Heaven’s Helpline podcast: Ex-Mormon reveals heartbreaking story of abuse

Caroline tells her story of an abusive marriage and disillusionment with church leaders in episode two of Heaven's Helpline. Illustration / Paul Slater

After publishing a series of stories about the wealth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) for NZME’s BusinessDesk in 2022, investigative reporter Murray Jones was hit by a flood of much darker stories. In episode two of Heaven’s Helpline, a six-part investigation into the LDS church, he speaks to Caroline* about her experience.

Caroline’s parents were converted by Mormon missionaries in Australia when she was 5. It led to a few sudden changes in the household.

Her alcoholic father got sober and her parents decided to move over to New Zealand so they could be married, or sealed, in the temple at Hamilton - as there wasn’t one in Australia at the time. Sealing is very important for LDS members as it ensures families can live together for eternity in the afterlife.

Caroline was extremely shy and didn’t mix much with the other children attending Church College, the church-run high school in the Mormon-dominated suburb of Temple View.

She had other things to worry about. Her father was incredibly violent and controlling towards Caroline and her siblings.

“One minute he could be very cheerful and happy and you could be his favourite child. And the next, it could suddenly switch. So you’re just constantly on the edge of your seat,” recalled Caroline.

“The reasoning that he gave for his control was that he was the priesthood leader, which is church teachings that the father is the leader of the home. He knows what’s best for the family and that’s his role and it mustn’t be questioned.”

But Caroline did have questions. Whilst her father was the leader in the home, she was also being taught by the church that women were equal partners in marriage and she just couldn’t see how these two things squared.

When she went to see her church leaders about this, they visited her parents to warn them about their daughter who had been asking awkward questions. To Caroline, everyone else in Temple View seemed to be totally on board with the status quo and so she felt the problem lay with her.

As a young adult, she was determined to resolve her theological questions but was struggling to find satisfactory answers. She had kept this internal battle private, so she was relieved and surprised when a young man approached her one day and asked her if she was having doubts about the church.

Very quickly, he set himself up as a teacher to Caroline - to provide spiritual instruction.

But this was not your typical study group. He would keep her up until the early hours of the morning, getting her to memorise vast quantities of scripture. He demanded that she fast and pray persistently.

Caroline was short of sleep. She was hungry. She was reading the same parts of scripture over and over again - attempting to humble herself in the service of God.

Three months passed in a blur until he told her: ’I want you to go to the temple, I want you to fast for this period of time, and I want you to pray about whether or not we should be married’.

“And I’m like, what?! Because we weren’t dating, it wasn’t romance, it was scripture instruction. But I thought, okay, I need to be humble.

“This isn’t what I want, but I need to do what God wants. Lose myself in the service of God. All this stuff that my head was being filled with,” said Caroline.

So she prayed about it and when she returned, something happened.

“I can’t really explain this, but I felt this wave of spiritual energy. And he said to me - ‘Did you feel that?’ And I said yes. And he said, ‘That was the Holy Ghost telling you that you are commanded to marry me’.

“Which I believed. I didn’t like it. I wasn’t happy about it. He knew that I didn’t love him. He knew that I was just marrying him out of commandment to God. So that was the end of any leaving the church or getting a career or studying. I started on down the road of marriage and children.”

What happened next to Caroline shocked me to my core because it turned out that, just maybe, this could’ve been avoided.

It transpired that this man had practised his coercive tactics on other women in Temple View before; one woman even took out a protection order against him.

But no one had told Caroline.

Yet the true betrayal by her church leaders was still to come.

We sought comment from the church in response to the allegations discussed in this episode. The church did not address the allegations directly, but in a statement said: “As followers of Jesus Christ, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abhor abuse of any kind. As a church, we invest heavily on prevention and response; and will continue to do so. Our priority is the welfare of the victim and following the law of the land with respect to the abuser facing the consequences of their actions.”

Listen to the full story in episode two of Heaven’s Helpline - an investigation into the Mormon church in New Zealand.

*Not her real name

Heaven’s Helpline is available at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. The series was made with the support of NZ On Air. For more on this series, go to nzherald.co.nz/heavenshelpline