I spent a great deal of time thinking about this woman since last evening, when my mother and I had a discussion about this situation. My mother is of course appalled that someone would degrade the meeting in such a way. My initial reaction was that her using this meeting was perhaps unwise. But in thinking about her situation from the beginning, I cannot blame her for doing what she did. She is not much younger than me, and was in the MTC only a couple of years after I was, so I think I can understand her entire situation to a certain extent.
She was a part of a religion that claimed to be God's true church on the earth. She was taught that church leaders were called of God, and that they were inspired by Him for those over whom they had jurisdiction. Back in the early 80s, we hadn't really heard about church leaders (Mormon, Catholic, or otherwise) sexually abusing others. At that point, we still naively believed that our leaders were nearly infallible. We were told that God would never lead the church astray, and that even if leaders ever say something wrong, we would be blessed for following their counsel anyway. We were also used to being interviewed in one-on-one meetings with our male church leaders who asked questions about our sexual behavior. Women have been perfectly groomed to be victims if they are unfortunate enough to have a leader who will take advantage of that situation.
Sexual predators obviously know how to pick their victims, and Joseph Bishop chose her (and who knows how many others). He was the President of the MTC (over several hundred missionaries at any given time) and she was susceptible to his attention. He admits that he took her to a room and asked to see her breasts. She says that she was raped. No matter where the truth lies between those two statements, his actions were inappropriate and accordingly he should have been disciplined by the church and perhaps by the law. At the least, he should have been removed from any position where he was a leader over young women.
She did nothing about it at the time, which would be consistent to what it was like in the 1980s. She knew that no one would believe her over him (and she says that he told her as much at the time). She served her mission. When she came home, she told her bishop about it. I know many, many women who tried to tell their bishops about such situations, and they were usually told to not go to the police (often with the terms "because it will ruin his career"). Her story is pretty consistent with the experience of so many others who are not believed by their church leaders because everyone involved still believed in the near infallibility of church leaders. There is no way that God would ever have a sexual predator be the MTC leader, so the woman must be lying. Even reporting to the police in Utah back then meant you were likely to be speaking to an LDS officer, and he would have the same misconceptions and little reason to believe her.
And so her life went on. I do not know exactly what triggered her after all these years to pursue this. If I remember correctly, she had assumed that he had likely been punished by the church somewhere down the line, and she found out this had never happened. She decided to confront her abuser, and met with him and recorded his conversation. He admitted to having had incidents of inappropriate sexual behavior and that he had never been punished for them, even when he had confessed them.
She filed her lawsuit against him and the church, and all but one of her claims have been dismissed due to expired statute of limitations (which needs to be done away with in the case of sexual assault). Her only remaining claim is whether the church covered up his crimes.
I believe she wants to be heard. And I believe she wants the church to acknowledge that she was treated unfairly, and that he should have been dealt with appropriately. I suspect the reason she went to Mr. Bishop's fast and testimony meeting is because she still feels so powerless, and because he still has not been punished for any of his crimes. That would make anyone upset, and this has been festering for over 30 years. All she wants is some sort of justice.
So whether I think her actions are appropriate or not doesn't matter. Whether I believe her story or not doesn't matter. This woman deserves all the compassion that we can give her for all that she has endured. And I hope that through her suffering and the actions she now takes, the church will realize that women deserve better than what they have gotten in the past.
