LB was baptized into the Mormon church before he started the fifth grade in 1984 and placed with a Mormon foster family in Utah. He was one of thousands of Native Americans who participated in the church’s Indian Student Placement Program that aimed to give children educational opportunities they didn’t have on the reservation. The voluntary program started in the late 1940s and ended around 2000.
The lawsuit says that LB was sexually molested three times in the 1980s by a church bishop who lived across the street from his foster family, twice at the bishop’s home and once at a church office. The bishop convinced LB to return to his home the second time by offering him candy, the lawsuit states.
LB told his foster mother about the abuse, but she accused him of lying. She sent him to bed without dinner and grounded him another time, according to the lawsuit. His foster father spanked him for reporting abuse to a case worker, the lawsuit states. LB also said he told a teacher.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
That's so sad this fellow human being had to suffer so much as a child. I wonder how he is doing today, if he has been able to get past the abuse and lead a normal life?
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen