Why Sexual Violence Should Disqualify Anyone from Missionary Service

Is it a hot take to say that committed sins of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment should disqualify someone from full-time missionary service?

I am a survivor of sexual trauma. I've lived with this burden all my life. I was so young the first time I was abused, I have no recollection of ever being anything other than a survivor. It is all I have ever known.

I've had a lifetime to ask God about sexual trauma. From the earliest "why is this happening to me?" to now. I've spent years trying to understand what God's forgiveness looks like for the people who did this to me, and what that means for me as a survivor.

Here's what I know.

Restitution is Everything 

It is not enough for someone who is guilty of traumatizing someone with sexual abuse to confess what they've done to a bishop, a stake president, or even to the prophet himself. That confession is meaningless on its own.

Repentance for sin does NOT belong to church leadership. It is not theirs to bestow. It belongs to Jesus Christ alone. His is the standard for repentance and forgiveness, which is to confess and forsake sin. (See D&C 58:42-43)

What does it mean to "forsake" sin?

In the case of sexual trauma, it's not just a private rejection of the behavior. It's not just a personal conviction to never repeat it. It also means making restitution to the victim, their families, and everyone else affected by the abuse.

The effects of sexual trauma are lifelong. It's a burden many survivors live with every day of their lives. For as long as that suffering continues, there is more restitution to be paid. And until the utmost farthing has been paid, the perpetrator doesn't qualify for forgiveness.

Let me be clear about this for the church leaders in the back. You have no right to declare someone forgiven for sexually traumatizing someone who has done absolutely nothing to make restitution. You may give them institutional forgiveness, but it means nothing to God.

God gives justice to victims of sexual violence

Every tear, every pain, every heartbreak victims experience is seen by God. Weighed against the abuser's restitution. Measured. Remembered. Every victim of sexual trauma will receive justice. Otherwise, "God would cease to be God." (See Alma 42:13)

Individuals who have already sexually traumatized someone before mission age have much more important things to worry about than serving a mission. Their souls are at stake. The most important thing they need to do is begin the lifelong process of achieving their own repentance.

 

Some people mistakenly believe that serving a mission will help people in this situation achieve forgiveness—that giving up this time is a necessary sacrifice for that ongoing repentance. 

 

Here's why that's an unacceptable approach.

You Want Reasons? Here's Six of Them.

1. Perpetrators of sexual violence are already at a serious deficit when it comes to forgiveness and repentance. They have no legitimate moral authority to speak on behalf of Christ about forgiveness to anyone.
2. Male perpetrators especially have no business wearing a missionary name badge because they could hold leadership positions, in their missions and in branches throughout the world. They could oversee and administer to female missionaries, many of whom are survivors of abuse.
3. As someone who was openly and repeatedly denigrated by elders where I served, I know what being abused by elders is like. I know how easily they can get away with, as well as the retaliation that follows when it no longer remains a secret. They don't learn the right lessons from these situations. They don't know how to make the situation right again. They only learn how to improve their abilities of getting away with it.
4. It sends the wrong message to the perpetrator about what they've done and their abilities to handle it on their own.
5. It sends the wrong message to the one they've traumatized. How many of them are sitting in pews, listening to a missionary mom read their abuser's letters over the pulpit in sacrament meeting? Why should that missionary get to live a lie before the whole world, while that person has to sit with what they know in silence?
6. Being a returned missionary opens church members, especially men, to holding more leadership positions in the future. No person in this church should have to deal with the spiritual crisis of finding out their abuser is in a bishopric or a presidency.

I'm not saying abusers should live in public disgrace in our congregations. But there are opportunities they should relinquish as a consequence of their decision-making. Missionary service as a young person should be one of those opportunities. If that deprivation seems harsh, if that loss seems severe—good! Loss of opportunity is something victims of sexual trauma know a lot about. It'll be a chance for them to understand what it's like to have something you treasure forcibly taken from you.

It doesn't begin to compare, but it's a start.

Any consequence at all is a start.