Alice Brown's Story

Latter Day Survivors Blog

"Survivors telling their own stories in their own words"

This is Alice's Story written in her own words. The photo attached is an art piece created by Alice as an expression of coping with her sexual and religious trauma.

"When I was 7 I was enticed into sexual activity by an older child at a sleep over. I believe she was around 10 or 11. I called my mom in the middle of the night and asked her to come get me, claiming I didn't feel good. The mom of the home I was at thought I was scared because the older children had played "Murder In The Dark" before the incident happened in the bedroom. I wish that was why I was calling. For years it ate away at me.

When I turned 12, the purity talks in Young Women's started to eat away at me and I told my parents what had happened. My parents made me tell the bishop. I was treated like I had done something wrong and had broken the law of chastity. I was double punished because I did not tell the truth before I was baptised when they asked me about chastity in the baptism interview. I have a vivid memory of not knowing if I should say something in that interview because it wasn't something I had chosen to do or done again. I mean, again, I was 7.

I was not allowed to take the sacrament for a month and had to meet with the bishop weekly, then monthly for 6 months. I was 12 at that point. I feel like my story is very mild compared to what many others have had to go through, but the more I speak about it the more I am finding victims punished for their own abuse and every voice counts. So I want to speak up and share my story to bring awareness and support to others.

Its taken 4 years of EMDR therapy for me to be able to even talk about it, let alone start to heal from it and we are just cracking the surface of the religious trauma brought on by the LDS church.

Im willing to talk about what happened to me if it can help others and bring awareness to the evil happening in a cult that calls itself "religion"."