I come from a long line of Mormons. My great-great-great grandparents were pioneers who worked closely with Brigham Young and assigned to colonize parts of Utah and New Mexico. My family fell away from the church, however, two generations ago when my great-grandfather committed suicide.

I converted to the church when I was 13 years old and in high school. Though I never fully accepted the BoM nor Mormon Doctrine, I enjoyed going to church because I'd been befriended by so many "normal" families. Coming from a less-than normal family made this aspect of the church quite appealing to me.

I truly believed that so many of the families in the church were perfect. They bore their testimonies to it, after all, supported by tears and intense emotion. Through the years, though, I learned those perfect families were simply just showcasing what they wanted others to believe about them. Their outward appearances were merely veneers. Unfortunately, one of the families that had sort of adopted me as their own (figuratively) turned out to be such a family.

The problem began when I had just turned 17. One of my friends had introduced me to her grandparents. Her grandmother and I hit it off from the start, but there was something very odd about her grandfather. He gave me the creeps; to be quite frank, he made my skin crawl. Several weeks had passed since I'd first met him, and I suddenly began to feel guilty that I'd thought such a nice man, who began treating me like I was his granddaughter, was creepy. The three of us became quite close, and I was suddenly a permanent fixture in their home and was always included in holiday celebrations. 

About six months into our friendship, things got very strange. As I became closer and closer to the grandmother, and she became my best friend, her husband, who even told people I was like their granddaughter, started staring at me strangely. Then one day, he said he wanted to make love to me. At first, I played it off as if I hadn't heard him correctly. As time went on, he got more brazen and started telling me he was in love with me and that my virginity belonged to him. He started stalking me and driving by my house when he got off work at midnight and would call me at 2 or 3 in the morning on the occasions that he did not see my car in the drive to question where and with whom I was when he drove by.

I decided that I would not be in his company alone. And that worked out quite well until one day when his wife and I had made arrangements to go to the movies together. I was to pick her up at their house. When I got to the house, her car was in the drive, so I knew it was safe to go inside. I'd already made it a practice not to go in if her car was not there. When I went inside, her husband told me that she said I should go into her room to help her pick something out to wear. I didn't think anything of it, so I went down the hall and entered their room then called out her name. She didn't respond, so I turned around to go back into the living room but was stopped by her husband, who had followed me. "She's not here," he said. Apparently, she had to leave town on an emergency with her eldest daughter and wouldn't be back until late that night. He then grabbed me by the wrists and tried to kiss me. I moved my face from side to side to avoid him kissing me, so he threw me onto the bed. He was a big man and strong. He held me with one hand while getting my shorts off with the other. I was yelling for him to stop the entire time, and he just kept saying, "You don't want me to, you're mine..." He got his pants down and tried to penetrate me, but fortunately, he could not attain an erection. He kept jiggling himself in an attempt to get himself erect to no avail. Luckily, there was a loud sound that came from the kitchen, and it sounded like someone had come in the side door of the house, so he jumped up and ran out of the room. I got my pants up and ran out of the house.

When I went to the bishop about it, I was accused of either lying or bringing it on myself. Of course, the man denied everything, so the bishop called me back into his office. This time, I could tell he believed me, but by this time, it was out of his hands, and he issued a threat. Basically, if I continued to maintain my story, I'd be sued for libel.

I left the church shortly after that, when I realized I was attracted women. Had it not been for my experience with that family and the bishop's response to it, I probably would have tried to deny who I was and would have entered into a sham of a marriage somewhere down the road. Thus, I'm actually glad that bishop threatened to sue me for libel!