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Apology said:
I almost missed this article because I don't care for political mudslinging. This is exactly the type of biased source that Janadele is complaining about. However, I decided to spend a few minutes doing independent research on the list in this article, and found unbiased sources for nearly all of these cases. I have a hard time believing that Deseret News, ABC News, Fox News, and Huffington Post all have an anti-Mormon bias! Here's what I found---names are linked to the source article, and quotes are a small snippet from each article.
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Thank you very much. I hope Janadele can approach this information with open eyes, and not simply dismiss it as anti-Mormon propaganda. She seems to be burying her head in the sand when it comes to corruption and abuse within her own church. Such behavior does not bring glory to God, but instead enables predators to continue using holy vestments as a shield to abuse and molest the faithful.
 
Janadele said:
Pixie, Your own Spirit within you knows the truth and will guide and direct your path if you will but listen. Pray in the name of Jesus Christ and ask that you can distinguish the light of Christ from the clamour of the heathen world. Seek and ye shall find.
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What about all those anachronistc claims in the BoM? I am still waiting for you to provide sources, as you have not yet, for the anachronisms form the BoM that have been demonstrated, by practical, empirical evidence, attested to by neutral scholars, to have existed in the pre-Colombian Americas.
 
Apology said:
I almost missed this article because I don't care for political mudslinging. This is exactly the type of biased source that Janadele is complaining about. However, I decided to spend a few minutes doing independent research on the list in this article, and found unbiased sources for nearly all of these cases. I have a hard time believing that Deseret News, ABC News, Fox News, and Huffington Post all have an anti-Mormon bias! Here's what I found---names are linked to the source article, and quotes are a small snippet from each article.

<respectful snip for space>
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In the past, Janadele has made the claim that such sources are not "neutral'--since they say "anti-mormon" things. She once called BYU an "anti-mormon" source, for publishing an article reporting the truth of the Spencer Lake Horse hoax.
 
Slowvehicle said:
In the past, Janadele has made the claim that such sources are not "neutral'--since they say "anti-mormon" things. She once called BYU an "anti-mormon" source, for publishing an article reporting the truth of the Spencer Lake Horse hoax.
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Attitudes like hers only empower and enable the people who use their position in a church to abuse others. Anyone who tries to address abuse problems is dismissed and sidelined as being "anti-Mormon." I heard about the same thing happening with the Catholic Pedophile Priest cases. The people who reported the pedophiles were accused of being anti-Catholic!

Which is better Janadele, to find, expose and punish the abusers within the clergy, or to hide like a scared child and pretend they don't exist? The Catholics tried the latter strategy and it only allowed the priesthood to attract more pedophiles and abusers, making the problem worse.
 
Apology said:
I almost missed this article because I don't care for political mudslinging. This is exactly the type of biased source that Janadele is complaining about. However, I decided to spend a few minutes doing independent research on the list in this article, and found unbiased sources for nearly all of these cases. I have a hard time believing that Deseret News, ABC News, Fox News, and Huffington Post all have an anti-Mormon bias! Here's what I found---names are linked to the source article, and quotes are a small snippet from each article.

Lon Harvey Kennard:



Eneudo Petit, Mormon Bishop:



Timothy McCleve, Mormon Bishop:



John Baysen, Mormon Missionary:



Jack LaHolt, most notorious Mormon Scout Master: I'm unable to find any free news sources on this case---they're all archived due to age. If anyone has a Findlaw subscription they could look up this case number for more details on Mr. LaHolt's transgressions: 2004 WL 1282850 (Cal.App. 6 Dist. 2004).

Frank Curtis, Mormon Boy Scout leader and Sunday School teacher:



Susan Brock, Relief Society:


I highly recommend giving the linked article a read. It's an extremely complicated and fascinating case. Ms. Brock's husband was a prominent County Supervisor and politician, and Ms. Brock's daughter was also involved in the case :eye-poppi

Art Phillips, Mormon Sunday School teacher: I was unable to find any free news sources on this case---they're all archived due to age. There's also a great deal of red herring flooding due to the fact that there's a much-loved Vancouver mayor also named Art Phillips.

Eric Patrick "Ricky" Avant, Mormon Boy Scout Leader, sentenced to 26 years for molesting boys over multiple years:

LA Times news archive, including court documents and contemporary news articles about the Avant case. This is a great resource for any sexual abuse case involving the Boy Scouts between 1947 and 2005 and contains information on about 5,000 people who were expelled from the Scouts on suspicion of sexual abuse.

Richard Kenneth Ray, LDS member who confessed to two LDS Bishops:



Ryan Whitaker, Mormon Sunday School Teacher:



Please note that there is only ONE CASE on the list that I wasn't able to verify using an unbiased, free news source. There is a second case on the list that requires a subscription in order to download the case file. The fact that there's an actual court file on record means that it's the most unbiased source available, the court file itself.

The VAST MAJORITY of these cases were easily verifiable by doing simple Google searches. None of MY sources are anti-Mormon blogs. None of these cases are based on rumor or mudslinging, in spite of the bias of the original source of the list. FACTS ARE FACTS---saying that one source is biased doesn't make the other sources biased as well. Nor does claiming bias do ONE THING to mitigate these people's guilt or help their victims.

One may say, "Well, that's nothing compared to the Catholic Church." Does it really matter that the Catholic Church has been caught covering up similar cases? No, pointing the finger at the Catholic Church and saying "B-b-but, but, but, they did it too!!!" doesn't mitigate the crimes of the LDS church and the Mormon perpetrators of these crimes. The Catholic Church is also paying the price for their bad behavior, and their transgressions are also being exposed publicly. If anyone would like to start a thread called "But the Catholics did it too!" and provide me with a list of prominent Catholic clergy members who are alleged child molesters, I'd be glad to provide the same verification service in that thread that I've provided here about the LDS Church.

IMPORTANT NOTE: On some of the more "biased" sites, there are long lists of other cases that the LDS Church has settled out of court without admitting any wrongdoing. There are also a large number of cases in which the defendant plea-bargained to a lesser charge and got out with a slap on the wrist that didn't really make headlines. These cases that I've verified here are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Edit: I left out Arthur Gary Bishop


This true crime article is 11 pages long, so I haven't read it all yet.
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Thank you for doing that.
 
Janadele said:
Pixie, Your own Spirit within you knows the truth and will guide and direct your path if you will but listen. Pray in the name of Jesus Christ and ask that you can distinguish the light of Christ from the clamour of the heathen world. Seek and ye shall find.
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Why can't I just ask him which religion is correct?
If it worked for Joseph Smith it'll work for me, right? IOW,if he answered that question for Joseph why doesn't he answer it for everyone that asks?
 
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halleyscomet said:
Attitudes like hers only empower and enable the people who use their position in a church to abuse others. Anyone who tries to address abuse problems is dismissed and sidelined as being "anti-Mormon." I heard about the same thing happening with the Catholic Pedophile Priest cases. The people who reported the pedophiles were accused of being anti-Catholic!

Which is better Janadele, to find, expose and punish the abusers within the clergy, or to hide like a scared child and pretend they don't exist? The Catholics tried the latter strategy and it only allowed the priesthood to attract more pedophiles and abusers, making the problem worse.
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Very good post. I think any honest Mormon would have to admit that the policies like lack of transparency creates demonstrable problems. Of course, there's always denial to preserve belief. Why should anyone care if the Mormon Church won't allow anyone to look at their financials or if members are not allowed to criticize by leaders when they do wrong (AKA backbiting).
 
RandFan said:
Very good post. I think any honest Mormon would have to admit that the policies like lack of transparency creates demonstrable problems. Of course, there's always denial to preserve belief. Why should anyone care if the Mormon Church won't allow anyone to look at their financials or if members are not allowed to criticize by leaders when they do wrong (AKA backbiting).
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It occurs to me that the problem of coverups goes right to the heart of the reason for groups in the first place. People join them to be part of something larger than themselves, to feel like they have support from others.

The same motivation that encourages good stuff--solidarity and support--also encourages bad stuff--coverups to "help" members--whether the group is a football program or a church. It's an inevitable problem with the way humans naturally form groups and interact.

Mormons, though, claim that each member of the group was given their authority, which facilitated their crimes, by direct inspiration from God. The obvious conclusion is that groups led by directions from God are indistinguishable from groups led by people, so there's no evidence that God is interfering in mankind's affairs. But rather than come to that conclusion, they look for the usual excuses: people got God's message wrong through their own faults, God works in mysterious ways, etc. etc.
 
halleyscomet said:
Thank you very much. I hope Janadele can approach this information with open eyes, and not simply dismiss it as anti-Mormon propaganda. She seems to be burying her head in the sand when it comes to corruption and abuse within her own church. Such behavior does not bring glory to God, but instead enables predators to continue using holy vestments as a shield to abuse and molest the faithful.
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I would hope that Janadele would read it rather than dismiss it, but I'm not hopeful.

I'm just glad I liberated the information from a site that even non-Mormons like myself find a little distasteful. There were many reasons why someone may or may not have wanted to vote for Mitt Romney, and I think his religion was among the least important of those reasons. The list, though accurate, was almost drowned out by the political overtones of the site.

Slowvehicle said:
In the past, Janadele has made the claim that such sources are not "neutral'--since they say "anti-mormon" things. She once called BYU an "anti-mormon" source, for publishing an article reporting the truth of the Spencer Lake Horse hoax.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I thought that's how she would take it. :( At least I tried though.

halleyscomet said:
Attitudes like hers only empower and enable the people who use their position in a church to abuse others. Anyone who tries to address abuse problems is dismissed and sidelined as being "anti-Mormon." I heard about the same thing happening with the Catholic Pedophile Priest cases. The people who reported the pedophiles were accused of being anti-Catholic!

Which is better Janadele, to find, expose and punish the abusers within the clergy, or to hide like a scared child and pretend they don't exist? The Catholics tried the latter strategy and it only allowed the priesthood to attract more pedophiles and abusers, making the problem worse.
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Halleyscomet is right, Janadele. If you're not willing to accept the fact that the Church has problems, then you're only enabling the troublemakers and helping them hijack your faith. Isn't your duty as a Mormon to protect and preserve the Church, making it a stronger and better religious institution? Ignoring the evil people in its midst allows the evil to take over and have free reign. Those evil people are free to claim that they're good Mormons just like you! Wouldn't you rather distance yourself from people like that, and try to have them forced out of the Church? First you have to admit that there are bad people taking advantage of their status within the Church. It's very basic---fight evil by exposing it, or support evil by denying it exists.

RandFan said:
Thank you for doing that.
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You're quite welcome.

I had a good time doing the research and came across all other sorts of cases involving Mormons that weren't really relevant to this thread. Cases involving offshoot cults like the Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times, and cases simply involving bad Mormons doing bad things, such as the Joyce McKinney case, can be pretty interesting but they don't add anything to the thread so I'll leave it at that. One could wander the Crime Library for years without running out of interesting reading material. :eye-poppi
 
Janadele said:
Sadly, those who refuse to open their eyes to the truth are a lost cause, not worthy of wasting precious time over.
Each has a choice to follow Lucifer or Christ. I choose Jesus Christ and have absolutely no interest nor time to debate or consider the lies and misunderstandings propagated by the followers of Lucifer.
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Ah!

I was thinking it was something like that.

Why did you take so long to remind us AGAIN that your religion is correct, and everyone else's religion is wrong?
 
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Originally Posted by Janadele

Sadly, those who refuse to open their eyes to the truth are a lost cause, not worthy of wasting precious time over.
Each has a choice to follow Lucifer or Christ. I choose Jesus Christ and have absolutely no interest nor time to debate or consider the lies and misunderstandings propagated by the followers of Lucifer.

This must be the love of christ coming straight through you, huh?

As ye judge, so shall ye be judged.

Are you saying that the work of your god is essentially a lost cause, not worthy of wasting precious time over? Who did jesus die for then? Just you?

Such a show love and tolerance, kindness and patience.
 
deaman said:
Originally Posted by Janadele

Sadly, those who refuse to open their eyes to the truth are a lost cause, not worthy of wasting precious time over.
Each has a choice to follow Lucifer or Christ. I choose Jesus Christ and have absolutely no interest nor time to debate or consider the lies and misunderstandings propagated by the followers of Lucifer.

This must be the love of christ coming straight through you, huh?

As ye judge, so shall ye be judged.

Are you saying that the work of your god is essentially a lost cause, not worthy of wasting precious time over? Who did jesus die for then? Just you?

Such a show love and tolerance, kindness and patience.
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If she isn't a believer in predestination, then she's parroting the talking points of someone who is.

According to the theology she's advocating, you aren't worth administering to because God didn't decide you should be saved. You weren't chosen so you will never see the light. Predestination was always a garbage theology, a cop-out to escape the difficult questions about people who die having never heard the word of God.
 
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