Alliance deals with MK abuse
A denomination confronts horror stories from an uncomfortable past.
By Debra Fieguth ChristianWeek staff
An 18-month inquiry into abuses that took place at a missionary school in West Africa between 1950 and 1970 has concluded with calls for changes in the way missionary schools are run, help for victims and disciplinary action for offenders.
The Independent Commission of Inquiry (ICI) to the Board of Managers of the Christian and Missionary Alliance completed its report on abuse at a missionary school in West Africa in December, following months of meetings, hearings, and written and verbal testimony. The denomination released the report in late January.
The findings are shocking. The 95-page report details physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual abuse by a number of staff members and older students on children attending Mamou Alliance Academy in Guinea during the 1950s and 60s. A more comprehensive report, not released, includes recommendations in policies, in dealing with victims of abuse, in prevention of abuse, accountability of boarding schools and intervention in cases of abuse.
Painful process
For missionary kids (MKs) who survived grueling years at Mamou, the report is but a step in a long process. That painful process was initiated, says Beverly Shellrude Thompson of Burlington, Ontario, for "justice for ourselves and other adult survivors."
The commission’s findings validate the experiences of abuse victims, adds Lois Edmund, a Winnipeg psychotherapist who was vice-moderator of the ICI. "To be believed is extremely important and therapeutic."
A second reason for the commission of inquiry, says Shellrude Thompson, was to make sure measures were in place for the safety of future MKs. "We have a profound concern for children in boarding schools today," she says. "They are at a high risk."
Shellrude Thompson, who lived at Mamou from 1958-68, says she first started approaching the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) 10 years ago. The abuses she experienced as a child had a profound and lasting impact on her, and she wanted some acknowledgement of her suffering.
Her father and her sister backed her up, but they didn’t seem able to get anywhere. "One of the things that has been communicated many times to us is the telling of the story will damage the church," says Shellrude Thompson. "There’s not a sense that it’s the fact that it happened that is so damaging."
Eventually she put out word to other former Mamou MKs to find out what their experiences had been. About 30 came forward, and a handful formed the Mamou Steering Committee. Their first formal approaches to the denomination "were rejected, and they were rejected," says Edmund. "They were made to feel their parents were bad parents."
Finally, two years, ago, after a change in administration, the C&MA appointed the five-member ICI, only one of whom was a member of the denomination.
The commission heard from 85 individuals, the majority of them Mamou alumni. The ICI learned that three of the nine named perpetrators had died. Two were former students, and two were not members of the denomination.
Formal charges were laid against three individuals who, although retired, still carry C&MA credentials and still hold ministry roles. When they went through disciplinary hearings in Florida last November, "there was no admission of guilt," says Edmund.
Disciplinary options are limited. They include temporary suspension of credentials and placement under a restoration committee. "The ICI is advising the C&MA that all of the offenders should be put under a counselling order," says Edmund. One of them was a sexual offender and there is evidence that his offenses continued after Mamou, she adds.
The denomination is taking the recommendations seriously, says Richard Bailey, chair of the C&MA’s board of managers as well as chair of the restoration committee. "We appointed a committee on discipline handling those matters unbecoming of Christian testimony. Discipline has been meted out."
"Unbecoming"
"Unbecoming of Christian testimony" puts it delicately. Evidence includes stories of children being beaten till they were bloody and bruised, staff members forcing children to eat their own vomit or sit in their own feces, teachers throwing over desks with students in them, voyeurism, sexual touching and oral sex.
For some the sense of abandonment by their parents, coupled with humiliation and intimidation by house parents or teachers, was the most traumatic. One student recalls a female staff member criticizing her prayer as the "worst prayer I’ve ever heard." A male staff member dismantled a six-year-old’s bicycle as punishment when he couldn’t stop crying after his parents left. Another staff member made children feel responsible for African souls, and for their parents’ potential failure as missionaries.
"We lived in an atmosphere of real terror during the tenure of one particular house parent," writes a former student who now has an executive role in a Christian organization. "The crack of the belt, the pleading of frightened children, the futile intervention of siblings and the sobs of broken hearts and spirits rang through the halls of that dormitory from dawn to dusk." When he learned how to "average" in Grade 3 math, "I worked out the most difficult math problem of my life–I discovered that I averaged 17 spankings per week. We received such severe beatings that we had to help each other back to our rooms."
The results of such horrendous and ongoing abuse, the ICI concluded, were extensive. Feelings of loneliness, abandonment and unworthiness lasted many years for some; others are still under professional care for depression. The ICI learned of a number of attempted suicides and of two completed suicides. Premarital pregnancies, substance and behavior addictions, struggling marriages and 16 divorces are also part of the Mamou legacy.
It’s a chapter of its history that the Alliance, known more for its positive advances in missions, regrets very much, says Bailey, of Fort Myers, Florida. "It’s a very heavy burden that we carry."
Saddened
The denomination is saddened by the commission’s findings, agrees Peter Nanfelt, the C&MA’s vice-president for overseas ministries, based in Colorado Springs. But times have changed, he adds. "There have already been quite a number of changes in how we operate schools and how we staff them," he says.
Nanfelt, who says he has not seen the final report or the recommendations, says the denomination now has much more stringent hiring procedures, as well as child abuse guidelines. Even so, the process has "urged us to take another look and make sure we’re not missing something."
Mamou alumnus Rich Darr, now a United Methodist pastor near Chicago, is thankful for the C&MA’s work in bringing the issues to justice. "Hats off to those leaders who finally stood up and said we have to face this thing," he says. Darr hopes the report will be useful for other mission agencies and denominations. "Right from the start we said we want to put [forth] a model of response that others can use."
Shellrude Thompson agrees that some positive changes have taken place. In recent years, for example, the denomination has loosened its policy on mandatory boarding school attendance. But she believes more could be done to make sure the 10,000 children now attending some 120 missionary boarding schools are safe.
Her personal journey isn’t over yet, she adds. Although she holds an MDiv degree from the C&MA’s Canadian Theological Seminary in Regina and has worked as an unordained pastor, the fact that she’s "non-churched right now" is "very related" to her past experience as well as the ordeal of dealing with the denomination.
"I would like to resolve things in my life spiritually," she concludes. "I’m not sure I can do it within the context of organized faith."
