The Beginning and The Child SA

My name is Joseph*. I was born into a family that belongs to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Also known as the Mormons. For this writing, I have often labeled this church as “LDS Mormon”.

My parents are intensely private people. If everyone knew what happened in their home, they could be arrested, presumed innocent, tried in a court of law, convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of their horrible lives in prison. I am here to start that process.

Our family’s beginnings

We live in the United States of America, where religious organizations have more rights than their victims. The LDS Mormon Church is responsible for hiding the Child Sex Abuse (CSA) that my sister, my brother and I endured in our parents’ house in Reading*.

My father was a convert in his formative years. He went on a mission during the Vietnam era. Many LDS Mormons received deferments based on their membership in the church and BYU status, helping them to avoid the draft.

My father served in France and Switzerland. A country club compared to the jungles of Vietnam.

When Father returned from his Mormon Mission, he attended Brigham Young University (BYU). Like many Returned Missionaries, he set off to Provo to find a wife and make babies. He met Mother in Provo.

Mother’s history is dark. There is little information about what actually happened in their family. I know that she is one of four children of first-generation Australian immigrants. Mother’s parents are said to be from Latvia, but the region they claim is on the long-contested borders of Russia, Latvia and Lithuania. None the matter, Mother’s parents arrived in Australia as refugees during World War II. The family converted to LDS Mormon during this time.

Mother said that she and her brother were sent to an abusive LDS Mormon boarding school in New Zealand in the late 1960s. Her brother would go on to father 7+ children, and abandon them after “ruining the family financially”. Mother’s version of this is that her brother preferred to be homeless than to live at home. That is the stock that Mother comes from. She has no idea what a home is supposed to be. She was sent away in her formative years, the question is “why”.

Mother stayed on the LDS Mormon path after New Zealand boarding school She attended BYU, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in “social work”. The type of social work that Mother learned is how to use the LDS Mormon church and the social welfare systems to hide criminal acts. She was an excellent student.

Students having large families

Mother and Father met at BYU. Like many LDS Mormons, they had children right away. The first when Mother was 22, the second at 24, and then a third at 25 (that’s me). Holy crap that is a lot of babies for a new mother. That is too many babies to manage for a woman raised in a boarding school.

Mother could not handle three children, so she separated from my father. That is what Mother told us all of our lives. The 1979 trip to her home in Australia was a pre-divorce separation. Mother took her three kids and fled to Oz in June, not returning until October. What happened that sent her running from America? Why did she come back and have another baby at 27?

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Leaving BYU

I was born in the land of Brigham Young, the founder of the LDS Mormon Sect we know today as “The Mormons”. The Latter Day-Saint Church has swung like a pendulum on the label “Mormons“.

I was taught to sing a song “I’m a Mormon; Yes I am, So if you want to study a Mormon I’m a living specimen”. There was/is a push to not use “Mormons” due to Warren Jeffs and other unsavory Mormon criminals in the media.

My biological parents were students at BYU in Provo Utah. I will refer to these people as Father and Mother in this writing. Please know that the female parent was never a “mother” or “mom”. She was like a WWII-era Russian soldier holding private citizens captive as slave labor. The male was never a “dad”, but he was almost a “Father”. Mother put a stop to that in 1984.

We moved to Copper* Arizona, Father’s home town, in 1981*.

From my Sacred Mormon Baby Book; Mother wrote this about moving from Utah to Arizona:

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Leaving the Desert

Mother wrote this about this time in Arizona. I turned three years old a few months prior to this update in my Sacred Mormon Baby Book:

Grandma and Grandpa helped raise us

Mother did not have any family in the United States. We lived in Father’s hometown of Copper*. He loves his hometown, often telling stories of his high school years. I used to enjoy those stories because it was a rare moment to see my Father happy. He actually talked about “racing his mustang” back in Copper. I almost picture it.

Father’s mother and step-father lived in Copper. They were amazing grandparents. They helped Mother with the kids as much as two retirees could help. That is Father’s step-father in the picture above. That is my Grandpa.

Father did not live with us most of the time we were in Copper. Father was going to school in Phoenix, hours away by car. He lived alone and was studying to get his PhD. Let me say now that this is a terrible way to bring kids into the world. I never had a Father. He had his priorities wrong.

When we lived in Copper, there was an event that may have been what pushed Father to accept living elsewhere. Father has a sister, Aunt June*. June, a caucasian woman, married an African-American man. The LDS Mormon Church follows the teachings of Brigham Young, namesake of BYU:

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.

Brigham Young, (March 8, 1863.) Journal of Discourses 10:110.

Were the children of God to mingle their seed with the seed of Cain it would not only bring the curse of being deprived of the power of the Priesthood upon them[selves] but they entail it upon their children after them, and they cannot get rid of it. If a man in an unguarded moment should commit such a transgression, if he would walk up and say “cut off my head,” and one then killed the man, woman and child, it would do a great deal towards atoning for the sin. Would this be to curse them? No, it would be a blessing to them—it would do them good, that they might be saved with their brethren. A many would shudder should they hear us talk about killing folk, but it is one of the greatest blessings to some to kill them, although the true principles of it are not understood.”

Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet p. 222 (1847)

Mother talked about beheading a lot

Mother used these teachings to turn my Father against his sister. Mother was like the mighty Colorado River cutting through the Grand Canyon. It took a long time, patience and perseverance, but she did it. Mother convinced Father that his only sibling, June, was a vile sinner and should be “beheaded“. There is a “My Family Tree” cassette tape with my voice saying “…and I like to cut my head off”. What little boy runs around talking about beheading?

Mother and Father had a final confrontation with Aunt June in the front yard of our house in Copper. I remember Mother facing off against Aunt June. Father did nothing. He let his spouse say racist, vile things to Aunt June.

Aunt June already had two children with her husband by then. Mother called my cousins “mutts”, “mulatto” and the n-word. Aunt June tried to fight back in the yard that day, but her brother left June to fight on her own. Aunt June’s truths were no match for Mother’s lies.

Aunt June took her kids and left. I would not see or speak with her until Courtney died in 2004. I don’t really remember that, but Aunt June told me that I was the only member of Father’s family to treat her like family.

Mother makes her final updates in my baby book

Mother stopped writing in my baby book around this time. I think she saw a typical Father-son relationship developing and her mental illness allowed her to be jealous of her own son’s time with with Father. I really think that she was done with me prior to the rapes in 1984. That is why she did not report the rapes. She literally did not care about me.

Here are her final updates in my baby book. What a mother, eh?

We left Arizona under duress.

We moved from Copper* to Gateway*, Arizona. Gateway was a suburb of Phoenix, so we lived with Father for about 6 months while he finished his degree. It was in Gateway that Mother planned our move to Reading*.

I wonder why she picked Reading. Before the calendar year would end, Courtney and I would be raped multiple times in Reading*.

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I would like to state that the first four children are not racist like Mother and Father. All four of us went to school with a diverse group of students. Our schoolteachers taught us that all humans should be treated the same, regardless of their skin color. I don’t think Ezra* is like our parents. Karen* is a copy of Mother.

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1984.b. They Called the rapes “Studying”

Author’s note: I updated the title of this section. My trauma counselor has told me many times “Joseph*, six year old children do not have sex, you were raped”. My mother always called it “sex”. It was rape. I was six. Courtney was seven.

Long Distance Phone Calls

Mother loved to talk on the phone. The phone allowed her to be connected with limited family and the gossip tradeswomen she had in her pocket. Back then, in the 1980s, phone calls cost actual cash money. If you called someone a certain distance from you, it would cost even more money. If you called someone in another country, it cost a lot of money. More money than a family with no income had. Companies like AT&T & MCI charged fees around a dollar a minute for a long-distance phone call.

Mother was from Australia. She was sent to religious boarding school in New Zealand in her youth. Mother moved to the United States on her own. Back then you could write letters or talk on the phone. Air Mail was expensive. Mother preferred the phone.

Mother does not communicate well in person. She needs her notes to keep her stories straight. So, she talked and wrote. Her voice echoed through the house at all hours. The scheming voice, the questions she asks that only have one answer. Truth must be countered with “evidence” that the honest person is “bad”. Mother is a well-trained manipulator.

When we moved to Reading*, we lived thousands of kilometers from our family and home in Arizona. Mother had contacts in Arizona and Australia that allowed her to talk of her husband’s achievements. With contacts in different time zones, she talked on the phone day at night. In Reading*, the phone cord from the kitchen reached into the dining room. Mother would sit at that table, notepad and writing utensil ready to keep her story straight.

Mother was most likely sitting at that dining room table, on the phone, when Courtney and I were being raped. We were sexually assaulted by the kids Mother was supposed to be watching while she gossiped on the phone.

The Rapists

Father drove the U-haul from Arizona to our new house. He moved us into the house in Reading* and then flew back to Arizona for his last semester and to defend his PhD dissertation. I state again, my father had his priorities wrong. Mother could not be trusted to take care of her four children on her own. Father’s mother and sister told him not to marry Mother. They knew that mother was a liar.

The rapists came from a family that lived across the street. That family was similarly aged to our family. Father warmed to the parents because the man and woman were both educated. Father respected people based on their academic achievements. The neighbors seemed very friendly and normal. My Mother was the fourth wheel. She did not have an advanced degree, and did not have the intelligence to keep up with Father, Robert* and Leslie*.

Mother had four children at the time. Stefanie* was 9 years old. As the first child in a Mormon family, she was parentified and did not have a childhood. Mother made Stefanie watch us while Mother talked on the phone. Courtney* was 7; I was *6. We were born 18 months apart. Little Murph* was 4 years old. Stefanie would focus on keeping Murph alive while Courtney “watched over” me. Stefanie could fill in a lot of the gaps here.

The rapists were a brother and sister. The sister rapist was the leader. The sister was in Courtney’s grade. Courtney skipped a grade, so the sister rapist was older, giving her “authority” to lead our play sessions.

If you’d like to skip the writing about the rapes, scroll past these red boxes to heading: Mother interrogates her six year old child.

Trigger Warning: Child Sex Abuse (CSA), child abuse

The Child Sex Abuse

The rapists would take Courtney and me up to my bedroom. Murph and I shared a room in that house. There were two beds in the 2nd-floor bedroom of that little Cape Cod. The ceilings were sloped, very low on one side of the room. There was a built-in desk with glass on top, to protect the surface. There was a light over that desk.

The female rapist liked to play “soap opera”. It involved the two girls sexually assaulting the two boys, and then they would switch partners like on a soap opera. I do not blame Courtney, she was a 7 year old LDS Mormon that did not know better.

The female rapist raped me. She was mean. I will never forget her face. She smiled angrily when she violated my 6 year old body. It hurt my body when she did that to me. It frightened me that she seemed so smiley and so evil while she raped me. I can see that face clearly, more than 38 years later.

Studying

The rapists repeatedly took Courtney and me upstairs to that room. The female rapist would tell Mother and Stefanie that we were “studying”. Stefanie had her hands full with Murph. Mother was probably on the phone.

I think that there was “studying” happening between the rapist’s father and his children. I think that the female rapist was being sexually abused by her father and she was doing it to me, Courtney and her brother as her way of revenge. They are both alive and should be questioned by the proper authorities.

The female rapist is a lifelong criminal with an extensive history of arrests, court convictions. She is still on probation at the time of this writing. If she would have gotten help back in 1984 by being reported, would her life be better? We will never know, but we should hypothesize. That is what thinking people do. LDS Mormons want you to stop thinking about it and “move on”.

My mother is a liar

One example of Mother’s whitewashing the past is lying about when we moved to Reading*. In my childhood memory book she wrote “We moved to Reading in December 1984”.

I am working to locate Reading’s academic calendar for this school year. By the current academic calendar, we would have been in Reading by November of 1984, or just before. Note the 5 absences. Were the rapes were discovered during the 2nd or 3rd period?

This is my 2nd grade report card. I didn’t miss a day of 2nd grade. I missed 5 days of first grade, the year I was raped. The year my rape was concealed. The year I started wetting the bed again. The year my spirit died.

I wouldn’t miss more than 2.5 days in a single school year until my senior year when I missed 11 days. That was the after the second Child Protective Services (CPS) investigation. The Church and my parents had to hide me from CPS. I was sent to live in an different LDS Mormon house. Like, a strange home. It met the legal definitional of kidnapping. That’s wild.

What kind of Mother lies in their own child’s sacred LDS Mormon Baby Book? The kind of Mother that hides her daughter and son’s rapes.

Trigger Warning: Child Sex Abuse (CSA), child abuse

Mother found out about the rapes from the school. Only Mother can fill in the gaps between when she found out, and when she confronted me about the rapes. I was 6 years old and in first grade. Courtney was 7 years old and in third grade, she had skipped a grade in Arizona. Mother was the parent of four children and fully responsible for the house. Mother was the only adult living in Reading* with her four children. Her husband was back in Arizona getting his college degree.

Mother interrogates her six year old child

Mother had a piece of paper at the kitchen table. She had set up the kitchen like an interrogation room. Mother had to psyche herself up. She doesn’t have her notes when she has to deal with people in-person. It makes her nervous that she will mix up the lies. That nervousness turns into anger at the target for making her feel guilty about the lies.

The note from school said that I knew about sex. Mother showed me the note and angrily asked “where did you learn about sex?” Mother was so scary that I immediately burst into tears and exclaimed “From (female rapist), (male rapist) and Courtney”.

Mother was not expecting me to say that. Her face was pure surprise anger. Her eyes got really big, like Large Marge in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Mother boomed “YOU SHOULD NOT KNOW SUCH THINGS!” and stormed out of the kitchen. Courtney was upstairs in her room. The next thing I heard was Courtney screaming and crying.

My guess is that Mother, in her damaged brain, thought that a first grader had learned about sex by himself. When I told her that the kids she was supposed to be watching “taught us sex”, her brain broke and she had to blame someone immediately. Courtney, all of 18 months older than me, was to be blamed.

I think my oldest sister knows about the events and the cover up that took place at this time. Mother had to blame someone, so she most likely told Stefanie* it was her fault for not watching Courtney and me more closely. I do not blame Stefanie, she was watching Murph* and had her 9-year-old hands full while Mother talked on the phone.

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Waiting for Daddy

I was 6 years old. Our family had just moved from the Western Desert to this strange suburb outside a large city. In this suburb, there was a house. My father rented the house from an old man. Father moved us in to the rented house. My father left us with our Mother and then he went back to the Western Desert. My father left us. He left.

After Mother learned that FemaleRapist* and her brother, MaleRapist*, had raped Courtney* and me, Mother never asked me about the events. Dear Reader, please pause and think about that for a moment. A Mother of four children, all under the age of 10, learns that her daughter and son were raped by the neighbors that Mother was babysitting. She never asked me any questions about the event. She won’t answer questions about this time in our life because it would be too easy to reveal the truth.

Sidebar: Remember, my Mother has a Bachelor’s of Science in Social Work from Brigham Young University. Mother had to manage the child sex abuse (CSA) crisis like a BYU-trained Social Worker. Her husband was not around. She was all alone, all of 31 years old. She was not a US citizen. She was a product of the LDS Mormon boarding school system. She was alone in a strange city in a foreign country.

Read the letter about the “long-standing policy” to call Church headquarters should any Mormon be facing trouble. Did Mother call the number back in 1984? Is that is what she was educated by the LDS Mormon Church to do at Brigham Young University? Mother acted on the church’s behalf and isolated her children from each other.

Changing bedrooms after we had just moved in

Mother sought to limit my interaction with Courtney by assigning Stefanie* to watch me. Stefanie does not question mother’s authority to this day. Stefanie was in charge of keeping me and Courtney apart. Stefanie would later receive the worst of mother’s beatings in return for her years of loyalty.

Stefanie also had to trade bedrooms with the boys. Mother, the BYU-trained Social Worker, knew that the bedroom would be a trigger for her raped son. Murph* and I were moved from the CSA-bedroom upstairs to the 2nd bedroom downstairs. It was smaller, but they wedged two beds in there. Murph and I always shared a room.

Stefanie was moved upstairs to the CSA-bedroom. The room was the largest bedroom in the house.

Courtney had the smallest bedroom in the house, a little room to the left of the stairs. The sloped ceilings made it feel even smaller. Courtney somehow ended up with the TV in her room shortly after the rapes. It was a little black and white television with rabbit ears. It was very exciting and new for a kid to have a TV in their bedroom. 1980s LDS Mormons did not watch much TV. We were allowed to pick one show a week to watch. I remember browsing the TV Guide that came with the Sunday paper. Mother needed the paper for coupons. The TV Guide was exciting. I got to pick a show. I can recall the smell of the newspaper and my fingers dirty with ink.

I started wetting my bed again, a symptom of child sex abuse

Murph and I were confined a small room. I began wetting the bed. I think that Murph also was wetting his bed at this point.

Sidebar: I did not tell Murph what happened to me and Courtney until January 20, 2021. During that phone call, Murph told me that he was molested by the same MaleRapist in a shed, around 1985*. Murph said that there were two occasions, one with a 3rd boy, one with a girl. Murph and I cried together on the phone. I was at home, my spouse was listening to us cry together. Murph was at work.

Back to 1984.

Again, the BYU-educated Social Worker isolated her victims so we could not gain the confidence to tell the truth. Is that what a BYU-educated Social Worker should do? If you read THE letter from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, you just might agree that the BYU-educated Social worker did exactly what she was trained to do.

After the shock of the kitchen-interragation-gone-awry, I began to ask Mother, every day, “what are we going to do about FemaleRapist and MaleRapist?” They were still coming to our house every day. I was not “playing” or “studying” with them anymore, I was isolated. I don’t know what happened at this time. All I know is Mother said “We have to wait for your Father to come home”. I was a traumatized 6 year old child. I suspected that this was not right. But, I was 6 years old. We had waited for Father to help us out with other problems before.

So, I waited for my father while I started a lifetime of sleeplessness. I wet the bed nearly every night for the next 10 years.

Courtney’s silence took a lot of Mother’s resources

My mother was managing the crisis with Courtney, who began making demands. Mother was managing the separate crisis with me, who asks a lot of questions and does not buy an ounce of her bullshit. Mother also had to make Stefanie feel like the whole thing was her fault. It could not have been Mother’s fault. If Courtney was a victim with me, that meant that it was Stefanie’s fault.

I imagine that this is when MaleRapist molested Murph in a shed with another boy. Murph also remembers MaleRapist molesting Murph and a girl at the same time.

Mother’s inaction is what allowed Murph to join Courtney and I in the CSA-victim club. It sucks in here.

Continue reading: That Was Supposed to be a Secret

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