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What New Tribes Mission did wrong:
Now that we are four years down the road, I have some thoughts on how we came to be in this dreadful impasse. How New Tribes went down one road and MK abuse survivors and their advocates and supporters went down another, to the point where we are now peering at each other from opposite hills across a deep chasm.
My thoughts have to do with the pervasive attitude of self-assured self-sufficiency that I remember so well from my 50 years in NTM.
People tell me the mission has changed since I left it in 2001. But I don't know .... from where I sit, I would say it doesn't look like it's changed enough. Not enough to help the MKs who are hurting so very deeply.
During my tenure as an adult missionary I remember participating in an arrogance that now makes me cringe in shame. During our mission training we were instilled with a cockiness that was most un-Christlike. We knew more, and knew better, than anyone else. We knew what was wrong with American churches, including our own home/sending church and all the other churches that we used for financial support. We knew no other mission board was doing things right. We knew we had the answers to how to reach tribal people, how to tell them Bible stories until we got to the grand finale and acted out the crucifixion in the village square. We knew that any tribal people who had ever been baptized by any other Christian group couldn't possibly be saved, so they needed to sit through our entire presentation and be re-baptized - by immersion.
We didn't want to use any other missionary flight organization, so we set up our own flight program, thank you very much. We didn't trust any other school to indoctrinate our children, so we set up our own boarding schools, mostly in remote locations far from anyone else's scrutiny, staffed the schools with often-underqualified or totally unqualified staff, and used fundamentalists' curriculum to teach our children everything we thought they needed to know.
New Tribes Mission handled all their own education. The mission knew what it wanted to train its candidates in, and how to do it. Their favorite recruits were kids fresh out of high school who entered Bible School, were funnelled into one of the Boot Camps, then Language School, and on out to the field. Candidates who wanted to bypass Bible School, or who came in with a degree from a real college or university were viewed with much skepticism, and often didn't even make it through the training, because they were so unsubmissive.
Now .... 2009, and NTM agrees to use GRACE to investigate MK abuse at its school in Fanda, Senegal. What followed is now a significant chapter in MK history ... GRACE produced a scathing indictment of a mission culture which set the stage for terrible abuse and cover-up on that field. The GRACE report shook the NTM community, and other mission organizations as well. We heard that mission leaders were shocked and horrified, and that Larry Brown, CEO of NTM, was losing sleep over the accounts of abuse that had taken place in his mission.
The heroic MKs of Senegal ... the true Fanda Eagles .... emboldened the rest of us with their courage. One by one we too began to raise our voices to call attention to the fact that MK abuse was not limited to Senegal. Reports of abuse came from multiple fields, from scores of adult MKs still struggling with the wounds inflicted during their childhood. Some of these MKs had been keeping their soul-shredding secrets for 50 years or more. Cumulatively, the reports were staggering.
AND THIS IS THE POINT AT WHICH THE NTM WE-CAN-HANDLE-THIS-OURSELVES MENTALITY TOOK THEM DOWN THE WRONG ROAD.
Despite our pleas, NTM decided not to use GRACE for any other investigations. Instead it found Pat Hendrix, and contracted with her to head up what it would call "independent" investigations. Totally funded by NTM. And totally controlled by them, at the end, as now demonstrated by the first investigation she has finished, into abuse (ahem, you mean misconduct?) at Vianopolis.
Yesterday an NTM member posted that MKs distrust New Tribes Mission. I have been mulling this over, and this is what I would like to point out: When NTM leaders first began comprehending the scope of this scandalous abuse, to whom did they turn for insight and guidance? What did they do to try to understand abuse survivors better? To know how to validate them, help them feel safe?
It is true that back in the 1950s and 60s very few people understood the prevalence or the life-long damage of child abuse. Corporal punishment was accepted, and was practiced, even in public schools in the US. Most people quoted the adage, "Children should be seen and not heard." Kids were viewed more as property, little pieces of clay to be molded in the hands of their parents and other adults. They were not seen as small people ... people with rights and with dignity. There was little comprehension of the ways in which cruelty to a child would shape who they would be as adults.
But that was then. This is now. Currently there is a heightened awareness of child abuse and its effects. There are experts in the field of abuse and recovery, and they can be found in schools, community organizations, law enforcement .... these people care about children and they care about adults who were hurt as children. They are not hard to find.
Did NTM look to these experienced, compassionate people for help in knowing how to communicate with abuse survivors? If they had, the leaders would probably have travelled down a very different path. Their compassion would have been palpable. I am not saying NTM leaders don't care about abused MKs. The tragedy is, I think they DO care, but they have no idea how to show it.
Communication has been poor to absolutely lacking. The NTM response has been led by a bunch of men (just think about that for a moment) who do not know how to connect with the MKs who want their stories to be told. As far as I can tell, everything is being directed by attorneys, even down to the words that are used in letters and documents. I haven't been able to feel anybody's heart since the day I was told they wouldn't be communicating with me in e-mails anymore, but only in phone calls. The process has become cold and sterile, devoid of emotion.
This is a fiasco. And it could have been so different. If only we could turn back time and I could convince NTM leaders that they were not equipped to respond to this crisis alone, and they needed to get some outside help.
But no, we can manage this by ourselves.
And so, here we are, peering at each other across the chasm.
This breaks my heart. Again.
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