This is the story of a “#MeToo” event that took place in the mission field in 1938, detailing the harassment (not assault) of a sister missionary by an elder, and the response to that harassment by Church leaders.

I have chosen to conceal the identity of the elder involved; he has no descendants to be embarrassed by this story, but there isn’t any particular good to be done by naming and shaming in this case. On the other hand, I fully identify the young sister, Thelma Heaton (later Hastings) – she did nothing wrong, she did everything right, and if her descendants are not aware of this aspect of their grandmother’s mission, they may take a little pride in her personally difficult service and her mission president’s evaluation of her character.

Thelma Heaton was born in 1913 in the southern Utah mining camp of Marysvale (my mother’s birthplace!), and spent her youth in Alton, Utah, in the next county south, or in St. George where she went to school. She was the proverbial “well-behaved woman,” and when she did make history, it was for doing the kinds of things that turn up in the social notes of small-town Utah in that era: She spoke in Church meetings; she won a speaking contest as a Gleaner Girl; she was honored as the “Goddess of Liberty” in her home town’s Fourth of July parade; she came home from St. George to spend holidays with her parents in Alton. And in 1937, at age 24, she was called to serve in the Central States. This is her formal mission portrait.

Her name appears twice in the 1937 issues of the Liahona, the magazine of the U.S. missions: Early in her mission, she appears in a list of transfers, and shortly after, she is named as the Mission Recorder, called into the mission office at Independence, Missouri. That was a very responsible position in any mission: Thelma was responsible for maintaining the formal records of all Latter-day Saint births, blessings, baptisms, confirmations, priesthood ordinations, excommunications, marriages, and deaths – all by hand (requiring attention to detail and legible handwriting). When members moved into, within, or out of the mission, she wrote out certificates, by hand, to notify branches of a member’s standing in the Church. Her work ensured that Church members received recognition of their standing.

The little notice of this appointment appears in the 10 August 1937 issue of the Liahona.

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That’s it. Just that. I went page by page through the entire year looking at photographs of missionary groups and member conferences, and no picture of the Independence conference or office staff was published that year. There is nothing to draw anyone’s attention to Sister Heaton in particular out of the scores of sister missionaries serving at that time.

Yet it did draw the attention of one man, Elder J., serving in another U.S. mission far from Independence.

Elder J. was born in 1911 in Cache County, Utah, where he had apparently spent all his life to this point. I have not found his name in the social notes of the small-town newspapers in his region. I do know that he was married in 1934, and that within the year he was divorced. He went into the mission field at about the same time Sister Heaton was called – not as a regular missionary, but as a short-term missionary. (Short-term missionaries in that era served for a few weeks or months. They did not receive formal calls from the First Presidency, although their names were approved; instead, they were recommended by their bishops and stake presidents directly to mission presidents, or mission presidents requested their service – remember that there was only a handful of mission presidents at this point, and virtually all of them knew each other intimately, making such requests fairly easy. Short-term missionaries did not receive minister’s certificates; they could not claim clergy discounts on train fare; they held no authority within the official mission structure. They were usually called for the summer months when regular missionaries who worked in cities spread out through rural areas, tracting and holding blitzes of street meetings and informal services to reach people far from the centers where they usually worked. The service of short-term missionaries allowed regular missionary companionships to split up and cover twice as much ground as they otherwise could cover; these short-timers helped with tracting and did a little public speaking, but not much else.

Elder J. was approved as a short-term missionary, but with some hesitation. I do not have records spelling out the hesitations expressed by local leaders and made known both to the First Presidency and to his mission president. From the clues present in later correspondence, I am certain there was no suggestion of criminal behavior or sexual misconduct. Rather, they seem to have been fears based on Elder J.’s erratic personal behavior – some emotional instability, perhaps, or some overzealousness in religious matters, or anticipated difficulties with his companions or others? Nothing serious enough to disqualify him as a missionary but well enough known that his mission president was told he need not keep Elder J. if he became a handicap to the work in the mission field.

Elder J. did want to be a missionary – so much so that after serving for a while as a short-term missionary, he asked to have his service converted to that of a regular elder. The leaders involved agreed to extend his term – conditionally.  His mission president was advised, confidentially, “that if at any time conditions seemed to warrant it, Elder J. might be released short of a two-year-period.”

Apparently conditions did, or almost did, warrant it. His mission president’s notes indicate that he seriously considered releasing Elder J. twice within his first year or so of service, but that the president “tried in each instance to bring about adjustments which would make it unnecessary to release Elder [J.] as I have been in hopes that he would be able to fulfill a two-year mission.” There is no hint as to what “adjustments” were needed – a change of companions? teaching Elder J. the limits of his authority? patching up misunderstandings with local members? I have no idea.

When Elder J. saw that August 10 Liahona notice of Sister Heaton’s appointment as Recorder of her mission, another “difficulty” commenced, one that could not be corrected by any “adjustment” that would allow Elder J. to continue his service as a missionary.

Elder J. wrote to Sister Heaton care of the mission offices in Independence, telling her he had seen her appointment mentioned in the Liahona. He asked Sister Heaton if, as mission Recorder, she would be willing to provide him with some information if he asked her for it. He did not specify what information he needed. Naturally, she wrote back to say that she would; “if he needed any information that she could furnish him, she would be glad to do it, as recorder of the Mission.”

That started a series of letters from Elder J. to Sister Heaton, sent at one- or two-week intervals for the next year. He never did ask for any mission-related information, but instead asked Sister Heaton all manner of personal questions, endeavoring to establish a personal relationship with her. She told him “positively and frankly” that she was “filling a Mission and wanted to fill it honorably and wanted him to cease his correspondence.” He pressed her to come see him in his mission area, or to agree to meet him if he came to hers. He continued to write, making her more and more uncomfortable with the correspondence, which she did not answer; in fact, she tore up his letters and threw them away.

Sister Heaton asked for help from two of her fellow missionaries, elders who wrote to Elder J. on her behalf and ordered him to cease harassing her with his unwelcome attention. He continued to write.

Finally, after nearly a full year of this weekly annoyance, Elder J. sent a letter that could not be ignored. In it, he conveyed the contents of a “revelation” he had written. Unfortunately that “revelation” is not among the papers I have read; from later description, though, it appears that Sister Heaton was named in that writing – perhaps it was the sort of thing we occasionally hear about where a lovesick young man receives a “revelation” that a young woman is supposed to marry him. Whatever it contained, however, its cover letter disturbed Sister Heaton even more: Elder J. said that he was “going to find her or die trying.”

In desperation, Sister Heaton went to her mission president, Elias S. Woodruff. Maybe she should have gone earlier, but that was her choice. She had tried to handle the situation herself; she had enlisted the help of two friends; but now she had to find more powerful help.

To his everlasting credit, President Woodruff recognized the seriousness of the harassment and the fact that it was escalating: Sister Heaton was not safe if Elder J.’s infatuation/manipulation was not cut short. President Woodruff immediately – the same day that Sister Heaton received the “revelation” and the foreboding “find her or die trying” letter – wrote to Elder J., reciting a summary of the events to show that he knew the full history.

Now you send her a long typewritten vision with the Lord in which you mix a combination of serious matter with some very light-minded material. You also inclose your card in which you tell her that you intend to pursue her and see her at home if you do not see her here and that you will do this or die trying.

I am writing now to request you to stop this nonsense and quit sending letters to this young lady, who is being upset and made nervous by your constant unwelcome attention. I am sending a copy of this letter to your Mission President so that he will be advised of your activity in this direction. I am writing this at the request of Sister Heaton, who wants to be relieved of the embarrassment that you are causing her by continuing to pursue her in correspondence.

Nowhere, here or in any of the ensuing correspondence, is there any hint that Elder J. should cease his attentions in order to focus on his missionary service, no hint that his behavior would be appropriate after his mission but not during it. Every reference to it drips with disapproval for the reason that Sister Heaton rejected his advances, and because she was made uncomfortable. That was reason enough for everyone involved – except Elder J.

President Woodruff sent a copy of his letter to Elder J.’s mission president. He spelled out in further detail Elder J.’s pursuit of Sister Heaton. He asked that the other mission president see to it that Elder J. ceased his attention. “If he does not,” President Woodruff said, “I will prefer charges against him, either before you or before his Bishop at home. … It must needs be arranged and taken care of.”

President Woodruff did not know of the “conditional” status of Elder J.’s missionary appointment, nor of the instruction that Elder J. be released at any time “conditions seemed to warrant.” This was a matter that could not be “adjusted” by the mission president. Elder J. would have to go, immediately.

Elder J.’s mission president called Elder J. to come to the mission home the day he received President Woodruff’s letter. Instead of handing him the ministerial certificate that had just arrived from Salt Lake – the document that would have established Elder J. on an equal footing with the other missionaries and made him an official representative of the Church – the president informed Elder J. that he was being released then and there. Elder J. should return to his lodging and pack his bags, and return to the mission office the next day to pick up his release – the president was willing to make it an honorable release – and his train ticket, and the president would escort him to the train station and put him on the train – he was expected to depart from the area immediately.

Elder J. at first denied that he had been in contact with Sister Heaton for those many months, but confronted with the evidence sent by President Woodruff, he finally admitted his guilt and seemed to appreciate his president’s willingness both to pay his way home and to release him honorably for the service he had rendered rather than dishonorably for the secret misbehavior. He left the office.

He did not return to the mission office the next morning, however. Instead, he wrote several letters over the next days, stating that “he is ‘withdrawing’ himself from the mission, and ‘not remaining to accept your release.’” His return address indicated that he had taken up residence at a hotel. Two weeks after his release – accepted or not – Elder J. wrote asking to be reinstated as a missionary, “with some assertions as to what may happen if this is refused.” I do not know what those “assertions” – threats – were, but they carried no weight either with the mission president or the First Presidency. Letters were written to Elder J.’s bishop and stake president, who contacted Elder J.’s parents to tell them that Elder J. no longer had any mission status and that they were no longer under obligation to support him in the field.

Elder – now Brother – J. did not immediately cease his attentions to Sister Heaton. Within a month after his release, President Woodruff wrote to the other mission president again, enclosing two letters recently received from Brother J. “Sister Heaton,” he wrote, “is an exceptionally fine lady missionary. She has no affairs. She has nothing but her heart in the work, and this continued nagging and writing has almost upset her nerves to a point of hysterics. This young man simply must quit writing to her.” Both mission presidents had believed Sister Heaton and done their best to protect her. In the end, though, there was little either man could do. Neither could the First Presidency do anything more – they, too, received a string of letters from Brother J., complaining of his treatment, finding fault with his mission president, demanding reinstatement. No authority at any level sided with him. In fact, the First Presidency sent word that when Brother J. did return to Utah, he should write a letter reporting his mission. They did not want to greet him at their offices, which was standard practice for returning missionaries within reach of Salt Lake.

When Sister Heaton completed her full mission late in 1938, she received an honorable release and returned to Southern Utah. Her ward threw her a reception at which they sold refreshments, the money given as a Christmas gift to a missionary couple serving at the St. George Temple.

In July of 1939, Thelma Heaton married George Hastings, an ordinance worker in the St. George Temple. Her sealing session “was attended by so many of their relatives and friends that it necessitated a double session to accommodate the number present.” (I don’t know what a “double session” was – if you do, please comment.)

Thereafter, the string of social notes in the newspapers – first in Southern Utah, and then in Salt Lake County where Thelma and George Hastings eventually settled – continued to report on the developments of a well-behaved life: Thelma had children; she with another teacher accompanied 20 Primary children to the Salt Lake Temple to do baptisms for the dead (at that era, the ordinance was open to children younger than 12). Over the course of her long life, she served in Junior Sunday School, MIA, Relief Society, and as ward librarian as well as Primary. Her 1995 obituary notes that “Mom was loved of her family and loved having her children and grandchildren around her. She enjoyed crocheting and quilting for them throughout her life.” She is buried in Sandy, Utah.

And Brother J.? The traces of his later life suggest that he tried to build a normal life, but struggled. He was married at least four times, before his mission and after. In addition to those marriages – at least three of which ended in divorce – there is a newspaper notice of the “surprise announcement of Miss R.’s engagement to Brother J.” at a ward dance – an announcement that contained the information that he “filled a mission in [X] for his church 1-1/2 years ago.” Six weeks after that “surprise announcement,” though, his engagement to Miss R. was cancelled and his wedding to Mrs. O. in the Mesa Temple was reported.

Brother J. moved from his Cache Valley hometown to the Phoenix area to Los Angeles to Seattle. He tried this and that to support himself, and sometimes a wife. In the early 1940s he wrote two short books, one on Mormon baptism and the other on Mormon marriage. (!) In one case he wrote to apostle John A. Widtsoe to tell him of his plans. Elder Widtsoe responded, “If you feel impressed to write a treatise on baptism, you have full right to do so.” Eleven days later, Brother J. wrote to say he had completed his manuscript. “Inasmuch as you have given your approval of the work,” he said,

and ‘full right’ to compile the material, I planned, with your permission, to have the following note of authorization printed with it. ‘Approval of this work for use in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and full right to the compilation thereof designated to the author Nov. 2, 1943, by Dr. John A. Widtsoe of the Council of Twelve of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.’

Six days later he wrote again, announcing his plan to get the names and addresses of all seminaries and institutes and send a complimentary copy of his booklet to each, asking each principal to sell copies to students on a commission basis.

Elder Widtsoe hastened to reply and put the brakes on such plans. He wrote very carefully but explicitly. “You are a much more rapid worker than most of us,” he wrote.

You must not misunderstand our correspondence. I wrote you that you have full right as a member of the Church, or as a person not a member of the church, to write on any subject that you may desire. There is nothing in the regulation of the Church prohibiting such free action.

However, the Church does not ordinarily give written approval of works produced individually and unofficially, such as you are doing in this case. I would not have the right to give such approval, nor would any single and separate member of the church. To obtain the right to print such a statement as you suggest in any book or pamphlet, the manuscript must be presented to the publication committee of the Church for consideration by that committee. In my judgment, the committee would hesitate to permit such a printed approval, for it would set precedent which might greatly embarrass the church, and at least give the committee members a great deal of unnecessary work to do. Perhaps you have not understood the procedure to be followed.

I congratulate you upon giving your time and talent to this great latter-day cause, and pray the Lord to bless you in it abundantly.

Brother J. ‘s exaggerated reaction suggests, perhaps, some mental or emotional irregularities.

From your letter it appears that I’m a great deal of trouble or annoyance to you all. I’m very, very sorry to have bothered you so much. I realize that there is no good reason why you or anyone else should put themselves out to assist me to do things properly.

I’m just a young man of 32 years, a humble elder in the Church. I help build ships for a living. My hands are greasy most of the time. I don’t see why anyone in your high station should bother with me. Perhaps what I have said in my Manuscript is only fit for humble, simple folks like myself to read anyway. The rich and the proud would derive little benefit from my simple words and simple thots. …

I don’t know when I have felt so utterly useless, and beneath everybody as I have felt since I received your last letter. I feel sorry that I ever attempted to write anything for publication.

Elder Widtsoe, bless him, tried once more in a letter written within a few days of hearing from Brother J.

I have your note and cannot imagine what I have said to depress you. You must not be too sensitive.

I have also read your article on baptism, and it is very good. You write very well. I would suggest [here Elder Widtsoe inserts some practical ideas about organization, voice, and focus, suggesting to me that the writing really wasn’t very good]. Otherwise, I can see no improvement necessary. I congratulate you upon this nice piece of work.

As I said in my letter, I have no authority to approve this work or any other work for the Church. Such approval can come only through the regularly constituted committee on that subject, and is very seldom given. In fact, in my own writing I do not ask the committee to sponsor what I say.

I have not found further correspondence on the subject. The booklet on baptism was eventually published, but certainly without the endorsement of the Church and without being peddled by seminary teachers. Brother J.’s second booklet on Mormon marriage soon followed and was advertised in the newspapers in both California and Utah. I have not seen the booklet itself, but the advertising copy suggests a simple explanation of the importance of marriage in Latter-day Saint doctrine; there is no suggestion in the advertising that Brother J.’s writing addresses polygamy or goes beyond standard Church teaching.

Early in 1947, Elder Widtsoe wrote again to Brother J. in response to a letter I have not seen.

I know nothing about the events that led to your excommunication from the Church. The High Council undoubtedly had evidence sufficient in their minds to effect your excommunication. You must have been in error somewhere. You know the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. You have taught it, preached it these many years. If a man sins, he must repent and then seek forgiveness. That is the requirement made upon all of us. None can escape it. Therefore, you must by traveling the same path recover your membership in the Church.

Since I am utterly ignorant of the causes that led to your excommunication, I can only lay down these general principles. It will not do at all to lay the blame for anything you have done upon your father or your father’s father. It is true that the sins of the fathers are often involved in the punishment of the children, yet the sins of the fathers are not the cause of the sins of the sons.

Now, go forward in good cheer, correcting your mistakes, laying aside your sins whatever they may be, and seek again the membership of the Church of Christ.

If you think you have been dealt with unjustly, which you do not say in your letter but only faintly imply, you always have the right of appeal. You know yourself whether the charges against you are justifiable or not.

And that’s the last I know of Brother J. He died in 1983, and is buried in the Cache Valley town where he was born. He has no descendants, and no one has fleshed out the bare facts in his Family Search record with pictures or documents or any other memories.