MK forum

This is the email I sent to NTM:
Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 5:31 PM

Dear leader of New Tribes Mission and others to whom it may concern,
I am extremely broken and hurt by the many things I have learned about my friends, my family, and my teachers and adults which I knew so well growing up on the mission's field in --.
I am not affiliated with NTM anymore, though I feel an obligation to speak up for the sake of my friends and family.
I have recently learned that NTM is trying to handle the situation with the Fanda abuse, and the dozens of other abuses in other schools which have occurred over the past 30+ years in an internal manner. After what happened with the Fanda internal investigations of 1993, I believe NTM has lost their credibility to "handle internally" this matter of GRAVE importance.
I believe that NTM must do three things: 1) have an external Christian organization (similar to Grace) that can investigate all the schools (that are both closed and open) concerning the allegations of abuses that occurred in all the schools where NTM children were part of 2) report ALL confirmed and even allegated abusers to their proper external investigative government body (aka the police) 3) Have a counseling retreat for ALL mks in all the schools who desire to come to the retreat, paying for all the costs for professional, external Christian counselors and group therapy for those wanting to be involved.
If money is a factor, I don't think it should be. NTM is beyond that point. If you, as an organization, desire to save your name (and preserve the wonderful aspects of the organization and incredible missionaries in your midst), then you will do the right thing.
I would ask that you help me in this matter and that you would forward this to the proper person if you cannot do so yourself.
Praying for you and each of the leaders, that God would give you incredible wisdom in this time.
Sincerely,
- -


Here is the response I received:
From: ------ on behalf of Child Protection Committee (cpc@ntm.org)
Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2010 4:15:11 PM

Thank you so much for this e-mail. Thank you for taking the time to write. It is really appreciated.

Just so you are aware the NTM Executive Board has not formed any plan concretely yet. The EB put a brief statement out two weeks ago just to let people know that they were seeking to address how to proceed and many people took that general statement and speculated greatly with it and even GRACE, who investigated the Fanda School, made comments that were beyond what NTM intended to say. The Executive Board will be meeting this next week and will be deciding on how to move ahead from here.

The NTM Executive Board has no intention of doing an "in house" investigation on the other schools. Whatever form that they decide will need to foster trust, transparency and openness so it's unreasonable to think that NTM intends to handle this on their own. Neither does NTM have any desire to control the investigation.

Thank you again for your e-mail. If I can answer any other questions for you, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Your prayers are really appreciated, thank you.
----- ,
On behalf of the CPC

Thank you for taking the time to write that letter, and to post it here.

GRACE in fact told us themselves there was still time for NTM to change their minds. GRACE has earned my trust and the trust of many of us abused MKs, and I find it upsetting that NTM would want to discredit them in any way. I trust that NTM made these statements to GRACE and the fact that they could have ever even considered having an investigator report to their CPC is grave.

Your letters and efforts are preventing this from happening.

If my assumptions are correct, there may be as many as 50,000 living NTM MK's in the world today. I am not sure how NTM would go about consulting with all MK's about anything. All they could possibly do is consult with a few of them and seek their input. I do believe that this is what NTM USA ought to do. Select a panel of NTM-USA MK's and allow them to give input into their decisions about where to go next. Each sending country of NTM will likely have to do the same.
As for the petition, could we perhaps see a draft of what would be in it?

(Has NTM hired Red Barren to answer their emails for them? This would be funny were it not such a serious topic.)[/quote]Gene Long

Any "Tribers" out there agree with Red Barren's statements? This is one MK Triber who doesn't, rather is horrified at what he has posted, and from what I have heard from those I work with and leadership here, they wouldn't agree either. Thank you, Fanda Eagles, for pushing this so that NTM did have to deal with it. I grieve for you who have suffered, and for my own siblings and their spouses and friends who suffered abuse, and I pray for healing and change. I'm not proud of NTM's past, what was allowed to occur, and the cover up. My hope is in God and the change He can bring and is causing to happen. He can move the mountains!

There is brand new update from Larry Brown on this topic. It is on the members-only portion of the NTM website, I believe, but an excerpt from it reads as follows:

"This week, October 12-14, the Executive Board has its normally scheduled Board meetings. We will seek to make some critical decisions and we covet your prayers. One of those critical decisions is how to handle future abuse investigations. In our last NTM eNews we made a general statement about this to let you know that we are talking about what NTM USA policies will be. Unfortunately, this stirred up a lot of dialogue which led to many false assumptions about NTM doing in-house investigations, controlling the process etc. We want you to know that we have not concluded on a specific approach yet. We have no desire to do in-house investigations, nor do we plan to control them. Thirteen months ago, we contracted GRACE to investigate the Fanda abuse. Now we are evaluating where to go from here. The Executive Board will be processing this decision and others during this week's board meetings."

Thus, the reason NTM has not yet contacted GRACE to conduct further investigations is because they are having meetings this week concerning it.

On a different tone, I prayed for the Fanda Eagles today with a group of NTMers today, and they brought it up themselves. Many care about you!

Meetings, meetings, meetings. Going on for two years now... Unreal.

I demand action.