MK forum

GRACE set the gold standard for what survivors would like to see in a report following an investigation into child abuse.

Their report on Fanda protected the privacy of the victims, but it did NOT protect ANYONE else. Names of abusers and their enablers were revealed. The nature and extent of abuse was made clear. Also clearly stated was the opinion of GRACE about the wrongness of the abuse, and the connection between the leadership structure and the oppressive atmosphere of NTM at the time of the abuse which contributed to secrecy, perpetuation, and covering up of the abuse of innocent children. The report was validating to the survivors, shocking to the general public, and terrifying to anyone who played any part in the unhealthy cycle of abuse and mishandling of truth.

I know that New Tribes Mission has ended their relationship with GRACE, and I accept that they will refuse to use GRACE for any further investigations. But as we move forward toward the culmination of the first IHART investigation, I would like to try to explain why an end result that falls short of what the GRACE report on Fanda did will leave survivors and their supporters feeling less than validated.

For many MK abuse survivors, their abuse is like an elephant in the room. They sense it all the time. People they know and love move around the room as though there is not a huge animal in the center, and the MK wants to shout, "There is an elephant in the room! Can't you see it??"

Now an investigator comes into the room. Let's call him Mr. Ihart. Mr. Ihart looks around and says, "Say! You are right, MK! There is an elephant in the room! He then pulls out a stepladder, a tape measure, a clipboard, and other investigative tools, and proceeds to spend what seems like an interminable amount of time confirming that there is in fact an elephant in the room, and its ears measure this long, and its tail is this long, and so on. He asks a lot of questions, and finds out all the historical facts about the presence of this gigantic gray thing in the room. He then walks out to file his report.

Months later, with great anticipation, the waiting MK receives the report and rips it open, to read many pages with information like this: "Sam let the elephant into the room. It has been in the room since March of 1992. Larry fed the elephant. Clara combed the hair on its tail. MK tried to tell Aunt Gertie that Sam had brought an elephant into the room. Aunt Gertie told Mr. Smith, and Mr. Smith told Aunt Gertie to be quiet and leave the room. When Lois asked where Aunt Gertie went, she was told to stop gossiping. George asked Sam if he had brought the elephant into the room, and Sam said of course not. There isn't any elephant in this room. Whatever are you talking about? MK is just a little trouble maker. She always has been, and nothing she says should be taken seriously." etc., etc., page after page.

Now, after reading this long report, does MK feel any better? The elephant is still in the room. The report says she was right about there being an elephant. But nowhere does it say that Sam was wrong for bringing the elephant into the room, and he has been turned over to the police. Nor does it say that those who fed and cared for and protected the elephant were wrong. What MK needs is for people to get upset about how she has been ignored all these years when she tried to call attention to the elephant. She needs to know that she is believed and supported and that there is no excuse for the fact that so many people stepped around the elephant for so long and pretended it wasn't there.

Perhaps this isn't making sense, I don't know. I am in a bit of a mental fog these days. I have so much swirling around in my head. But without being too specific, I am attempting to make an appeal, to NTM and to IHART.

Please understand: the end goal needs to be something the MK survivors can feel good about, or they still will not have any healing, nor will they feel truly validated or supported. Validation in this case means more than, "I guess you really were telling the truth." Without any accompanying indignation, and without appropriate consequences to those who have been guilty of abuse or the enabling of abuse, I fear that MKs will be deeply disappointed. And if the survivors are disappointed, then I will be as well.

Oh it makes perfect sense. The damn elephant should never have been in the room and the zoo wants to take no responsibility for it getting there. Oh sure we've had a few crocodile tears from the keepers, but then strangely they just go back to doing whatever it is they do.
And they don't seem to be informing even their own prayer warriors about all the elephants that have trampled and squashed little lives that now just exist and never truly live. Which is really odd, because how can the almighty prayer warriors, which we have been brought up to believe the zoo can't function without for all our lives, pray for something to be fixed like having the elephants dealt with, when they don't even have any idea that there are big grey things with tails at both ends out there. Of course the cynic in me would suggest that the good old faithful prayer warriors will be being fed a diet of how much $$$$$ is needed and that it is needed to reach more of the lost or to make some missionaries life a bit more comfortable. No mention of how much $$$$$$ is being spent on legal avenues to try and make sure this goes away with a bit of legal magic.

Yes many of us have or have had elephants in our rooms. The fact that they got there is a serious criminal matter, not just a bit of slap and tickle between two consenting participants of consensual age. And even when ICE gets gets a Mammoth, somehow this gets completely mishandled by NTM and after an initial burst of throwing up hands in horror, there is little comment and it appears the faithful are being selectively told only. And so has history repeated itself, have the three monkeys only heard a little evil, seen a little evil, done no evil and life carries on at the zoo just like it always did and the visitors keep paying their money to see the wonders?

Therefore I agree entirely Raz, lets see some action as a result of these investigations. Let the guilty be exposed and the victims given a better chance to really live, beyond just existing.

DEFINITELY!
Thank you to both of you.

While the elephant has been in the room it has done a lot of shit. Its keepers (NTM) appear to have lost their shovels and seem to think that by trodding through said shit again and again they can clean it up. Alas it only spreads and gets very sticky indeed. The elephant of course keeps on shitting (as elephants do). In some rooms there is now a veritable abundance of shit. To get rid of the problem the keepers moved the elephant to a clean room. But alas it kept doing shit. So now there was the old filthy room still full of rotting shit and the elephant was now befouling the new room. Bloody elephants. Oh wait, maybe if we shift the elephant again (while praying for a miracle) it will stop all that shitting?

Now the keepers are paying people to measure the shit. How much shit can an average sized elephant do? Oh that elephant over there is a super shitter. Lets measure its waste and write a report about it.

Rocket scientists those keepers shall never be.

I believe our good friends at ICE know safe places for these elephants. In ICE cold rooms they only shit on themselves. but now its the keepers over all those years who knew about the great stinking piles of shit that should be worried. When shit hits a fan it looks for places to fall (laws of physics apply even to keepers).

ps: apologies to those offended by my use of the word shit. It did however feel really good to write it.

I am trying to remain positive in the face of facts that suggest otherwise.......

No apologies needed for me Raz. The word fits perfectly, no matter how many times said or needed to be said.

Raz, great original post.

We know there was abuse. We don't need anybody to merely confirm that fact.

And, NTM. If one brother operating in a non-Brazil NTM field admits to an NTM co-worker that his biological brother currently operating in NTM Brazil is an abuser and will likely get "caught up" in the ongoing investigation...there is a SERIOUS problem within your organization. Think about it.

Under any conceivable scenario, a minimim of at least one person other than / in addition to the alleged abusive brother should get fired in this case, whether or not there was any actual abuse. Think about it.

Am I off base here?

If the scenario you are describing is that one brother KNOWS the other one is an abuser, but has waited until an investigation is ongoing before confiding that his brother is likely to be "caught up" in the investigation, then I agree ... something is seriously wrong here.

People who enable family members or friends to continue abusing, and don't speak up, are in a way complicit in the abuse. Aren't they?

I'd say the whole organization is somewhat complicit in that they refuse to even consider that there is any abuse and that any of their coworkers could possibly be doing anything like that.

It is extremely troubling to me that NTM has chosen to respond to the arrest of Scott Kennell with such tight-lipped secrecy. They have not even given his name, in the statements they sent out to their members. (Apparently active members only, not retirees.) Anyone in the mission who has the least bit of curiosity is going to need to google for the facts ... which are available freely in several forms from various sources online. Larry Brown has set the tone, and it would appear that loyal NTMers are following his lead, and do not discuss this arrest openly, or show much interest in it.

And this is what drives me crazy: a man who has been caught by federal authorities with child pornography, in which he himself was shown committing a lewd sex act on a child, and who then shared this pornography online with other pedophiles, has spent most of his life in your NTM family. He was raised as an MK, and has been an adult missionary with your mission since the early 90s - 20-some years! To anyone who is familiar with pedophilia, this means that it is not only possible, but LIKELY!!!, that there has been an escalating pattern of troubled behavior going back quite a ways. When questioned by the agents in the airport, this man admitted to molesting four children in Brazil.

Now ... WHO thinks this man has ever only been inappropriate with FOUR children???? Am I the only person who feels that silence is a form of complicity in this instance?? Shouldn't the mission be getting clear, specific information out to any and all who might have had contact with this man at any point over the past 30 years?? It is not only possible, but PROBABLE, that he has left other victims in his wake. His plan was to spend this very summer working in a children's camp in New Jersey! He gravitates toward children! All you had to do to see that was to take a look at his personal blog (no longer available).

I have said it before, I will say it again: Leaders of New Tribes Mission, do NOT try to tell us you care about child victims, when in the case of Scott Kennell, you have done nothing to search for past victims who might be suffering in silence, thinking they were the only ones.

Complicity. It takes many forms. Not all of them fit a strict dictionary definition. But some of us are deeply troubled by the choices you have been making.