A small sampling of Mormon sexual abuse cases in which church members or abuse victims were allegedly encouraged or pressured to forgive the accused:
- https://floodlit.org/a/a221/ – “Today, for the second time in the space of two short months, the […] Stake President stood at the pulpit and advised our ward to forgive a man who subjected his wife (according to her testimony in court, as corroborated by her psychiatrist) to indescribable abuse” – Massachusetts
- https://floodlit.org/a/a780/ – an LDS bishop in Utah allegedly asked a child to forgive her abuser. Afterwards, he continued to SA her, according to a 2019 civil lawsuit.
- https://floodlit.org/a/a391/ – the accused was an LDS branch president in Argentina when he sexually abused a child (he was later sentenced to 14 years in prison); she asked local LDS leaders for support, but allegedly received none; she said the church punished her for “refusing to forgive” and for “failing to comply with worthiness standards”
- https://floodlit.org/a/a946/ – victim felt pressured to forgive
- https://floodlit.org/a/a807/ – victim comments about forgiveness
- https://floodlit.org/a/a628/ – victim was “expected to forgive” after being SA’d for years
- https://floodlit.org/a/a520/ – abuser wrote articles about forgiveness for the LDS Church News around the same time he was SA’ing a child
- https://floodlit.org/a/a503/ – LDS bishop allegedly failed to report abuse to police, instead encouraging the victim to forgive
- https://floodlit.org/a/a309/ – victim said her LDS bishop asked her to forgive her abuser; charges were dropped when her family would not cooperate with investigators
- https://floodlit.org/a/a325/ – LDS bishop allegedly told two abuse victims “they should forgive and forget; the bishop took no action against the man”
- https://floodlit.org/a/a905/ and https://floodlit.org/a/a904/ – Gordon Hinckley’s sister and brother-in-law allegedly SA’d a child, who later publicly stated that both Hinckley and Thomas Monson told her in separate private conversations to forget about the abuse and move on with her life
- https://floodlit.org/a/a251/ – stake president allegedly asked ward members to forgive a man caught perpetrating a sex crime; the man had been their bishop and was serving on the stake high council when he was caught
- https://floodlit.org/a/a290/ – apostle Boyd Packer defended a man who, when caught paying a sex worker for a sex act, was a stake president and one of the LDS church’s top attorneys; Packer reportedly said, “We are a family. A family keeps things private. A family draws close together. These things are to be kept private.”
- https://floodlit.org/a/a410/ – victim said a bishop told him to forgive his abuser, a Mormon missionary