Despite all the talking the Mormons do about the importance of families, that's not the whole story. Loyalty to the church comes before everything, including family. That's the gun the church holds to your head: if you leave the Mormon church, you lose your family and all of your Mormon friends too. I have several friends from high school who have confided to me that everything they read convinces them that Mormonism is bonkers and actually pretty creepy, but they stopped investigating and reversed themselves when they realized what they'd have to give up if they left. 

I'm from a very well-off and very old Utah Mormon family. My ancestors were pioneers. All my male relatives over the age of 40 are Bishops and members of the Mormon business cabal.

I stopped attending church when I was 17, which in Logan, Utah (89% Mormon) is the same as announcing that you're a child molester. (Not a child molester.) Then I declined to serve as a Mormon missionary which makes you lower than toenail dirt. If you don't go it is generally assumed that the church won't let you go because of something awful you did, and those hot Mormon girls will not marry someone who has not served a mission unless they have absolutely no other choice.

I was essentially ejected from my family. We still barely communicate with each other and even then it's very chilly and formal. I relocated to Oregon first, and then Nevada but every time the Church managed to track me down and send the missionaries after me to reconvert me, despite the fact that I did not give anyone a forwarding address. (No I'm not just being paranoid, yes they did do this.)

I married my first wife and together we fled to Japan. Fleeing actually isn't a bad word to use here, actually.

Two years later we have our first child. By this point enough time had passed that I had started to forget why it was I felt compelled to leave in the first place. It couldn't possibly be as bad as I remember. Sure they're weird, but not intolerably weird.  (Are they?)

So around 2003 I called my parents, after not having spoken to them for four years, and tell them we're thinking about moving back to Utah because I think it's important that our son know his extended family. They ask me if I plan on attending church and I tell them yes I'll give it a shot. They tell me they think that's great and they'll have a job (and a house, and a car) ready for me when I get there. My dad is an executive at Icon Heath & Fitness, which is far and away the largest employer in Logan, Utah. Nepotism is rampant in Mormon-owned companies and pulling strings to get family members jobs is not uncommon.

I'm exaggerating only slightly when I say that 2003 to 2004 played out nsort of like the plot to John Grisham's The Firm. Except instead of working as a high-powered corporate lawyer I was being paid to do absolutely nothing. The executives at Icon told me I was being groomed to go to Xiamen, China and help bring the new factory there online. My official title was "technical liaison" on account of my Chinese skills.

This was a lie. Yes there was a project team but it wasn't until a year later that I learned I was not on it. During the year and a half I was there I was given no training, no direction and no one ever discussed the project with me. I was told I should "learn how the company works" and I had to figure out how to do this by myself. The actual project team (and the real technical liaison) were meeting in secret. Everyone below the executive level, I eventually found out, hated my guts (and justifiably so) and would not let me near any actual work. 

While all this was happening my parents were working on converting my wife to Mormonism. She and my mother became very close and remain close to this day.

At the end of the year I was getting really really paranoid. My own father it turns out was part of the ruse. (loyalty to Church & company before wayward offspring, after all.) He knew there was no real job there but kept assuring me that my coworkers would share with me more if I would only work harder. So I did work harder. I interviewed every department head, took copious notes and learned the workings of the company in scrupulous detail. In the end I probably understood the place better than anyone else. I also translated 18 2-inch binders worth of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) documentation into Chinese. My flowcharts and translations were never used, much less looked at. They were just to keep me busy.

I must be kind of on the slow side because it took me more than a year to figure out the job was a ruse. I met the actual technical liaison by chance, and she had never heard of me. She had business cards with her title (my title!) on it and a copy of the factory business plan too. She was Chinese and apparently hadn't been understood that I wasn't to be told anything. We compared notes and I realized that the project I was supposed to be such an important part of had started a long time ago without me. 

I wanted to quit but I couldn't because I was tied down by a mortgage in the middle of Darkest Mormonia (Hyde Park, actually) and there were realistically no other employers in town for what I did. What I did do is quit going to church. Again.  Buncha lying backstabbers anyway. This put me seriously on the outs with regard to the family.

My first wife had always been given to bouts of depression during which she would self-isolate, say I never loved her and suggest maybe we should get a divorce. She said this every six months for nine years and I always laughed it off and reassured her. Around this time she was going through another one and I was so tweaked out and paranoid that instead of saying "nah baby it's cool" I said "FINE muahahahaha you're with them anyway aren't you? You're one of the Mormons hiding inside my walls spitting poison at me through pinholes!!" 

So she goes "waaaah you bad husbarnd!" runs to my parents house and tells them that I kicked her out. (Not true.) And this is where the story gets really weird. Rather than sitting us down and trying to work it out like normal parents would, they couldn't be more pleased that we're splitting up. There's a good chance my ex will convert to Mormonism, but I obviously can't be salvaged. For the sake of her and the child it's better if we get divorced so I don't drag both of them down to hell with me. 

My mother starts driving the process and things start happening with alarming rapidity. I said I wanted a divorce but I wasn't going to do anything about it. I hadn't looked for a lawyer or filled out any papers.  Those days I was spending my evenings watching X-Files reruns, getting drunk on rumpelminze and trying to figure out just what I was going to do.

My mother hired a divorce lawyer (the father of one of my childhood friends and my former scoutmaster) and started drawing up papers. She told me the lawyer was for both of us and I didn't need to bother getting a lawyer of my own. (Mistake!) I made a couple half-hearted attempts to stop the whole thing but I was assured that it was going to happen and there was nothing I could do about it.  

Also my ex-wife and mother completely emptied my bank account and never did return what they took.

I actually got a really sweet deal out of it. I kept refusing to sign the papers so they ended up removing all the alimony and child support obligations and my mother even threw in a small bribe. My parents and my former scoutmaster both assured we would have joint custody of our son and that was all I cared about. So I signed, not having actually read the documents. More about that later.

At some point during this process I confronted my department head at work about the raft of poop he'd been feeding me for the past year and a half. He looked relieved to finally be able to tell me there was no job there for me, but I was free to work in data processing. I told him to f*ck off and I quit. Which surprised him.

So my parents put my wife and 3-year-old son on a plane and send them to Japan. See you again in six months so we can swap? Ok. Deal? Deal. I didn't see him again for four years.

By this time I'm all "aaaauuugggghhhhh get me out of here!!" so I moved to China. I had been busting my butt for the past year trying to improve my Chinese in preparation to do just that, so I did it. I ended up getting remarried and we had another child.

All this time I'm trying to contact my son. For the first year I got hung up on every time I tried to call. My mother and former scoutmaster (her lawyer) advised her that she didn't have to do anything she was not comfortable with, technically making them accessories to kidnapping under US law. Keep in mind I hadn't actually done anything that any normal person would say justified this kind of treatment. I didn't hit her or sleep around, I wasn't a drunk or a drug-user or a layabout. My only crime was leaving the Mormon church.

I finally got a lawyer, a specialist in international kidnappings based in Portland, OR who advised me to contact the US State Department which has a bureau that specializes in these sorts of kidnappings as well. I started talking to both of them on a regular basis. It was at this point that I realized I had gotten screwed again. I had been assured that I had been awarded joint legal custody of our son, as this was my only condition for signing the papers, but the document that I had singed and not read awarded full custody to my ex. Doesn't matter, the visitation schedule stipulated by US and Utah state law still entitles me to visitation, and jumping borders in order to avoid complying with the law still constitutes abduction.

I was persistent and eventually, after four years, got her to agree to one week of visitation in August of 2008. So I flew to Japan to pick him up, fully intending to send him back when the week was up. I even had the return tickets.

When he got here though the boy was just not right. He woke up screaming every night about something horrible his grandmother had done to him. (I still don't know what it was, because he doesn't remember when he's awake.) The first time I got angry with him, when he trashed a painting we had hanging in the dining room, he went to the kitchen to get a knife and threatened to cut his own throat. Also he was six and his mother was still breastfeeding him. For fun, I suppose. Who knows.

So I said screw this. I have no idea what kind of family they're running over there but there's no way I can send him back. Besides, by my reckoning I'm entitled to at least two years of accumulated visitation. Also the State Department told me I was well within my rights to detain him prior to repatriating him. So I kept 'im. Still got 'im.

Everyone in Mormonia went berserk. My parents threatened to prosecute me and had their lawyer (my old scoutmaster again) send me a bunch of threatening emails telling me I was going to prison. I was prepared this time though and told him to direct his communication to my lawyer.  I also asked him (the lawyer) if it was true he had advised his client (my ex) to ignore US laws she wasn't comfortable with. They were clearly bluffing because they dropped it immediately, and the lawyer sent me an email from his personal account telling me he had not so advised his client and it would be a very bad idea if I told anyone about this.

Here's where things get interesting again. I've got to get my son a Chinese visa so he can stay with me but I can't because I can't prove we're related. His mother had changed his name and dyed his hair.  His birth certificate is in Japan, and there's no way I'm going to get a hold of that. So I call the State Department again and ask if there's anything I can do. There is, he says. They still have my son's US passport application form on file with my signature on it from the time we left Japan to go to the US, and as far as the US government is concerned this is proof enough. He says he can send a copy of the application to the US consulate in Shenyang, China (the one nearest me) with instructions telling the vice consul to issue me a stamped affidavit saying I'm his father and he's my son, and both of us are American citizens. I call the consulate and they agree.

I got all the documentation in order, took two days off work and flew up to Shenyang to get this document and a copy of the passport application. When I arrive I meet with the vice-consul, with whom I had been communicating the whole time, and he shows me the affidavit already drawn up. I paid 300 RMB to have it notarized and stamped and went back to the waiting area.

Not long after, I get called back and the vice consul tells me that the consul himself wants to speak with me. He had seen I was born in Utah, and the consul was also from Utah, so he wanted to chat. Fine, I say, and I go back to the window.

The consul, a tall blond older guy, asks me only one question: "are you Mormon." Like an idiot I say "well I used to be, ha ha." "Hm" he says "well just wanted to meet with you is all," and goes back to his office. 

My number gets called but instead of the document I asked for the girl at the window just gives me my money back. What the? I ask to speak to the vice consul again and he tells me the consul is "just not comfortable" giving me the affidavit. We argue but he says there's nothing he can do.

Well, what about the copy of the passport application? That's from the State Department, they have to give me that. Yes, he agrees, they have to give me that. And they do, technically. They give me a nearly white sheet of paper that you can only barely tell resembles an application, like they ran it through the copy machine on the ultra-light setting. It was completely illegible. 

Is completely illegible, I still have it. 

What the devil is this? He tells me the State Department sent it to them that way and there's nothing he can do, but he doesn't look at me when he says it.

(That's a lie by the way, the State Department sent it digitally.)

Amazingly enough the Chinese government accepted it though and everything worked out.  Adam-God and the Three Nephites be praised!

[The above is a slightly less rude version of my story, originally posted here:  http://www.theneweffort.com/front/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8233 ]