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Letter: Don’t cover up for sexual predators

Joseph Bishop, seen here in a screen grab from a 2017 video interview with BYU police, answers questions about what he admits were inappropriate sexual interactions with sister missionaries when he was the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Missionary Training Center in Provo in the early 1980s.

I am horrified by the story about Joseph L. Bishop sexually molesting McKenna Denson when he was president of the Provo Missionary Training Center and she was a young missionary there. I was in the MTC just before he was president and at Weber State just after his tenure. There but for the grace of God...

I believe Denson and I find the way she has been treated reprehensible. What she has or hasn’t done is irrelevant to what should happen to Bishop. He has confessed twice on tape to having acted inappropriately with sister missionaries.

He also said he confessed to his church leaders at the time. It appears that the church has tried to cover up what happened and gone the route of shaming and blaming the victim.

Mormon leaders need to take a lesson from the Catholic Church that denial and cover-up are the wrong way to deal with sexual predators in church leadership. They need to take her accusations and his confessions seriously, acknowledge the harm that has been done, apologize and take appropriate action against a man who took advantage of his church position to harm women.

Tracie A. Lamb, Lynden, Wash.

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