Church admits it doesn?????t know if missionaries are safe.

[Guest]

A year ago, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent a safety questionnaire to all of its young full-time missionaries. It included inquiries about whether the “elders” and “sisters” have experienced or observed physical harm, such as being punched, kicked, mugged, choked, restrained, bitten by a dog or in any other way injured.
It also asked about harassment, including obscene gestures, catcalls or stalking. It wanted to know if any respondents had been grabbed, groped, kissed or otherwise sexually assaulted — and, if so, when and where.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/05/04/ ... -concerns/

“We were pleased to learn that an overwhelming majority of missionaries reported feeling safe within their missions, and the number of incidents was very low compared to the total missionaries serving,” LDS Church spokesman Daniel Woodruff said in a news release. “Gratefully, serious threats and violence involving missionaries are uncommon, although we recognize that exceptions occur.”

Before the survey you didn’t know whether missionaries felt safe or not?

“Information from this follow-up survey will be shared with mission presidents,” Woodruff added, “to help them understand the potential risks in their missions and to help them consider where missionaries are placed.”

Mission Presidents don’t already know? Risk assessments aren’t done as a matter of routine?

Staggering.

Edited to add. When the Apostle stares at the picture of the missionary on the computer screen, deciding under divine inspiration where to send them...they don’t know if they’ll be safe there or not. They need to send a few surveys out to check retrospectively.

[_Dr Exiled]

I don't know how routine these types of checks are in other organizations. I don't know what organization would even be comparable, off hand. However, one would hope that this type of threat assessment would become routine in the future. Obviously, the discernment model doesn't work and is really a part of the "magic" the church leaders are selling to the members. So, it would be prudent to develope a reporting system so the church magicians can evaluate risk as normal humams would do. Maybe this way threats can be discovered, analyzed and then prevented.

On my mission in Brazil, I was held up once at gun point and our apartment was right next to where armed gangs would roam. We once watched a gun battle in real time (not very bright but we thought there was some magical power watching us, so why not watch the gun battle). Also, a drunk Brazilian once shot at a companion of mine. No saftey precautions were ever discussed other than to be "careful." Also, the "wise" mission president told us to not write home about these incidents, of course. Silence is golden in the church ever since Joseph Smith obsessed about secrecy in the nauvoo days.

[_candygal]

Yikes...might as well join the army!!