Welcome to this blog, about the response of SIM to the many MKs who are suffering the effects of abuse that happened at SIM boarding schools in the past. Please visit the pages above to find out more.
Mk Safety Net Conference for April 2012 has been postponed until April 2013
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From the MK Safey Net web site: Due to circumstances we were not able to control, the MK Safety Net Conference is being postponed. It will be held next year, April 19 – 21, 2013, in Chicago. We are grateful that Paul Young, Andrew Schmutzer and Boz Tchividjian are available to participate in the conference next year. We will keep you posted about further developments.
Tyler Perry’s Open Letter to Penn State 11-Year-Old
Tyler Perry wrote an open letter in Newsweek magazine to the boy who first accused Jerry Sandusky of sexual abuse. Read the letter here. This is just a wonderful message to give this boy and anyone else who is a victim of abuse. Tyler Perry is also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Here is a powerful image from the letter: If every man who has ever been molested would speak up, you would see that we’re all around you. You may not know all of our faces and names, but my prayer is that you feel our strength holding you up. You will get through this; you’ve already endured the worst part at age 11. Now fight on, my young friend, fight on!
MK Safety Net Conference April 20-22, 2012
MK Safety Net is sponsoring a conference April 20-22, 2012 for former MKs and their families. The conference will be held at Holiday Inn Rolling Meadows Schaumburg in Rolling Meadows, (Chicago), Illinois.
They have some exciting guest speakers on their agenda, including William Paul Young, who is an adult MK and the author of The Shack, Boz Tchividjian of G.R.A.C.E., and Andrew Schmutzer, an adult MK and professor at Moody Bible Institute. As the MK Safety Net web site states, all keynote speakers and breakout sessions will address abuse and trauma experienced by former MKs with a view to breaking the silence of abuse and offering resources to move toward healing.
They will discuss topics such as therapies that are available for trauma treatment, the impact of abuse on family systems, how to report abuse, and how to recover spirituality after abuse. Whether you are an MK who has suffered abuse, or the friend or family of such an MK, it sounds like there will be something at this conference just for you. I know that for myself the support group in this area is largely online. What a wonderful opportunity to meet in person, and have an actual ‘real life’ conversation.
The Scandal at Penn State and the Message Of Accountability
I am a Penn State graduate, and the current sex abuse scandal playing out in Happy Valley really hits home. I am not a huge football fan, but I have fond memories of going to the games at Beaver Stadium during my college years. There was the tailgating, the excitement of watching your team win one game after another, and behind it all was JoePa. We loved JoePa, in fact really the man could do no wrong. In a University where football is, well, everything, Paterno set a high standard for his players during his 46 years as coach. It wasn’t just that he won more games than in other coach in the history of college football. He also insisted that his players study and work hard academically, and football players at Penn State graduated at a rate that was well above the national average for football players. Not only did Paterno build a first rate college football program during his tenure at Penn State, he also donated over $4,000,000 to the University, much of it to programs that were not sports related.
Last week Jerry Sandusky, who at one time was Paterno’s assistant football coach and right hand man, was charged with 40 crimes related to child sexual abuse. He is accused of molesting 8 children over a total of 15 years. In 2002 a graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, reported to Paterno that he had seen Sandusky sexually assaulting a young boy in the shower of the football building at Penn State. Sandusky was no longer employed by the football team in 2002, so Paterno passed the information on to other University officials but did not report it himself. Those other University officials did not report it either. Nobody called the police to report this crime.
Two Penn State officials, Tim Curley who is the athletic director, and Gary Schultz, the senior vice president for finance and business, have been charged with perjury and failing to report to authorities what they knew of the allegations. The University President, Graham B. Spanier, and Joe Paterno were not charged with a crime, but were both fired last night by the Board of Trustees. They were informed of the abuse at the time it occurred and although it wasn’t technically their job to report it either one of them could have stepped forward, but neither one did.
Paterno say he is grieving today for those children and their families, but he must not have been grieving much for that victim back in 2002. As we have learned from many mission apologies, your statement doesn’t mean a whole lot if you only say it when you are forced out into the spotlight.
It seems to me to be a no-brainer. Large prestigious organization knows of sexual abuse going on and the people in charge weigh the consequences of bringing it to light. What kind of negative publicity will they get when the press finds out one of their employees is a child molester? Do they really want to allow that conversation to take place? Look at how well respected the abuser is in the community. What if supporters stop sending in their donations because of it and it affects them financially? Wouldn’t it be better to just keep it quiet and deal with it internally? Why is anyone surprised that this is the way Penn State handled the situation when they found out about this abuse? We have seen it over and over again with mission organizations, including SIM. The needs of the organization come before the needs of the victims.
Because no one at Penn State reported Sandusky to the police back in 2002, he was allowed to remain at large for another 9 years, and who knows how many more victims he had during that time? I keep hearing of how tragic the situation is for Penn State. It is even more tragic for the victims who will live with the effects of sexual abuse for the rest of their lives.
I am happy and proud that the Board of Trustees sent a message that no one at Penn State is too powerful to be held accountable for their actions, or in this case their inaction. I hope that message gets out to all the organizations, especially the missions, that are knowingly keeping child molesters on their staff, protecting them from publicity, shielding them from their victims. No matter how big and prestigious and righteous you think you are, you will also be held accountable one day.
Abused MKs and the Question of Compensation
I hear more and more that people believe abused MKs are only out for the money. Nussbaum and Sidebotham made it a premise of the article they published back in June of 2011. This article with its rather twisted logic claimed that Protestant Ministries have become a new market for MKs who are all out to get a large sum of money as compensation for their abuse. Nussbaum has a great deal of influence in the missionary community, since he is legal counsel for the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), and also for Christian and Missionary Alliance and no doubt for other missions. On top of that ACSI is a member of the Child Safety and Protection Network (CSPN), which bills itself as a collaborative network of mission agencies, faith based NGOs and international Christian schools intentionally and strategically addressing the issues of child protection. Many, probably most, of the missions we discuss on this blog, including SIM, are members of CSPN, attending their conferences and working with them in some capacity. We all know missions today have a heavy reliance on lawyers, and are greatly concerned about their liability. When misinformation like that in the Nussbaum article is being passed on to missions is it any wonder that they become hostile and defensive when an MK comes forward with allegations of abuse?
Now, several MKs have spoken out and disagreed with the assertion that we are all out to get large amounts of money. I think it is true that most MKs are not interested in compensation, but rather in having their experiences acknowledged and validated, and having the perpetrators dismissed from the mission. But is any of this really even what we should be discussing? My feeling is that it is just a tactic to throw blame back onto the MK, to make it seem like they are the “bad guys” for wanting compensation. When we all start debating why MKs are opening investigations, we lose sight of the real issue, which is the abuse that happened in the first place.
So what if an MK wants monetary compensation for abuse they suffered in the past? I know MKs who have spent thousands on counseling and medical fees out of their own pockets, who have been unable to earn a steady income because of the effects of abuse, and who missed their chance at education and proper training because they had NO support when they were young adults fresh home from the mission field. If someone added up all the costs associated with abuse that occurred to SIM MKs, it would be pretty staggering. And yet the fact that they would ask for compensation is such a bad thing that lawyers are writing up papers about it! Shouldn’t they be focusing instead on the fact that many perpetrators are still on the mission payrolls, and still out there in the community working with children and putting them in harm’s way?
Whether the goal of an abused MK is to get an apology or to get compensation does not matter. The fact is that they are the victim, they are not the one who has done something wrong.
Lets take the blame off the abused MKs and put it right back where it belongs, on the shoulders of the missionaries who caused so much trauma and heartache for children under their care, and the missions who are refusing to do anything about it.
Lánre – Love Way
I just discovered Lánre, a Nigerian singer-songwriter who currently lives in London. She is a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice.
Messy Spirituality by Michael Yaconelli
In Messy Spirituality, Michael Yaconelli starts out by saying “I am a mess.” With that confession setting the tone, we soon find out that this is not a book for the “together” person who needs another pat on the back or validation that they are doing everything right. This book is for the broken, depressed, discouraged person, who stumbles and fails and never quite measures up, at least in their own mind, to the norm. The message of this book is that God’s grace covers everyone, especially the messy people. And not only are we covered by God’s grace, but he made us, and can use us, just the way we are.
Consider some of the heroes of both the Old and New Testament. These people were mentally unbalanced, made poor decisions and didn’t play nicely with others. David had a man killed so he could steal his wife. Samson was impulsive, reckless and routinely picked fights. Rahab was a harlot, Jacob tricked his brother out of a birthright, Noah got drunk with disastrous consequences, Saul in the Old Testament was seriously depressed and Saul in the New Testament hunted down Christians, persecuted them and saw them stoned to death. On and on goes the list of scandalous people who were taken and profoundly used by God.
Messy Spirituality is chock full of stories, and one of my favorites involves Charlie Brown and Lucy, the Peanuts characters. Charlie Brown has stopped for advice at Lucy’s psychology booth.
“Life is like a deck chair, Charlie,” says Lucy. “On the cruise ship of life, some people place their deck chair at the rear of the ship so they can see where they’ve been. Others place their deck chair at the front of the ship so they can see where they’re going. Which way is your deck chair facing?”
Without hesitating, Charlie replies glumly, “I can’t even get my deck chair unfolded.”
Charlie Brown’s dilemma pretty well sums up the way many people feel – inadequate, unworthy, unable to measure up, not just unable to participate at the great meeting, but unable to even get there.
Sadly the very groups that could be helping desperate people are shutting them out. To attend MOST churches, you need to get yourself together first. Get yourself cleaned up, dressed up, and calmed down to the point where you can sit for an hour in silent listening. What about the people who can’t clean up – don’t they need God even more? If I sit through the service week after week with tears running down my cheeks, that just makes me and everyone else uncomfortable, and we will all try to find a way to stop it.
Even Facebook, the microcosm of society, rejects a really messy person crying out for help. Telling stories about what a great parent you are, the sacrifices you are making for others, and what wonderful things you have done for God lately are strongly encouraged on Facebook. Talking about your brokenness, and how you became broken, will send your “friends” scattering away, or at least turn them into silent spectators.
Thankfully this is not God’s way. He does not require that we clean ourselves up and get our lives together before we come to him, and he can use us right in our imperfect and messy state. His grace covers the thief on the cross just as readily as it does the man who spent 30 years on the mission field and told the gospel to hundreds of people. They will both be paid the same amount at the end of the day.
In a chapter called Resisting the Resisters: Overcoming the Saboteurs of Spirituality, Mr. Yaconelli talks about how it is the nature of human beings, and especially in Christian organizations, to try to silence those who interrupt the comfort of the status quo. Those of us who are trying to make churches and missions aware of abuse know this only too well. The people in these organizations act in different ways to shut people up. They might ask you to leave the organization if you make people uncomfortable enough. They might resort to name-calling. You may find you are a poor example, uncommitted or “unspiritual”, you may even be labeled as crazy, delusional or mentally unstable. You might run up against the “Kingdom Monitors” whose self-appointed job is to keep the riffraff out of the Christian organization.
Mr. Yaconelli talks about how the idea of spiritual growth has become an industry, and an unforgiving measuring stick to live up to. The reality is that spiritual growth is not a formulaic process which increases at a steady rate day by day. Sure there are good days and high spots, but there are also days when the graph plunges down, moments of despair, times when we become stuck and can’t get anywhere. I love the way Mr. Yaconelli puts a positive slant on these times in our life when we are not “growing” spiritually. He calls these the times when we are resting, listening, returning, or waiting. How many times does the Bible tell us to be still and wait? We wait in hope for the Lord. (Psalm 33:20) Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. (Psalm 37:7) But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:25)
Are you a moral misfit, burned-out believer, religious incompetent or spiritual perfectionist? Messy Spirituality is a refreshing reminder of the truth that God loves you just as you are.
