Thank you, Deanna, for your very good, very wise words.
I too am an NTM MK, and my experience was much like yours. I grew up feeling relatively safe, and assumed that all the other MKs I knew were having the same positive childhood and adolescence. I think that is one of the things that fuels my activism at this time: the sense of how unfair it is that some MKs suffered so much, and I did not know, and thought they were all just like me.
Your call to repentance is so appropriate. This has been called for before. Several years ago. In the immediate aftermath of the GRACE report on the Fanda abuse, there was a certain sense of repentance from some of the NTM leaders, specifically from Larry Brown.
I have tried to express what a huge mistake I feel NTM made, at the point in time when they began using attorneys for the protection of their institution/corporation. That is not what I call a spirit of repentance. In the years following that decision, what I sense is not repentance anymore. It is: "Yes, that abuse was terrible, but it is not us who did it. It was other people. Now our main concern is just to go about our business as usual, reaching the tribes till the last tribe is reached. We will continue to recruit candidates, train them, send them out, solicit millions of dollars, expand our facilities, and modernize our methods and our buildings. Those who keep banging their drum trying to call attention to the "historic" abuse of children long ago are just distracting us from what is really important, and they are becoming quite irritating, because they just won't shut up."
That is my perception, Deanna. Thank you for expressing what is on your heart, which is that repentance is appropriate and necessary. Perhaps you will be able to catch someone's attention, because from where I sit, it feels like no one is listening.
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