MK forum

Where are you, Fanda MK's who are not speaking here? (I understand that some of us have told our stories over and over again, and maybe we are tired...)
Where are you, parents of the abused? Why are you not here, (I think I have asked this so many times it is becoming ridiculous) screaming in rage about the things your kids went through in that "safe place" you sent them to?
Is the thought that maybe NTM will do the right thing causing you to sit back and sigh with relief? "It's finally over"?
Let me tell you something (parents!), it is FAR from over. Some of your children will suffer forever with the affects that Fanda had on them. And with the affects of being sent AWAY from you! Their parents! Abandoned by you.
Come here, voice your sorrow, voice your regret, voice your broken hearts!

Bonnie,
surely you must have had some contact with examples of all of these parties, individuals who gave you reasons for not participating in any way.

is there anything you can share as to why those who are still hesitant or have outright refused to get in here would have done so, while still being respectful to them and their preferred anonymity?

follow-up, i guess: how close knit is the ex-MK community apart from such obvious commonalities as that which draws people here? i.e., is it possible to be out there and oblivious to any or all of this?

jdg

Only one person has given me reason for not participating here, and it was rather vague - I get the feeling that people are simply tired, and I understand that very well.
More, I am concerned about the lack of voice from the parents.
I suppose it is possible that someone out there is oblivious to all of this, although that's highly unlikely. I think it's more a problem of shame, guilt, and fear that is keeping parents away from expressing themselves here. Some are still tied to the mission, and probably fear for their jobs if they talk here.... I wish I had more of an answer for this.

The closest I can come to understanding it is to think my own experiences with "faith" dividing families. The church where I grew up was legalistic and controlling to a degree that would be very familiar to anyone at NTM or similar if we compared notes. In addition there was an explicit hierarchical system where you had (some mixture of) God and the leadership, kind of intertwined and inextricable from each other, and then everything else came very much after. It's only since I left that I realized that blood is thicker than water, and that NOTHING trumps "family," but growing up I think we almost coldly relished families splitting, marriages ending, etc., all in the name of God, all in the name of following a Man, a church.

It showed us, falsely of course, that the whole thing was "legit." In the sense that our faith was so weak that we needed to see things pushed that hard to reinforce it, to prove that our brand of Christianity was higher, and special. Like, I suppose if it truly came down to it, you'd pick God over everything else, but how often does He really make you pick? Over your own children? Forbid it.

I suppose once you've operated under a mechanism that is similar, and I think I see it here to a much lesser degree in the demand to board your kids -- i.e., proving His primacy in your life -- that I'm not sure your balance will ever be right again, without a lot of honesty and hard emotional work. Right now, thinking about what happened, and imagining anything like that horror visited upon my daughter, I promise you that people would be dead. And that I would be on this message board and dozens of others, a berserker for justice, hunting down the ones I couldn't find.

And yet I'm not thinking in terms of the hundreds of little compromises over the years that lead to situations like this. I'm not saying this in any sense to compare my worthiness as a parent, this is a situation that is entirely foreign to me, so I can't say anything about it.

What I'm saying, in a long-winded fashion, is that to all appearances, the expected involvement of parents, their fulfillment of their "typical role" is out the window in a situation like this.

This is in response to Bonnie's question, "parents of the abused, where are you?" I attempted to post a reply yesterday, but it seems to have disappeared. (Which is discouraging because I expend a lot of emotional energy reading and responding on this forum ... very painful for me.)
I am not a Fanda parent, but I AM an Aritao parent.
I too am shocked by the lack of response from missionary parents. I am thinking that what holds a lot of people back is the weight of guilt that they are feeling. Whether they are actually aware of the guilt or not. I know that I personally have gone through an extremely heavy and painful time of remorse and repentance for ever having embraced the group-think that allowed me to accept the notion that it was okay to give my children away to strangers to raise. Words are inadequate to describe the extent of the regret I feel for this, and the grief over the fact that I can never go back and unmake the choices I made which were so unnatural and wrong, which hurt my own children so deeply that the wounds last a lifetime and extend to succeeding generations in my family as well.
Back in 1993 when I first learned that my daughters had been molested in the filthy hands of a vile pedophile whom I considered to be not only my colleague but a good friend, I vowed to do everything in my power to respond in a humble and honest way. It was the least I could do. There was no price I was not willing to pay, including being completely honest about the failures of not only myself and my husband, but the mission I had been in since I was a baby in the Fouts Springs Boot Camp and up through adulthood in the Philippines.
All the tears of repentance and contrition have been worth it. Our God is a God of redemption and restoration. "The truth will set us free."
May I encourage other parents out there who are reading this ... please don't be afraid to speak up, speak out. For the sake of our children. Please.
The way up is down.
Raz

Raz, thank you. You are such a sweet minority right now, and I love that you are speaking here.

I am surprised by the silence, but not for the same reason stated above. I kinda thought that we would have a pouring in of former FC, dorm parents, EC members on here appologizing for anything they "may" have done to harm anyone. A first strike so to speak of "lets reconcile quick" before the investigation gets to the schools they were over. I imagine there are a great many people out there reading the Grace report on Fanda who are now shaking in there shoes because they know what is coming and they do not want their name on any list. Believe me, if they say anything like "if I did anything to harm you" they probably already have many instances in their memory bank coming back to haunt them. That is what I am surprised about, that it has been pretty quiet from them. Maybe they are scrambling around trying to figure out who they can blame for what they did or why they did it that way. Just my thoughts.

I commend the parents who have gotten on here and said that even though they were going with the flow, what they did was wrong. I am encouraged by those parents.

I just wanted to come on and say that I recently posted a comment on someone's facebook page telling him that I was happy that he was full of joy. This is a person who was named in the report and who took his punishment from NTM by being retro-fired and losing all footing in NTM meaning that he can no longer represent the mission that he halped create. I am able to wish him joy because I was told that when presented with his punishment he welcomed it and said that he was glad that he was being punished because he had "wronged and hurt those kids". This statement let me know that he actually felt sorry, that he actually felt something. I am sure that if these people truly repent and ask forgiveness that God will give them true joy in their souls.
The only thing that I am troubled by is that I had to hear this from someone else. I have heard nothing directly from anybody except Larry. Why is that?? Don't they know that we are waiting, waiting to hear from them personaly? I should not have to call everyone involved personaly so that they can apologize to me, they should be doing that anyway. Where are all of the apology letters on the Fandaeagles home page, or the NTM website? If you do not know if I am talking to you just open up the GRACE report, look up all the names of the ones who buried this and covered it up, if your name is there start writting because I want to read it. I get that you are apologizing to your family, to your pastors, to your church friends, and small groups, but how about turn your voice to us know.

Well said, Denise. Would you feel free to put that on the front page of the blog? I think some NTMers don't go in to the forums but they look at the front page and don't seen anything new. I've been told that by some.

I think it shouldn't just be those named in the report although they should definitely be writing, calling, doing everything to let the Fanda MKs know they are sorry. It should also be EVERY NTM member in Senegal! This is not just about those named but is about all those others who insist on their silence. some were on the field for over 20 years and by their silence were complicit.

I'm just plain sick of the silence by the entire Senegal field. Are they wimps, cowards, fearful or simply stupid??? they certainly have no God-conscious - that is evident! Fed up!

Thanks Interested.
I posted it on the home page of the fandaeagles site, after correcting some spelling errors, yikes!