Brenda Miles and Bill Cartsensen

The primary focus of this website is the Glenn L. Pace Memo and Brenda Miles is only tangentially related to that--they kinda just happen to share a common setting and time period. Furthermore, Bill Carstensen, mentioned in Episode 5, is only tangentially related to Miles. So we did not give Bill's case a full treatment.

So here are some more details:

Bill Carstensen was accused of abuse in Bountiful by Marion Smith and Co at the Intermountain Sexual Abuse Treatment Center (ISAT). Barbara Snow and Paul Whitehead were involved.

Bill was the son-in-law of Marion Smith, the director of ISAT. So the whole family was neck deep in the experimental psycho-therapy of the Satanic Panic. Bill was a true believer.

When Bill was accused, he responded, "I don’t remember anything. I don’t know what they’re talking about but my kids don’t lie”. (Marion, "Blip," pg. 9). This is very strange response for an abuser to make. But it is not strange when one recognizes that Bill was a true believer in recovered memory therapy. If he denied the accusation, Bill was denying the entire enterprise. Another psychiatrist, Dr. Mason Redd, treated Bill and concluded that Bill "was so beaten in life, so psychologically downtrodden, that he'd believe anything he was accused of." (Smith, "Blip," p. 11).

In the video essay series, Bill's history with Brenda Miles is partially recounted, but Bill's story goes further. He was sued and hounded by accusations for years. Bill's second wife also brought accusations against him. She blamed the church, saying that she thought the accusations were untrue because the church had not disciplined him. In this way, the Church was responsible for the abuse she alleged happened.

Also far from the Brenda Miles case, is that Bill voluntarily moved to Maryland for treatment at Johns Hopkins Medical Treatment Center. Bro checked himself in! After four months of continued, intense therapy, Bill was given Sodium Amytal, a controversial truth agent that has since been discontinued for use in the United States. Sodium Amytal produces a state of hypnosis and renders the patient highly suggestive. It also "does not function reliably as a truth agent." Why not? Because it "might make you say something to please someone else, even if it's not true." (Orwig, Jessica. (5 March 2023). "'Truth serum' drugs do exist." Business Insider. Link.) While under heavy influence of the drug, Bill made strange confessions to the doctors. The Johns Hopkins Hospital Final Progress Note, dated 30 June 1986 by Fred Berlin reports:

"33 year old was attorney from Utah who was implicated in several incidents of sexual abuse of young children (his son, daughters & nieces). Patient did not deny these incidents might have occurred but did say he was unable to remember them. Through treatment, he became more effective in ... the patient discussed the content of the sodium with the nurse. He admits to remembering many inappropriate sexual acts that he was involved in with his children and mother. He denies, however, being sexually aroused by his children, but does state that he had an erection during the time of the instances. He also denies ever climaxing when demonstrating sexual acts on his children. He explains the incidents by stating that he has a great need to have control and he connects control with sexual control. He states that not climaxing is a form of maximal control. He states also that he showed control over his sexual life and his wife by not complying to having sex when she wanted it but doing it only when he wanted it and initiated the act. When asked why wasn't that bit of control enough, he states that he wanted to have that same type of control over his children like his mother has over him. He also admits that the "tabooness" of it was a real turn on, just being able to get away with cheating on my wife. He also states that doing this with his children ..."

It's hard to know if Bill was just high as a kite, or if he was telling the truth. Bill's reminiscences are vague, focusing on his motivation, not the acts themselves. Since Sodium Amytal makes the patient so open to suggestibility, it might have had the precise opposite effect as intended. Bill was pressured on all sides to admit abuse so the Sodium Amytal might have just weakened him against the pressure. Additionally, the doctors diagnosed him with "adjustment disorder," which is "a mental health condition where extreme emotional or behavioral reaciont to a stressor" like divorce or job loss. Both of which resulted from the abuse accusations.

This is also very strange behavior for an abuser. If Bill was really an abuser, (remember also that he was a lawyer), then it is puzzling why he would willfully subject himself to all of this.

Perhaps aware of the unreliability of the "confession," doctors discharge Bill from Johns Hopkins as "improved," and, as stated in the video, "not a danger" to those around him. Being a pedophile isn't a crime, but acting on it certainly is. The therapists at Johns Hopkins did what they could to help Bill, but they were not criminal investigators.

Furthermore, Bill never mentioned drinking fecal matter, or giving children sedatives to numb pain, or killing animals, or parties or anything of the sort. What began as sadistic and torturous, at worst turned out to be disgusting sexual abuse. Any abuse is horrible, but Bill wasn't accused of just "any abuse," he had been accused of heinous, devlish things.

No matter. AntiMormons will point to this as the smoking gun, that Russell M. Nelson was covering up abuse by Brenda Miles because Bill Carstensen said these things when he was on drugs. These are the facts and the reader can draw their own conclusion.

The important part is this: Bill's alleged abuse of his children has absolutely nothing to do with Brenda Miles. Even under Sodium Amytal, Bill did not implicate Brenda Miles or Dick Miles. Dr. Snow and company were accusing Bill of holding abuse "parties" with Brenda Miles. They told of "violence," torturing animals and nearly drowning children. Nothing like this was corroborated by Carstensen. Bill never mentioned drinking fecal matter, or giving children sedatives to numb pain, or killing animals, or parties or anything of the sort. What began as sadistic and torturous, at worst turned out to be disgusting sexual abuse. Any abuse is horrible, but Bill wasn't accused of just "any abuse," he had been accused of heinous, devlish things.

Bill's family was absolutely soaked in the experimental psychology of recovered memory therapy. Bill was too. Couple that with heavy hypnotic drugs and you might get only more confusion. If Bill did abuse his children, then may God have mercy on his soul, and may God comfort the children, now grown. But none of this involves Brenda Miles.

Lastly, if this wasn't Satanic Ritual Abuse, then why was it retrieved using Recovered Memory Therapy? SRA-believers are always adamant that the abuse is so heinous that it dissociates the personality of the victim and makes them unable to recall the abuse. But if Bill's accusers want to point to his confession, and resulting diagnosis as smoking gun evidence, then are they claiming that any and all abuse victims suffer from dissociative disorder? That Bill himself was suffering from dissociative disorder? While we're at it, who's to say Dr. Barbara Snow wasn't dissociatively repressing memories of the children admitting it was all a hoax? SRA-believers are quick to choose when memories are reliable and when they are not. For the months of Bill's children denying abuse, they were not, but then suddenly they were.

For these reasons, because it is only tangentially related to the Glenn L. Pace Memo, Bill's case was not covered in full in the video essay series.