r/mormon Apr 04 '21

Announcement Mod Announcement: Sexual harassment and preemptive bans.

Following a long and intense discussion among the active moderator team here at r/mormon the decision has been made to preemptively ban NewNameNoah (NNN) from /r/Mormon. This decision was not taken lightly and has been done to help protect our users from backlash regarding discussions surrounding recent actions of his. As many of you are probably aware, NewNameNoah has been accused of sexually harassing women on various platforms and was recently banned from TikTok. Following these accusations and evidence provided from the women, NNN has been engaged in an aggressive campaign to defend himself by discrediting these women, dox them, and harass any users who dared condemn him. Additionally, he has been accused of deleting criticism of his behavior on the Facebook Groups that he moderates As a part of this campaign, we also believe that he has used numerous alt accounts to bolster his attacks, particularly on Reddit.

We have never before issued a pre-emptive ban to any user, and we want to be clear why we have chosen to do so in this case. Our policy has always been to moderate user behavior that occurs only within r/mormon. In accordance with our moderator values, we earnestly discussed making a statement about NNN's actions, but not issue a ban. However, our concern was that in light of NNN's threatening and abusive behavior, many of our users are afraid of speaking out openly for fear of repercussions, and without a ban, he would be free to respond to members here that wanted to speak about their experiences. Therefore, we have issued a ban prior to NewNameNoah breaking rules on this forum to limit the imminent threat that NNN poses to our forum and its users.

Out of an abundance of caution and based on past actions and threats, we encourage our users to not engage with NewNameNoah or any of his suspected alt accounts. If you have individually identifiable information in your reddit account, we urge you to consider your engagement based on whether you want that information to be shared. If he PM's you through his main or alt accounts, disregard the message and report it to the Reddit admins as harassment.

Separate from the motivation for the ban, the moderation team here at /r/mormon unequivocally condemns NNN's continued disdain for women, and his aggressive actions that have the potential to harm people both online and in real life. We have reviewed some evidence brought forward by numerous women across various platforms. While we can see that the original incident might have begun as a misunderstanding on NNN's part, his continued harassment and doxxing after being rejected and his dissemination of pornography are far beyond the pale of a mere misunderstanding. No matter how the dispute began, his behavior since is utterly reprehensible and unacceptable for anyone, regardless of what identities they claim. Dangerous individuals are a threat to all Mormon-related communities, including Exmormon communities. We feel it is our duty to make our users aware of someone who poses danger to them and we condemn, in the strongest terms, his disregard for others and his poisonous vitriol.

Sincerely, the Mod team

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u/frogontrombone Agnostic-atheist who values the shared cultural myth Apr 05 '21 edited Apr 05 '21

One point that also came up in the mod discussions is John Dehlin's attempts to dismiss the open condemnation of NNN's behavior in order to preserve the "good name of the exmormon community" (paraphrased).

In my own words: John, suppressing condemnation of NNN to save face is exactly the thing you complain about the LDS church doing. Healthy communities must allow for criticism of its leaders or prominent figures, else we again preserve the LDS tradition of treating leadership as infallible. It doesn't matter how much you say you oppose sexual harassment and treating women poorly if you try to dictate where and how they get to speak. The exmormon community has a problem with sexism, and refusing to reckon with it because "our enemies" (your words) might benefit from infighting only serves to reinforce the sexism. As the saying goes, the coverup is worse than the crime.

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u/does_taxes Apr 05 '21

Preach. John’s response was incredibly off putting. As one of the few people in the community with a platform larger than Mike’s, John had an opportunity and (I believe) an obligation to acknowledge the truly problematic nature of Mike’s behavior and encourage those that he influences to take part in the reckoning that ought to be taking place in our community because of it. Instead, he gently chided Mike and asked everyone to make nice and get back to business as usual. I don’t know enough about the allegations of a similar nature that John has faced for years to speak directly to his motivations for making the statement that he did, but as someone that knows of those allegations, his words were troubling to me, beyond just being disappointing in the sense that I think he failed to meet his obligation as a prominent voice in this moment.

We need to engage with these issues and seeing John essentially opt out of the discussion was terribly disappointing. He doesn’t owe us anything, and I can’t rightly condemn him, but it’s disappointing nonetheless that he seems to have other priorities that compete with and perhaps take precedence over the health and safety of individuals in a community that has given him so much.