SALT LAKE CITY — When Marla Perrin, now 25, first heard about Mutual, the dating app designed for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she was thrilled.
Perrin had tried dating apps like Tinder in the past, but found the experience fruitless and frustrating: the men she matched with often didn’t share her faith, and her guard was always up, worried that someone would harass or stalk her.
But Mutual seemed like a dating oasis to Perrin, who was living in Hawaii and looking to find a partner. She thought that the men on the app were all members of her church, which meant she could finally relax: they would have the same values and expectations of dating — such as no sex before marriage — and they would be respectful of her boundaries.
Or so she thought, until she matched with a returned missionary who at first seemed successful and physically fit. But after going on a first date with him and finding him arrogant and pushy, she told him she wasn’t interested in seeing him again.
“Don’t lie to me,” he replied. His response made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and she immediately blocked his number. Later that night, she received calls from three random numbers — all of them him — and she blocked those too, and hoped that was the the end of it.
But days later, she received a message from an Instagram account from a guy claiming to live in her area. They exchanged a few messages and he asked her out. As she was still feeling skittish after her last experience, she agreed to meet in front of the safest place she could think of: the Laie Hawaii Temple.
When he showed up, she felt a chill go down her spine: it was the same guy from before — she realized he had tricked her into meeting by using a fake profile. She told him firmly to leave her alone, and returned home immediately. Then the messages started flooding in, from more fake phone numbers and fake Instagram accounts, some of them pretending to be a female friend of hers, telling her she was a liar, “pathetic” and had “mental health issues.”
“In retrospect, I had a false sense of security, because it was a dating app for members of my church. On Mutual, I thought I would find a husband, not a stalker.” — Marla Perrin, 25
“In retrospect, I had a false sense of security, because it was a dating app for members of my church,” she said of the app, which has no affiliation with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “On Mutual, I thought I would find a husband, not a stalker.”
Perrin isn’t alone, and the problem isn’t specific to Mutual. Harassment on dating apps is all too common, according to a recent study by Pew Research Center. Sixty percent of female dating app users under 35 say someone on a dating site or app continued to contact them after they said they were not interested, and 57% reported being sent a sexually explicit message or image they didn’t ask for, the study found.
“Some experts contend that the open nature of online dating — that is, the fact that many users are strangers to one another — has created a less civil dating environment and therefore makes it difficult to hold people accountable for their behavior,” the study states. “This survey finds that a notable share of online daters have been subjected to some form of harassment.”
But to some, religious dating apps like Mutual, J-Swipe, and Christian Mingle not only seem like a good way to meet a partner of the same faith — they can feel like a safer alternative to more mainstream dating apps, where one can match with people with similar values and shared interests.
But the feeling of safety on religious dating sites may be an illusion, and a dangerous one at that, said Dr. Marina Adshade, a professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia who studies the economics of sex and love.
“If women using religious dating apps have a false sense of security, those apps almost certainly will attract people who are willing to take advantage of that,” she said.
A ‘false sense of security’
The Deseret News spoke to several women who shared screenshots of unwanted sexually explicit text messages and images they had received on religious dating apps, including Mutual, J-Swipe and Christian Mingle.
Many said they were surprised to experience sexual harassment on a religious dating app, and that they had specifically sought out a religious app to avoid such behavior.
“I did expect (Mutual) to be different,” said Heidi, a 24-year-old who lives in Millcreek, Utah. “Since you already go to tons of other dating sites/apps like Tinder that are known for hookups (or whatever else that doesn’t necessarily fall into Latter-day Saint standards) you expect an app made for church members to have people that choose to practice those principles in dating.”
Carlee, a social worker who lives in Provo, agrees.
“I think Mutual is unique, because in theory everyone has the same standards, like no sex before marriage,” she said. “But I feel like so many men are trying to take it as far as they can. A lot of people can pose and look a certain way and act a certain way in order to take advantage of people. I think there’s a false sense of security and really unique expectations that you don’t get on other dating sites.”
“A dating app allows you to deviate away from what is socially acceptable in your community, because you can do it secretly without being sanctioned.” — Marina Adshade
Bob Carroll, a co-founder of Mutual, says it’s possible that Mutual users are more trusting of others than the users of other dating apps.
“I would expect that people of deep faith are very trusting people,” he said. “So I think that there is the potential that they will inherently trust a person they meet on the app, rather than saying ‘you have to prove yourself worthy of my trust.’”
It might seem counterintuitive, but religious dating apps can be the kind of place where one might expect to see high levels of sexual harassment, because it provides an opportunity for members of a religious community with strong moral and social expectations to act out and deviate from the norms and expectations of their culture, said Adshade with the Vancouver School of Economics.
“When you’re on a dating app, you have some anonymity, and people feel free to behave in ways that they might not otherwise in public, especially if you’re part of a religious community in which there is a lot of social pressure to behave in ways that are consistent with the norms of that community,” she said. “A dating app allows you to deviate away from what is socially acceptable in your community, because you can do it secretly without being sanctioned.”
‘Not everyone has pure intentions’
Despite the drawbacks, religious dating apps provide important and unique benefits as well, said Adshade.
“I’m relatively in favor of dating app technology just simply because it makes people’s markets so much bigger. And from a purely economic perspective, if you have a bigger market you’re much more likely to come across somebody who has all of the qualities you’re looking for than if you’re in a smaller market,” she said.
That’s especially helpful for single people from religious minorities, such as Jews or members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who may have trouble finding partners in a city in which their faith is not the dominant religion, she said.
That said, dating apps themselves should take responsibility for ensuring that their products are safe for users by taking an active role in screening the people using the app and by responding promptly to reports of sexual harassment, said Adshade.
Carroll, the co-founder of Mutual, said the app has a robust process to allow users to report inappropriate behavior they experience on the app itself or on dates arranged through the app.
They even allow users to inform Mutual if they know that a certain person has a track record of inappropriate behavior unrelated to the app, for example, if that person has harassed or sexually assaulted someone they met at church or at school, he said. Depending on the evidence presented to them, the app’s support team can block the user altogether, or keep an eye on them to see if their behavior escalates, he said.
“It’s really important to us to have the reporting feature on the app and for people to feel safe reporting harassment,” he said. “We want people reporting the issues because that’s the only way to protect our community.”
Mutual’s investment in keeping users safe is integral to the larger mission of the app itself, said Carroll, which is to recreate a close, caring church community online. If church members would protect each other in their physical community against predators and sexual harassers, then Mutual must foster that same ethos, he said.
“We wanted Mutual to be about more than just being able to swipe up and down on LDS girls and LDS guys,” he said. “What we wanted the big difference to be was the tone, that people on the app adhere to the same core values that they would in their own physical community.”
It’s also important for users to take steps to protect themselves when using dating apps.
“The best way to protect yourself is to always meet people in public places, and always let somebody else know where you’re going,” said Adshade. “Do your research on your date before you go out without them, by looking through their Facebook and other social media. See what kind of activities they are involved with and how they treat other people online. I think that it’s a really good idea to get to know them that way before you meet them in the real world.”
Meanwhile, back in Hawaii, Perrin is grateful not to have to use dating apps anymore: at church one Sunday in November 2018, she met the man who became her husband, and they just celebrated their first wedding anniversary earlier this month.
Looking back, she said, her experience on Mutual taught her that just because a dating app is religious-based doesn’t mean that women who use it are safe from harassment.
“If I had to do it again,” she said, “I would treat Mutual like any other dating app, knowing that not everyone has pure intentions.”