Organized religious groups are only a few bad decisions away from being a cult. As with many thing is this world, organized religion is what you make of it. You can use it to wield power and victimize others, or you can use it as a moral compass to guide you in society and in building a strong and loving family. Invariably, assholes will find a way to do the former.
But it's beautiful when people use that moral compass to extricate themselves from a predatory group. The ex-mormons in my life are easily among the kindest, most intellectually curious and genuine people I've known. I'm not going to say there's a causal relationship or give credit to the Mormonism, but I do think it's likely that the heavy emphasis on community has a tendency to cultivate a person's inherent selflessness and the repeated exposure to and analysis of its complicated lore has a tendency to cultivate a the expectation that almost everything has should have an explanation if you think hard enough about it (even if the explanation only makes sense in a fictional sense that their faith requires them to believe is real). Which is to say, in theory you could have all the benefits of Mormonism without all the exploitation, but in practice it's probably impossible to achieve.