[Digory]

FWIW, What you described as your personal experience doesn’t strike me as all that abusive.

If my (non Mormon) pastor was told someone was violating title IX (sex assault), I’d expect them to report to various other authorities. Mandatory reporting laws mean most information communicated to religious leaders abouse sexual harm isn’t all that confidential.

Maybe Mormons have a relationship to clergy more like Catholics do to priests?

[Mbioguy]

You've got it backwards. This has nothing to do with mandatory reporting laws. You are assuming something is said about person B during person A's confessional. That isn't what is being described.

A student confesses to their religious leaders that they have done some sin. Fine, go through the religious repentance process. That's how things normally work in other religions too. A religious leader doesn't have authority to academically punish someone. What doesn't normally happen, is that this info gets shared with a school authority that does. And then the school authority shares info with campus police, from where it can also go into state or federal databases.

Or it goes the other way, where info given to city police ends up in the hands of academic or religious folks who use it abusively.

A student like Madi Barney is assaulted, she goes to city police. City police share detailed info with campus police, who share it with title ix and honor code office, who share it with religious authorities. She was not the assaulter, she was the victim. Yet, because a part of the police report includes a history of some breaking of the honor code, even though as in my original response predators manipulate folks into doing this, she ends up being investigated and punished academically and religiously. City PD ends up functionally an investigation and enforcement arm of academic and religious authorities. That is ABSOLUTELY institutional abuse of power.

I didn't share much of my personal experiences, just enough to rebut the claim that religious attendance is not mandatory, that was the purpose of paragraphs 1-2 so I don't know what you are going on about. The rest of the response was what detailed the abusive system.

I didn't even touch on how this is used against LGBT students.

[Malician]

If there are no barriers between the police, the sexual assault investigation department of the university, the honor code enforcement of the university, and what the religious leaders hear during private confessional (what the poster above describes):

1. Anything said to the police, the university, or during confessional can get you, the victim, in trouble with the honor code department.

2. Predators know this, so they intentionally work to get victims to break minor rules that will bring major honor code punishments down - preventing the victims from reporting real crimes, or even talking about them to anyone - the police, the relevant university departments, or even their religious leader.

This isn't about the pastor reporting evidence of a crime to authorities, this is about the honor code department destroying the integrity and value of every other law enforcement or authority and effectively protecting predators.

This happens outside BYU with drugs: predators rape victims after getting them under the influence of minor drugs which will get the victim in trouble if they go to the police.