http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/bre ... story.htmlNew Tribes Mission settles 'dorm dad' sex-abuse case
By Rene Stutzman
Staff Writer
June 16, 2015, 6:41 PM
SANFORD — The crimes took place nearly 30 years ago in a village in Africa. Now a woman who says she was sexually abused repeatedly by a "dorm dad" in a Christian boarding school that was run by New Tribes Mission has reached a financial settlement with the group.
Brett Bressler, the woman's attorney, and David Doyle, New Tribes' attorney, confirmed that the suit had recently been settled but said a confidentiality agreement kept them from discussing it.
The settlement is part of a sex scandal that came to light in a 2010 report that faulted the Sanford-based missionary group, one of the largest in the world, for covering up two dozen cases of child sexual abuse at its boarding school in Fanda, Senegal, in the 1980s and '90s.
The victims were the children of New Tribes missionaries who were separated from their families and sent to a mission-run boarding school so that both their mothers and fathers could work full time, spreading the Gospel.
Three women responded by suing New Tribes, all in state circuit court in Sanford. One of those cases, filed by a Lake City woman called "Jane Doe No. 25," alleged the same "dorm dad" sexually molested her for two years, starting when she was 6. Her suit is still pending.
The other, filed by a woman in her 30s who alleges she was sexually abused by a different New Tribes worker at a different mission-run boarding school in the Philippines, was settled in 2012, also for an undisclosed sum. That woman, referred to as "Jane Doe No. 7," was seeking $5 million.
In 2009, New Tribes hired a pair of former child-sex prosecutors to investigate the claims of child abuse in Fanda. They and their team produced the GRACE report, which stands for Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment.
It confirmed the allegations of widespread child sexual abuse, prompting the mission to acknowledge the problem and admit that some managers learned about it in 1997 and 2009 but then covered it up.
According to the report, a New Tribes dorm dad sexually molested several young girls in Fanda, often touching them inappropriately at bedtime.
The report was released in 2010, and within days, New Tribes apologized to the victims, saying that it had sinned against them, and put in place a plan to provide counseling and financial settlements.
Said Doyle, "I've been very impressed with how they've tried to take care of these people." The woman who just settled her suit rejected the mission-offered financial settlement and filed suit in 2012. She had lived at the Fanda boarding school from age 1 to 17, according to the suit.
Bonnie Cheshire, 35, of Tallahassee said in an interview Tuesday that she was molested by the same dorm dad who sexually touched Jane Doe and Jane Doe No. 25. Cheshire settled with New Tribes without filing suit.
The man molested her about once a week for nearly 21/2 years, starting when she was 7, she said.
"He was always in the older girls' room — I was jealous," she said. "We would hear tales of late-night parties in their room. ... I also wanted to be a part of that. Eventually he did start to come into our room. …
"With me, it started off pretty innocently. 'Let me rub your back because you seem sad,'" she said.
The man also spanked her every day, she said, often for no justifiable reason.
"I just remember always being afraid," she said.
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