Abuse in PNG schools - how about kids standing in line each day waiting for their turn to be beaten. One little boy was beaten so much and so often that he had solid bruises down the back of his legs - God only knows what his butt looked like. I still have to drown out the sound in my mind of kids screaming on a daily basis. One boy was beaten regularly for licking his lips, we were beaten for gagging when we had to eat liver, beaten for our room being messy, beaten for crying and being homesick, beaten for bad grades or forgetting to do homework, beaten for chewing gum, on and on and on. And I don't mean spankings, I mean beatings. Kids would be beaten at school and then by the dorm parents when they got home after school. I had my face slapped hard so many times my head still feels like it's spinning. I received one beating that left me bleeding and caused permanent back injuries. One teacher would slam students over the head with a heavy school book. I literally saw stars and my whole face went numb when that happened to me. We were publicly ridiculed. Our hair was pulled. We were pinched so hard. I had my head shoved in a toilet by a teacher and thought I was going to drown because I couldn't breathe. Children who wet their bed (probably due to the trauma they were suffering) were humiliated and ridiculed. We were regularly told how stupid we were. That's just the verbal and physical abuse. The sexual abuse was also ongoing by our teachers and dorm parents. Even when we weren't being molested at night, our dorm dad loved to play "tickle" and the big fat pervert would tickle us and if we didn't like it and go along with it then we would get a beating. The spiritual abuse - well that doesn't even need to be said. The missionaries and the MK's suffered spiritual abuse...it seemed everybody lived in fear of "the field committee". As one person wrote, it was on our shoulders as little children and on up that we had to be good and never tell our parents anything that would upset them or the natives would all go to hell because of us. I could go on indefinitely with experiences I remember. I have ZERO positive memories from NTM PNG Boarding Schools. Do I need counseling? Heck yeah! Do you know what it is like to grow up with one basic emotion - FEAR??!!
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