MK forum

@shadowspring:

Standing. Clapping. Cheering.

Woah! Head rush. And exhaustion. Sitting.

Update from Pat:


The Independent Historical Abuse Review Team (IHART) has named its first investigative team. Its task will be to investigate historic reports of child abuse at NTM’s school at Vianopolis, Brazil. The team had its first meeting May 13, 2011. It will meet again the week of May 23 and will begin contacting survivors the week of June 1.
The team members are:
• Randy Coffman – Investigations captain, Andover Police Department, Andover, Kansas. She is also a nurse and paramedic. As a forensic nurse she has been a sexual assault nurse examiner for 15 years. Randy has said that nursing led her to become a paramedic, which led to law enforcement, and it was when she was investigating mostly sexual abuse and child sexual abuse cases that she felt she had found her “calling.” As an investigator one of her main concerns is to determine the truth of what happened.
• Jim Richter – Global security director for Team Expansion (an international missionary agency), Louisville, Kentucky. He is a former policeman. As security director he directs and handles all investigatory matters, including adult and child sexual abuse cases, for the agency worldwide. Jim has experience in training investigators and investigating current and historical sexual abuse cases.
• Robert Davis – Safety and security person for the Kroc Salvation Army Community Center, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. He is a 35-year veteran with the FBI and has extensive experience as forensic child interviewer and a master investigator. Robert supervised FBI operations in all of North Idaho. He worked cases on the Indian reservations which included child abuse cases.
• Richard Ramirez – - Director of corporate security, SEND International, Farmington, Michigan. He is a retired US Postal Inspector with extensive investigative and supervisory experience in abuse and child pornography investigations. During his 32-year law enforcement career he has served with the FBI and as a police detective. Rich also has experience training investigators and investigating child abuse cases, current and historical, for sending mission agencies.
Richard Ramirez is the lead investigator. If you have inquiries or information for the investigative team, contact Mr. Ramirez at rramirez@send.org or 248-477-4210, extension 111.
Questions or comments about the independent investigations should be sent to Pat Hendrix at pat.mkguardian@gmail.com

Thank you dbarney for this. I think it is really good news.

Agreed. It looks like great news.

Allbetter, that was honorable of you to clear Publius' name. Hats off to you.

And about how hard it is to admit that your family was not special above all other family's to the heart of God for your great sacrifice? I totally get that.

It was your ace up your sleeve, your only consolation. When your abandonment hurt so very, very bad, the consolation you were offered was that God chose you special to live this life and would reward you special because of it. I am sure all the MKs held to that reassurance very tightly. That was all you had to console yourself with.

I know that has made facing the truth very hard for my husband. He would face it one day, but then not want to admit it the next. He went back and forth for a long time.

I don't know which is worse (not being an MK myself) believing that God would decree your abandonment and that if you object you would personally be responsible for sending heathen to burn in hell for all eternity (YOWCH! I think this would be worse, but I don't know.) BUT that your sacrifice makes you special and God will be specially pleased with your willing endurance of the situation...

or, believing that your parents were duped by a religious system into thinking they had no choice but to abandon you and if they (the whole organization?) had not been so deceived your parents would NEVER have hurt you so! But the organization did decree boarding school for you, and your parents did comply, and in some families they aren't even sorry they did, and, well....

The first conclusion robs you of intimacy with God because you believe lies about Him and those lies paint His character as sort of capricious and harshly demanding, like the ancient heathen gods of the Greek pantheon (imho). But you get to hold on to your consolation of specialness, AND no one has to admit any responsibility for the decision to send you to boarding school. It's all God's fault. (My in-laws blame the mission and never apologize, they just say "those were the rules..."). It keeps the family system intact, but intact as it is. There is no healing for the deep soul wounds of abandonment because everyone pretends they don't exist. Family of origin relationships remain polite, superficial, and only the MKs new family knows how messed up it all is. Keep your distance, don't rock the boat, and everything stays all godly-looking on the outside. (Smile for the camera!)

Healing on the other hand, requires first of all an admission of pain on the MKs part. That could upset the whole family of origin, and destroy what little sense of connection MKs have with parents and siblings in the first place (healing is all our nuclear family's little secret so far, as it is doubtful sibs would be supportive and guaranteed parents would ridicule the whole concept), plus you have to face all those painful memories and scary emotions that were buried so long ago. BUT if you go through healing, you get to have intimacy with God and other people and experience real loving relationships and finally (eventually) be healed in your heart.

It's a very big decision to make.

Thanks dbarney for the update from Pat. That is encouraging.

Wow Shadowspring. You hit very close to home. It was very hard for me to face the truth.
Over the last few months my Mom has actually begun to realize how wrong it was for them to send us away, and has apologized. So there is hope that the parents who abondoned us will get it. It has helped me so much, for her to even begin to recognize this!

I understand about your husband facing it one day and then not the next. Sometimes I so badly want to just forget it all but it's so so worth it to face the painful past. I was robbed of intimacy with God and loved ones, as you so accurately state. But of course, I did not know that. I'm thankful to God for His healing.

I mean abandoned, not abondeded!

I agree, highlander. I am so sorry you had such an excruciatingly painful childhood, and wish I could do something- anything_ to heal that hurt that exists is no many hearts.

I so regret the day in 1999, when I was in Boa Vista, and a mom and her six year old daughter came through on their way to PQQ. I didn't know what I do know.

I was human enough to remark that I though it was very sad. This provoked an immediate angry response from my relative along the lines of how dare I judge the family/mother/mission! She told me how dangerous it was in the tribe, how lonely for other children the child would be, but mostly it was a defensive response to the truth.

I listened to her, trying to be open-minded and all. Plus I hadn't come down with pneumonia yet, that would happen overnight, so I really had no first-hand experience of the strength of the missionary-denial-system yet.

I quickly found it that missionary denial knows no limits. Here I was panting, with extreme pain in my right chest continually plus and extra stabbing pain when I breathed in, coughing up rust colored sputum, with a high fever, and it took two days and about an hours pleading by a mission nurse to get the director to go get me any antibiotics.

(On day two I had taken all my energy to drag myself out of the house and down the stairs to her apt and begged her to take me to the hospital! She told me I would die for sure there, and she would go talk to the director and get me antibiotics. It took a lot of persuading and persistence on her part. I owe my life to her. I support her for many years after that out of appreciation.)

His belief system was that Americans took too many antibiotics, and we were just whiners. I could have died. It didn't matter what reality was in front of his eyes; he lived by his beliefs, not by reality.

I still see that frightened, apprehensive little girl in my memory. If I knew then what I knew now, I would not talk to my relatives at all. I would have taken the mother aside and warned her about leaving HER daughter in ANYONE ELSE's care other than her own loving hands and her own two vigilant eyes. I would tell her that God was way bigger than she had been told, and he didn't need her help at the mission, that if is was God's will and his timing no one would have to commit the sin of child abandonment to make it happen.

I know that mother never heard a perspective like that. That little girl would be about college age now. Sad.