MK forum

The official copy of the Tambo report, from the IHART website:

http://www.ihart.care/uploads/4/2/1/8/4 ... ressed.pdf

Finally read it. It reminds me of Lance Armstrong. The race was won by someone who had to win at all costs and if that meant cheating, then so be it. Lance Armstrong eventually got caught, the sponsors are gone, disgrace is the consequence. NTM has been caught . . .

IHART's Panama Historical Investigation Summary Report was released on October 5, 2016.

IHART's Bolivia Historical Investigation Summary Report was released on December 5, 2016.

Putting the two reports side by side is interesting. It looks like Theresa has come up with a basic template for her NTM investigation reports, and then she can just plug in whatever is different about each field.

To an outsider like Theresa, perhaps this seems logical. Maybe she has the impression that every field, every school, and every situation in NTM shares so much commonality, that having a template report is appropriate.

As an "old timer" whose NTM roots go all the way back to 1952, my opinion is that this is not the case. During the period of time that child abuse was rampant in NTM, there were many differences between the fields. Each one grew into its own personality, very much affected by the male leaders who controlled that field. Anyone who went through the NTM training during that time will understand what I mean. We actually chose what field we wanted to serve on, based on the impressions we formed during the training, of what the different fields were like, and whether we would fit in and be comfortable there.

Bolivia was the oldest field, and we knew the leaders and the field philosophy were "old school". Quite a few of the people who were at that time back in the US serving in various capacities, including being on the Executive Committee, had roots in Bolivia.

We knew about the boarding school at Tambo, and we knew about the pressure put on missionary families to place their children in that school. We knew about fields like Paraguay and Thailand that at that point had taken strong stands against boarding school, and that families on those fields were home schooling their children.

In recent years, I have been made aware of what types of abuse took place at the NTM school in Tambo. Particularly the abhorrent things that took place there in the 1960s; the things that happened to MKs there who were my peers; MKs I went through the Stateside training with, when we were young adults preparing to robotically stay in the mission and become missionaries ourselves.

The extent and the type of child abuse that went on at the school in Tambo is much different than what I understand to have happened at the school in Panama. It is very misleading to place the same template over both schools, over both investigation reports.

An male MK who survived the horrors of Tambo in the 60s told me that place was like a "concentration camp for kids". To lightly brush over that degree of cruelty with a vague report which minimizes what New Tribes missionaries did to innocent, defenseless children there does a great disservice to those children who are now adults.

Those MKs told you their stories, IHART. You saw their tears, you heard the agony in their voices, you saw their tortured body language.

But you did not adequately convey in your report what really happened on that remote school campus. And for that, you should be ashamed.

Let's take a look. (Both the Panama and Bolivia reports can be found on the IHART website. http://www.ihart.care/reports.html)

Cover page - same layout, wording, both with a picture at the bottom

Introduction page - exactly the same words, except the country name and the maps are different

Table of Contents - almost exactly the same, with just a few different minor headings

Page 1 - The same except for country name, plus the Bolivia pg 1 is prefaced with this quote from Larry Brown, CEO of NTM USA:
"We started this journey by stating we were committed to humble ourselves before the mighty hand of God since He “resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” We are faced with this grievous sin. It should cause us to fall before God and for His grace and wisdom in dealing with it." Such a lovely statement, Larry. Such a lovely, heartfelt statement.

Pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc: all basically same, same, same. There is one difference though: font size.

The pages describing the process of each investigation vary a bit, due to the differences such as the involvement of Professional Investigators International in the Panama investigation, and the decision to have a second, leadership culpability phase in that investigation.

Under the headings of "Understanding of Child Abuse in a Historical Context" and "Difficulties of Historical Investigation", the wording is essentially all the same. Note that in both reports, Theresa makes a point of questioning the credibility of MKs' memories because of the fact that they are in touch with some of their MK peers who endured the same type of abuse in the same school. Apparently she believes that the bonds created under this type of stress taint the credibility of what these MKs reported to IHART interviewers. "Social contamination". Gag.

"Early NTM Organizational Culture and Field Leadership" - all the same. Theresa does not acknowledge in this section the fact that NTM sent its first missionaries to Bolivia is 1942, and the Panama field was not opened till some time later (Chepo, Panama school was opened in 1962).

The sections about "Grace Rediscovered" and changes in leadership structure are identical.

The section in each report about historical and political situations in Panama and Bolivia seem a bit pointless, but time is spent explaining the history in such a way that it is evidently supposed to excuse the excessive cruelty that the children of missionaries endured.

The next pages in the reports vary a bit, but much of the content seems to be about the same, just with some repositioning of some of the paragraphs and/or sections.

Essentially the only parts of the two reports that have differences in their content are the actual "Investigative Findings" - pages 28-37 for Panama, and pages 23-33 for Bolivia. Even on these pages, the content is sometimes strikingly similar, and sometimes identical, such as the final paragraph starting with "IHART regrets ..."

The last pages of IHART's two reports are much alike.

Then we get to NTM's response.

Larry Brown's letters of apology to the MKs and their parents are very similar, with just a few changes in wording.

And then comes "NTM Response to IHART Recommendations". Exactly the same. Word for word. Line for line. Paragraph for paragraph.

So that makes me wonder about those supposed recommendations panels. Were they two different groups, or all the same people? Did they really come up with the exact same recommendations? For two different schools? To which the Executive Board gave identical responses?

And did NTM/IHART actually think that there would not be some critical and analytical person such as myself, who would print the two reports out and compare them???