MK forum

Except for the episode with the dr!!!!!!!
I don't know how they could explain away that one.

Almost 300 clicks on this thread, lafula!

There is definite interest in the subject of the Panama report!

We are waiting, Theresa Sidebotham! You said "a few weeks" a few weeks ago!!

http://www.ihart.care/progress.html

A month ago, Theresa posted: "I had hoped to have a release date for Panama in this update but have not been able to determine that exactly, though we believe it is just a few weeks out."

However, she also wrote, "We still need many addresses for that release." I think that means, "We will not be releasing our report until we get all the addresses we want."

IHART says they will not mail abuse survivors a "packet" unless they first receive a confirmation of their current mailing address.

My skeptical mind wonders: Will IHART delay this release until they receive ALL the addresses they want? And who but IHART knows whose addresses those are, and which ones have been confirmed?

It could continue to be a long wait. That's all I'm sayin'.

Oh, and I will also say one more thing. I hear that not all MKs who consider themselves to have been abused in Panama, and therefore they participated in the interview process, have received a request for confirmation of their mailing address.

It sounds like IHART is still functioning the way they did during the Vianopolis investigation, in that THEY get to decide who was abused, and who deserves to get one of those "packets".

That sounds like further abuse, to me. Minimizing a human being's abuse is so hurtful. This never promotes healing. People who are in pain need to be validated ... not ignored.

Have been skeptical here for years.
The investigation never sounded independent to us.
And giving info seemed like just feeding ntm lawyers with fodder.
It was kind of people to give the benefit of the doubt.
But we're way past that now.

Just got my report. I wanted to share some initial thoughts although will continue to process and have more later. I'm especially interested to hear what the rest of you think of it.

Overall, it's exactly what we expected...primarily a use of historicicsm to justify the behavior of the times. We didn't have the same standards for abuse back then, we didn't know how to identify it, we didn't talk about it...etc. As a little girl, I knew without a doubt that most adults at EHM were abusive. I didn't need to know the vernacular or acceptability of behaviors at the time to understand that manipulation, lying, beating, humiliation, and totalitarian control were wrong and certainly not godly.

Of course my letter says that "the investigative team did not make a finding of abuse by preponderance of the evidence for any of my specific allegations." They noted my parents spanked me naked. But did not include any of my specific examples of current missionaries like Bruce Enemark taking me out to the deposito alone as an 8 yr old girl to try to force me to admit to a "crime" that I had not committed and how i was terrified of this huge man intentionally intimidating me. In fact, another student had already admitted to the infraction to the teacher. But Brenda Baird did not care about truth. She merely chose to lie about "knowing" I'd committed a crime and reported it to Bruce. According to the times, children were always wrong. So despite having no evidence and a student's word acquitting me...willing to take the punishment...I was taken alone to the deposito by Bruce. When I didn't cave, my dorm parents were instructed to discipline me and I was spanked.My other reports didn't make the cut either, like Mark Case trying to hold me accountable or give me lower grades due to lies and manipulation by Marion Woodhead and John Anderson. His response to my clear explanation of their lies was that they really did care about me so it was ok. Huh? Again, children must always be wrong and adults right. The world revolved around protecting adults regardless of their behavior.

My point is that the report says it wants to find the root causes of abuse...but doesn't even touch on them. The closest it got was admitting we had an authoritarian and hierarchical leadership which we changed in the late 1990's. I hoped they would have the decency to be introspective and enumerate real root causes of abuse. A missed opportunity but not surprising. Oh yes, the leadership is also all men in the report and no mention of how that is problematic. They talk extensively about how things have improved since 1997, but again, not addressing the real issues that report was supposed to be about. It reads as an excuse because look how much we've changed!

A surprising section is the one on the political climate under Noriega and the stress and concern of school leadership to not traumatize children about what was happening in the country. I knew a political opponent was beheaded and body and head were found on either sides of the Panama/Costa Rica boarder at age 6. I knew people were stressed and I couldn't say Noriega or Pina Cabeza in public. But does the principle (presumably Harry Huddleston) seeing someone shot in the street during this time make him more likely to beat children? The logical connection in this section doesn't work at all and the political stress provides no clear reason why NTM children would be more abused while he was in power.

I hope someone can shed light on the claim that Pii did not produce a report on leadership culpability. The time frame given in this report and explanation for why it took about 5 years rings hollow and I hope someone will provide more details on this.

Very concerning is the complete lack of accountability for leaders of the time. The report tries to say they may not have known of these incidents and issues because people were afraid to report or assumed they knew. We all knew they knew. Just because they EC leaders didn't take good meeting minutes or track who knew what...or are not willing to admit it to investigators now doesn't mean they didn't know what was happening. It's scary that they mention things like an MK getting pregnant and how they couldn't report it to the police but there is NO discussion on how that MK was shunned and the whole family sent home for the MK being raped...because they led everyone to believe the MK was promiscuous and the rumors abounded about her before and after departure.

And there is an effort to say that the MKs who communicate and want full transparency have maybe contaminated the reporting process by sharing info. All people trying to maintain power in a system discourage the sharing of info between the regular people and use intimidation. I'm not surprised to see this continued effort in the report and the reference to MKs who had positive experiences and don't want to see full transparency or discipline. Yes, many MK's went straight back into NTM and/or have family and friends in the organization. There are many different motives for the way people responded to the investigation. I know my parents were told it was a witch hunt and did not participate. So despite all these claims for trying to be unbiased, it's very clear to me that NTM was forced to produce a report with a degree of accountability, but not willing to really make the necessary changes and examine the deeper underlying issues. I think this whole effort was meant to a be a controlled confession with limited actionable results. Again, if you read Theresa Sidebotham's paper that was posted to this thread earlier, you will see the exact mindset and methodology used in this report.

To read the Panama Historical Investigation Summary Report now available to the public, click on this link:

http://www.ihart.care/panama-summary-report.html

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And welcome to the world of the Downunder MK, totally ignored then despite fully knowing what was going on. As a second class MK I got to share rooms with MKs no one else wanted to and so not only did I put up with the bullying and abuse in and out of the classroom but the face of it was the last thing I saw at night and what I woke up to. Then at conference time I shared a room with an expelled MK who couldn't keep his hands to himself and left me with bruises in parts that should not have been visible, let alone grabbed and twisted that hard I was sore for days.
Numonohi/PNG was full of perverts, sadists and abusers, it wasn't any secret because they were inflicted upon the second class missionaries and MKs while the priviledged majority knew exactly what was going on and protected their own as much as they could.

And a clever bit of research done in conjunction with a valued colleague of mine reveals that leadership knew what was going on and at least one was giving new Downunder missionaries coded warnings about the predatory behaviour their children were likely to face. The same research has also revealed that NTM is STILL sheltering pedophiles and rascisim is alive and well.

But then it never happened, did it? It's all a conspiracy to let the devil keep them little black souls for himself and anyone who says otherwise is . . . .

And one side knows it did because they experienced the mess that is NTM and the other side will deny or minimise it because it is all an inconvenient truth and the good times must roll on, come hell or high water.

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