"Let's celebrate!" they say.
Let's celebrate, without mentioning that:
Reports of child abuse (including rape) date back as early as the 1950s.
New Tribes Mission (now Ethnos360) set up an education system of boarding schools which separated small children from their missionary parents for most of their school-age childhood.
These schools were often staffed by missionaries who were for various reasons unqualified to work on the "front lines" of tribal work, but were also tragically unqualified to nurture and/or teach children who had little support from their own parents.
Over the decades, the Executive Committee in the US received numerous reports of child abuse, incest, etc, but these reports stayed hidden deep in files at headquarters. Sometimes abusers were quietly dismissed from the mission, but in other cases, they were protected and even enabled.
When (in 2010) GRACE published a report detailing horrendous abuse at NTM's MK school in Fanda, Senegal, embarrassed NTM leaders, with advice from their attorneys, set up their own investigative group (IHART, which they tried to pass off as "independent") to address the many abuse reports that were coming from other schools, other countries, and various time periods.
Ethnos360 has now spent a fortune (some say millions?) to keep the child abuse scandal under control. At least three MK abuse survivors have sued the mission and received financial settlements, other MKs have received settlements through a mediation process, scores of MKs have had their counseling/therapy fees paid by the mission, and the people connected with the IHART process have received and/or spent multiple thousands of dollars to carry out this ongoing sham.
IHART has completed investigations into abuse at MK schools in Brazil, Bolivia and Panama. Their reports did nothing to expose those who had committed crimes against helpless children, and failed to provide validation or closure for the now-adult MKs who had in good faith shared their painful stories with investigators.
IHART claims to currently be working on three more investigations, but their methods are mysterious, given the lack of publicity, and the fact that the ones who were hurt the most in these countries do not seem to even know about the purported investigations.
Warren Scott Kennell, an adult MK who had been serving in Brazil with NTM (Ethnos360) was arrested in the Orlando airport in 2013, and is currently serving a 58-year prison term for production of child pornography.
Thousands of MKs are trudging through their lives carrying a heavy load of effects from the abandonment they suffered, the estrangement they feel, the physical, emotional, spiritual and/or sexual abuse they endured, the questions about God and faith that have no answers, and the lack of concern from the mission organization that hurt them while their parents were dedicated to "The Work". Some have ended their own lives to escape the pain.
But oh! Let's celebrate.
Sorry. Count me out.
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