New Tribes Mission's Continuing Culture of Enabling Abuse

Something I found while browsing Facebook...

This is a picture of Brad Buser, a very big name in New Tribes Mission. While I was in training, he was a recruiter for NTM. He is standing with Gary Earle, the man who NTM recently refused to fire (They allowed resignation) for abusing children in Papua New Guinea. I'm not sure whose children are in the picture, and I blocked out their faces anyway, but why are they in the same room as this man who abuses children? Why do so many current New Tribes missionaries "like" this photo, including Ron Lindsey, president of the New Tribes Bible Institute, who would certainly know who Gary Earle is? Why didn't a single person speak up and ask for Gary Earle's sincere repentance? This is not just a reunion. This man was forced to come back to this corner of the world because he injured children on purpose.

For a bigger picture of who Gary Earle is, please see this post over at the Fanda Eagles: http://fandaeagles.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1362

And if you believe NTM has really changed, here are some recent thoughts from NTM MK survivors who continue to follow up on NTM's slow, questionable investigations. Their voices matter more than anyone else's on this topic. Listen and feel with them. These quotes, and their reasons for feeling this way, can be found here: http://fandaeagles.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1402&start=30

"I make no apologies if some feel that I just keep pounding the negativity drum. I think I have been saying the same things, over and over, for four years. But the reason I keep writing is that nothing has improved. NTM's response to our concerns has never been about what MK abuse survivors need. It has been -- and continues to be -- about protecting the mission." -Raz

"I wish I had not been trusting. It will not happen again." -Allbetter, in reference to sharing his or her story of abuse with the current investigators.

"GRACE was the last good decision made by ntm that was beneficial to MKs." --Mosquito Bite

"It's a bit like finally being invited to spend thanksgiving with "the family" after years of wishing and hoping to get an invitation. Only to find that there is no turkey and you are the replacement." --Bemused

"Cowards then, cowards now I say." --Aussie


Edit on December 30, 2014: It has been brought to my attention that Brad Buser was dismissed from NTM at some point during my training, so many of the people I trained with were there as a result of him and are friends with him, but it seems that was not officially the case from then on. Many of the followers at a blog called ALTA-FORMA are with NTM, and the consensus on and around their Facebook page seems to be that Buser is a good guy. Secondly, NTM ended up forcing Gary Earle to resign instead of allowing him to retire, like they originally intended. Allowing a child abuser to resign instead of firing him is still an inadequate response. I have modified the sentence above about him being allowed to retire and changed it to "resignation.")

My Letter To My Parents

My letter to my parents flowed out of me one day after seeing a sibling being bullied by them…again. I spoke with my sibling, then began washing dishes. Just a few plates in, I grabbed a notebook, pen, and let it all come out. I thought I’d have to edit it afterwards, but the version I sent them is exactly what I scribbled.


Dear Mom and Dad,

How many offspring of yours do you currently have an excellent relationship with? How many of them seem to want to be a part of your lives as much as you want to be in theirs? If you feel like your adult children are angry or distant, or do a poor job of keeping in touch, do you honestly think it is all of us with a problem, and that you have done nothing to provoke us?

The truth is, I’m tired of your bullshit, your lies (especially yours, Mom. You lie all the time.) and I won’t stand up for or with you anymore. And right now, you’re probably thinking more about my language than my point, because you are judgmental. We are not safe being ourselves around you. You spend the whole time we’re together w/ an agenda to fit us into our mold. Example for Dad: At Christmas, [my sibling] said, “Holy crap!” Dad, you literally looked shocked. You composed yourself, stuck your nose in the air, and asked, “Is there such a thing?” We all ignored you. Know why? Because when your [child] comes home from her first semester of college and says “Holy crap!”, if that is all you have to worry about, then you should feel lucky. Example for Mom: I moved to NTBI and you stalked me on Facebook avidly, clicking on the profiles of my new friends as I added them. We talked and the phone, and you said, “Boy, that Shawna person sure is wild, isn’t she?” So I went to see Shawna’s profile to find out why you would say such a thing, knowing that without adding her as a friend, you could only see her profile picture. And Shawna, in the picture, was wearing a green, spaghetti-strap tank top. You obsess over insignificant details that you think are evil, but you can’t even apologize for your own glaring faults.

I find it interesting, though, that both of your views on those insignificant details only change depending on who you surround yourself with and not with careful thought. I could never dress down for church. I could not wear jeans, shirts with words, or often even dress pants, even after I took the time to explain to you that spending so much time trying to look good on Sunday mornings put me in the wrong frame of mind for church. But you cared more about how we appeared to the rest of the church than you cared about my wellbeing. Then, you get jobs at CCC and bam! Allie can wear jeans to church.

As far as the abuse goes, I have listed 3 examples to you via email and phone call—one of spiritual abuse, one of emotional abuse, and one of physical abuse. I need not list more.* You have yet to apologize for just those three. In fact, Dad told *me* to repent. But I do feel that there were two more types of abuse that I am adding to your list now, and those are verbal abuse and neglect. Technically, verbal abuse and spiritual abuse fall under the category of emotional abuse, but these are separated for the sake of clarity.

Example of verbal abuse from Mom and indirectly Dad for enabling it, as well as spiritual abuse from Dad: One night, in South Africa, Mom would not stop insulting me and I kept trying to reconcile. Dad manipulated me to do so, based on Bible verses about honouring parents and reconciling. Mom sat on her bed, uncaringly spewing out the most hurtful things she could think of. Being my mother, you took advantage of your biological bond with me and your knowledge of me to hurt me in the deepest ways. When I could not take it anymore, I would walk out of the room, go down to the living room, and sob uncontrollably. I know you could hear me, because I was literally out of control. I sobbed long and hard each time. Then, per Dad’s instruction, I would try again to reconcile with you. It happened over and over. Dad would sit and listen at the desk in your bedroom, never stopping to say, “Hey! You can’t treat my child like this!” Fuck you both. Jesus wouldn’t have stood by and done nothing. He would have put a millstone around both your necks and drowned you. He would have grabbed a whip, turned over the bed and desk and driven you away from me, because HE VALUES ME. It is only since the day I made the decision to cut ties with you that  I am clearly able to feel his love.

found here:
http://middlenameconfused.tumblr.com/post/36218784121

Example of neglect: We moved to CGN when I was 11 years old (and Allie and Sam were of course, even younger). I went days without seeing either of you. No one made sure I was tucked in at night. Once, I got lost in the woods at the age of 13 or 14 for an entire afternoon and you never even knew. It’s by the grace of God I made it out, no thanks to you! I brought this issue of neglect up with Mom once and she said I was at the Ham’s or Memere’s during the summers. She knows this is only partially true. I went to visit the Ham’s I think 2 or 3 times, and Catey came to visit me once or twice (then we were both unsupervised!). And I went to visit Memere 2 or 3 times for a max of 2 weeks each time. I don’t think you ever knew that the summer I got really skinny it was due to anorexia, because you never bothered to be a part of my life consistently. Mom, you sat down with me at the end of one summer and asked, “So. Who do you like?” I answered “Nobody.” And you started crying and saying that I would never share anything with you and how all the girl counselors liked you, so why didn’t I? Because I know who you really are, and they don’t. That’s why. And you can’t expect a preteen girl to open up to you after you ignore her for an entire summer. Dad, you have NEVER been a fully present part of my life, and I think you know that. From your business trips to holing out in your office in South Africa (coming out to watch television), you have always put your ministry above me. I grew up thinking that whoever you ministered to was more important to God than I was. The only thing you and I ever had in common was theologically debating and bashing all the idiots who disagreed with us behind their backs. Now that I’m an Egalitarian hippie chick, I see that you have to have more in common with someone other than opinions to have a friendship with them. I don’t know why you never wanted to spend time you’re your 6 amazing, beautiful, and talented children, but I do understand now that it is something wrong with you instead of something wrong with us. I am an incredibly valuable person and if I have to spend the rest of my life re-programming that into myself, dammit!, I WILL. Because I am made in the image of God and I have worth, whether you act like it or not.

I am changing my phone number. I am changing my email. You can no longer be in my life or my daughter’s. If you wish to contact me (for the purpose of apologizing ONLY), you may write a letter and address the envelope to David. He will read it and if it meets the criteria of a true apology, he will pass it on to me. If not, it isn’t for my eyes, because I will not subject myself to further abuse from your hands.

I do love you, but as far as I’m concerned, your abuse has destroyed our relationship and you have forfeited your rights to the pleasure of my friendship. I love you both and goodbye.

Savannah

-----

*Please note that I certainly could have listed scores more of examples. I didn’t feel that need, though, because they were refusing to acknowledge the examples I’d already given. It was and is important for me to know that someone I’m dialoguing with is willing to see my side before I spend my energy trying to show them what I see.

After writing that, I typed it up and then had three qualified friends look over it for me. They all approved it and two of them said the same thing: “I’m proud of you.” I printed it off, signed it by hand, sealed it in an envelope, and scribbled “I Timothy 5:8” on the back. So you don’t have to check, that verse reads, “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” I walked it to the post office myself and then I was done. I haven’t spoken to them since, and I have zero regret.

Many people have said to me, “When your parents die, you’ll lose the chance to have a relationship with them and you’ll regret this.” My opinion of these people is that they haven't taken the time to visualize a little girl being battered. I don’t know where this idea comes from that I should automatically desire a relationship with them because they are my “parents.” Our society needs to come to terms with the fact that there are some sick people in this world, and there’s no stopping many of them from having biological children. Reproducing and then abusing their offspring doesn’t make them parents. Parenting is what makes a parent.

In addition, I’ve been contacted by certain of their friends, who say that they can see how much sorrow my parents feel over me. In a way, I’m glad that those who have done so have no concept of how abusers save their tears for the public and their venom for the vulnerable. In fact, I keep a running list of things that they’ve told others about me, and it’s full of contradictions such as “We’ve apologized and she won’t accept it,” to “She’s going through a rebellious stage because we wouldn’t let her wear jeans to church.” They have never owned up to the gravity of what they’ve done, though (Or that they’ve done anything abusive at all.). When it comes to serious mistakes, repentance is only in their vocabulary for other people.

But I have repented. I’ve repented of thinking God was like my parents and that he makes for a really crappy father. I’ve repented of my self-loathing and believing I wasn’t valuable. I’ve repented of following their will for my life instead of delighting in who God made me to be. I plan to spend the rest of my life repenting, and that letter was what enabled me to start. It didn't make me a prodigal child. It made me a bird that was set free from her cage.

I Regret Purity Culture

Any fundamentalist Christian who grew up in the 90’s is familiar with the phrase “True Love Waits.” Born out of a culture that prizes sexual purity, the TLW movement came with modesty slogans (for females only), purity rings, and sermon after sermon at youth groups across America. Believing that God requires total abstinence from sex before marriage, Baptists built a law around the law. “Purity is a direction, not a line you suddenly cross by going too far,” taught Joshua Harris in I Kissed Dating Goodbye. But “purity” meant “not having sex.” So we went in the direction of fighting even our sexual desires, because we weren’t supposed to engage in anything that could theoretically lead up to sex. Choosing to save one’s first kiss for marriage was usually the acceptable way to go. Where this rule originally came up from or why it was so widely accepted, I have no idea.

A couple more things you would need to know if you looked into the TLW movement are that courting was more pure than dating, giving away your virginity or anything else physically was seen as giving pieces of yourself away—an act you could never take back and would always regret, and women could not be trusted to make their own courting/engagement/marriage decisions.

My dad took that last one to the extreme. When I was 16, he tried to betroth me to a co-worker at camp, someone I was not at all attracted to and who would require me to wear skirts and give up Christian rock music for the rest of my life. My dad liked this guy so much that he repeatedly begged…and offered him our car in exchange for me. To my co-worker’s credit, he was baffled and embarrassed. He said no. I heard about it later in the summer, which made life in the horse barn with him terribly awkward for the remainder of the season. I doubt Joshua Harris would have been ok with this, so I’m not saying it represents purity culture at large, but to my knowledge, nobody told my dad that he was being controlling and…just crazy. I can’t think of another word for his actions.

His behavior for the rest of my single life was more typical of a pro-purity dad. He and my mom were constantly matchmaking (to the point that, when I was 18 and being stalked by a fellow MK, my mom asked me, “Aren’t you at least a little flattered?”). When my older brother got a girlfriend at college, my parents were totally over the moon. They trusted him to pick a suitable mate, and were delighted to hear that he had his first kiss with her on their first date. But when I was instant messaging with a potential boyfriend, my dad started getting very grouchy because this young man hadn’t spoken to him about it first.

When I met my husband to be, David, I was at NTBI in Wisconsin and my parents were in South Africa. David had to ask me for my dad’s email so that he could get permission to court me. My dad responded with a list of 10 questions for David that required detailed answers. By the time David was finished typing up a response, his paper for my dad was bigger than his biggest paper he ever had to write in Bible college. My dad’s motto is, “You wouldn’t let anyone just take your car for a drive, so why are you letting people try out your daughter?” For the record, I’m much more capable of making good choices than a car, but ok…

My dad gave David and I strict courting rules. He said he didn’t see how it was acceptable for a couple to even hold hands. “Maybe….maaaaaybe, when they get engaged,” he said. Because we were so utterly brainwashed by purity culture’s concepts of not giving yourself away, running the opposite direction of pre-marital sex, and listening to a woman’s “spiritual leader” (my dad), my husband and I didn’t have any romantic touching at all until our first kiss at the altar. While we were courting, he once led me by the hand because I was blindfolded, but other than that, no physical contact was allowed.

We took this as a joke during our engagement, but
it's not at all funny to me now.

The entire TLW movement is based on not having any regrets before marriage. They scare young people with talks about how you don’t want to explain to your future spouse how you have had physical contact with other people. But I regret so much. I regret being a part of this movement at all. I regret not standing up to my dad’s ridiculous behavior and double standards. I regret the thousands of missed romantic moments that David and I longed to touch each other but held back. I regret that my first kiss was in front of everyone we knew. I regret that my concept of purity before God was entirely centered around not having sex before marriage. I regret teaching the girls at youth group that I had set some sort of Christlike example to follow. I could go on and on.

This movement is based around insecurity, plain and simple. If a man is upset that his wife had kissed other people before him, that would be insecure and degrading to her personhood (she didn’t give pieces of herself away—she’s still a whole person). If a parent is so worried that their child will fall into sexual pitfalls that they have to ban their children from even thinking sexual thoughts, that is insecure, too.

I am not insecure about my purity anymore. Not before my “father,” not before my husband, not before myself, and not before God. But I can’t get those years back now. The only thing I can do is throw this shame in the goddamned garbage can. So here it goes…

This One Time I Got Shunned

photo found here: http://tyt2000.deviantart.com/art/Freedom-19490162

This evening, I browsed Facebook photos and came across an album called “Pastor T’s Ordination.” I clicked and suddenly saw the eyes of my abusive father (Can I get a different term for that? He is no father of mine.) looking at me through the screen. My youth pastor, who spiritually abused me, was being ordained and my abuser spoke at this event. I clicked through the pictures, identifying each person that came out to support my abusers by name. These were my once my friends, my mentors, the kids I babysat…

Pastor T apparently still endorses my abuser. Everyone at my old church does, as far as I know. And I can’t figure out why the pain flows tonight, because this is not new knowledge, but it does. It flows and flows.

These people raised me. Did they always think I was crazy? Or just when I stopped believing what they believe? I haven’t done anything wrong by stating facts. They would even say that God wants truth to be known, but they want me to say nothing about the truth of my childhood.

And why do I care? I look through the photos, and it’s not like I want to move back to New Hampshire and be in their lives again. I don’t ever want to go back to that church basement for potlucks or even stand in the parking lot.  So what’s bothering me?

I think it’s the fact that they took away my basic human rights, and they continue to act as if I am evil because I took those rights back. They degraded my gender. They sacrificed me to do their mission work. They tried to control my thoughts. They taught me that I wasn’t valuable to anyone, not even God. They made me feel that setting relationship boundaries wasn’t spiritual. They said I made God sad if I didn’t do exactly what they wanted me to do. Then, when my world went beyond them, they shunned me. Some did it through ignoring me and some did it through picking countless fights on my Facebook wall (and never engaging in conversations on a personal level, even when I pointed out that our friendships couldn’t survive constant debating with no personal encounters). Every lost friendship wounded me, but they said they did it because they couldn’t, in good conscience, support me as a person. They implied that I was backslidden and compromising, doing whatever I felt like doing. What really happened? I examined the world and my beliefs with fear and trembling, afraid of what would happen with each change. I think I found beliefs that correspond better to reality. I can’t change reality. And truth I've found has been too good to me to reject. So who is the real friend, the one who shuns me for having different viewpoints, or the one who tries for years to fit the mold so that she can stay included in the community?

What do I want from them now? I want them to believe that God hates abuse. I don’t need to defend myself, but I still wish I could be believed. When they are entirely unwilling to consider that my father is an abuser, when they set him up as their leader, when they feel sorry for my mother as she plays the victim (and then focus their negative attention towards me, just as she wants), when they bend any evidence they can find in directions it doesn’t naturally go so that they can stay in their secure lives, when they support the phony “investigations,” that the unqualified leadership at Christ Community Church used to harass me, and when they call me a liar, they revictimize me. I’m not too far away to feel this pain, since they will always be my past.

And tonight, it makes me feel hated. 

Why I Choose to Love Me

I like who I am. I like who I have become. I like who I am still becoming. In short, I have come to a place in my life where I really, really love myself.

I hear the collective gasps out there.

One of those gasps is coming from my old self, who would be mortified. My old self would give my new self a sermon that would go something like this:

“We do not need to be taught self-confidence or self-love, because the problem with the world is that we already have too much of it. People are prideful, and meanwhile, the Bible says we are like filthy rags before God. Stop loving yourself. You’re arrogant and I don’t even want to be around people like you.”

If my old self really believed that she thought too highly of herself, why did she beat herself down constantly? Why did she starve herself, measure her value according to how productive or thin she was, frequently want to cut herself, or think about killing herself?  That is why my old self was dead wrong—she didn’t love herself too much. She didn't love herself at all. She was taught that she was worthless, she was treated as if she was worthless, and she believed that she was worthless…to her parents, to her god, and even in her own heart.

The ironic thing is that I learned these attitudes from people who still claim to value human life more than the rest of society, yet somehow, my life was not included in that equation. They used this inherently abusive teaching to trample me. The tipping point for me was when I read that there is a big difference between being unworthy and being totally worthless, similar to what is taught here.

Humans are valuable. Humans are made in the image of God. God has gifted humans. If it is important for me to protect the lives of other human beings on those premises, why shouldn’t I protect myself? I am human too, after all.

I’m learning to act according to my gifts and inherent God-given value. When I wear what I want to wear, I am pleased with what I’ve expressed. When I listen to a friend share that my story helped him in some way, I know I’m doing the right thing with my life right now. When I publish my freelance work, I feel that I am using my gifts in the way God intended. God is pleased when I'm helping others, so why shouldn't I be pleased?

So I’m here to say that I’ve become my own fan. I love myself, and I think the world would be a better place if everyone could say the same. People wouldn't look for someone to look down on so they could feel better about their own insecurities. They would place high value on rest and self-care, and then would be more ready to serve one another once their own needs were met. Self-harm and suicide rates would drop. Expressing their God-given gifts would lead to individuals reflecting God to the world in a clearer way.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’...‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Lent and Remembrance

Today I decided to get rid of a piece of clutter. It was a homeschool project from when I was 8 years old. What kinds of things should an 8 year old be learning? Not these things...

Part 15 B Unexpected Revelations--Camp Good News

I can’t even tell you how sad it makes me to write this. When I think of Camp Good News, I think of friends, tall green trees, puddle jumping, and horses. I was completely, 100% for CGN as a ministry, a place of beauty, and as a respite from my parents. But today I realized something that unnerved me. I regularly have nightmares about this place. Some of them, I don’t understand, like numerous ones where I’m being attacked (always involving the hill leading up to Bascoms pond. I don’t know why. I have no memories of trauma there). The others make perfect sense. When the dream starts, I’ve discovered that my mom wants me to be on camp staff and I’m late to training. As the dream continues, I’m filled with anxiety because I need rest but I can’t move one heavy foot in front of the other. I’m disappointing everyone for the simple reason that I’m a limited human and not the superhuman they think I am. Then, I always wake up relieved to be away from that place, and trust me, that makes me sadder than anyone out there who is a current Camp Good News fan. 

My most positive memories of camp were from being a camper. I relished it. In fact, my most vivid memories of childhood are camp memories, while many other parts of my childhood are blank question marks. I sincerely believe that this is because camp was such a light for me in comparison to my home life. I do believe I experienced some spiritual abuse there, because I remember “getting saved” repeatedly out of terror and going to sleep in my bunk bed afraid of waking up in hell. When I was 11, my parents became the camp directors. The abuse I remember most vividly was when I was a volunteer and a staff member (under their leadership for half of my summers) during my high school summer breaks. That was when I was taught how to be an abuser.

It started with being in Teen Service (cleaning bathrooms, setting tables, and washing dishes). We did huge amounts of work, and jokingly begged for naps. One day, our leader came and told us that we were to take a mandatory rest. I was confused, so I pressed for more information. Not surprisingly, someone had just added up our hours of work, and we had reached the legal limit that a minor can work. I felt quite validated because the State of New Hampshire thought I wasn’t lazy; I was just overworked and tired. But we still did the dishes for the rest of the week, and at the end of each week, we were called to the camp office and told to sign papers to say that we hadn’t gone over the legal limit. I distinctly remember thinking that I had to lie and sign those papers because I didn’t want this great ministry to be brought down over such a minor issue.

The really tragic thing about camp was how their authority structure worked. The next summer, when I became a counselor, I was trained in how to control kids using the Bible. I was given methods for spiritually abusing them just like I had been abused. Every week, I got a fresh cabin full of giggling little girls, and I taught them that Romans 13 said that obeying their camp counselor meant that they were obeying God. Likewise, I believed I was obeying the authority that had trained me in these methods, and on up the chain it went. Any time a camper even felt negative emotion, I was to try to help her see how this was a shortcoming that she needed to “be saved” from. For example, if a camper was homesick and crying for her mother, I would show her verses about how she was not trusting God with her fear and redirect her to “The Wordless Book.” If she accepted everything I said, the next morning, I would report it to the higher ups, who would put a star on the wall in the Dining Hall. The stars were the staff’s pride and joy—our salvation tallies. 

The Wordless Book

Female counselors were asked to enforce rigid modesty checks that, at times, really alienated us from campers, and I think I followed those rules more obediently than any other staff member. I remember feeling culture shock one weekend when I went out to eat and saw, of all things, girls wearing short shorts and spaghetti straps openly! In public! These women didn’t even have a human element in my eyes because all I could see were sinners in need of a Saviour.

My final summer at camp was incredibly difficult. I had just moved out of my parents house, was experiencing culture shock (having come from South Africa), was dealing with a roller coaster of a college application (which camp didn’t have the internet for me to keep up on), and was dealing with some personal issues. It was the first summer that I didn’t fit the mold of the perfect counselor, and I felt guilty for being exhausted. I know that this is where my most of my anxious, over-achiever camp dreams come from, because I felt utterly alone and like a total failure. I had been taught by my abusers to give 200%, to always sacrifice myself for others whenever possible, and that taking anything for myself was sinful, so I kept at it.

I’m replenishing from this season even now, almost 6 years after I left camp for the final time. I’ve often wondered if I would ever introduce my family to this place that has meant so much to me. Every time I play out the scene in my mind, though, I feel like a spiritual pariah entering the camp grounds. I am not the missionary they raised me to be. I wear clothes they shame women for wearing. I would never let my children be campers there. In fact, what I’d really want my family to see isn’t the camp programs at all, but the woods, the beaver ponds, the dirt roads, and the mountain streams I came to know so well. I wouldn’t be allowed to explore those again by myself, so I have no reason to return.

I have no reason to ever return to any institution that made me afraid of the God I’ve learned to love. 

My final week at CGN

Part 15 A Unexpected Revelations--Claremont Christian Academy

It’s incredibly odd to think that I haven’t woken up to what I’m about to write until today. My husband thinks my brain couldn’t handle all the memories at once, so the realizations of abuse come in pieces. I think it’s because I really was brainwashed and this was all “my normal.” It’s probably a mix of both. I’m discouraged to say that there’s two more organizations that I still haven’t identified as systematically abusive I’m afraid I will draw the most criticism in my personal life for these two posts, but I carry on wearily anyway, because I need this for myself.

My cult church in NH ran a school called CCA. In our early years in the church, those in the school ostracized the church kids who did not attend. I would get wind of things that parents would say about public school kids, like, “What I want to know is how [a public school student] passed his science tests,” implying that the student must have been compromising his faith. I do remember a little criticism about homeschooled kids like me as well, and up to a certain point, we weren’t part of the “in crowd.” That faded with time, though, particularly when the principal of CCA was found to be sexually abusive and a lot of his minions had graduated and moved to college. To my cult's credit, he was kicked out of the church because he refused to apologize for his actions, but some outraged families even left with him and started another short-lived school. While he was in leadership at CCA, I heard all sorts of stories of abuse, ranging from him raping and molesting teenage girls to obese teachers sitting on elementary school students until they cried. I sit in grief for the children who were entrusted to his and his staff’s care.

Personally, I was always perfectly happy not attending CCA. The curriculum, called Accelerated Christian Education meant that everyone had to sit facing the wall, without talking, for most of the day. Instead of engaging with other people, it required students to read lessons alone. I knew that wasn’t my learning style, but in high school, my parents informed me that someone in the church had anonymously paid for me and 3 of my siblings to attend.

The curriculum reflected the school’s spiritually abusive messages that we heard from everyone in our church. It was filled with cartoons containing formulas for living the Christian life (This action + This thought = Pleasing God). The idea that hurt me the most was one I heard from all sides in my life and it went as follows:

·         God is the absolute authority. God has set me up as your leader. Therefore, God wants you to obey me and obeying me means obeying God.

As you can see, this was brainwashing at its finest. I wouldn’t dare step outside of their ideals for my life.

One teacher stands out as particularly abusive. He was also the leader of our youth group (the man who told me that I had to submit to my parents even if they weren’t good parents). While funny and easy-going, he made me feel shame like no one else at the school. His constant group talks about modesty made me feel like it was my fault when I caught him checking me out (and I realize a lot of people will be angry and accuse me of lying, but curvy girls would probably understand right away what kind of looks I’m talking about). The thing is, when I caught his eyes as he stared up my shorts one day, I only remember halfway feeling like he was wrong. The other half of me felt like I was wrong and that I should have done something differently, even though I lived and breathed strict modesty standards for myself and others. It was something I rigorously policed myself on on an hourly basis thanks to the teachings of my father and this man.

Another way he made me feel shame was for my physical disability. The staff, when I attended, was dismally disqualified to be teaching (something that goes along with ACE curriculum; the staff are considered “supervisors,” not “teachers.”), and this youth pastor was our gym teacher. There were certain types of exercise I enjoyed, and certain ones that made me feel like I couldn’t breathe. I honestly just thought I was out of shape and that running was more rigorous than anything else I did (snowboarding, swimming, horseback riding, rock climbing). My throat quickly became raw, my face turned beet red (and remained so for the rest of the day), and I would suck in huge amounts of air, but I always felt like I was suffocating. For the rest of the day after I was forced to run, I would hold back vomit and feel like a pillow was being stuffed over my mouth so I couldn’t breathe. I tried to alternate running and walking in gym class, for which the teacher accused me of being lazy. I found out as an adult that I have exercise-induced asthma, which is aggravated more by certain activities, including running. If I hadn’t snuck in walking when the teacher wasn’t looking, I could have died. A qualified PE teacher would have recognized the symptoms of asthma, but instead, he made me feel like a less-than-worthy human being. I felt sinful for having asthma.

Not coincidentally, this man was also the camp pastor for the camp in Part B of this blog post...

How NTM is the Perfect Hiding Place for Child Abusers

Warren Kennel

As yet another child sexual abuse scandal emerges from a New Tribes missionary, my mind is whirring with questions. For example, how does a large organization like New Tribes Mission, with such nice people and such a clear focus, become the perfect hiding place for abusive people like Warren Kennel? Why does this keep happening? I can only speak from my own experience, but we left NTM two years ago, immediately after graduating from their Missionary Training Center. I have given this a lot of thought ever since, and I’m sure I’m not done thinking about it. I want to open up my thoughts in this post so that other people who have knowledge of NTM’s structures can chime in and let me know of their perspective.
To write this blog post, I’ll be referencing the example of Donna Beach. If you would like to know all the ins and outs of this problem, feel free to read the GRACE report, but here’s a quick summary: She is a statutory rapist. She committed her crime with a student at NTM’s boarding school in Senegal (aka Fanda). NTM chose to keep her on staff after the GRACE report was released.

So how does something like that happen? Here we go…

1. Bear with me through the technical jargon of this point, but I was told that Donna Beach is not with NTM-USA (Update: Ten minutes after posting this, I checked to see if this was true. I am not entirely sure, but I now believe she may be an NTM-USA missionary and I'm not sure why I might have been given false information while in training.). NTM is divided by country. Each country has different leadership, but works together. If I was in the remote jungle, I could have co-workers from NTM-Australia, NTM-Germany, etc. NTM-USA might have fired her (They actually had full knowledge and decided to keep her around, including Paul Wyma, who instructed everyone to “leave the lid on this,” during NTM’s first “investigation.”), but by the time the report was released, they had no authority to. Her sending country’s board decided that they disagreed with GRACE’s recommendations and kept her around. Is that NTM-USA’s fault? No. But it does point to a problem. An NTM-USA missionary who has a problem with Donna Beach has no say. Their hands are tied. The abusers have power. 
2. Why would any leadership, USA or no, decide that Donna Beach could stick around as a missionary? A missionary?! There are several leadership committees in the NTM world that are ok with her because child protection knowledge varies from country to country, and it seems that Donna Beach’s leadership believes that she has changed and is now capable of mission work. Willful or not, blindness ties up their hands. The abusers have power. 
3. Some  people in NTM plow over individuals for the sake of their end goal, so if a missionary speaks up with a problem, they risk being shamed, silenced, and ignored. Don’t believe me (and I don’t recommend that everyone read this part; it involves the death of an infant. Skip to part 4 if you think this subject would be hard for you.) When I sat in classes at New Tribes Bible Institute, I listened to a missionary tell the story of how he let an indigenous baby cry to death for 3 days in the jungle because he didn’t want to risk tarnishing his reputation by going against the cultural guidelines of superstition. He told the story as an example of his faithfulness to the goal and to God. What kind of organization would let someone like that stay on the mission field? What kind of organization would allow this missionary to teach other missionaries what it means to be faithful? One that prioritizes goals over individuals. The victims’ (like the MKs and that little baby) hands are tied as long as they submit to NTM leadership. The abusers have power. 
4. Many NTM missionaries disassociate themselves from the evil side of their organization. They know they can’t do anything, so they shut up, keep the end goal in mind, and keep working. After all, the very structure of the leadership defies change, but tribal people are dying without Jesus. They do their best to separate their own ministries name from the names of the abusers, as they build their life’s work inside of the organization they verbally distance themselves from (“NTM has done more good than bad,” or “That was a different missionary. My team is different.”). They do this instead of standing up actively to fight the abuse. They tie their own hands. The abusers have power.
5. NTMers can be unaware of this continued problem. Like I said, this organization has a lot of nice people in it. They assume the organization is inherently good and that they now do their best to keep up with child protection. I know I was shocked when I pushed and pushed to find out whatever happened to the GRACE recommendations. First, I didn’t know who to ask after we left the organization, so I wrote on NTM’s Facebook page asking where the recent Fanda updates could be found. They deleted my post and private messaged me (I found out later that what they said privately wasn’t even entirely true). This smelled funny to me. So I wrote to an MK who sent me to the Fanda forums. That was when I discovered NTM’s communications with MKs concerning Donna Beach. If you are with New Tribes today, I beg you to read this. Then I beg of you to make a stink. Throw rotten tomatoes at your leadership for their shameful response to the recommendations given by GRACE. Leave in protest if you have to (You don’t need New Tribes Mission in order to be a missionary). Anyone who supports NTM missionaries, write to the organization and tell them you will do so no longer and tell them why. Tell your churches’ mission boards this story. The monster will only stay alive if we all keep feeding it, so do whatever it takes. Your hands are not tied. Abusers should never be given power

Part 14B – Leaving Behind The Cookie Cutter Missionary

The list of opinions that I hid from other New Tribers grew substantially when I went to the New Tribes Missionary Training Center (MTC). I learned not to talk about women in leadership, how I choose to parent, the hurt I received at the hand of a staff member at MTC, and my changing outlook about New Tribes in general.

For example, in our course syllabus for our parenting class, we were informed that the

One of our required reads at the NTM MTC

reason for the class was that there was a lot of conflict on the field surrounding parenting; missionaries can’t get along with their co-workers who discipline differently than they do. Instead of teaching a class on giving others the freedom to parent differently than oneself, they lumped everyone together—singles without children and married couples with or without children—to teach us all the “right” way to parent children.  Sitting in class, I heard day in and day out about the importance of spanking my daughter. If you’ve read my older blog posts, you’ll know that I was abused through spanking. I personally can’t use this discipline method because of my past. Timeouts were criticized in our homework assignment one day, and I marveled at the idea of the organization dictating my life down to this minute detail of how I could and couldn’t discipline my child.

Sadly, if I did get the courage to speak up about any of my problems, I was met with one of three answers.

1.    “A ship takes a long time to turn around.” This analogy was often used to excuse inaction. When I or my classmates brought an issue to staff, this was the typical response. I witnessed and experienced it many times. Sure, it takes a while to turn an organization around, but they will never get there if they simply quip this line at people who want to be the voice of change.
2.  “If you think this is bad, consider it as preparation for the field. You’ll have conflicts much worse overseas and you need to learn to submit here and now.” This answer, given by both students and staff, usually meant ducking your head and ignoring problems as well. The correct response to conflict seemed to be to have a “godly attitude” which meant to suffer in silence and be unrealistically positive. I should have seen that conflicts that were much worse on the field meant that I didn’t want to be part of this organization. Sure, there’s no perfect organization, but there are organizations with leadership structures that don’t invite abusers in and protect them, then expect a “godly” response of submission and positivity from their workers.
3.  “If you think this is bad, you should have seen MTC 20 years ago.” I think it’s great that MTC has improved, but again, this is not a reason to stop improving and silence those who want to see more improvements.

Unfortunately for New Tribes, I discovered the Fanda Eagles forums and became irreversibly informed about how patterns like these played out on the mission field. I’ve written before about a report that was released when I first arrived at MTC. When the GRACE report (If you follow that link, please understand that it is full of accounts of graphic child abuse. This is your trigger warning!) was released, I believed NTM leadership really had the desire to come alongside the MKs their organization had physically, sexually, emotionally, and spiritually abused. I braced for change and expected everyone to care long enough to change NTM from the inside out. The devastation for the MKs seemed to die down, though without sufficient action. Someone even said to me, “How sad that this report might bring down our organization,” without any mention of how sad it would have been for a missionary’s child to be molested night after night at boarding school. It broke my heart.

One of the main contributing factors to the callousness was that NTM’s work was seen as vital. New Tribers believe that all people who never hear about Jesus will burn forever in Hell after they die because they didn’t get a chance to believe in him. They believe their organization is especially critical because they insist on teaching chronologically through the Old Testament, while other groups typically start in the Gospels. In that system, some people (not all!) seem to subconsciously land at the conclusion that the abuse of MKs ends up being the lesser of two evils, because NTMers are being specially used by God to rescue lost people from eternal fire. I no longer believe that people who don’t hear about Jesus have no choice but hell, but some who do believe that operate in a way that values both MKs and minority people groups at the same time. I believed NTM would make it right and work to discourage the remaining callousness.  As the school year progressed, less students and staff members at MTC were discussing the Fanda survivors (excepting Andy Kline and the fabulous Child Protection department—which has since been totally relocated and restaffed with new people), and it seemed assumed by the general student body that NTM was on the right path. I continued to follow up and found the opposite. New Tribes did not follow all the recommendations from GRACE. They even kept a statutory rapist on staff.

New Tribers and the churches that support NTM, if you’re reading this, what have you done recently to hold NTM accountable? Do you feel helpless? Is your leadership set up in a way that any abuser in your organization, from anywhere in the world, would be fired for their actions? These are the types of questions you need to be asking. The reputation of your organization is not your primary concern. Do the right thing, continue to push back on this, and your reputation will take care of itself anyway. And in the end, you may even refuse to line yourselves up with an organization that does not prioritize protecting their own children. Wage war on this or your inaction will cause further devastation.

Dale and I at a Soulation retreat

By the time graduation came, it was clear that my husband and I needed to take a break and think things through. The more I lived a normal life (outside of the missionary community for the first time since early childhood), the more I realized I couldn’t go back. At first, it was scary to think what people would say about us and to completely start over with our lives, but the thought of continuing on under an abusive system was far scarier. Then, it was a sweet relief to know that I didn’t have to dedicate my life to a work that I simply wasn’t gifted for. I relished getting out of a community where scoffing at my beliefs was acceptable and started to taste healthy relationships where I was offered the dignity and love of being different from my new friends. One such friendship was with Dale, who eased the pain of leaving fundamentalism with great skill, because he once navigated those waters and lived and healed to tell his tale. Last summer in the Rocky Mountains, Dale brought together a group of us who had all been spiritually abused and named us “glass warriors." Dale told us “If we do not think we are loved, we cannot be open to the truth. We cannot trust. That is why mistrust reigns in abusive communities.” 

Love is why I can share who I am now. 

Our Colorado Soulation Gathering

Part 14A – Training To Be a Cookie Cutter Missionary

Free and full of life, one year after
saying goodbye to my parents. This
was taken in the Rockies, at a
Soulation retreat for survivors
of spiritual abuse.

I’m struck, as I write about yet another institution, how many abusive environments I’ve been in. People who are abused go back to abuse. It’s been shown over and over. Each institution I’ve joined since I’ve left my parents’ home has been gradually less and less abusive as I’ve tasted and loved freedom in increasing amounts. I just turned 24, and I’m happy to say that I just finished my first full calendar year with no abusive treatment from my parents. Cutting contact continues to be a beautiful thing that I treasure and celebrate. I’m hoping 2014 will bring my first full calendar year without allowing abuse from anyone. It’s been hard, painful work to cut toxic people, institutions, and communities out of my personal life. It’s even been lonely here and there, but I’m slowly building my life around people who love health. May New Tribes be the last installment of my long list of abusive institutions to process and write about. I’ve found a church, and I think my eye will be on the door for a long time, keeping in mind that no one can trap me in there. I might have too strong an instinct to bolt, but my short time there has taught me much about health, about God, about healing, and forgiveness. 

Now, on to NTM.

I chose New Tribes Bible School (NTBI) because my high school education was so sloppy that I was afraid of going to a regular college and Moody Bible Institute didn’t accept me. It was affordable, which was another big perk. I didn’t know ahead of time that they didn’t accept loans, and they blatantly stated (more than once!) that finances indicated who was supposed to be there and who wasn’t. If God provided, that meant the poor kids got to stay. If not, then it wasn’t meant to be. The rules were easy for me to navigate. They were a breath of fresh air, actually, after my upbringing. I had choices! I could go out when I wanted. I could study whenever I wanted. I could sleep in on Saturdays without being called lazy. Heck, my roommates were doing all the same things, and I quickly felt a deep sense of belonging. I didn’t understand the select few who left (or got kicked out) because they stumbled over rules because, to me, the world had opened up in a way I had never experienced. Of course, now I wonder why college students were given a curfew, not allowed to dance publicly or drink alcohol unless they were married (Yes, single people were really the only ones who couldn’t have it!), and forbidden from physical contact beyond holding hands with the opposite sex!

It wasn’t long before I knew that I was going to be a “tribal” missionary, because New Tribes teaches their students that it’s not an individual calling—it’s a commission. I was already strongly leaning towards this work already, thanks to my church in South Africa and uncountable hours spent listening to John Piper. I learned shortly after getting to school that they weren’t Calvinist. I didn’t exactly hide it at first, but by my second semester I was doing damage control since I’d told a few people about my beliefs. I tend to be bent toward the unfortunate belief that, if people could only understand me, they would be ok with me, so I tried to explain myself one too many times and started getting burned by people’s reactions.

One teacher in particular, Dave, taught classes intended to cover God’s sovereignty. I felt like he severely misrepresented Calvinist beliefs, and he seemed to have a particularly good radar for picking out and picking on Calvinist students in the class. He made my sophomore semester rough, and I was trying too hard to be submissive and avoid “gossip” to get help. I wore a t-shirt about God’s sovereignty one day, only to have its slogan ripped apart in class the next day as I worried about my classmates noticing that it was my shirt he was shouting about to the point that he was red in the face. I never even directly challenged him, and it crushed me one day when I raised my hand to ask a question, but was told to put my hand down. He humiliated me by taking a question from another student moments later. Immediately after class, he approached my table and told me in front of the surrounding classmates that “now was the right time” to ask my question. He even told our class once that we weren’t allowed to discuss a concept about Jesus outside of class, because he was so afraid of the students disagreeing. I did secretly go against that rule. Gladly. And angrily. That was a matter of conscience, too, and I valued my conscience over being penalized further. The day that he wounded me most, he wrote in reply to my honest test answer, “Does [your boyfriend] know?” as his only reply to my beliefs, as if no one could want me in their life unless I held Dave’s beliefs.

That teacher combined with the stigmas around Calvinism were the first things at NTBI that made me feel unacceptable and only conditionally loved, but for so long they were the only things! Remember, I was coming from an atmosphere where the list of things that made me feel unlovable was long and I was more allowed to be myself than ever at school.

To be continued…

Part 13 - Birds of a Feather

My father and I in Cape Town

When I first started writing this blog, I thought it would be great to have my story all in one place. I could just send the link if I needed someone to know about this part of me and I could remember the order of certain events years down the road. I didn’t think I would need to keep adding to my story of abuse after writing the installments 1-10, but the more I unravel and dig through my history, the more I see abusive organizations and individuals that I need to process. I wrote about my parents first because their abuse affected me more than any other abuse, but along the way, I unknowingly suffered from constant institutional abuse. Any abusive institutions my parents chose for our family were chosen because they reflected our family. We were not drawn in and changed as gradual brainwashing occurred. Instead, we very easily jumped into the deep end and my father would always quickly gain access to leadership wherever we went because he chose places that were exactly like him. Even where minor (very, very minor) theological differences were present, the spiritual competitions and lack of boundaries made us all feel right at home. This was very true of our church in South Africa.

Healthy churches exist everywhere. It’s something I’ve been astonished to learn as an adult, actually! I always saw the other churches in the States as less-than because I was trained to think that way, but when we arrived in South Africa, my parents’ church selection confused even me! It felt odd, but I chalked all the uncomfortable moments up to cultural differences. I could see that other churches in town seemed more vibrant, though, and a visit to another youth group had me longing for that type of community.

To this day, I have no clue how my parents found this church. It’s tiny and meets in a garage. There’s no sign out front and no church website. My introduction to the church was a Girl’s Retreat in the gorgeous green mountains, within two weeks of arriving in the country. I noticed right away that the pastor’s wife would get within inches of my face as she spoke to me, hugging me in a very matronly way, and I felt like she would be hurt if I told her to respect my space. I could see that she treated everybody this way and it was a new culture so I went along with it. Multiple times, she forced me and my sister to sing for everyone. By forced, I mean insisting over and over until I gave in. She had huge problems when people said no to her, asking until it became clear that it was a demand—all done with a smile. Sometimes during the retreat, the pastor’s wife discovered that me, my sister, and one other girl on the retreat had no problems with contemporary Christian music, so she concluded the retreat by having us all watch a ridiculous and inaccurate movie called, “What’s Wrong With Christian Rock?” I had no idea it was such a big deal to her before then, because the very songs we were singing in our songbooks were contemporary Christian music. We only lacked the instruments. From that point on, I began to hide myself and my opinions out of fear of being called out.

By the time I came home from the retreat, my parents were set on their decision to stick around, and within a month, my dad was preaching on Sundays. They loved him. I consider this a great example of how, in the fundamentalist mindset, it barely matters what you believe—it matters how you believe it. The pastor’s wife once told me, “There are no gray areas,” and I think my dad would agree. He at least behaves like he does. Unlike the rest of the church, my dad was secretly a staunch Calvinist who loved Christian rock and smoked an occasional cigar. It makes sense as I think about their similarities. The church leadership and my dad were both appalled that people would sin differently than they did. They both shamed people who disagreed. They were both male worshippers. They both made me feel like I couldn’t be me and had to be them. I could go on, but you see my point. They got along fantastically, since my dad wasn’t necessarily open about his true beliefs or behavior.

The pastor at this church obsessed over two things—“dying to self” (a phrase that he used so frequently and in a way that eventually made me feel like I wasn’t a person anymore) and tobacco. I remember him sharing from the pulpit on a regular basis about a new convert’s battle with giving up cigarettes, asking us all to pray as he shared specific weekly instances about the man’s failures. Once, during a sermon, he turned to me and asked, “Savannah, is it ok for a Christian to work for a tobacco company?” I’d been doing quite well at flying under their radar, but I felt flustered as I chose between honesty and feeling safe. I care as much about smoking as I do about fast food—both are terrible for you. Where are all the sermons railing against the evils of McDonald’s?  I don’t get angry at the McDonald’s employee working for minimum wage. With ALL those thoughts running through my head, I didn’t answer fast enough. Shocked, the pastor turned to my father and exclaimed, “Allen? Is it ok for a Christian to work for a tobacco company?” My dad paused long enough to take a deep breath, pursed his lips, and answered,

“It would be hard.”

“Absolutely not! Absolutely not!” the pastor indignantly cried, launching into a rant that I barely remember as my mind worked through what had just happened.

In Tugela Ferry

As I reflect back on my years in South Africa, this is the time that I feel like I became a robot that cried a lot.  My parents had just made the biggest move of our family’s life, one that was obviously not in my best interest, and justified it by saying that God wanted them to treat me that way for the sake of the greater good. I was very lonely for months, I couldn’t be myself in church, and I lost myself in John Piper sermons about giving up what you want now so that you could get rewards in Heaven. Really. I was listening to John Piper on an almost daily basis and I kept thinking that if I could just get through this life making every sacrifice I could possibly make and bending myself into submission, I would eventually find sweet, sweet relief when I died. I don’t know that person anymore. She finally had her behavior, if not her will, totally in obedience to the idea of being a missionary for the rest of her life in a remote location, not because it was her gifting to be away from modern conveniences, but because she thought that sacrificing her desires meant God would be pleased.

It was through this church that I first heard of New Tribes Mission, an organization that deserves its very own blog post! When I was barely 18, I packed up and left my parent’s home in South Africa to attend New Tribes Bible Institute in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

With the exception of a few friendships, I wasn’t very sad to leave the atmosphere of “my” South African church behind.