MK forum

Bemused, I think only God and the predator know the full answer to your questions.

What I do know about this particular person is that he was a full member of NTM who made it through the entire training course in the United States with stellar marks. We now know that he was very wounded and dysfunctional himself, and had childhood trauma of his own. No reports of him molesting a child prior to his career in the mission have surfaced, however we now know that behind closed doors he was very abusive to members of his own family.

This family was given a new "ministry" in the Aritao dorm for reasons that really shouldn't have been valid. When it was not feasible for them to remain in an isolated tribal location, they were given an empty slot in a dorm ... with apparently very little screening, training or accountability.

At that point, I think opportunity presented itself, and this man now had a much larger "family" to terrorize and victimize. By then he was a master at knowing how to groom his victims and then keep them silent.

The thought that scares me is how possible it still would be for a predator to conceal themselves in a mission organization. NTM now includes some pretty pointed questions in its application form. However, I have never known a pedophile who would raise his hand and say, "Oh, and by the way, I am very attracted to small children in a sexual way, so please don't accept me for membership in your mission, church or workplace."

Jesus himself told us to be wise as serpents. None of us were wise enough or discerning enough when it came to this monster. He got away with his iniquities for years, and we were right there, just yards away from where he was doing it.

Was blessed by some thoughts from Waking the Dead by John Eldredge on this very topic...that of giving out and also caring for my heart.

He contrasts a canal with a reservoir...a canal spreads water around as it goes and ends up depleting itself, but a reservoir fills to overflowing before it shares, at no cost to itself. He points out that God is like a reservoir, he gives out of the abundance of his heart.

This analogy comes in the middle of a discussion about our hearts...that my heart does matter to God and it will always matter to God. As he says...it is one thing to say we believe that, but quite another to discover it is true. I think for me the light bulb is coming on.

When I read those words, that my heart matters to God, I felt some strong emotions, which usually means that something has touched a nerve...

Did anyone else get the impression that our hearts are 'desperately wicked and deceitful'? Because I definitely got that message, that I couldn't trust my heart because it was bound and determined to deceive me. As a result, I think I have had a really hard time hearing God because I tend to think that it's just wishful thinking or my so-called 'deceitful heart'.

Waking the Dead points out that Proverbs 4:23 says "Above all else, guard your heart", what, as if it were a dangerous outlaw? We tend to assume this warning is to keep us out of trouble, but the rest of the verse says to guard your heart because it is the wellspring of your life, because it is a treasure. It's like God saying, "Be careful with this, it means a lot to me."

So God intends that we treat our hearts as the treasures of the kingdom, ransomed at tremendous cost, as if they really do matter and matter deeply. Caring for my heart isn't selfish, it's how I begin to love and how I handle my own heart is how I will handle others' hearts as well. Do I take care in how I treat others' hearts?

I don't feel like my heart was handled as a treasure by others and therefore it seems, sadly, that I didn't learn how to handle it as a treasure either...but I'm learning now! I know I can't live merely regretting the past, but sometimes I do wish these lessons had come a little sooner in life...

Raz, what you all went through is really quite unthinkable and I am so very sorry that happened to your family.

I simply cannot for the life of me understand how someone could go through the full NTM training and not have raised any flags...and yet in a way I think I can understand. There is something about the environment that seems to allow people to live behind masks. It's as if the right questions aren't asked or the right qualifications examined or something. It's as if all that really mattered was if you said the right words and showed the right attitudes, then all was assumed to be well?

I used to be quite critical of other agencies' training programs, or what I perceived as a 'lack' thereof, even of the process that our current agency uses...but now having gone through this process myself, I think I like it. There was extensive evaluation/testing done that we had to complete that serves to detect dysfunctions, etc. and then the practice of 'outsourcing' for different training (although they accepted our NTM training and didn't require us to do more), such as Bible training, language learning skills, etc. allows the candidate to be evaluated by those outside of the organization in these different contexts. It's quite a different process from what NTM uses, which is all completely 'in-house', if I am not mistaken. I haven't been around the training institutes for a long time, so am not quite aware of all that is done nowadays.

Anyway, again, I am so, so sorry to hear some of your story and it really breaks my heart.

Bemused said "Do you think the person concerned was a predator before they entered the mission or was it something that developed. If it was something that developed, do you have any theories as to why this was the case. If the person was already a predator before entering the mission, do you think the combination of inadequate screening and the devious nature of sex offenders makes missions a prefered haven for pedophiles?

I've got my own opinions based on evidence that I'm privy to and discussions with experts in the field, but perhaps if I keep my opinions on hold until you have a chance to offer your wisdom."

I just read this today
"There is a subgroup of child molesters who molest children simply because they are sexually attracted to them. There are others who molest because they are antisocial or even psychopathic and simply feel entitled. There are still others who use children for the intimacy they are too timid or impaired to obtain from adults. And there are others who molest children for reasons we don't understand at all." (Salter,2003,p.75) the rest of the article here http://netgrace.org/wp-content/uploads/JPT-Walther.pdf

All who molest children are not pedophiles someone who is sexually attracted to children. When I went to the conference at Penn State one of the speakers emphasized pedophile means love of children which abusers do not do. He said the are nothing but child abusers, what could be worse. But if we look at the other reasons for child abuse we see there are many. It will be different with each abuser. If you know the abuse you may be able to understand their motive for abusing. I am sure the mission field contributed much so some may not have been abuser when they joined NTM but became abusers later. The reason for trying to understand the why is to help stop abuse.

I haven't yet finished the above article it is 16 pages long but well worth reading.

Thank you so much, AnotherMK .... it's been 20 years since I discovered that man had betrayed us all, but compassion from another fellow traveler still warms my heart. Always appreciated.

I have come to realize a HUGE number of candidates' dysfunctionality should have raised red flags in NTM training. And yet they didn't. I have read or heard story after story of parents who do not know how to acknowledge or validate their MK's pain. Families are destroyed. Parents and children have stopped speaking. Siblings have turned on siblings. What do you call this, if not dysfunctional? And yet these are missionaries who graduated from New Tribes Language Institute. The masks were just what the leaders wanted to see. Back in our day, the mantra was, "God can use anybody." And just to prove that point, no one ever dug too deeply to try to detect potential dangers. Instead, the main aim was to get candidates to conform. This pressure was applied, at times, in almost a cultishly extreme way. We 20-year-olds were terrified of being "kicked out" of the training. So we would do anything to prove that we were compliant and submissive.

I wish that instead of squeezing us all through the mission mold, turning out identical toy soldiers, the leadership would instead have asked hard questions, and got us to examine our own pasts, our own relationships. They should have guided us in searching for our own individual needs, and helped us work on them.

But no. That was never the point of "the training". Never.

Many of us carried huge loads of emotional baggage into Bible School. Baggage that was never addressed, and we dragged it out to the field with us, where it could fester and infect. What a sad indictment of a group of men who were trusted by us, and by our parents, our churches and our supporters to prepare and guide us into being ready to be missionaries. These men let us all down. They failed us all.

AnotherMK, can you imagine how it rips my heart to read your memories and feelings from your childhood? What do you suppose I think of myself, for having participated in that system and put my own children through that?

I have grandchildren now who are the age my children were when I peeled their arms from around my neck and handed them over to strangers to tuck in at night.

I look at my grandchildren and ask, how in God's name could I do that to my kids???

Once again, my eyes are blurred with tears and I am choked by remorse and regret.

I can never undo what I did. God forgive me.