Are children more abused by Mormons? I find it highly unlikely just considering on average they are wealthier than other religious groups and poverty and child abuse are highly correlated
It's more like a combination of factors that make child abuse more prevalent: lack of access to the outside world ("we are in the world but not of the world"), a strict patriarchal hierarchy in the home that puts children at the bottom, endorsement by the church of physical punishments, etc.
So you just falsify data to waste people's time? I think you are just guessing. Or protecting your own distate for people who have a different lifestyle than you.
you can't just say "mormons have a higher incidence of abuse because patriarchy" - thats a fundamentally lazy statement. There is abuse in/out of religious households. Go look at the demographics if you don't understand it (hint: the #1 abuser of children is women). Time taken away from dishonest and lazy arguments (and bigotry) is not wasted.
The problem of child sex abuse in Mormonism is magnified by several factors. The community is very tight-knit and insular. Mormons believe that God directly guides their leaders. This leads to mental compartmentalization and slowness to recognize abuse to start with. When it is recognized, there is an extremely strong culture of handling grievances internally through the Priesthood hierarchy. Reports will go to the bishop, not secular authorities. The perspective is a bit skewed to begin with because it is normal and expected for Mormon bishops to ask youth (11 yo and up) explicit questions about their sex lives in private one-on-one "worthiness interviews". The "marching orders" that bishops (the equivalent of priests or pastors) follow (the Church Handbook of Instructions) are primarily designed to protect the church and its reputation. In places where the Mormon church has political power, it can even extend to law. For instance, bishops/clergy are exempted from mandatory reporting in Utah. Bishops are specifically instructed to _not_ report abuse to authorities. Instead they are to "call the hotline" (the Kirton McConkie law firm), where are advised on how to protect the abusers so that the church doesn't incur financial risk or negative publicity. The Mormon church is very centralized and hierarchical compared to many other churches, which means the official policy of cover-up is endemic.
The Mormon Stories (John Dehlin) and Radio Free Mormon podcasts have a lot of documentation of this. The first link below is one of the most important and has a lot of written content as well.
Look into Sam Young, whom the church excommunicated because he campaigned for ending the policy of asking teens and preteens sexually explicit questions in personal worthiness interviews.
The Mormon church was also intimately involved with Boy Scouts, so basically all of the Boy Scout problems overlapped and combined with the issues above.
I agree that CSA exists in the mormon community. just want some kind of evidence that it in any way exceeds any other population. If you point out that any other group, e.g. illegal immigrants, commit crimes, you are labeled as racist. but it's strange there is no <blank>-ist when you do it. why is that?
I make a thorough and well cited post, and get this zero-effort trolling in response? The Mormon central corporation has a dedicated legal hotline specifically for advising clergy how to prevent child sexual abuse from being reported to the police. Since uou can't distinguish this from racism, I'm done here.
