Abuse and how it was handled

In 2011, abuse was near the bottom of the list. Seven percent of respondents said that their own or a loved one's abuse by someone in the Church was a major factor, and the trend line was flat or falling. The authors listed it alongside offense and desire to sin as the reasons believing members overestimate.

That is worth keeping in view, because the picture has changed since. What rose after 2011 was not abuse itself but the institution's handling of it. In 2018, a former bishop named Sam Young gathered thousands of accounts of children being asked sexual questions in worthiness interviews, marched on Church headquarters, went on a hunger strike, and was excommunicated. In 2022, the Associated Press reported on an Arizona case in which a bishop who learned of a father's ongoing abuse of his daughter called the Church's help line, was told he was not required to report it, and did not; the abuse continued for years. The Church defended the help line as a tool that protects children.

The 2014 list already contains the items that later reporting confirmed: protection of abusers at the expense of the abused, untrained bishops as counselors, and the interviews. Women rated abuse significantly higher than men did. For members who had assumed that a church led by revelation would at least be safe for children, each of these stories landed on a shelf that was already carrying a great deal.