A Conversation with Chelsea Goodrich

Welcome to the latest episode of Inside Out, the podcast that takes a pragmatic look at the Mormon Church and faith. We consider the strengths and weaknesses of the Church. We acknowledge the good that the Church does, but also the problems and issues of the Church and areas where where we think the church can change and improve. And, uh, as always, a, a very special welcome, uh, to the extraordinary, uh, Mr. Jim Bennett. Welcome, Jim.

Thank you very much, sir. Glad to be with you as always.

Thank you, Jim. And today, as you, you and I know, we have a very, uh, special guest in a very important, uh, serious podcast. Uh, we're joined by, uh, Chelsea Goodrich from, uh, Idaho. Very special welcome to you, Chelsea. Thanks for joining us today.

Thank you so much, Ian and Jim Bennett.

And you're in the state of Idaho today.

I am. I am a little cold. Sounds like it's similarly cold where each of you are, but not a lot of snow yet.

Yeah, we do snow up there in Idaho.

Not a lot. Not as much as normal.

Well, we're— yes, I— we were encouraged by last winter that maybe we were getting enough snow to sort of stem the tide of the Great Salt Lake collapse, but I don't think that's happening this winter. So, so we'll see what happens.

Yeah.

And in British Columbia, as we were discussing earlier, we're having a very mild winter so far. We've got no snow. Usually it's -10, -15 here, but we've had very little snow. There's no snow on the ground right now. And yesterday was +8, which is very, very unusual. As you know, we recorded this between Christmas and New Year. Hope you've had a wonderful Christmas, both of you, and been able to spend time with your loved ones. And, uh, Christmas and best of 2024. I hope 2024 is very prosperous for you both and, uh, and successful on, uh, on every level. Uh, so thank you again, Chelsea, for joining us. Uh, just want to say from the outset that we, um, uh, really appreciate you taking time out of your, uh, your holiday schedule here to join us and to share your experiences, your thoughts, and your perspectives. We want to say that we want to make sure that this conversation towards you is respectful, is thoughtful, and want you to feel safe and comfortable in the conversations that we'll be having and talk about the things that you want to talk about, that you're in control here. And Jim Bennett and I will have some general questions. I think I've shared when you and I spoke by phone a week or so ago, we shared some of those questions. And again, it's very important for, to you, uh, that you feel, um, uh, safe and, uh, and, uh, considered in terms of the conversation that we'll be having. And so, um, could you give us a little bit of introduction, Chelsea, to, to you and, and, uh, you know, to your, um, uh, your family, uh, if you will, for our, for our listeners?

Yeah, thank you so much, Ian. I appreciate your sensitivity to my situation, and I'm going to try to speak up because sometimes my voice gets a little too soft. So I'm going to speak up, and I'm grateful for this opportunity to maybe fill in the gaps or address some things that I might not have addressed so far in some other interviews. I've been thinking a little bit about that. Uh, yeah, as far as the family background, I don't think I really did specify this on previous interviews, but I am the oldest of 4 children, 4 kids. And so on another interview I was quoting two different brothers, but I realized later that I would just say my brother, my brother. So, um, there's two brothers and one sister, and so it goes girl, boy, girl, boy. And, um, I'm now 38 years old, and we're all about roughly a couple of years apart. And sadly, because of the way everything has unfolded in the past several years with our family, I'm estranged from two of those siblings, and I haven't spoken to, to John, to my father, for I think about 8, over 8 years now. So it's all a very fractured, fragmented family situation now, which is very heartbreaking and kind of just the, I guess, end result of the way that a lot of things played out in this process.

I just want to say what a courageous and brave individual you are in sharing, you know, the, your background here. And, uh, we're very sorry that you've gone through all all the pain and suffering and the hurt and the trauma. And what a resilient individual you are. So again, thank you for sharing your, your experience. When Jim Bennett and I were preparing for this, and we've, we spent some time thinking and wanted to make sure that this was a very safe experience for you, we were thinking of some questions that we thought might be appropriate, some questions that you might not have been asked. And we were careful about not wanting you to, only wanting you to talk about what you felt comfortable with and following your direction on that. But some of the questions that we had, which I thought was interesting, which you and I, I think, discussed some of those questions when we spoke by telephone, felt more than a week or so ago, was with, you know, you shared your experience on different channels, different platforms. Your story's out. You're going through some legal proceedings currently. And my, one of my questions was, you know, what has the church, how has the church responded to date in respect to your experience and your account? Has it responded and how has it responded? Has it reached out and provided any form of support at all, or is that now— is that not happening because there are some legal proceedings happening currently?

Yeah, no, I haven't heard from the church directly. My understanding is probably the same as everyone else's as to where the church stands based on their recent public media response to the whole situation. And I think that's something that was disheartening in the process of, you know, our— my mom and myself and also Eric Alberti, uh, as those who are familiar with the story know, we met with church attorney Paul Ritting beginning in 2017. He is or was the head of risk management of the church. And I was actually just reaching out to him because I knew his daughter. I was friends with his daughter, and she kept saying to me, "No, my dad works for the church, and maybe he can help you with your situation." At the time, there was a pending criminal case against my father, and I had reported him to the police for his abuse of me. So, There was a pending criminal case for that. And initially, the bishop that my, my father had confessed to at the time, uh, he was very willing to testify and that kind of thing to what he knew. And he was very clear about that. He told me he wanted to do so for the protection of other children. But then he spoke to attorneys over the helpline that he called the helpline of the, the church and spoke to some attorneys and social workers there, and also spoke to Paul Ridding in the course of things. And then his attitude really changed. His desire and willingness to testify definitely changed. And that was, that was really discouraging, to say the least. And, you know, in the process of our meetings with Paul Ridding in 2017, it became clear that really the church wasn't going to help with bringing forth justice in that criminal trial, at least by— I, I always say unscaring the bishop because I kind of felt like he went from brave to scared after speaking to the church attorney. So Uh, they weren't going to unscare him. They weren't going to encourage anything. And also, Paul Ridding, he presented some possibilities for how the bishop could possibly testify in the trial and legally do so. There was some legal loopholes, but then he never followed through with that either. And in the end, it kind of just became about the money. Like, we never went into it looking to ask for money, but in the, in the course of events, you know, it became more and more clear to me that the church wasn't going to do the right thing, that a lot of damage had been done to my mom, my mother, in the process of the way the church had handled things, and to our whole family. Just the fracturing that I spoke about at the beginning happened in great part because of the way that the church and other entities, but the church as well, kind of handled or mishandled things to do with, with my father and their knowledge of his abuse of me and, and the whole family situation. And so my mom at the time in 2017 had recently had a number of strokes she'd gotten a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's. It was very frightening to us. And she was at the same time caring for my 84-year-old grandmother full-time, who was in heart failure. My grandma was in heart failure. And it looked possible for us at that time, in the midst of my parents' divorce, that my mom might not get anything and that she and my grandma might end up homeless. And so I, I did, through the process of meeting with Paul Ridding, start to say to him, you know, if you're not— what we really want is for the bishop to testify and for the truth to come forward and for my dad, for my father, to be stopped from continuing to abuse children. But if you're not going to do anything by way of that, you know, so much damage has been done here to our family. And if there's any way that you can help take care of my mom and grandma Yeah, I'm gonna push for that. And so, you know, in the process of things, Paul came back to answer one of my burning questions. My first one was, can the bishop testify? That didn't, um, pan out. And then my other burning question was, you know, my father had told us that he, while he was a bishop in 1999, my father had been a bishop for 5 years during that time period, and he told us in 2015 when everything came out that he had gone as a bishop to make a confession to the stake president about having sexually abused me. And he told us this in the very beginning when he had kind of a solid consistent story at the very beginning. As time went on and he realized that we started recording him, recording our conversations with him, my father started to kind of, you know, jump back and forth on his story a bit. But in the beginning, his story was pretty straightforward because he was caught off guard. We weren't recording him yet, and so I think he was telling mostly the truth at that point. And so when we met with Paul Ridding, I wanted to know what that stake president knew and why he hadn't followed, you know, the stake president that my father confessed to while my father was a bishop. I wanted to know what he knew and why church policy hadn't been followed, because At that point, I had researched that church policy is that in that situation, the stake president should have notified my mother so that she could take action steps to, you know, remove us as the children from the home. But that had never happened. And so I wanted to know what that stake president knew and why he hadn't followed church policy, and if there was any other church leaders, you know, any of my father's other former priesthood leaders that knew anything about my abuse as well. And Paul Riddink came back in answer to that question. I mean, initially he was honestly just going to avoid answering that question, which I think is understandable as far as his position as head of risk management, he was acting as an attorney. He wasn't really straightforward about that with us at all from the beginning. Eric Alberti asked him, "Are you acting as an attorney for the Church?" And he basically says, "No, I'm just here to help these women." But that wasn't true. It became clear that he was, you know, trying to protect Bishop Miller. From saying anything that Bishop Miller shouldn't say in our meetings that was clergy-privileged. And yeah, you can hear that unfold. Um, if you were to hear those recordings of our meetings with Paul Reading, it's very clear that he's acting as an attorney, but he won't just directly say that. And, you know, he's giving us more the feeling that he's acting as a loving kind of— presenting more as almost like a loving, uh, priesthood leader, church leader type of person, but at the same time he's acting very attorney-like. So it's all kind of confusing. And in answer to my question about my father's confession to that stake president while he was a bishop, Paul comes back and Eric Alberti asks him more directly, can you please answer that question? And Paul Reading tells us Well, Curtin McConkie, which is, you know, is, uh, the church's legal team or part of it out of Salt Lake City, he said they did call and interview all of John Goodrich's former priesthood leaders. And he's kind of stumbling and hesitating, you can hear on this recording, who says, I need to be very careful what I say here, but for the most part, none of them knew about any confessions of sexual abuse of you. And so as soon as he said, for the most part, we knew that someone did know, I believe from surrounding circumstances and other things that we're aware of that it most likely was that stake president, uh, when my father was a bishop. But Paul Ridding wouldn't tell us who it was, so we just know that there was someone. And to tell you the truth, I'm surprised that Paul— I don't know if his conscience just kind of, you know, um, was bothering him at that moment. I don't know why he even said that much, because he really could have just completely lied, uh, but instead he did give us a piece of the truth, but he wasn't going to give us, you know, the full truth and the rest of the details. And so I don't know if that's why the church went from giving us an offer of a certain amount of money to like about triple that amount or something. That's still kind of a mystery, but my theory is that it was related to that because they did come to realize that there was— I mean, really, without that there wasn't a lot of direct fault on the part of the church. Yes, when everything came out in 2015, it was handled quite horrendously by the stake president at that time in 2015. And Bishop Miller, frankly, was really trying to advocate for my mom and me in the beginning. He really wanted to do the right thing. That was his natural instinct, and his natural instinct was to report it. But when he spoke to the attorneys over the church's helpline, they discouraged him from doing so. They said, you don't need to do that, she's not a minor anymore. And, you know, I just think about how differently things may have played out if Bishop Miller had said, okay, I'm gonna go with you to the police, let's go together. And that would have been very life-changing for many people involved because Bishop Miller frankly knew more about my sexual abuse than I can remember. And we had a conversation about that after my father confessed to Bishop Miller in 2015. I had a phone conversation with Bishop Miller where we discussed the fact that my father had gone and confessed. The family was aware at this point, you know, about my father having abused me. And so Bishop Miller was speaking to our family about it, and he called me. And we started having this conversation where Bishop Miller thought that I remembered or knew everything that my father had confessed to him. And as the conversation went on, I think he started to realize, as I was going, "Oh, I didn't know that part of it," he was like, "Oh, I need to be careful." what I'm saying here, because I guess I'm realizing that you don't remember all of these details about your sexual abuse that your dad confessed to me. And so I need to be careful because I guess that would be clergy privilege and just really put Bishop Miller in a very bad position. Because then on the other side of it, you know, the attorneys for the church were starting to kind of coach and counsel him about what he should and shouldn't do. And, you know, he, he told me that when he called the helpline, they said, this is very serious. What you've described to us is— would be considered legally considered child sexual abuse. And it's very bad. This man needs to be excommunicated. And he was a former Mormon bishop and had who knows how many kids alone with him in his office as a bishop. And so regardless of what the stake president thinks— because at that time, for a while, the stake president who was longtime friends with my dad was frankly trying to kind of COVID for him. And my, my father was telling the stake president by that point a bit of a different story. So to the stake president's credit, she doesn't deserve much if you heard the whole story. But in that aspect, I mean, the stake president wasn't getting the whole truth. He chose to believe my father's narrative that he'd, you know, started spinning by that point, that my mom was mentally ill and that she had convinced me to make this all up, to make up the sexual abuse story. And the stake president treated us accordingly. I mean, he really treated us like we were not honest and were not credible or sane. And that was very, very painful for a period. And then finally, Bishop Miller kind of had a meeting with the stake president and got him up to speed about what my father had actually confessed to Bishop Miller initially. And the stake president was like, oh, okay. I didn't realize all of that. And the bishop also told him, you know, uh, the Salt Lake City attorneys have told me that kind of regardless of anything else, that this excommunication really needs to be mandated. There's no question that he needs to be excommunicated. And so we'll just go through the excommunication court as the necessary formality, but the end result of it has to be excommunication. Communication regardless. And so, yeah, that's— at that point, you know, you would think the stake president would have been more, I guess, on our side and supportive. But there still was a lot that happened after that where the stake president wouldn't communicate with us about when the excommunication communication court was. And that's another thing that according to church policy, the victim is supposed to be at least notified of it and given the opportunity to be present if there's a, an abuse situation. Uh, and that, that just didn't happen. And I requested to the stake president that I could be present because I was concerned by that point. Just about my father's lies, because at that point he decided to change the narrative and say that my mom was the abuser and that he was innocent. And unfortunately, because nobody— no one from our family was present at that excommunication court, we were barred from that, and by the stake president, and Bishop Miller wasn't even present at that excommunication court. And so Unfortunately, my father was able to say a lot of really extreme falsehoods against my mother. And unfortunately, there was someone there present on that excommunication court that later said something to one of their wives, and then she said something to someone else in the ward, and then gossip just spread like wildfire. Throughout the stake, in the town, that basically, you know, my mom was the abuser, and that people weren't really clear on whether or not my father should have been excommunicated or she should have, kind of a thing. It was really, really terrible for, for my mother's situation. And the stake president— and really no one would come to my mother's defense. And the other thing is that the stake president was trying to avoid announcing my father's excommunication to the proper, uh, the, those certain leaders that needed to be notified of that. Uh, he wasn't going to do that either until finally I think Bishop Miller did intervene in that way too and said, you know, people either don't know he was excommunicated or they're just hearing this strange story that's going around. And it's all very confusing and it's really damaging this family. And anyways, you get the idea. It was all kind of a mess and I've been talking for a really long, really long bout here. So feel free to interrupt me.

No, I don't want to. I really appreciate you sharing all of this. And I, and I know that it must be difficult to share all of this. I mean, we came to your story, I think, the way most people did, through the AP. We listened to the audio that had been recorded, particularly about the $300,000 that you were offered. That, to me, it was just so discouraging to hear that the church was so much more interested in just not letting your story get out They were in doing right by you.

Yeah.

And doing right by your family. Mm-hmm. Uh, and so I, I mean, you know, I, I'm the one, you know, that the name of the podcast is Inside Out. I'm the one that's still on the inside and I, I still feel like we don't do the church any favors by minimizing, um, sexual abuse. And by minimizing the real challenge and problem here, and it's just so bizarre to me that the church is so much more interested in just kind of whitewashing real problems than it is in actually solving them. One of the things that Ian and I talk about too is I'm very curious as to what your relationship is with the church today, what your attitude toward the church is today. Is that something you'd be willing to talk about?

Yes, it is, Jim. And I just completely agree with you. I don't understand the church's approach to this. I mean, I understand it in terms of it being, I guess, kind of a standard or expected approach for just a huge corporation. But the church, you know, it purports to be much more than that. And so, you know, I would expect more. And I think that the, the church would get so much more respect and credibility by being transparent and handling these situations much differently, much better. Uh, but yeah, so I am still a member of record. I don't attend church. I recently did an interview on Mormon Stories with John DeLynn, and I kind of explained that. But essentially, even after everything that happened to us with the, the church with the handling of the mishandling of things by leaders, church leaders in Mountain Home, Idaho. Uh, my mother moved herself and my grandmother about 90 minutes away into the mountains to Hailey, Idaho, where I now live. I moved here to Hailey as well. At the time, I thought it was temporary to just help Mom and Grandma. But I, I was moving from Los Angeles at the time. I had been going to, to graduate school there studying psychology, and I just felt so strongly one day that I absolutely needed to leave Los Angeles, come and be here with Mom and Grandma, and that we— I was thinking that I was supporting them But truthfully, we ended up needing to band together and really support each other because there was some really rough times ahead. And, you know, we were initially all attending the LDS Church here in Haley for actually, I mean, several years after everything happened, from, I would say, 2015 to probably 20— 18 or 19, I want to say. And something interesting happened in that interim that for me, I almost felt like— I thought, you know, is God trying to really show me something here? I almost felt like I had to be hit over the head by a 2x4, I say, as far as being willing to see some things. That I needed to see. And there was at that time a, a brother, if you want to call him that. There was a, a man in our ward who was married with children, and he— I was working with his daughter in women's, and she was struggling, and I would sometimes go visit her at their house and Long story short, without too much detail, I mean, he was trying to have a relationship with me even though he's married with children. He was sending me very inappropriate, even sexually inappropriate, uh, messages, text messages, and he was eventually stalking me. And I put up with this for a while, for longer than I would have if his daughter wasn't, uh, if I wasn't her leader in Young Women's, because I was so afraid of like embarrassing, having her become embarrassed or hurt or these kinds of things hurting their family. But it got pretty out of hand, and so I did, I eventually told this man that I was going to take the necessary steps, whatever necessary steps, to stop him, you know, report to the police and that kind of thing. And so that did stop the stalking. But unfortunately, when I would go to church, he would come over to my mother and me, and he would actually reach over and try to physically touch us, grab us, hug us, and we would say stay away, you know, back off. But he wouldn't. And I went to the church leaders about this. I spoke to the bishop and also a member of the stake presidency. And they told me, they said, we know that he is a problem. We've had other people make complaints. And they said, you know, well, we'll see if we can talk to him. But they apparently really never did, or they, whatever they said or did, didn't really do anything, and they kept him in as Sunday school president. So for us, going to Sunday school was not, uh, an option. And yeah, he was teaching Sunday school every week. And actually, you know, I'm just grateful because when we first moved here, he was the early morning seminary teacher, and there was a young man who had just returned from his mission. He was 20 at the time, from the ward, who confided in me at one point that, that this man, even during the time that he was this young man's seminary teacher, this young man would go and visit his friend's home, who was the son of this man. And when he would visit his friend, this man would do this tickle game with him, where he would end up groping him, grabbing his, his penis, and doing it all in the name of a game. And this young man told me that, that this brother, this man had done this for over the period of several years while this boy was a teenager. And I said, well, you need to go to the police if possible, and you need to go talk to the church leaders. And he said, you know, I just I'm so afraid of hurting this man's son. He said, because he's my best friend. He said, this man's son is my best friend, and I just don't want to cause embarrassment and pain for him or destroy our friendship. It's kind of how I felt for a while about the man's daughter was in Young Women's. And I said, I understand that kind of feeling, but you know other people could get abused. Ultimately, this young man didn't obviously have it in him that I know of. I know he didn't go to the police that I'm aware of. I don't know if he went to the church leaders. I went to the church leaders and I told them. And I mean, fortunately, at least they didn't have him in as an early morning seminary teacher anymore. But the last that I was at church, he was still teaching Sunday school. And so I just think it reached a point for me that I thought, for me, Personally, church is not a safe place anymore because the leaders— I don't understand all the reasons why. To me, it seems like cowardice. I think that there's also confusion that goes on about what it means to be Christ-like and what it means to be forgiving. It does not include allowing a, a predator to predatorize. That, I mean, I think we know that Jesus Christ was very clear in what he said about his views on those that would harm one of his little ones, right? Uh, he was, you know, clear in what he felt about the hypocrites and that they needed to be called out. And so I think that somehow there's a disconnect that goes on here. And I will be honest, there's some— are some incredibly good and kind people in the LDS Church throughout the world, including here in Healy, Idaho. Some, some of the, the nicest and best people you will ever meet, I think, are Mormons. I think that sometimes there's something going on culturally where that niceness crosses over into situations where nice is not what is called for anymore, um, that it's no longer the right thing to do to just not hurt somebody's feelings. So when I realized that there's really I guess a more systemic problem going on here with how sexual predators and victims are treated and handled. That's when I stepped away. It was extremely painful for me personally because I had been extremely devoted and faithful to the church for my whole life up to that point. I had served a full-time mission for the LDS Church when I was 21, served for 20 months, stayed, you know, longer in Korea than I had to because I loved my mission so much. And I had remained faithful in the church. And frankly, still now I live as a Mormon, still, as far as my lifestyle goes, and I miss going and taking the sacrament. I miss mingling with the good people and hearing the word and sharing in that with other people. But until the church changes how they handle sexual abuse and sexual predators or any kind of probably, you know, abuse predators. But that's a big issue that I see is with the sexual predators. Until they handle those types of situations differently and support the victims better instead of sort of supporting or enabling or looking the other way with the with the abusers, then I, I don't want to be in the church because I don't want to raise a family in the church and have something similar happen to one of my children that happened to me, or that, you know, is happening, had been happening. I think that that man has now moved away. He's no longer in this ward. That's what I understand. But there was some really wrong things happening, with him in, in that ward, and he was sexually abusing at least, you know, that one young man that I spoke of. And if that happened to one of my children in the future, I couldn't forgive myself because I would think, well, the signs were there that this was going to be allowed in this church.

I really resonated with what you said about forgiveness because when we talk about forgiveness, when we talk about being Christ-like, and when we talk about forgive and forget very often, and I don't think that's what forgiveness is. In my experience, I forgive because, well, I had a boss who once said hatred corrodes the container it's carried in. And to me, forgiveness is sort of letting go of that hate. And I do it not for them. I do it for me because I am a happier person when I let go of that. But, but I think sometimes that is contorted or distorted into the idea of, okay, we forgive them. And therefore we pretend it never happened and we, we don't hold them accountable and we don't protect people from predatory behavior because we're not willing to sort of acknowledge the forgiveness, uh, involves sort of creating a tabula rasa where we pretend that these people can, are, are, are still capable of participating safely. In the church and with other people. And, uh, and that's just horribly, horribly wrong. You know, forgiveness is not about saying, okay, well, I'm going to continue to allow predators access to my life, access to the lives of others. I, I, what, why do you think that that is the mindset in the church? I mean, where do you think that comes from?

You know, that's a great, great question, Jim Bennett, and it is an incredibly important discussion that needs to be had. I don't fully understand the roots of this, but it is deeply rooted. And the Salt Lake Tribune actually is working on a piece right now about the weaponization of forgiveness. And the wonderful journalist that I've been communicating with about this Uh, she asked me to share some of my experiences, and so I, I have, and I documented and sent to her some of the messages that I've gotten over the years from my visions.

This Peggy's like the stack you're talking to?

Uh, actually her name is Tamara.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, Tamara, I think Tamsley, and I think that maybe a younger newer, uh, journalist on the scene but seems excellent. And yeah, I, I sent her some documentation that I have of these messages that I've gotten over the years from the beginning of everything coming out about the truth about my father being a sexual abuser, from these messages from my LDS relatives, very active LDS relatives You know, I sent her some documentation from an aunt who has served different missions with her husband and very, very devout within the church. And I have this messaging record with her where she reaches out and said, oh, you know, I found out about some things going on with the family, what's going on. So then I write back and to her in detail exactly what is happening. And this is my father's sister, by the way. And she reads all this that I wrote her, and she just writes back and basically says, you know, your uncle and I have seen a lot on our missions that sometimes people become very bitter and angry because they won't forgive and let go of things. So you need to, you know, follow the path of forgiveness and allow Christ's Atonement to take its course, and wish you the best. Goodbye. And it was a strange— it was an ill-fitting response to what I had just written, which, mind you, did not include any kind of hatred towards my father whatsoever. In fact, I had told her, I said, I hope— I said, my father isn't he's speaking with us right now. But I said, maybe you can talk to him and you can help him and you can support him and you can get through to him that he needs to take accountability and do the right things to heal his family. And I wasn't speaking like someone who was angry, like she mentioned, or filled with hate or anything like that. But as someone that still loved my father, and I still do, as strange as that may sound, part of why I want to hold him accountable through this process is because I think that that is the most loving thing to do for him. And so many others weren't willing to do that through the process, and it's not helped him. I can tell you, it has not helped him or our family at all to not hold them accountable. So anyways, I got— I didn't hear from her. I haven't really communicated with her since then. Uh, she hasn't wanted to ever connect with me or support me, or, um, from what I understand, my father's side of the family has all been very supportive of him as far as actually, you know, letting him come to the family reunions and hang out with the kids there. I mean, to the point that it's just— they're basically saying, we think you're innocent, and even though you were excommunicated, I don't really understand what their thought processes are there. So then I, I sent to Tamara a couple of other— I sent to her, um, a messaging email record that I had with some other relatives where they were basically saying the same kind of things. They were saying that, you know, you need to forgive. And I never understood exactly what they meant by that. Did they mean— I mean, I guess in the case of my father's family, it means pretend like the abuser didn't do what he did to you and pretend that he is still not an abuser, to the point that we're gonna let him just hang out with the kids at the family reunion. Um, I'm not going to do that if that's what forgiveness means. I don't ascribe to that description of forgiveness. And, and then I, I sent another, uh, email correspondence to Tamara about basically, um, a conversation that I had with the attorney Paul Ridding again after the church had given us that money, uh, a while later. I reached out to Paul Ridding because my sister had recently moved her— moved in with my father with her little girl, with, um, her child. And I was just absolutely sickened by this. And I knew that my sister knew the truth, but that my father had blackmailed her. And I have legal documentation of that, um, when she was a witness for my behalf in the criminal case. My father went to work blackmailing her with some several years old jewelry theft that she'd done as a teenager in Utah, and the statute of limitations was up on that being prosecutable, but she didn't know that. My sister didn't know that. So, uh, there was a lot of other things that went on, but my father brutally harassed her, blackmailed her, and at the time, the Prosecutor said that she was going to charge my father with witness tampering, but that didn't happen. And, you know, a couple of my siblings, including her, unfortunately took bribes, you know, from my father as well, as far as just a lot of financial support. And they didn't have the strength of character to really withstand his level of manipulations. So I'd found out that she'd moved in with my father with her child. And of course, I reached out to the proper authorities, you know, to the local police, to what's it called, the child services, Child Protective Services, CPA, or CPS. And I reached out to Paul Ridding, and I said, Paul, as you know, the church knows more than anyone about John's sexual abuse of me. In fact, the church knows more than I know about it, and I'm very concerned about this little girl being molested. And Paul wrote back, and I still have all this email correspondence, and he said, you know, the church is deeply concerned as well, but there's really nothing we can do at this point except for, you know, pray for them, pray for these people. Whatever, um, we can just try to maybe reach out to the bishop. And I said, that would be great, that would be amazing, you know. But that never happened. They didn't do that. Uh, they were going to have the bishop basically warn my sister and her husband, have Bishop Miller warn them that John was dangerous. They already knew, but to really give them the full scope of things. And at that time, they were very active and would have listened to Bishop Miller, but None of that ever happened. And Paul let me know, he said, you know, you just need to rely on the Atonement of Jesus Christ and let go of all this, or you're being controlling because people have free agency and we can't control them. And I just didn't know how to even process the whole thing. And I reached out to the Idaho Attorney General next, and I told them what was happening and they said, well, since the former Mountain Home prosecutor now works for us, it would be a conflict of interest for us to investigate into this, so we're not going to. So it was basically just kind of the bird finger from everyone. That's what I felt like. It was like, you know, sorry, nobody's going to help you with this. And at that time, the Idaho Attorney General was LDS, active LDS. I think our current one now is as well. Um, there's been a lot of Mormon Idaho attorney generals over the, over the years. And so to me, it just started to feel like, how can nobody care about this? How can nobody care about— and, you know, by that point, uh, there was also this other criminal case that had happened with my father drugging and raping a woman in Boise, and he did end up getting a felony for that. But because of a plea deal, you know, he pled guilty on the drug charges so that they wouldn't charge him with the rape, even though this woman had these recordings, audio recordings of conversations she had with my father where he admitted to raping her. But the plea deal didn't allow that evidence to even go before the judge, you know? And this happened, and the Idaho Dental Board said, we're going to take his license away when he gets the felony. They didn't do that. Instead, they just sent him to some kind of like sensitivity training for dentists with boundary issues. I mean, it just goes on and on to the point that I would laugh if it wasn't my own story. And I wouldn't think it was true. I would have a hard time believing someone if they were telling me all of this, it just sounds too extreme, you know. But oh, that was, that was kind of a tangent. Coming back to— I sent the Salt Lake Tribune also my email correspondence with Paul where he's kind of sending me the same message. I'm seeing a pattern that my aunt told me, that this other relative told me, this a man, and then Paul tells me kind of all the same message, which is You know, you are going to be this controlling, angry, bitter, un-Christlike person who's not allowing God's will and the Atonement to take place in your life. If you continue to talk about this, if you continue to try to pursue accountability and justice, then you're not being a good Mormon. You're not being Christlike. And that's really what I felt. I felt very shamed. And I can read for you, gentlemen, um, what I— the closing comment that I had for the Salt Lake Tribune here is I said, you know, I'll finish sharing my experience by paraphrasing what I told my LDS relatives. It fell on deaf ears with them, but maybe it won't for someone else reading this. I believe in love and forgiveness. I also feel that love, forgiveness, and true Christianity are not synonymous with the kind of pretending and enabling that perpetuates generational and societal cycles of dysfunction and abuse. There is no letting go of the past when it is still the present. For the only thing that distinguishes the past from the present is change. Shining light on what's been hidden in the dark and asking for accountability and change is the only hope for healing. And I really do feel that. I mean, as you, you both know, the original, I think, root meaning of the word repentance is change. It's essentially something to do with change and transformation and You know, that's, that's part of the process of being able to forgive. And I agree with you what you said earlier, Jim. I think forgiveness is in great part something that we do for ourselves in terms of not holding in this corrosive— these corrosive emotions, right, of, of hate and anger and pain. So that, that's an important part of it, but You know, it shouldn't— forgiveness shouldn't be weaponized against a victim to shame them and make them feel like they aren't a good person or a good Christian, or they're somehow denying, even denying Jesus Christ and his atonement because, because they won't play the denial game. That's what I feel like it is. It seems like this big sort of denial game that you have to participate in or you're not forgiving. It doesn't seem right.

I, um, want to respond to some of your points, Chelsea, there. I think your, your, uh, experience there, your perspective on how things should be in the church and how it should have behaved, I think is really important I want to try to connect some of the points. I'm speaking also from being a former bishop and having served also on a stake presidency. Historically, I want to say that in my experience, and as I listen to you, when the church is pursuing something in its own interests, in my opinion, it follows the line of justice. It will seek justice, and it will get justice in whatever form that would be. When it's instructing or directing the rank-and-file members and the leadership at the state presidency and bishop level, it requires of its members a— it follows— asks them to follow a line of mercy. And so there's a correlation, uh, and it's, it's very clear and evident in your experience and your comments and your points that you're making, there's a very important correlation between the doctrine of the church of forgiveness, what Christ taught, and the, the many references in the scriptures and the materials to, to give. You know, we, we are reminded frequently that in order to enter the celestial kingdom, in order to have eternal life, we must be like Christ and we must forgive like him. And if we do not forgive, and there are references in the scriptures, if we don't forgive, then we cannot ourselves be expected to be forgiven. So there's a huge emphasis, historical, doctrinal emphasis on repentance, which just means change, is my understanding also, and also to forgive. And we are required, is my understanding, that members are required to forgive anything and everything. That's our, that's our responsibility. Let the, the ecclesiastical leaders and the bishop who's a judge in Israel, they're the ones who, who, who will have some level of judgment, but ultimately God will be the final judge. But as members, we're required to forgive and, and trust in the, in the ecclesiastical process of the church and in the, the doctrines of the church that, uh, you know, that will mete out in some balanced way, uh, justice and mercy. So this huge emphasis on forgiveness and repentance of almost seemingly anything, however heinous that would be, including but not limited to sexual abuse. And that is pervasive across the entire doctrine and history of the church. In fact, it, it, it spans beyond that into the, you know, the New Testament, um, And so this is a doctrine enshrined and entrenched within the church. And it has, you're absolutely right, it has been, the doctrine has been misunderstood deliberately, I would argue in some cases, in order to protect the position of the church. I think the church does shield itself or tries to shield itself behind this doctrine of forgiveness. There's that, for example, that Ecclesiastical um, um, confession privilege, which the church has cited before. As a former bishop and stake presidency, I became aware of that and, and was reminded at times— and we, we dealt with sexual abuse cases in, in leadership— but was reminded that any confessions that were, uh, released or disclosed, that, that was protected under this, um, uh, ecclesiastical confessional privilege. And just as I was saying earlier, there's a relationship between the doctrine and policy, you know, in terms of how these things are dealt with in the church. There's a connection with the process, you know, what's the process to follow in regards to the policy. And again, from, you know, our experience, and just for your information, you probably know this already, but any confessions that are shared with bishops or counselors or anyone, that those individuals under criminal law, certainly here in Canada and in the UK, and I think actually in the US, uh, those individuals can be subpoenaed and, uh, copies of those, uh, confessions can be retrieved in the case of, of sexual abuse like this, because that's very, very important evidence. And I want you to know that, um, uh, uh, in, in, in this case, in your case, I'm pretty sure that, uh, there'll be quite a bit of, uh, written, uh, information, uh, you know, between leaders, uh, High Council. You know, there'll be, um, material that will exist with the, um, you know, the risk management, uh, leader, um, right? Is it written? Right, reading? Yeah, individual.. And so there'll be a lot of information that'll have been written down, recorded conversations, different times, et cetera. And those, any confessions or anyone that your father confessed to, that is really important, um, evidence that, uh, you could, or your attorney could, could retrieve. And so in the case of, uh, uh, of sexual abuse, that, uh, is not protected, uh, in terms of under the, in my, I'm not a lawyer, but in my experience it's not protected. And, and that this um, you know, because this is a criminal case, um, that, that information is now— it should be released to, you know, to your, your attorney. And I don't know where— are you aware of that? Are you aware that, that you, you, you have, or you should have access to that, that, that information will exist? They'll have had a meeting. It'll have been excommunicated. There'll have been a report on why it's been excommunicated, that, that the, the High Council will have met, the state presidency will have met. All of that will have been recorded. The, there'll be copies. And by the way, the church has a, and having had some experiences myself, the church annotates members' records on cases of sexual abuse. So specific notes, uh, will have been recorded, put into the system, and all that information will exist somewhere. There'll be emails, there'll be, uh, notes and minutes of meetings, et cetera, et cetera. Especially, you know, in, um, in, in cases of sexual abuse. I, I, have you— are you aware of that? That's my first question. The second question is, uh, have you got access to that information, that material that will undoubtedly exist?

No, and no one's ever put it to me quite in the way that you just stated that, Ian, and I guess it's hitting me with full course, you know, how much evidence really wasn't available, made available to me in the process of that criminal proceeding, you know. And I know something interesting recently, an attorney who's been looking into this situation, who's former LDS And for him, for he and his wife, it was also a painful experience leaving the church where they didn't want to, but they saw some covering for a sexual predator as well at the expense of potential harm of other members and children. And so that was their reason for leaving too. And this attorney told me that he recently did a public records request, or however it works, of my whole criminal— that whole criminal case against my father and Mountain Home. And he said what came back showed him that there never were— Bishop Miller was originally subpoenaed to testify, and that there never were any motions indicating that that was— that anyone tried to, to block or prevent that. And that goes— that's in contradiction to the church's recent public statement. Because they said something to the effect that Bishop Miller was subpoenaed, but then that, that subpoena had to be undone or reversed or something because it wasn't legal. But he says from everything that he is seeing so far, he's still investigating into it, that that just isn't the truth, that that isn't the case, and that there really wasn't anything legally barring the bishop from testifying. And I can tell you that in that first meeting that we had with Paul Ridding Paul told us, he said, you know, because your father has told multiple people about the abuse, about the sexual abuse, not just Bishop Miller— Bishop Miller apparently knew the most— but because he said your father said things to multiple people about it, he said there, there is probably good legal grounds for saying that the clergy privilege no longer stands. Because of that, which would allow Bishop Miller to testify. And Bishop Miller spoke up at that point in the meeting and said, I don't want to get sued. I don't want to get sued, because that kind of became his whole focus after he spoke to the church attorneys. And I think Paul Ridding was almost a little embarrassed. That was my impression, that Bishop Miller kept bringing that up because it created such a contrast from Bishop Miller's original stance, and it made it clear that he'd been kind of, it seemed, scared by the church out of testifying. So Bishop Miller kind of reached over and put his arm on— or sorry, Paul Ridding reached over and put his hand on Bishop Miller's arm, and he goes, "You know, we could probably help with that. In the case that you got sued, the church could probably help you out with that." So in other words, the message we were getting is that Paul was saying there was likely at least one— I wouldn't even call it a loophole, but just a legal grounds for the bishop testifying And also that if the bishop were to get sued by my father for, for testifying about what was confessed to him, that the church obviously has the means to support a bishop in that kind of situation. And I can't imagine, you know, anyone would consider that a poor use of tithing money to— for the church to support the occasional bishop in testifying about a child sex— to testing— testifying about what they're aware of, um, came to be aware of in a confession about child sex abuse. I don't think that anyone would think that the church— I think that people would think that the church was doing the right thing, uh, by supporting a bishop in that kind of situation. So that was kind of the impression I was under after our first meeting with Paul Ridding, is that he was going to try to help us bring forth truth and justice, um, in this situation. But then that's just not at all how he— he didn't end up honestly following through on anything that he told us other than offering the money. There was no follow-through with anything else.

Oh boy.

Oh boy, it's right.

So I'm sorry, it's just so heartbreaking to hear this, and I'm so sorry you had to go through this. I wish there was— I mean, I wish there was more than words that I could offer you, uh, to be helpful. Um, I mean, if you were put in charge of the church for a day or for forever, I guess, uh, What changes would you institute on an institutional level that could help prevent this kind of thing from happening again?

Well, there may be many changes that need to happen. I'm sure that there is a lot of individuals out there. There are a lot of individuals out there that could speak to that. But based off of my own personal experience, thus far, I think you know that my focus would be on changing how the church handles sexual abuse cases that come up within the church, within families in the church, and how they treat the victim versus how they treat the abuser. And I would want to make major changes in that regard because for me personally— everybody has their own different experience and take, right? But for me personally, I don't know that I would have ever left the church. You know, people may be judging me out there that, that are very against the church now in a different way, that left the church under different premises and for different reasons. But for me, I don't know if I would have ever left the church if it wasn't for the fact that I didn't feel that it was a safe place because of the way that they handle sex abuse, um, in the church. And for me, that was a major deal breaker. And now, as time— more and more time goes on, and I have come to, to feel and recognize that for me personally, again, I'm able to have a very strong and powerful connection with my Heavenly Father and to have a very spiritual connection with God and with Jesus Christ without the middleman, without the church there at this point. I don't know now, even if the church changed that, if I would go back. But I can tell you that I would see the church very differently. I would respect the church if they did make that change. And I think that I would not think that there was— I would think it was, it was a good place for people who want to be there if it's a safe place. But right now, I don't really know that it's a safe place.

But it sounds like you have been able to maintain a certain degree of spirituality and connection to the divine, uh, independent of the church. Is, is that accurate to say?

It is, Jim Bennett. I think that when I was in the church, I believed that my relationship with God was inseparable from the church. And that the two couldn't be separated. And now I realize that that just isn't true. It's not true for me. I'm not going to speak for everybody, but it doesn't— it's not playing out to be true for me in my life, in the way that I feel, in the way that I'm able to live a full and complete life where I do feel connected to God. And so Yeah, I think that— I think the church is a precious place for many people. It once was for me, and I would never want to take that from anyone. If the church really feels like a safe container for certain people to worship God, to feel more connected to him, then I would never want to in any way shame anyone for that or take that away from them or diminish that. That's not my purpose here. My purpose is to say that for many people, particularly from my perspective, abuse victims, that the church is not operating in a way that makes it a safe place in a safe container for worship for someone like me. And I know that there's a lot of other people out there like me. And so if the church is motivated to change that, then I think that would be reflective of truly being— the leadership truly being led by Jesus Christ. But if they're not motivated to change that, then By their fruits ye shall know them is what I feel.

We're, um, we're coming up to the last few minutes here, Chelsea, uh, and again, we're really grateful and honored to have you with us. And we think you're a very, very credible person and an extremely courageous and brave individual, and, and you've shown extraordinary, uh, strength, um, and resilience today and just pleased to hear that you still have that relationship with, you know, your Heavenly Father and you've been able to receive some spiritual strength in all of this, through all this pain that you've gone through. In a final minute or two here, is there anything you'd like to and/or share with us or with our listeners that you haven't shared, or anything you'd like to emphasize from this conversation or early conversations that you'd like to do?

Yeah, thank you so much for saying that, Ian. I don't feel particularly strong and brave a lot of the times, you know, behind closed doors. There has been a major struggle for me where I just felt completely overwhelmed and completely weak. But I will say that for me, by not letting go of that connection with the Divine, with prayer, that I have seen miracles in this process, in my life, and also even in this story coming out. You know, I think sometimes a story, I like to say, wants to be told, even if the teller doesn't even really want to tell it or have the strength to tell it, that sometimes that story wants to be told or God wants it to be told. And it was even strange and miraculous how somebody else reached out to the AP and then the AP reached out to me. It's still so mind-boggling to me because for the longest time I have not been seen, I have not been heard, I have felt like nobody, I felt invisible, I have felt covered up, and I felt shamed and dismissed. And all of a sudden, you know, a, a news source at the level of the AP is reaching out and wants to hear the story and wants to get it out there. And too many things happened along the way to bring that about for me to not think that God really wants the truth of this to come out. He wants the LDS Church to be held accountable and to make things right, and for all of us to look more closely at how we all can be more accountable and we all can work harder to make more things right in situations of child sexual abuse and just in general. And I really do think that, that, that, that's, that's what— I'm not trying to speak as a prophet or prophetess or anything like that, but I just have seen things play out in such a way that It seems clear to me that God really does want always the truth to prevail. And I think that that's really— my story coming out is a part of that, and it gives us all an opportunity to either turn a blind eye or to embrace the truth and to try to be better.

Chelsea, thank you.

Can't thank you enough. I, I, I think you're absolutely right, and I think, I think you will help the church be better as a result of this. I think you, you are, uh, you are doing God's work in what you're doing here.

Wow, thank you.

Mm-hmm. Just, and just to close here, Chelsea, uh, I want you to know that we see you, we hear you, and thank you again for sharing your, um, your experience and your story. And we are here to help and support you in any way that we can.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. And with that, we will bring this episode to a close. Thank you, Chelsea. Thank you, Ian. And thank you, listeners, and we look forward to seeing you on our next episode of Inside Out.