LDS Abuse Coverups: Protecting Predators & Assets ft. Alyssa Grenfell

Cults to Consciousness

Shelise Ann Sola, Jonathan C Rosales

Society & Culture

4.8 • 574 Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2026

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Surviving Mormonism is a new limited series hosted by Real Housewife of Salt Lake City Heather Gay where she interviews people with harrowing stories of how the LDS church failed them. It is a heartbreaking series that reveals the reality of a systemic problem that is not only covered up by church officials, but amplified by their only true intentions…avoiding lawsuits and avoiding bad media. Thousands of people have shared their stories of abuse and coverups at the hands of their leaders who were supposed to protect them. In a church that claims to be the one true church of God, their priorities of protecting their assets over their most vulnerable members, leaves us all bewildered and angry. Episode by episode, Alyssa Grenfell and Shelise recount these stories as shown on the show and give their thoughts as former Mormons.

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YT: www.youtube.com/@alyssadgrenfell/

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TT: https://www.tiktok.com/@alyssadgrenfell

Thumbnail Photo of Alyssa provided by Ilana Panich-Linsman website

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**Disclaimer: Thanks for joining us at Cults to Consciousness. This storytelling podcast is meant to be for entertainment purposes only and does not substitute for medical advice. We may discuss triggering topics and we ask that you make your personal mental health a priority. Lastly, the opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host.**

Chapter Marks

00:00:00 Intro

00:03:52 Who is Heather Gay

00:07:20 How Mormon critics of the Church are shut out and silenced

00:11:28 Did Alyssa feel she knew enough about the truth behind Mormonism when she served a mission trip

00:13:43 Mormonism equates secrets with spirituality

00:17:24 Bishops are instructed to call the law firm instead of report SA cases

00:21:35 The church doesn't recognize being gay (David Matheson)

00:45:37 Nick Jones, the former Bishop, who stepped down for moral reasons

00:51:16 CW: CSA Cover up- Episode 3

01:00:40 Cognitive dissonance from the church members

01:07:41 How dissenters and critics have changed LDS policy

01:15:29 The insane ending to the show!

01:19:09 Linda, Listen

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I have not really encountered another religion that equates secrets with spirituality like Mormonism does.
0:06.9	In so many instances of people coming forward about their abuse, a core theme is that their abuser
0:14.0	was using the language of the church to convince them to be abused. We still don't know if Ruby
0:19.7	Frankie was excommunicated for what she, for her
0:22.7	abuse.
0:23.5	I mean, most of the people in the show were not excommunicated despite being abusers,
0:28.8	or they basically had to have been doing the abuse for years before the church took real
0:33.5	action against them.
0:34.4	When members are in this moment of like true emergency, true moral panic,
0:40.2	they do not act logically because they've been indoctrinated to look to the church for what to do.
0:45.4	The bishop, rather than doing his gut instinct, which is to immediately call the police and say,
0:49.7	this is a huge crime, we have to stop this. I will not rest until this child is protected.
0:55.3	Instead,
1:00.4	over and over again in these stories, the bishop calls a law firm, learns his legal responsibility to report, and then allows the man to go home with his children, and the abuse
1:06.6	continues for years. What church needs? A hundred lawyers? Probably a church that is vigorously
1:13.8	defending their $300 billion. Yeah. The way that the church so systematically pushes out
1:20.0	critics, the way that people just are like, oh, they just had a, you know, people often say of me,
1:26.2	like, oh, your parents were just strict. Even though I have all of these screenshots and receipts of real church doctrine that
1:32.1	is very damning and harming, it's still just, it's like members are very much taught to view
1:37.7	X members as basically the biggest enemy ever. Worse than abusers, worse than files. Yeah. The true enemies are the
1:46.3	ex-members, especially the outspoken ones. Mine is the only voice. What have I been doing?
1:52.6	Lay down my autonomy. After that, it got very dark very quickly.
	...

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