February 14, 1986

How the Telling Began | February 14, 2026 is the 40th Anniversary of the Scott Children Telling

Photo by Christian Agbede on Unsplash

Shattered Silence

The story no one wanted to tell. The story no one wanted to hear. Not even me.

“No one wants to hear this story. Not even April. I don’t want to tell it. But if I open my mouth (it’s been closed for four years), it comes out. I want to be in the recovery room again, but instead I am here now, telling my story.

It is February 14, 1986. Cold outside but not snowing. Kids can ring door bells and run and hide if they want to, but they don’t do that much anymore. Now they put their Valentines in a shoe box they’ve covered at home with white Kleenex and red crepe paper. Where it’s Elmer-glued, the crepe paper is all squashed and blobby. They line the boxes up on the school room worktable. The boys don’t care how full their boxes are, but the little girls wait until they go home and then count the cards over and over sitting on the floor by their beds after they’ve pulled off the candy hearts and suckers. My grandchildren took their boxes to school yesterday.

This February 14th I am sitting in a therapist’s office waiting. My two oldest grandchildren, Timothy and Isabel, are watching the fish in an aquarium whose glass is so smudged with little fingerprints it’s not pleasant to look at the fish. I’m here because at the last minute Loraine’s baby fell and cut his chin and she had to take him in for stitches. She should be here any minute now. That’s what I’ve been telling myself for fifteen minutes.

I had never been in this waiting room until three weeks ago. Now it’s where I seem to live.

I don’t much like the people here in this waiting room.

One man fidgets so much you think he must have a disease. A woman pretends to read Parents Magazine, but she doesn’t turn any pages. Little kids play with and fight over the blocks and stuffed animals. The woman next to me is fat and worn, and she isn’t changing her smelly baby. She keeps trying to talk to me. She says awful things, and she won’t shut up. She says her little girl ripped the head off her new doll and stuck burning matches in the cloth body. She says her husband thinks the child should have to pay for the doll, teach her to take care of property.

I don’t want to hear these stories. I don’t want to sit in this office. I’m not one of these people in their capes. I keep saying over and over in my head, “Please, God, please.” These people are the Others. I want mother-fucker to be just a name scrungy truck drivers yell at each other on Los Angeles freeways.”¹

—Carol Scott, Co-Author, Paperdolls & Cowboy Boots, page 47

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February 14, 2026 is the 40th Anniversary of the Scott Children Telling

The Scott Grandchildren and Children are doing remarkably well. It’s a testament to those who break the silence, tell, and get therapeutic support early that they can almost lead lives where the scars of the abuse is barely visible.²

My co-author passed away a few years ago. I’ve always shied away from commenting on her portion of the book, because it’s not my story. Yes, there are ties between our two stories, especially with Hank, who as a teenager abused me, then grew to be an adult and ravaged the Scott’s family and many in their elite Mormon Neighborhood.

But, now that my co-author is gone, I’m the only one left to speak: I pray the wounds of spiritual betrayal she felt from the Mormon Church have subsided. I pray she knows she helped a lot of people. I hope she knows she did a lot to help many.

“I didn’t do enough”

There’s a Hebrew saying, depicted in Schinldler’s List: “Anyone who saves a life is as if he saves the world entire.”

At the end of the movie, Oskar Schindler quietly collapses and exclaims, “I didn’t do enough”

I felt that way particularly after Kacie Woody was killed .and Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped.

I didn’t do enough.³

I always sensed my co-author and her husband felt that they didn’t do enough either. In my perception, I believe they wanted the LDS Church to publicly acknowledge the horror and suffering of the children.

It never happened. ⁴

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Saving one life is sacred.

After Paperdolls: Healing from Sexual Abuse in Mormon Neighborhoods was published in 1992, we received hundreds, in not thousands of letters, messages and correspondence from other sexual abuse victims and survivors. Many uttered hushed whispers that my story was a mirror to their own. Others professed that we saved their life.

One life saved might not be the world entire. But, it’s something. Something divine and sacred. Life is sacred.

Acknowledgement, Justice, and Responsibility

Acknowledgement and justice would help victims and survivors tremendously. I believe it would help the perpetrators also.⁵ However, even if a victim/survivor never receives acknowledge, indemnification, spiritual or legal justice—a victim/survivor can heal.

To my beloved survivors, even if your perps are slinging DARVO⁶ attacks at you and conjuring up a lot of rubbish—you can heal. I strongly encourage you to take action to protect yourself, remove yourself from their evil attacks. Then, take time to heal. Get in a support group. Get into therapy. Go to SAPREA. Call RAINN. There are resources for you. You can heal.

Your life is important. You are sacred.

1. Paperdolls & Cowboy Boots, page, 47

2. For more specifics, with Carol Scott’s eloquent words, please read Paperdolls & Cowboy Boots.

3. Of course, that’s just a feeling. An irrational and helpless feeling. The reality is that when I was abused as a child, I was seven years old. When I started dealing with it, I was thirty years old. I didn’t even know if Kacie Woody’s perpetrator was still alive, where he was or if he continued his horrific pattern of abuse. As a child I never knew the name of the one who eventually abducted and tortured Elizabeth Smart. As a child, I called him the “Toy Box Man.”

4. The closest they got was the Stake President from their old neighborhood told me that the General Authorities delegated the responsibility to him. The Stake President was admonished: “Where this this much smoke there is fire. We leave it to you to right this wrong.”

The Stake President of that old neighborhood looked me directly in the eye and said, “I know that this all happened, but I couldn’t subject the Church to that much liability.

5. Some call it “repentance” others “making amends” but I believe accepting responsibly for ones actions, and trying to indemnify the one injured or harmed helps the victim and the perpetrator.

6. DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender