With ‘MeToo’ and similar movements of recent years empowering victims of sexual abuse and turning the tables on the abusers, we’re starting to hear more and more harrowing tables of harassment, assault, and rape. These stories are never easy to hear and not easy to share for the victims involved, but they can help to bring criminals to justice and prevent those people from hurting others in the same way. Either way, it takes a lot of bravery to stand up and tell the world what happened to you, and McKenna Denson needed an awful lot of courage to face her rapist.
According to McKenna, a former Mormon missionary leader named Joseph L. Bishop raped her back in the 1980s.
The incident occurred in 1984, while Bishop was in charge of the Missionary Training Center for the Mormon Church. McKenna says he raped her in the basement of the center. She also argues that the Church knew about his “prior sexual improprieties against women” but made no attemps to stop him.
In 2018, she filed a lawsuit against the Mormon Church and Bishop, but the Church has so far failed to acknowledge or accept her claims.
The Church tried to get the case dismissed on statute of limitation, and a judge at Brigham Young University officially dismissed many of McKenna’s claims. In short, the case was effectively being covered up and washed away.
But McKenna wasn’t willing to let that happen. She bravely decided to face up to her rapist and share her story with the people closest to him.
She stepped into Bishop’s local church in Chandler, Arizona, telling the congregation that “a sexual predator” in their own community was being protected by LDS Church officials.
McKenna bravely stood up in a room where Bishop and his son were sitting and shared the details of her story, arguing that something had to be done, for the safety of others and the sanctity of the Church.
For the atonement to take place, we have to be accountable for what we do. In order to keep the church safe, we need to hold sexual predators accountable.
Quickly, church leaders intervened to try and get McKenna to stop talking, physically pulling her away from the lectern.
When she got outside, she confronted Bishop’s son, telling him that his dad raped her. His response: “Yeah, right.”
The Church has consistently criticized McKenna, saying that people with “personal grievances” should find other ways to share that information and saying that filming inside the church showed a “lack of respect”.
The latest news in this story is that McKenna is still pushing to bring her abuser to justice, but her case is currently on hold as she’s waiting for a new attorney.
The case is also set to be a part of an upcoming documentary on sexual abuse and cover-ups in the Mormon Church entitled ‘The Hushed Ones: A Cover-Up Decades in the Making’.
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