDRUS UT – I tried to be sensitive to this. I will change whatever you recommend. Do you mind helping? What would you change?
OK, lets assume everything reported here is correct about Murdock. Why would his church leaders not convene a church court? Are they all like he is and protecting him? Are they relatives and don’t want their good name damaged? Are they trying to help him repent and felt this was the best way to treat this particular case having had success this way with past offenders?
The point I am making is the church is not trying to ignore this kind of behavior. They are trying to help! Maybe they have learned that a church court in the internet era isn’t always the best way help. Could it be there is a history of success that warrants the approach they took with Murdock?
Of course, in this case their decision turned out to be a spectacular failure and embarrassment.
I don’t know the answer. But I am certain church leaders were doing what they thought was best.
I agree to a point, that they thought they were doing the right thing. The problem is that with zero training they don’t have the experience or perspective to deal with these things appropriately. I doubt the Stake Pres wanted anything negative for the victims, but the emphasis on forgiveness of the abuser does in fact damage the victims. The local leaders need a lot of training, not the crappy 30 minute thing they just rolled out, but training on specific matters like “how a Stake Pres should handle an accusation against a Bishop”. The Stake Pres’s are currently handling this to their best ability, but they shouldn’t be left to their own ideas. They should know exactly how to handle it, there should be clear processes for this.
But this is the point. The church has massive resources and is very good at creating processes and procedures around the things that matter. Think about the training, 2-deep requirement and regular auditing that goes into handling $$! Handling these allegations should be at least as important as that. The church is showing that it is not willing to allocate resources to really train its leaders. As to why? Who knows.
Teancum~
I understand why you would truly believe everything you said about the church is true. In the worst kind of way, I wish it were. But, it simply is not…, not at all. Everything discussed in this podcast about the way the church covers up and protects the abuser at the victims’ expense, sadly, is very true. I am only ONE person who happens to have had SIX experiences with sexual abuse coverups within the church. They took place over a period of 30 years, with 5 bishops in 5 different states, and the last one going all the way to the first presidency of the church [involving little girls as young as 2 and 3 years old being abused]. I made excuses, put up blinders, and looked the other way for 30 years! After a chronic abuser was excused, minimalized, ignored, and swept under the rug by the member of the first presidency, I realized it wasn’t individual bishops, who were just lay men trying hard to do the best they could, but had no idea how to handle the situations presented to them. It is malignant and systemic within the church and goes all the way back to Joseph Smith’s perversions with other men’s wives and 14 year old girls. If you aren’t aware of those, go to ‘lds.org’ and read everything on polygamy and polyandry and/or listen to the podcast, “Year of Polygamy.” Thousands and thousands of people are coming to the realization of the truth concerning the lies and deceptions the church has perpetrated to its members. Amazingly, it can all be found in the gospel essays on ‘lds.org’ and within the footnotes.
It is blatantly obvious that he has the Second Anointing which completely disregards the role as the Mormon Church presents it, of Jesus Christ. So how can members be living a “Christ Centered life” when Christ has no part in this church? As for quoting statistics …do not disregard the damage based on one man but on the number of victims affected by this emissary of Satan.
Teancum, you don’t seem to know much about church membership and activity. Only around 33% of members tithe. That remaining number would be out of the valiant group. And to be valiant one would need to be a current temple attender. When I was an Elder’s Quorum president, I would spend a lot of time trying to just locate inactives. In my last ward, I would glance at the ward list where well over 59%, I had never heard of. Before I stopped attending, there was a couple of called temple workers, but except for those my wife and I attended by far more than anyone else, and we went once a month except in winter when the 4 hour drive was treacherous. Not many members went. I keep meeting members that I have never heard of, ones who haven’t attended in 40 years and ones who are active members in other churches. I have a close neighbor, a Mormon on the church list, who is in his 70’s and hasn’t attended since he was 8.
If you want to believe that HF is happy with growth, go to ldschurchgrowthblogspot and you will indeed find that the church is growing rapidly but nearly all the growth is in Africa and not the U.S. And though most member seem to think the church is the fastest growing faith/religion in the world, according to PEW Research as quoted in The Deseret News, by the year 2100, Muslims will outnumber Christians, so the Mormon god must not be very efficient.
These problems are so well covered up, like with the Catholics that we rarely hear of such abuse. And like people who believe President Trump when he says that he is ‘the chosen” of God, members can’t even imagine church leaders being guilty of anything. I know that to be true because before I found the truth of the church, I beliieved that way, too.
Thanks again, John.
John, you are asking all the right questions. Thank you so much for doing this story. Please continue to push the church on this issue.
My LDS abuser had raped a minor, was disfellowshipped for a short time, then moved to our ward, and no one was warned. He was made a High Priest and everyone trusted him. Parents in our ward began to report to the Bishop disturbing allegations of this guy exposing himself to their children, and the church told them to not talk about it and it was a misunderstanding. When the truth finally came out years later, he’d sexually abused dozens of LDS kids. ALL OF THAT ABUSE COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED IF THE CHURCH HAD WARNED MEMBERS, reported abuse, and taken allegations seriously! And even after all that, the church kept all the sexual abuse quiet and told members not to talk to the police. This abuser moved again and is a current member of the church, and I would bet that no one in his ward knows how dangerous he is.
Some of the victims of this man have committed suicide. I also struggle with depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, PTSD, relationships/trust, etc. The church needs to be held responsible for allowing/enabling the abuse of children, as they are in a unique position to stop it, and choose over and over again not to protect children.
So why isn’t the LDS church sued with covering up all this junk with all of these stories?
They do get sued often and repeatedly. Unfortunately there are too many people who will take cash payment and stop talking about their abuse.
https://mormonleaks.io/wiki/index.php?title=File:2012-10-31-Special_Investigations_and_Products-Kirton_McConkie.pdf
Wow! Only seven open cases at one time, worldwide for a church of 16 million people. That’s remarkably little. And only one case involving a priesthood leader. Compare that to over 140 cases of Catholic priests among the 2 million Catholics in Boston. That’s 160 times more often among Catholics in Boston.
I agree with Heather and this article that the local church leaders need to believe victims, report incidents to the police, not discourage victims from talking to the police, and not keep abusers in church callings. But statistically, incidence of abuse in this church is nearly nothing compared to what happened in Boston.
Thank you for investigating and shedding light on this.
As somebody who has experienced sexual abuse, sexual assault, AND sexual harassment at church, I think it important that you distinguish them here in your post: Murdock’s unwanted sexual contact was sexual assault, not sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is abuse of a different nature.
S.BRACE,
You make a truly valid point here. Sexual assault is unwanted. Thank you for clarifying.
I have a question for the readers here, how do we influence the church to enact change in the process of how things are done churchwide to protect victims?
This is a problem and concerns me deeply at many levels.
I have also been a victim of assault by a man who held the Priesthood and came to my home to give me a priesthood blessing. He offered me a drink and suggested I looked dehydrated, drugged me and assaulted me.
I have witnessed and experienced (as painful as this is to admit) the church minimize, ignore, gaslight, turn a blind eye, tell me to move on and forget, I have been asked how do I know he hasn’t repented (and I am the victim) but he never served any time in jail from turning himself in and has never had a church court and has been allowed to serve in many capacities that give him access and trust to other victims. One of his Bishop’s whom I called to alert him and ask for a church court, scolded me for speaking outside the priesthood line of authority. He told me he would immediately call my Bishop and have me called in to address my misbehavior. WHAT???
1. Church documents and protocol on paper suggest a mandatory church court for predators. He never had a church court.
2. I reported it to at least 12 bishops and 6 stake Presidents. Nothing was ever done and as far as I know this man is still in good standing, and holds a temple recommend.
3. Kirton and McKonkie (legal firm who represents the church’s legal issues) told me that they didn’t feel they would advise action from the church as the legal civil system of Utah dropped the case and he wasn’t convicted. (Only 2 percent of all cases of the less than 35 percent of women who come forward to report get a conviction). Utah legal system has a current undetermined timeline of backlogged rape cases they have failed to test and use as evidence and mine is still in that backlog. The state prosecutors office told me they didn’t feel they had the evidence however they failed to confess that they didn’t even use the evidence I suffered humiliation to endure to provide as evidence.
4. I have called numerous times over the last 12 years and have asked for time in the presence of decision makers at church headquarters in the RS department, the Priesthood department, Public Relations Department, with the Area Authority Seventy.
I was told to write a letter and told to go to my local priesthood leaders. I wrote a letter and never heard back. I called to follow up and they can’t find my letter and admitted that if they read them, they sometimes file them, sometimes delete them but that they couldn’t confirm what happened to my letter, which I emailed to them. No action or help.
5. Church headquarters Public Relations Department has told me the following…they said on a phone conversation that they didn’t believe it happened and said prove it, before hanging up on me. On another occasion they told me I needed to work on my relationship with Christ and pray and on another occasion they asked why I would want to subject anyone to a church court. WHAT???
(Please forgive my writing style or any errors in my effort to communicate. This was very difficult for me to even write on a public forum. Please also know that I am a devoted follower of Christ. I do want to see policy reform, procedure and policy training for ALL church leaders from the top down. I want to see advocates within the RS organization to help victims. And I want to see a formal reporting process and system put into place and not just nice words on paper.)
What do you all want to see and how may we get to a place to invite the change we desperately want to see the church finally and truly adopt? Your thoughts? How can we all help to protect and support victims we already know about revover and heal?
Thank you for reading.
Really? You needed to put a picture with his wife? I don’t think this was thought out. I’m guessing they have children. I believe this happened when you had a podcast about Joseph Bishop and then you switched to just a picture of him. Please do that again.
I support John posting the picture of Amy Murdock as well. After all, as has been reported in the news stories, SHE tried to bribe the alleged victim with money to keep all of this quiet. That’s witness tampering!
Her crimes (as far as we know) do not begin to meet his. While I don’t agree with her trying to prevent police getting involved. I see her as another victim. Cant a little compassion be shown toward her and their children by not posting this photo of her?
She was panicked, saw her life crashing around her, and did what her instincts told her to do. Also, I think it’s actually more adult to try to reconcile outside of court than in court. If he can recompense the victim on the spot it can have advantages for all parties, not just the perpetrator and his family.
And I don’t think it’s witness tampering to try to persuade someone to not take legal action. As I read the law it’s not witness tampering if there is no official proceeding. And there was no mention of money in the articles I read, so bribery is properly not the form of influence they used.
But I have to wonder why Amy Murdock would be ok with the other things that this article says she knew about or saw her husband doing. Counselling would likely help her think through her response to his creepy behavior.
Finally, I think it was good in this case for it to not be reconciled in private. While painful to the Murdocks and the church I think it can lead to a better future for him, his family, and everyone in his sphere of influence.
I too support John posting the picture he did. She is very likely a victim too. However she also played a part by asking to keep this quiet.
This is a troubling case study for sure and raises the many concerns that you described.
But let’s not get carried away with some of the hyperbole.
A High Council position is NOT a “promotion” from the office of a Bishop. The office of Bishop is greatly more significant.
It is not true that a high council is “a position of even broader influence”. Most members couldn’t even name half of their high council.
It is completely false that ” a Stake High Councilman is a position of INCREASED visibility and influence.” Members have significantly less interaction with a high councilor compared to a Bishop. The comparison is not even close. A high councilor is usually assigned over one or at most two organizations in a stake, and they primarily work with ward presidencies, not regular members. Like I already said, most members probably couldn’t even name half of their ward council.
This is a significant case with important ramifications. Let’s not over-sensationalize it with false facts. It makes you look petty and ignorant.
Jedediah, why are you lessening the role of a high councilman? To say they don’t really have influence or visibility is inaccurate. To say it’s not a “promotion” is misleading since a high councilman is now on the stake level as opposed to a bishop who is only on a ward level. A high councilman sits in judgement of members in church courts. I think that’s a pretty influential position. They are the eyes and ears for the stake president because they do interact with members when they sit in ward meetings. Yes, members may not know the names of the twelve high councilmen. However do you think they care if members know their names? The visibility they care about is the kind they get from the stake presidency and other high council members. Not giving the full details of a high councilman undermines the amount of influence they really have and can “make you look petty and ignorant.”
Jedediah is correct. A high councilman is insignificant compared to a bishop. The rationale that it’s more important simply because it’s a stake calling doesn’t hold up. Is the assistant stake music director more important than the bishops? Of course not.
Bishops not only “sit in judgement of members”, but they PRESIDE at disciplinary councils, unlike high councilmen. And bishops do more of them than the high council does. Only Melchizedek priesthood holders who might be excommunicated for their offense have a stake disciplinary council, which is a smaller group than who bishops do disciplinary councils for.
Bishops have WAY more interaction with the stake presidency than high councilmen do, because their calling is so much more crucial. But visibility to other members of the high council and stake presidency is totally irrelevant here. Remember, we’re talking about a) whether high council is a “promotion” from bishop (no, clearly not), and b) whether it is a position that allows more access or less access than bishop to potential victims of sexual harrassment, etc., (clearly less).
I never said that ” they don’t really have influence or visibility”. I said that it was inaccurate to say that the HC has more influence or visibility than a Bishop.
Of course the HC is an important role in the church. I never said that they don’t have an important role.
Jedidiah is right… no one knows who is on the high council… haven’t you heard the term “Dry Council”? There is usually a collective groan from the congregation when someone from the High Council shows up to speak. They are not revered in the same way a bishop is.
John…come on… you were a member at one time and know this. You give this position too much weight…unless you yourself were one once and think too highly of yourself?
Also, while preserving confidentiality of your sources somehow… where is the proof of the claims you are making from your sources?
We have the proof that Steven is a predator, thanks to his victim for standing up to him. But
John, you are claiming a lot of damning things… if you are going to make accusations, back them up. I’m having a hard time of connecting all the dots of his affair, then being made bishop…etc without proof… unless you are asking me to have faith in what you are saying, but you don’t operate that way, right?
I am in the Olympus Stake, although mostly inactive, I attend sacrament sometimes with my family. As a parent, I have never fully trusted letting my kids even go to the bathroom alone… and used to see Steven in the Hallways, crazy!!
And… as an inactive member, I have met with both previous President Buie and the current President White once (to turn down a calling). But prove to me Buie knew this… in no way would I believe him to be complicit which is inferred here. The guy is a no nonsense straight shooter. You can be less active and still see the good that exists… not everyone who is a church leader is part of some conspiracy.
If someone really has additional concrete evidence about further inappropriate actions from Steven, or anyone else in the church, then come out with it! You would be a hero in my book. You will be protecting innocent people or preventing future victims from being abused.
I just read an article on get religion.org written by Terry Mattingly. I don’t know if he is a member but his deflection of the story makes me think he is. He is down playing the role of a bishop and high councilman. He is disputing other articles verbiage of a prominent or high ranking leader. He is making a case that Murdock was not high ranking but only a local leader. What he fails to report is that those “local leaders” have a lot more access to the members than the ” High ranking leaders” do. He also fails to mention that members are taught to listen and obey the ” bishop/ father of the ward”. Parents teach their children that the bishop is someone they are suppose to respect, love and pray for. And why? Because he is called by God to serve and lead their ward.
I am at a loss, I don’t understand how anyone can not see the hypocrisy that goes on daily in the church. And I definitely do not understand how anyone can defend abuse and the covering up the abuse. Even if it is a small percentage. So God calls just a small percentage of leaders to abuse just a few people? What? I just can’t understand……….
It looks to me like we have a lot of imperfect people casting the first stone. Your rumor mongering and delight in Steve’s mistakes makes you more of a voyeur than Steve.
Of course you are all perfect and everyone in your religion is perfect. It appeares looking for the bad in others, gloating at the misfortune of others and running down the LDS members is sport for you. Find something constructive to do.
Perhaps we could all benefit from the advice to “Judge Not”.
It is a Shame in this time of Me Too there is no path in civilization for forgiveness and redemption. One public strike and your done.
John Webb,
There is nothing voyeuristic in this, and it’s not about “Casting the first stone” business. So get off your high horse. There are victims here, and it appears that there are quite a few. I am in fact a victim of sexual abuse, at the hands to someone, that the church leaders were fully aware, and let it continue. I know other victims of this man, and we have all had to struggle with it for most of our lives.
Your attitude is blessing the problem and allowing it to continue. Only until the full scope of what has happened, and who is responsible for what acts is known, then there will be a chance to change things. Sure we could have a lynching, and a great many of us would feel good about it. BUT that is only taking out one small piece in a much larger problem. Murdock is a man with deep issues, and he has hurt a great many people over the years, that is pretty clear. Scott Buie having been aware of this, ANY OF IT, and left him in as Bishop, and called him to the high council after, shows that Buie is complicit in what was happening and has no care for the victims or the churches self proclaimed morality of its leaders, and them to be examples, live righteously, etc. IF Buie is going to go take someone’s temple recommend away for looking at pornography, but knowing to allow an adulterer remain as bishop, then he is no different than the pharisees, Ciaphas, and the lot.
You fail to see the problem here John Webb. The church leaders and the higher-ups seem only to be concerned with Image, and their “Good ole Boy(d) Kay Packer” club. As long as they let this kind of thing continue, there will be these kinds of responses. Just like the #metoo movement, everyone is sick of the old school garbage, and it is time to speak up, if we want things to change. YES THE CHURCH NEEDS TO CHANGE…
Sorry, John Webb, not going to fall for that “judge not” philosophy. Makes it sound like its a way justify and/or ignore the problems with sexual abusers in the Church. John, would you let your children (especially daughters if you have any) be alone with Brother Murdock? You wouldn’t “judge” him by his past actions and just let your child be interviewed by him behind closed doors?
John Webb, Where is justice in your scenario? It’s not judgement. it is a matter of right and wrong! I can’t believe you referenced the ME TOO movement in this way
What you don’t seem to understand is that anyone who is a victim of abuse, is changed for the rest of their life. . Even when they have received help and worked through the pain, it is always a part of you. Many years removed from the pain and abuse, it still creeps into your life. Women and children are finally saying NO MORE! We are not hiding from this anymore!
The offenders need to take accountability for there actions. I won’t through a stone, but I will surely stand and support anyone who sheds light on an abuser and anyone who has any empathy within them will too!!!! When justice and a real change has been met, I am on board for forgiveness!!!
I don’t know why it took five months to release him as bishop, but to be precise, he was not “retained by President Buie as a Mormon bishop”. All callings and releases of bishops by stake presidents can only be done under specific authorization of the First Presidency. I have seen the approval to call someone as a new bishop take around three months. It could be that this was just a long process (though I’m sure it could be expedited if they saw fit). It could be that Pres. Buie chose not to act for whatever reason. It could be that he interviewed Murdock after hearing the reports and Murdock snowed him, perhaps claiming that his getting fired was political or some such. With no personal knowledge of Murdock’s private work situation there wouldn’t necessarily be enough to go on to release him right away.
I was taught that both a stake president and a bishop have the spirit of discernment, the power to be able to determine right from wrong, this being so important if and only if this is the one true church run by God. There have been times in Church history when the Church would gloss over supposed “mistakes”, but certain leaders are supposed to be able to discern. The giving of $300,000 for a supposed Joseph Smith letter, by a “prophet of God”, to a fraudster, has basically been forgotten because it would show the lack of discernment in the Lord’s highest office. In the case of Steve Murdock, those leaders who seemed to have ignored his actions, could not have used discernment. My patriarchal blessing said that I would have the gift of discernment. And I did have it. And it worked. I discerned that the Church is not what it said it was and I stopped attending. We can say that certain mistakes happen because leaders are not perfect, but if this is the Lord’s only church, then its “righteous” and “valiant” leaders have discernment to be used in the name of God and with His authority.
John, I really appreciate how you’ve articulated this problem within the church and particularly how the church continues to deal with these situations.
This story hits very close to home. Our daughter was recently a victim of something similar in Park City.
In the summer of 2017 she received a letter from a so-called friend who was serving a mission. He confessed via email that he had secretly taped her and up to 20 friends in their own bathrooms and other private locations without their knowledge over the course of 3-4 years. In his email confession he specifically said, “don’t worry, I’m repenting of this and have no intention of coming home from my mission.” In addition, he asked the girls to keep silent and asked them to pray for him as he is “struggling to keep their naked images out of his mind”. As the girls started connecting and talking amongst themselves about the emails, most of the girls wanted to keep quiet out of embarrassment (which is a normal reaction for victims of sex crimes), but many also felt the additional weight of not wanting to undermine a “servant of the Lord who was where he needed to be.”
Although very difficult for her, my daughter sought help from a therapist who reported it to the police. They thought it was too difficult to investigate because he was out of the country on a mission, even though there was a written confession. We had to hire our own lawyer to ultimately get an investigation. We had to escalate within the church headquarters to get the abuser sent home in spite of the fact that he had confessed to his mission president. In the end, only 4 girls were willing to testify, and 3 of them were the only non-LDS girls in the group.
Two years later, this continues to be a major trauma in my daughter’s life and I’m sure the lives of the other girls. The abuser received only a slap on the wrist and was welcomed back into the ward with open arms as everyone rallied around him to ensure he was fully active. A bishopric member/friend even made a comment to my daughter that “boys do gross things” and “we need to forgive them and support them.” In contrast, no church leader attempted to contact any of the victims to ask if they needed counseling or support.
In our view, there are 3 fundamental cultural problems that enabled this abusive behavior:
1.) Young boys are taught to not do things like this because “they will lose the spirit,” not because it can cause years of trauma and hurt to others. The resolution for doing something like this is simply prayer and confession to get the spirit back with very little concern or regard for the victim’s long-term healing.
2.) Missionaries are put on such a pedestal because they are “called of God” and “doing God’s work” that victims feel like they are undermining God’s plan if they do anything to disrupt the work.
3.) Men are valued more than women. I know that that is a controversial statement, but I believe it permeates almost every aspect of the culture. Women are praised when they support and lift up their priesthood leaders, but if they challenge the leaders or reveal shortcomings or abuses of the leaders, they are a distraction. Even the young girls are taught that it is their responsibility to help the boys keep the spirit by being careful what they wear and how they act (“don’t become walking pornography”). Culturally, women often fall into only two categories: support for the priesthood or distraction.
Sherri
Sherri, this is awful. I’m so sorry for your daughter and the other victims. Would you mind if I share your story on instagram anonymously, w/o your name or city? I really want to bring awareness to these things happening in the church. The church also covered up my abuse and protected my abuser.
Hi Heather,
Feel free!
I don’t feel I have anything to hide and would personally like to even give the perpetrators name (although, I recognize that may not be appropriate).
Our first request of his family was that he make his technology available so that they could be investigated and the girls could receive official assurances that no images still exist and no images were transmitted anywhere. Also, he should’ve been encouraged to cooperate with the investigation for the sake of the victims. If the church were interested in the victims emotional well being, they would’ve have encouraged him to do this as part of the repentance process and they would have encouraged him to seek intense therapy treatment to reduce the risk of future abuse.
But none of that happened, his father lawyered up and the church washed their hands of any involvement while rallying around him. On top of it, he is still active in the church and now has a photography business where he potentially has access to underage girls.
His father told many people, “ that the victims over reacted and this isn’t something that should’ve ended his mission”.
Like…WHAT???
Go ahead and post it anywhere you’d like.
Thanks for your support!
Thank you!! I’ll post it next week in Instagram account “LDS Stories of Abuse”. I hope that the more these stories get exposure, the church will realize they need to prioritize protecting members over those who abuse.
Sherri, thank you for sharing this. What a terrible situation! I really hope it ceases to be traumatic for your daughter. Is it traumatic because there are still ongoing proceedings, or because she’s emotionally scarred by it? I hope that the scars will heal and she will be able to move on.
Could you tell us the details of how you escalated this within the church headquarters to get the abuser sent home? And what was the legal story once he got home? Was he charged? With what? How did that play out?
Thanks for your analysis of what cultural factors enabled this. FYI, I feel like those are not universal, but do exist for sure.
Thank you for your comment Sherri. I truly appreciate the insight in terms of consequences being taught to young men as it can truly damage victims.
I thought President Buie had the gift of discernment? Oops.
Scott Buie is a blowhard, he took every moment to get his word in. He would walk into sacrament meeting, and then “Take a moment if I may” and give a conference talk, swearing allegiance to the brethren, the policy, or whatever else he fancied at the time to come across as an especially holy and devout man. He caused a lot of unnecessary pain while he was SP. He alienated the LGBT members and the people who had family that are LGBT.
He went up to girls camp and unloaded a chauvinist, sexist, misogynist tirade about how these young women should look to marry a worthy priesthood holder, and be like his wife who quietly allows him to exercise his priesthood. He got on them about porn shoulders and followed the whole “You are pornography” bit from the Brethren. Many members, mothers especially went to him and told him it was all inappropriate and he was so proud of himself over it. He was terribly arrogant about it because he really thought he would have impressed Dalin H Oaks.
He especially gave the line “The family is under attack” for a while, though I asked him point blank how if my cousin and his boyfriend were able to marry was in any way a threat to my family or anyone’s. He dodged my question completely, and said simply that the prophet had spoken on it, and that a marriage was between a man and a woman, but still refused to answer when I pressed him for it.
To know that he was aware of this type of behavior and kept Murdock in positions, is no surprise. He made it clear women had their place, and he told me that my husband not coming to church had something to do with me, though my husband lost his testimony ages ago, and just did not like coming for any reason.
That is merely an excuse ‘not a bishop’.
What if the perp, a bishop were arrested and put in jail as he should be? What would the area do about that? They would have to find an interim bishop or allow the counselors to do the job. Or would they allow the man to run a ward from prison like Warren Jeffs does?
NOBODY wants an abuser to be their bishop, not for one month or five or one day. Be real!
That’s true that if Pres. Buie or those above him were convinced that he needed to be replaced as bishop on an emergency basis it could be done immediately. This happened with Jeffrey Byron Head and David N. Moss, for example. But their situations were very different in that there were publicly available police reports and there was evidence. With Murdock there was no evidence and no accusers, just rumors from three ward members that the reason he left his employment was that he was fired for sexual harassment. The assumption in his ward was that the reason he left his employment was that he cashed out. So there really was not enough to go on for an emergency release, especially if he did not confess to the stake president.
And to “Panhandle Rag”, it’s unfair to demand clairvoyance of leaders in the church. They have never claimed clairvoyance or taught that the gift of discernment or any inspiration comes on demand. It doesn’t. Just like you don’t receive divine guidance every time you want it, no one else does either. This leaves church leaders doing their best to learn the facts, figure things out, and look for inspiration along the way. Inspiration often comes, but not always. As Pres. Eyring taught, “good information leads to good inspiration.”
“Not a bishop” – Three separate faithful members informed Buie that Murdock had been fired for sexual harassment. And provided full details. That should have been more than enough in my opinion.
Apparently, this Steve Murdock is in my stake, which makes me uncomfortable to say the least.
I wanted to share a personal experience with having my story dismissed by church leaders to add to the body of concerning behavior. As a sister missionary over 10 years ago in Europe, I was literally picked up on the street and nearly kidnapped and who knows what else was in the plan after that. I was quite traumatized from the incident. I went to discuss it with my Zone Leaders only to be dismissed. Then I broached the topic of my trepidation to my Mission President who validated my concerns, but quickly changed the subject. This has caused some serious trauma in my life, in terms of my feeling of safety walking on the streets alone, exercising outdoors and stuff like that. Also, I struggle to trust that church leaders have my best interest at heart. I was paying to be there, and my leader took zero measures to ensure my safety after that. No transfer, no investigation and no therapy… for which I’ve since paid a pretty penny.
Since returning, I’ve been more privy to learning about the experiences of other people in similar situations. I’ve heard a number of women in Europe nearly being kidnapped on their missions! Would’ve been great to know before I went. I’m beyond concerned about the leadership situation. I personally don’t believe women should be confessing to men. It’s just so terribly uncomfortable and, dare I say, traumatizing- certainly for women dealing with men like Steve Murdock.
Thank you for the useful research and article. There are a few things in it that I feel mislead and leave the wrong impression.
Being a high councilor is not in any sense at all a promotion from being a bishop, nor does it have broader influence, greater responsibility, or increased visibility.
* High councilors are messengers, helpers, advisers to other leaders, and simply laborers on stake projects. They are not “over” anyone. On the other hand, bishops preside, typically over 200-500 members.
* High councilors hold no authority, other than to be agents of the stake presidency in administering specific, basic leadership functions.
* Being a high councilor is typically a 1-5 hour per week calling. Being a bishop is typically a 20-40 hour per week calling.
* The calling of bishop must either be made by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve or approved in advance by the first presidency. High councilors are simply called by the stake presidency.
* In terms of concentration of authority, there would typically be only 6-8 bishops in a stake, but 12 high councilors, so even if high councilors had authority, it would be diluted relative to bishops.
* High councilors never conduct worthiness interviews. On rare occasion they may conduct interviews with adults to extend a call to them.
* High councilors are not allowed to be one-on-one with any youth or child. In interviews, bishops are unless that youth or child would like a parent there.
FYI, the current correct term is “high councilor”, not “high councilman”.
I don’t feel like Bro. Hawkins’ description of bishop and high councilor as volunteer positions was trying to downplay their sacredness or power of the role, but to accurately provide the perspective that people with these callings are first and foremost church members, not “the church”. There are over 30,000 bishops and 40,000 high councilors at any given time, so I think the connotations of being a volunteer are applicable. We’re all amateurs, just trying to make our way through life like everybody else.
It is not the church’s “doctrine and policy” that “the men in these positions were called directly by God, and were not voluntary.” Inspiration is sought and often received when extending callings, but that is very far from being “called directly by God.” And all of these callings ARE voluntary in every sense. Just like you might feel right about voluntarily accepting a role as PTA or HOA president, in this church you typically feel right about voluntarily accepting callings, but you ARE a volunteer. And I was in a priesthood leadership meeting once where a member of the Quorum of the Twelve was thanking us for our service and sacrifice of time, and he explicitly said, “We know you are all volunteers.”
Finally, with a story like this our minds naturally rush toward youth and children, but is there any indication that Steven Murdock ever did or said anything inappropriate with a youth or child? He clearly had the opportunity, given his calling as bishop, but whether he did it or not is actually a pretty big deal as I see it. Any info?
I totally disagree. There is plenty of published church material on church websites that say God chooses church leaders and that people don’t ask (or volunteer) for callings. Here’s one: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2005/11/called-and-chosen?lang=eng
“We also need to support and sustain our local leaders, because they also have been “called and chosen.” Every member of this Church may receive counsel from a bishop or a branch president, a stake or a mission president, and the President of the Church and his associates. None of these brethren asked for his calling. None is perfect. Yet they are the servants of the Lord, called by Him through those entitled to inspiration. Those called, sustained, and set apart are entitled to our sustaining support. I have admired and respected every bishop I have ever had. I have tried not to question their guidance and have felt that in sustaining and following their counsel I was protected against the “sleight of men, and cunning craftiness.” This was because each of these called and chosen leaders was entitled to the divine revelation that comes with the calling. “
So, you are saying we should ignore the fact that the Stake President knew that Steve Murdock was a predator, and called him as bishop? Was that divine revelation?
These men had their little ring of immorality, and refusal to hold anyone accountable for years. They are hypocrites and turned a blind eye to the actions of a man, that would get anyone else excommunicated. A man who is groping women, making sexual advances, and generally being a sleazy jerk is hardly anyone that should be called in a position of authority in the church. Scott Buie thought so, so, if you are calling that revelation, then you are drinking the Kool-aid of the church’s double standard.
This type of thing happens all through the church, and if these men are doing this kind of thing. I refuse to sustain a bishop who does such inappropriate things, with adults, or minors. In light of these “Revelations” of facts being brought to the public eye, shows clearly that these men are no different than the Catholic Clergy who did this sort of thing for years.
Oscar, I would really like to know why you think what you just said. It makes you look incredibly nieve, and dangerous to any sort of victim, or potential victim.
Hi Firestarter, I think you and I are on the same page. I was disagreeing with Samuel who stated:
“It is not the church’s “doctrine and policy” that “the men in these positions were called directly by God, and were not voluntary.” Inspiration is sought and often received when extending callings, but that is very far from being “called directly by God.” And all of these callings ARE voluntary in every sense.”
I was trying to show Samuel that it IS the church’s position that callings are from God, so for the church to now say predatory church leaders are “volunteers” is very deceptive. The church says church leaders are “called by God” when they want compliance from members, but church leaders are only “volunteers” when they are predators.
Right, apologies. I shall redirect my question to Samuel.
No, I’m not saying anything at all about Steve Murdock or Scott Buie. I’m saying that the article is wrong as follows: It is not the church’s “doctrine and policy” that “the men in these positions were called directly by God, and were not voluntary.” And I think the author is being disingenuous about it, rather than innocently mistaken.
“Voluntary” and “volunteer” are being used in different ways in this discussion, and it’s causing a disconnect:
1) Anyone who does unpaid work on an amateur basis to help a cause they believe in (“I volunteer at my kid’s school”)
2) Seeking or Initiating assignment to a particular role (“I volunteered for the mission”)
3) Doing a task or assignment willingly, rather than under coercion (“I surrendered voluntarily”)
I believe Bro. Hawkins is using definition 1. And that’s the definition I had in mind when I said that bishops, high councilors, and all lay callings in the church are volunteers. I believe you, Oscar, have definition 2 in mind when you quote Pres. Faust as “None of these brethren asked for his calling.” And I think John might have definition 3 in mind when he says that callings are not voluntary. No one coerces bishops or high councilors to accept a calling; definition 3 is absurd in this context.
By the standard definitions of volunteer work used in the U.S. as regards churches and other charities, such as by the IRS and any other entity that cares, the work of bishops and high councilors is very clearly volunteer work. There is just no debating that.
I agree with you and even though I believe in a higher power I think most religions are abusive in their own way and encourage cruelty instead of being a safe haven. I would love community in a church but I have found most of them are filled with those who seek power and are filled with gossip. Of course many churches do lots of charitable work and that is to be commended as that is what we are supposed to be doing.
Individuals must “own” their desires:
One issue that I rarely hear discussed in these matters is how TCOJCOLDS doctrine allows predators/abusers to be placed into positions of trust, within the church, and remain there even though leaders in authority over them know of their victimization of others. The doctrine that creates this problem is the teaching that the desire to “sin” comes from a source outside of the individual, i.e. Satan. So long as the church, both the members and more importantly the leaders, hold onto that belief they will continue to allow the organization to be used by predators to find victims.
The admissions of Mr. Bishop regarding his sexual abuse of women illustrates this point. He kept saying how he was weak or struggled with temptation etc. He never acknowledged that those impulses originated from within himself. He confessed his actions to church leadership but excused himself of the desire to through the doctrine/teaching of the church that Satan was cause of the desire to abuse. The church leaders, also believing that Satan was the cause of the desire to abuse, would keep him in his position or even elevate his status because he was “a good person” and it was Satan who was the source of the abuse.
Penn Jillette made the following statement: “I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero.” Within the church we need to start looking at abusers in the same way. They do abuse (sexually, financially, emotionally etc.) as much as they want to. Or to put it anther way, which may be more relatable, “Abusers do not abuse anyone that they don’t want to.” Sure they may have tried to suppress their impulse but ultimately the desire to abuse their victim(s) came from within themselves, not from anyone else, including Satan. Until the church abandons the doctrine that the source of sin is external to the individual, abusers will continue to deceive themselves into thinking that they are not responsible for their desires and actions; and therefore, not getting the help they need to prevent themselves from abusing others in the future. Similarly the church will continue to turn a blind eye to the acts of the abusers believing that they are “good person” who succumbed to temptation from Satan, rather than accepting the abuser is not a “good person” and without regard to “repentance” they must implement organizational safeguards to prevent them from abusing others in the future.
If you imagine the Church hierarchy will do ANYTHING to change this deeply unhealthy, toxic culture, you are nuts! This church has sexual abuse ironed into its genes. It’s in its very DNA. The founder of the church was a sexual predator. Sexual predation has been a key part of its doctrine from Day One. Until the law is permitted to bring these criminals to justice, nothing will change. This church needs to DIE.
You are so right!
I have proof that there is absolutely zero inspiration and discernment in the Church: I renewed my temple recommend! I don’t believe in Christ, the Atonement thing, just about everything in the bible. I don’t believe the whole Joseph Smith story, I can’t sustain the corporate leaders and the local leaders. I don’t wear my “G’s”, I drink the forbidden tea, and I do associate with people who hold beliefs and have perform actions that are contrary to church teachings. I don’t live the law of chastity since I have indulged in the viewing of rated R movies. Obviously my little fibs in this interview make me not very honest with my fellow man. Now members have to go through this two-tier interview process starting with a member of the bishopric and then a member from the stake presidency so I had to do and say what they wanted to hear, twice. Both the bishopric counselor and the councelor in the stake president looked me straight into my eyes as if to try to intimidate me that they will know if I’m lying. The funny thing is that this interview was so easy compared to the ones I had when I was a TBM.
Now if you want to judge me on my integrity (might also want to scrutinize my church that I would have died for at one time) and blah, blah, blah, how I’m just as bad…blah, blah, blah. Just one thing to consider, we are all in different situations and I can not come out of the proverbial “I-don’t-believe-in-the-church-anymore-closet” because it would cause some real serious problems. Besides, I get free Ancestry.com and access to the church building! So membership does have its perks.
Another comment I wanted to make is about my friend’s dad who molested his sister. He was known to be a member in good standing and was adored and loved by members. He was never disciplined because he denied everything. Obviously, there was no discernment by any of the church leaders in this case. My friend kept his children away from his dad.
John,
Your gaslighting if this unfortunate incident is so over the top I wonder where you got your training for such PR stunts you post on Mormon Stories & YouTube!?
Oh that’s right you learned from church leadership how it’s done when you were a member. Well I take back my comments on the GASLIGHTING.
Now I do think Johns coverage of this incident is completely appropriate considering the COJ-COLDS PR Team is DOWN PLAYING (gaslighting) the important callings as Bishops & High Councilmen as “Volunteer Positions”
The simple fact I really wish John would pour some Gas On is the fact the Church hides behind the “Volunteer Clergy” argument to limit liability payouts or major jury awards in lawsuits against the church like in the case of the Catholic Church. losing Billions of dollars. The Catholic “Fathers” are Paid Employees who have been trained & have degrees in the ministry & therefore they along with any employer are LIABLE for sexual abuse claims proven in a court of law a long with punitive damages etc. if found guilty & liable.
The COJ-COLDS will never really “train” bishops or ever pay them for the simple reason of LIABILITY!
ITS ALL ABOUT THE MONEY HONEY it’s a shame many faithful members have not figured that out & actual eat up the church PR machine doing it’s monthly cover ups GASLIGHTING down playing the kind of religious CONTROL of its own members that these Volunteer Leaders have over them to perform their sex abuse behaviors on. All faithful members know a Bishop has major authority over every member in his ward to giving or taking away callings interviews temple recommends etc etc etc & to top it off CALLED OF GOD BY DIRECT REVELATION! This kind of belief leads a member to robot like responses or as we are taught OBEY YOUR PRIESTHOOD LEADERS! I guess we must obey when they sexually abuse us & when they tell us NOT to go to the police & NOT to sue in court. Yet there own PR representatives claim the volunteer position is of a local leader not of significance REALLY?
To them money is the bottom line otherwise they would use their Billions of dollars to completely put a STOP to such practices. Mandatory 2 deep interview. Honest reporting stating the facts like the Volunteer position of Bishop has great power & authority over a local ward issues all callings & is the presiding authority at all meetings at all times unless a Stake President is in attendance.
They reason they won’t be honest is they are protecting there name PUBLICLY.
I remember the days in the church when we were taught it was good to be hated of the world but today they want to be loved by the world & God agrees he reversed the LGBTQ policy Yippee! We are accepted of the world!!
Lawyers Run The Church Wake Up they sure as hell woke Russell M. Nelson up & reverses the Anti-LGBTQ Policy & of course it’s packaged for the faithful member as a “Revelation” Are We WOKE Yet?
I don’t understand why the Church keeps all these predators secrets for them, enabling them to abuse more people. It would be very easy to help protect everyone, if the church told sexual predators that they needed to be publicly identified in the ward as having committed a sexual crime, as part of their repentance process. If they have truly repented and wanted to hold any church position of trust again, they would understand why they need to be publicly identified and be alright with the CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR OWN ACTIONS. It would protect members and keep the predator accountable and give them less opportunity to re-offend.
Bill
I really like your solution to this problem for the church. I am not sure why they can not move to implement such common sense solutions.
My best guess is that any kind of procedures that are written & not ambiguous can be used in court against the church.
This is why the have the fake church “hotline” which is really just a phone call transfer to Kirton & McConkie the churches Law Firm. Then they use legal advise in each case which is considered “Privileged” & “Confidential” & not subject to discovery in litigation.
Samuel…
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/local/2017/10/01/god-picks-mormon-leaders-and-he-never-gets-it-wrong-eyring-says/
100% agree with Jedediah.
Since I haven’t known or been around sexual predators, I don’t really have a dog in the fight, but I thought it interesting the talk about calling by inspiration from God. Now as having been an Elder’s Quorum president in a small branch, that means that since I was the head of all our priesthood, I was required to attend all Sunday morning branch presidency meetings. I remember calling my counselors and other priesthood leaders and noting how most choices were desperation rather than inspiration. We didn’t have that many members so I was president, priesthood teacher, and preparation specialist at the same time.
When after 13 years, my family moved to a medium sized ward and noted over the years there that callings were recycled. If a woman was a YW president, she would eventually be called as a RS pres. And bishops would be called after having been a bishop in other wards. My church employment supervisor once told us in a monthly meeting how he had been called as a bishop in a ward and had been called there 2 bishops before. He thought that the church should give more people leadership roles. But as he said and I’ve learned other times, members of bishops don’t want to spend time training so they choose people who have been trained in other callings. Inspired by God?
I had an EQ counselor who because of his “obedience and righteousness” was called away from my quorum and put in the branch presidency. Eventually he moved to a large ward and was immediately called (By God???) to be a counselor in a bishopric. I encouraged him to visit me in another state, where he liked the area and moved. He was quickly, with his wife (Both with temple marriage) called to young single adults leaders, a calling influential to young adults. A year later, he took another wife, moved to Mexico and took a few more. He had always been very abusive to his wife (She would often come to meetings crying even when they were members of our small branch.), but she became a sister wife because she thought God wanted her to save her family. And to think I thought that God inspired me to call him as my counselor. Do you really think God inspired the man in his callings?
A member of the bishopric in my last ward sent in his letter because of research finding that leaders like Abraham of the Bible, Joseph Smith, and Joseph F. Smith lying to Congress in the Reid Smoot case— “lied “for the Lord”. So I can see how easy it would be for Murdock’s SP to just overlook things. But, until I stopped attending, I believed that many callings were inspired. However, I remember in one talk in our ward, a man said, “My dad was a bishop and I hope someday I’ll be a bishop.” When our bishopric changed, he was “called”(???) to be the bishop. And lastly, when I was called to be EQ pres., the stake high counselor (EQ presidents are called by the stake, not the bishop.) told me that God (They say HF.) had told him that I would be in leadership for the rest of my life. Well, I guess I asked too many questions and so I never had any more than primary, asst. scout leader, or employment specialist callings again.
John, I don’t agree with your repeated assessment that his spouse is a victim. Maybe she is, however she didn’t do anything to help his actual victims. If she wants to subject herself to him, that’s her issue but she knows who he is and allows it to continue. This is what needs to change in the world, we all have an obligation to stand up for the right thing. Moreover, this is not up to the LDS Church to solve, maybe it’s time the men of the church realize they’re are just men, and not capable of handling everything. Turn illegal behavior over to the authorities, and I mean human authorities, not “the next life”.
John, I thought you might like to know that I answered a question about the Murdock case and posted a link to this article on Quora, where questions about the Church appear with some regularity. Here’s the link to my answer: https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-the-high-ranking-Mormon-church-official-taking-pictures-in-dressing-rooms/answer/Joe-McVeigh-2.
Great work Joe.
Shattered! Sherrie W… my grand daughter is one of the four you mentioned concerning the shameful Park City event! A PERSONAL THANK YOU for you and your husbands efforts in dealing with that horrific situation which has left our grand daughter so damaged…
Sterling Van Wagenen is my cousin….thankfully in prison now…. never thought I would EVER have to say that….
Steve Murdock is my sons past Bishop and high councilor…… our family can’t breath………in our family’s world , Humpty Dumpty has taken a great fall……..😓
John….
For our family….. maybe “TO MUCH, TO LITTLE, TO LATE”!
Valerie…
So the author of this article uses this attack as a soapbox to argue for a handful of things. Some of these are relevant to this case and would be useful, such as more training of leaders in how to respond when impropriety by a leader is alleged. However, I disagree with two of the implications claimed in this article:
1) Requiring background checks for bishops would not have had any effect in this case because there was no record in his background. He had not been fired or arrested until years after being called as bishop. In fact, can anyone cite a single case where a background check of a bishop would have found a record that should have prevented him serving as bishop? But also, bishops are (until year’s end) Boy Scout leaders, and all BSA leaders do have to pass a background check, so I believe that bishops already pass a background check.
2) Preventing one-on-one interviews with youth and children would not have made a difference in this case. There are no allegations of creepiness or grooming in any youth or child interviews and no indication that Steve Murdock had any prurient interest in youth or children. I think using an irrelevant case to drag out every tired grievance against the church is intellectually dishonest.
But regarding the grievance itself, what cases are there where a rule against one-on-one bishop’s interviews with youth and children would have made a difference in the bishop’s ability to act improperly? The only one I can think of is Jeffrey Byron Head. And in that one the settings where the abuse occurred were so far outside policy that having one more rule to break may not have deterred him or prevented the situation. He had already gone rogue in a big way.
As a youth, I would not have wanted to have to talk to two adults about private, personal matters, and I am very glad the church does not require this. I think this policy would do more harm than good by closing off a youth’s ability to get help by having a private, non-threatening discussion. I think the church’s new policy of allowing the youth to choose to invite a parent at his or her own discretion is a good balance.
Lynn,
Answer to question 1 :
https://fox13now.com/2019/02/20/former-vice-squad-cop-arrested-in-valentines-day-prostitution-sting-in-lehi/
A background check would have found he was sacked from the Police force in St George years earlier on sexual abuse matters before becoming a bishop in the Lehi area. (may not be mentioned in that article, it is an other media articles)
#2 : there are no cases that we know of. This guy obviously had long running moral issues for years, people in his ward clearly have identified how they felt around him. There is no way I’d want my Young woman daughter near that guy.
Thank you. This is a good answer. I couldn’t find other articles referring to abuse, but that doesn’t mean they are not out there. From a church perspective, the consensual affair in St. George should have been enough to disqualify him as bishop. It’s too bad that it didn’t.
Hi John, love you and appreciate you bringing this to light. Not to be nit-picky and maybe someone else has already brought this up (I don’t have time to read all the comments) –
High Council is not a promotion from Bishop. And high councilmen do not give worthiness interviews of any sort, with anyone. A bishop is privy to a lot more info than a high councilmen generally is and a bishop presides at meetings, high council does not. Also, the stake president makes the judgment in court discipline, not the high council. The stake president may ask for their input and it is true that the high council is present to ensure both sides are fairly represented, but they do not vote, and the stake president doesn’t even have to ask how they would vote. (PS I am NOT in the least saying I think it was ok to put him on the high council, that never should have happened. But, it’s not a promotion).
Also, there continues to be misinformation out there about the “Help Line” and Kirton and McConkie. I wish Family Services would talk about this so they could clear it up, but it is not true to the help line goes directly to K & M. They may or may not get involved, but Family Services is the one to initially screen the calls. They are there to assess whether further assistance is needed for the victims and if there is legal counsel needed then it can go from there. But I don’t think it’s fair to say the help line is there only to cover the church’s butt. (Again – I think there are problems with the help line. Really there just needs to be a help line for anyone who needs it in the church and it shouldn’t have to go through the bishop. And the fact that K & M is involved at all – they should be 2 completely different entities based on what is needed – but just saying, let’s be accurate).
And one last thing – I’ve heard you say several times that Family Services therapists are somehow “less than”. Just want to point out that there are good and bad therapists in any organization. Every therapist with LDSFS is licensed and under the Code of Ethics for their discipline. I’ve known of several who had been terminated when they haven’t been up to snuff, and they are competitive to be hired into. Are there bad apples? I’m sure there are. But they all have the same education and licensing and code of ethics as anyone in the field, and some of them are very, very good at what they do. That being said, I personally have some major problems with some of their practices (such as bishop referrals) but…let’s just be fair. As with anything, it’s not all good or bad. This type of black and white thinking reminds me…dare I say…of where some of my major problems with the church stem from.
Thanks for sharing this story. And thank you for approaching it from a systemic POV instead of focusing solely on him personally. Thanks for all you do, I really do appreciate it. Don’t mean to be critical because 95% of what you say I agree with. I just hear these few things continue to come up and want to gently correct them. You are welcome to contact me if you need more info on this, I can direct you to places :).
I respectfully disagree that the most crucial part of the story is the LDS coverup, bad as the coverup is.
In fact, I would argue that your line of reasoning empowers the corporate church and that you did not mention a far more important point.
Nowhere in 102 minutes do I hear a celebration of the actions of Alondra Alcala in standing up for herself and for
Calling
The
Police
and for pressing charges.
That’s why the story exists. Alondra Alcala called the police. She exercised her right to justice. She called the police. That is what may stop Mr. Murdock from preying upon more people.
Ms. Alcala should be our role model. She is a denizen of the real world; she lives in a place the corporation has no authority.
She did the right thing.
She did not let him delete the evidence of his crime.
She called the police.
She pressed charges.
(I highly doubt she consulted an ecclesiastical leader for permission to do so.)
Calling the police is the only appropriate way to respond. “Call the Police” should be your endless drumbeat, and that of Sam Young as well, if he is serious about protecting children.
Why not take a stand and tell listeners to call the police? Do you think that perpetrators should not face the legal system? We have an actual court system to punish perpetrators and to protect victims.
Why put tacit support into the Mormon Church cleaning its act up when it has zero incentive to do so? Who cares what church authorities do in reaction to a reported crime? What the police does matters.
Reporting matters. That’s what got Murdock fired from at least one job. Report. Report. Report. Early and often.
The system of Mormonism in its corporate and cultural paradigms is a closed system designed to protect itself. It can only be affected by entities outside the system.
John, you yourself have commented many times that Kirton McConkie exists for the sole purpose of protecting the corporate church. Last time I checked, they were an exclusively legally focused organization; they don’t make policy–they only deal with legal issues they are told to emphasize. They’re skilled and highly paid lawyers, not unpaid volunteers. Why do you think the church’s exoskeleton is not the armor of god but a legal firm? Because their ultimate line of defense is the law–not the culture that says let the church handle criminal acts perpetrated by predator, but the law. Disciplinary councils and the church’s internal “justice system” will only work to reinforce its power. The church has to answer to the law. They only have to answer to the law. So training unpaid volunteers to shield the institution from answering to the law is their highest doctrine.
Your message actually reinforces the power of the church because you do not point outside the ecclesiastical hierarchy to the legal system.
The church wins every time *anyone* conflates the ecclesiastical system with the legal system and subordinates latter to the former.
Would it not be more effective to stop focusing on institutional coverups and encourage people to call the police and ship calling the bishop altogether? Call the cops. Early and often. Yes, there may be a loss in rage against the corporate church, but calling the police might actually result in justice. (cough, Sterling van Templefilm)
In reality, the Bishop *is* just a volunteer–that is the church spokesman’s view and the legal view. That same unpaid volunteer is also on the front line of protecting perpetrators. Why does the KM hotline exist? To minimize corporate risk. KM knows they are not above the law, but any time they don’t even have to deal with actual law enforcement, they win.
Only when a critical mass of people begin to call the police and not to make an appointment with a volunteer will the culture and policy shift. And that is the only house of justice that is not built on sand.
I liked the pious lists of our complicity at the end of the episode. I feel the same way. But they are paper words flung against KM brick wall. Highlighting the empowered actions of Alondra Alcala is a way to make a role model of her and of her actions. She is the hero here.
This may sound harsh: you’re empowering the wrong system, John. Elevate the legal system and encourage people not to take reports of crimes to unpaid volunteers but to trained officers of the law. You’re a professional. Why did you take a huge pay cut and become a professional? Should someone with a serious mental health issue talk with you or to a volunteer who happens to be an insurance salesman? And shouldn’t there be a “buyer beware” consciousness any time someone runs to tell an unpaid volunteer who has no training (and will sweep the problem under the rug or, worse, find a way to promote the perpetrator) instead of a trained professional who has real authority to stop abuse?
The sunshine of the public record matters most, not the one behind the KM wall.
Please follow-up Murdock’s journey through the legal system. Thank you!
I just listened to this podcast today. I’m a little behind. 35 years ago I was that woman married to a voyeur, philanderer, wife & child beater, and all around irresponsible man. Unlike Mrs. Murdock, I chose to see my husband for who & what he was and got out. The wonderful Mormon church did absolutely NOTHING to punish him. He was given a T-recommend 6 months later because in those day we had to wait 6 months after a divorce to get a T-recommend. Such a joke temple recommends, but that’s a story for another day. I raised 4 children by myself. I have walked through hell because of the Mormon culture & their not accepting attractive women in their community. Also, it was not easy raising children by myself. My ex forgot about his kids & had 9 more children with his pious return missionary new wife. She’s the other type, that doesn’t believe in rocking the boat, just what he wanted. I am very sure that my ex still has the problem of peeping in windows of college coeds, and yes he has served as a Stake High Councilman. What a joke. I have his arrest records to prove what he did. But I was afraid to ever call the police when he was beating me. So I have no proof of that.
It’s possible Mrs. Murdock does not want to raise her children alone and perhaps any kind of father is better than no father at all. My heart goes out to Mrs. Murdock. My children all have many problems today. I was able to pull my life into a successful place, but some of my children were not. I have written a book and am in the process of getting it published on Amazon, hopefully. The title is: False Promises. Author Hayden Wylie, (my pen name). The FB website is not up yet but will be soon.
I am puzzled as to why a man motivated by a need to possess intimate images of a woman, would attempt to take a photograph of someone in a fitting room. The chances of getting any particularly explicit pictures would be almost zero, I would have thought. And far more lurid and detailed images could easily be obtained from any porn site, with far less risk involved. Moreover Murdock appears to have done this with his wife not far away. The whole thing seems quite odd to me.
The history of the individual concerned, as it has been described here, would seem to be one of his committing what the law would consider relatively minor offences – no rape, incest, child abuse etc, Some are things that much of society accepts as legitimate, such as having an extra-marital affair. However they are all things for which he might expect Church disciplinary procedure to apply. Yet he does not seem to have gone to any great lengths to cover his tracks. So what exactly is happening with him?
I know this individual personally, this doesn’t surprise me. I’m also not at all surprised his spouse would rather leave a victim and never tell anyone than confront reality, this is a typical Mormon response to uncomfortable issues. I’ve known Mormons all my life who have ignored victims and in order to keep the peace, they hide the truth ad defend the abuser.