This is the problem - people expect s to be saints - well, they are not. Do all callings come from g-d? Does everyone tell the truth in their temple interviews? I left the church - not just over a few bad apples, but also over how those bad-apples were - year after year after year - given callings over children, reported then ignored, elevated to being a high priest, put in the bishopric...
Here is one list of convicted cases for you:
Mormon abuse cases - Wikipedia
- In 2001, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) paid a three million dollar settlement to Jeremiah Scott, after Scott filed a lawsuit in 1998 against the church for what his attorney described as an attempted cover-up of sexual abuse Scott suffered from church member Franklin Curtis.[1] The LDS Church denied legal liability in the case, and said it was settling the lawsuit based on "litigation economics" alone.[1]
- In September 2008, LDS Church bishop Timothy McCleve pleaded guilty to sexually molesting children from his ward.[2] He was sentenced in December 2008 to one-to-15 year prison terms for the abuse.[3]
- In March 2010, former LDS Church bishop Lon Kennard, Sr. was charged with 43 felony counts of sex abuse and sexual exploitation of children, and was imprisoned in Wasatch County, Utah. In November 2011, Kennard was sentenced to three terms of five-years-to-life in prison to be served consecutively, after pleading guilty to three first-degree felony counts of aggravated sex abuse of a child for sexually abusing his daughters.[4][5]
- In December 2013, LDS Church bishop Todd Michael Edwards was sentenced to three years in prison for molesting two teenage girls who attended his congregation in Menifee, California. Edwards received two concurrent sentences of three years in prison for two felony counts of sexual battery and sexual penetration with a foreign object. A felony charge of witness intimidation was dismissed as part of a plea bargain with prosecutors after Edwards pleaded guilty.[6]
- In January 2014, two men filed a lawsuit in the U.S. state of Hawaii against the LDS Church, alleging that they were sexually abused as children on a church-owned pineapple farm in Maui from 1986 through 1988.[7]
- In January 2014, former LDS Church bishop Michael Wayne Coleman was arrested and charged with luring a minor for sexual exploitation after a forensic examination of his laptop and cellphone revealed sexually graphic conversations and an exchange of nude photographs with a teenaged student in Brazil.[8]
- On August 15, 2017, MormonLeaks published a three-hundred and sixteen (316) page document which contained confirmed and alleged instances of child sexual abuse between 1959 and 2017.[9]
- On October 30, 2017, an Australian court sentenced Darran Scott to 10 years in prison for sexually abusing boys, some of whom he met as a Mormon leader.[10]
I am currently involved with another case, a bishopric member who videotaped abusing children, it is still going through the courts.
The lesson? Do not put your trust in the arms of flesh - call someone a high priest, a bishop, a president - apostles etc. it does not mean anything.
19 The weak things of the world shall come forth and break down the mighty and strong ones, that man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh.
Do you trust in the arm of flesh?
11 For there is no respect of persons with God.
Do you respect some people - from their title - above others?