Tag: child sexual abuse

Dear friends and workers,

Welcome to Duncan Convention in Beautiful British Columbia. As we look forward to our upcoming days at the convention, we want to communicate a few guidelines that could help our time together be safe, restful, and profitable.

Some of Jesus’s strongest words of reproof were for those who would harm children (Matt 18:6). As we look forward to conventions, we appreciate that Jesus modelled respect, nurturing, and protection that children should be able to expect from adults entrusted by God with their care. Children inherently have an innocent, trusting nature and come into this world dependent upon adults. When that trust is breached, there are life-changing consequences, so we understand that children require and deserve vigilant protection.

Each one of us can and must play a part in safeguarding our children at the convention. Parents can help by having open and ongoing dialogue about body safety in general and about safety at convention specifically.

The news in recent months of abuse involving both workers and friends across Canada and the USA has alarmed us all. This abuse has included child sexual abuse as well as emotional, physical, and psychological abuse, and it has also occurred among both friends and workers here in the province of BC. All forms of abuse, sexual as well as emotional, are damaging and may leave the victim with lifelong trauma. There is no doubt that we all want to minimize opportunities for any kind of abuse. While we respectfully agree and are happy to voluntarily host (provide the location/venue) for Duncan Convention to be conducted, we also have taken a zero-tolerance approach to any of this behaviour on our property. Any allegation will be taken seriously with proper reporting and real transparency.

In addition, it has been recently brought to our attention that Robert Corfield, a visiting senior brother worker, who stayed in the basement of our home during Duncan Convention last year, is a self-confessed pedophile. This has not been widely reported in BC, so we do feel it’s our duty to inform the Duncan Convention attendees of this and urge you to please speak to your children if they had any negative encounters. You likely can understand how we are feeling and see how it is entirely appropriate to take a serious and cautious approach to the convention, especially knowing that this particular situation was entirely avoidable; Robert Corfield’s CSA behaviour was known by the out-of-province senior worker(s) years ago.

Considering all of this, we feel particularly compelled to create a welcoming environment where all feel safe and at home. Here are some guidelines for Duncan Convention:

• Convicted and alleged child sex offenders (CSA) are not invited.
• There will be no communal, multi-person dorm sleeping. Please stay off-site, use an RV or bring a private tent. If you cannot afford a tent, we can help.
• We will provide shaded, day rest areas, in the former dorm areas.
• There will be no Wi-Fi password provided to any guests.
• Minors must have a designated adult/guardian responsible for them at all times. Absolutely no drop-offs and/or minors attending without a guardian.
• If younger children need to use the restroom during a meeting, a good practice would be for them to not go alone but be accompanied by their guardian or responsible sibling.
• All those that would like to listen remotely instead of attending in person are welcome to do so via the call-in number.

If any kind of sexual abuse happens ….do not keep silent. Report it to the authorities {Call 911) immediately and inform both the workers and owners of the property as soon as possible. Chat with your children before arriving about what to do if they feel uncomfortable at any time.

Please remember that we are all guests of the convention grounds owners/hosts throughout preps and convention. Conventions are a free, non-commercial event held on private property and are only open to invited, safe guests. As guests, we want our behaviour to be appropriate, safe, and respectful. Happy children, enjoying being together with their friends, is an appreciated hallmark of our gathering each year. With this in mind, we encourage parents to visit with their children about safe behaviour while attending. Let’s all invest in keeping the children and vulnerable as safe as possible.

You can help by taking the Ministry Safe course: https://ministrysafe.com/ . This program is not just for ministers but for everyone. It was created by two attorneys with extensive experience in child sexual abuse among faith-based groups.

As well, our convention season will soon arrive this summer and for many, it won’t be an easy time. Some of us are looking forward to being together again and feel it’s exactly what will help. There are others who are more reluctant, and understandably so, because of the breach of trust that has occurred. Feel free to attend or not. We understand your feelings and support your decision, either way. Emphatically, there will be no judgment on this very personal decision.

Should there be any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out and call us. We appreciate your help in ensuring our time together is enjoyable and spiritually beneficial.

Call-in number: Duncan Convention 778-561-3415

Sincerely,

Bruce & Rachel Munro

Jim Stipp has been removed from all meetings due to multiple allegations of childhood sexual abuse. He was a worker for about 30 years, starting in the 70s. He labored in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mexico, Argentina, and Puerto Rico. Jim now lives near Chicago, Illinois.

Allegations were brought to the attention of the overseer, Clarence Anderson, about 20 years ago, and no action was taken. They were later brought to the next overseer, Alan Anderson, and no action was taken.

Dear Ray and Barry,

In regards to the plethora of information coming to light about the mishandling of CSA/SA cases I feel compelled to write again. When a meaningful and sustainable policy has been put in place to prevent tragedy in this arena let’s have some further conversation about bullying and other forms of abuse that heavily contribute to the former.

Jack Mulkey often told us about the person who was asked “How long have you been in the Lord’s WAY”. The answer of course was “way too much and far too often”. In retrospect I’ve been guilty of this and realize my clumsiness in handling God’s work has been grievous. I understand not wanting to be rash or getting ahead of God. I know the feeling of people looking to you for leadership and being overwhelmed by the questions and not having answers. I know how hard it is to maintain an image of perfection and control, trying to keep “the box” together when it is completely falling apart because of the sand that it is.

I say this respectfully… would you ever consider that God is responsible for dissolving the box? Not allegations, not history, not cover ups, not mistakes that were made, not Dean B. Not CSA/SA, not ignorance. These are all simple tools. God is using the many voices of the unheard and abused to expose the sand that we have built on?

What if the time has actually come to dissolve the ministry, especially the current structure of overseership? This may be my own opinion but are you open to the Spirit’s direction here? How has strong oversight been helpful? Logistics? Unity? Honestly? Listening? Trust? Safety? Many of us know the feeling of hearing the story and afterwards Nathaniel says “You are the man”!

Something to ponder… mental instability and mental problems very often lack pathology. Meaning these problems stem from trauma and not being heard more often than something physically wrong with the brain. When we judge people to have mental health problems let’s ask how I have contributed to this. Listen, forego power and control then see how changes occur in one’s mental health status! Being a “Mental Health Professional” is not so difficult. Jesus was the greatest Authority on Mental Health this world has ever seen!

Can anything be done to undo what has been done? None of us have lived long in this world before we see many things we wish had been done differently. An apology comes to mind. Not the kind my kids say to each other when they are forced to. Not the kind that is guarded or accompanied with excuses. The kind that comes with self-exploration and from the heart.

This crisis isn’t a distraction from the “Gospel work”. The listening, connecting, self-examination and heart-felt. “I’m sorry” which can lead to healing… IS the “Gospel Work”!

Sincerely,

Rolland Sarver

Hi everyone,

I’m Tamara Gómez from Colombia. Please excuse mistakes since English is not my first language. I wanted to talk to you about my experience within the meetings. I first met the Friends and a Worker named Michael Hassett around 2002 after a terrible car accident my family suffered in Quito, Ecuador.

They were very charming and loving and I was surprised why this foreign people (all of them from Canada) were so interested in us, with such a love and care for our situation. That really made an impression on me. Then I was invited to my first gospel meeting, by that time I was at university in Ecuador.

Several months later, I professed. Eventually most of the maternal side of my family professed too. We regularly attended, most of them still do, meetings in Ecuador and Colombia. Women are told to be presented in very modest clothing in order to not be a temptation for other men or workers, we are told to be submissive to men. We, as women lived a very isolated life since we look so different to other women in our fields, work or study places, we rarely make friends with other people outside the group. Men look almost “normal,” so they really don’t have to deal with the rejection, bullying or jokes from others.

Women aren’t explicitly discouraged to pursue studies but most of them marry young and stay at home or work in family businesses. I was a single mother at a young age (17) and I studied medicine and later specialized in a clinical field, so my understanding of the outside world was bigger, but that didn’t prevent all the brain washing I suffered.

When The Truth was starting “the Work” in a small Colombian city in the Border of Colombia -Ecuador called Ipiales, many members were curious about the money, how the organization works, the hierarchy and all that stuff but they were told that they cared more of the mundane stuff than the spiritual things and that they should put their heart to the message from God they were bringing to us and not all those small things.

I have witnessed very concerning ways to deal with spousal or sexual abuse. If you are being beaten by your husband (even being both part of The Truth) the right thing to do is to stay with him and pray harder for his soul, and beware of not provoking him to hit you. I know a girl who was in her 20’s she was beaten so hard by her husband (both professing) that she flew to her parents’ home, and was convinced by her parents and Workers of the field that she has to stick to the husband she chose, since marriage is forever, and not be temptation for him to sin (it means hit her).

I knew of a female worker who was married in her country to another professing alcoholic guy that used to hit her so hard she was hospitalized several times, and she claims that God told her to leave him because she was going to be the cause of the loss of his soul if he finally killed her.

I know 2 now grown men who were sexually abused when they were kids by a worker in Ecuador and were told to heal in silence, and the worker was sent to another country.

I know a family where the grandfather and father sexually abused daughters and granddaughters during many years and are now are elders, and I know that the Workers knew about this situation years ago.

I eventually married a professing guy from Argentina, [name redacted]. He was constantly jealous and felt very threatened by my education and the fact that I, being a physician, was the main provider of our home, so he started psychologically abusing me, was very jealous and controlling in ways so damaging to my brain and soul that I cried almost every night of our first year of marriage. He was jealous of family members, friends, workers, everyone. In this first year I fought back this conduct and we decided to speak with the Senior Worker of Colombia about it, Munro MacAngus.

I thought he was going to help me and at least scold my husband, but what a surprise was when the thing he said was “well I know from now on Tamara would never give you any other reason to make you mad or jealous of her”.

So I started living by that premise. I was constantly walking on shells around him, I gave him the money I made for him to manage, I accepted that he chose my clothes, who I talked to, who I was associated to, what kind of jobs to accept etc. I completely lost my personality, my whole self was erased in the marriage. Remember I was a single mother, and my daughter was 15 when I married. I made her call him dad and to be submissive to him too, and he years later started sexually harassing her for a year or so, showing himself naked, hugging her and taking advantage of the proximity to touch her close to the butt and breasts, staring at her when she went up the stairs, laying down next to her on the bed while she was asleep, etc.

I tried to think that those were just honest mistakes of an honest man, but deep down I knew the truth but I was a coward not able to accept it. My daughter started acting out, not wanting to go to meetings, changing her hair and clothing, being irritable and disrespectful all the time until she finally attempted suicide by ingesting the pills she was prescribed by her psychiatrist. She never told her about the sexual harassment she was suffering so she was labelled with an anxiety and depression disorder medically speaking and just “trouble” in the fellowship.

I struggled with my maternal instincts and what I’ve been taught for almost 20 years, be submissive, be a peacemaker, obey your husband, marriage is sacred. I finally confronted [my husband] about the situation. I remembered one thing he said “Come on if I wanted to rape her I would have already done it”.

When the Workers in our field (both female – Isabel Fica from Chile and Elizabeth Jennings from Ireland) learnt about the abuse the response was what you expect, I should stay married and since my daughter was now 18 she should leave the house and nobody should hear about the abuse to not taint “the truth”. And she was blamed for the way she dresses, she behaves, she sits etc. As she was a young lady she was a temptation to my husband.

After several months of suffering and not sleeping I decided my marriage has to come to an end. So I kicked my husband out of the house. By that time the pandemic had arrived and I was the only provider for our home, so he had to fly back to Argentina to stay with his brother.

I continued to attend meetings only to be bullied and incessantly persuaded to “save” my marriage, to be told how much of a sin it was to make [husband’s name redacted] leave home; I remembered Elizabeth saying my sin was bigger than his. Almost all the messages in the meetings were about the holiness of the marriage and how big of a sin divorce is.

The workers and I also became aware that my husband also abused his younger sister since she was 3 to 17 yo and also a young female cousin while growing up. That didn’t stop them from keeping pressuring me to take him back. I was told I could not participate in the Sunday meeting if I don’t repent from my sin. They even told me that if the money for the plane tickets was the problem, they would pay for them.

The bullying was so mortifying that I stopped going to meetings at all. My soon to be ex-husband, we are in the middle of the divorce process, is now back in Colombia and continues attending meetings and sometimes acts as an elder when there is no worker present. I doubt other people in the fellowship know about the true reason we separated and think that they believe I am just a bad and cruel woman, not only here in Colombia but I’ve been told it’s how they see me in Argentina too.

The situation is reported to the competent authorities in my country, that can be checked. I’m now dealing with anxiety and depression too, and guilt, the guilt of not being able to act sooner and be brave enough. It’s been 2 years now and I can now see how toxic, sexist and dangerous environment “The Truth” is and how it enables abuse in so many ways affecting children and women all over the world.

WINGS Note: Overseer Percy Broughton is aware of these abuse cases.

Thank you for your care and thoughtfulness. I’ll make it as plain as I can from my perspective. I will also reply all as you suggested and I understand my email may be forwarded or seen outside of this group, including being posted in other forums. However, what I’m going to say is what I would say to any who ask so I feel I can be transparent to this small group of people.

Ray and Barry, the overseers they oversee, and the overseers in place after place, have actively condoned and facilitated child sexual assault and sexual assault by their actions. They have knowingly moved people or reintegrated people into close contact with other people in this fellowship when they had far more than sufficient evidence to understand the harm that had already occurred and would be almost certain or absolutely certain to occur again. The pleading of ignorance or of a lack of understanding by these men in letters and public proclamations of what child sexual assault and sexual assault is and how to address it is transparently false. It is a lie that borne of a heart that will not acknowledge what we have personally witnessed them knowing in the past. And further, surely, if the Spirit of Jesus would teach us anything, it would be not to have sex with children or to use the position of the ministry to gain access to children, women, and men to sexually assault them. Honestly, it does not take MinistrySafe training to teach us what the Spirit of Christ is already plainly teaching, let alone what even natural human care would teach us. There have been enough people already removed from the ministry explicitly for those reasons just in our current crisis, with allegations known to the overseers and many others dating back decades, that these continued assertions of ignorance are now completely and publicly without merit.

I am looking for true repentance. To me, this looks like a full and open confession of every single instance, including date, situation, and perpetrator, that they have ever dealt with, had direct knowledge of, or input into. In every case where the perpetrator is still living they would go to that perpetrator and remove them from the physical presence of fellowship and comply with all legal and ethical requirements for reporting. In all cases they would meet with and apologize directly to every reported survivor of each perpetrator, and continue to do so with every survivor who becomes known in the future. Further, if any part of this requirement means that they admit to legal culpability, they would be prepared to plead guilty and comply with any legal sentences imposed rather than mount a legal defense in every jurisdiction where this is applicable. These are the conditions they have imposed many times in the past on others in many situations. These are the marks of repentance that would also begin to reduce the harm that has been done and is being done.

In addition, these are the same marks I would expect every overseer internationally to demonstrate as well.

Harm is continuing. Every moment they do not do this is high risk for another person to become a victim and have to fight to become a survivor.

We cannot talk adequately about the future until the past is addressed. This is not negotiable. And anyone who is a survivor or has worked with or listened to survivors recognizes this is the only path forward. To date, in nearly every place where these overseers have dealt with this issue in this current crisis, they have not acted to stop harm or prevent further harm until backed into a corner by other people. This is not acceptable behavior in those we have trusted to demonstrate the life of Jesus.

It should not take lawsuits or other legal action to compel testimony under oath, or to have men participate in legal depositions under penalty of perjury, or to compel legal discovery of e-mail and text correspondence with one another, to simply have men to do what even the most base of men in this world have decided should be done when it becomes known that people in positions of trust are or have sexually abused other people, including children. It is lower than the minimum of what we would ever expect of any person who is being taught by the Spirit of Christ.

What was different about Jesus is that he is fully focused on the heart. Jesus said A. I have loved you as my Father has loved me and B. Love you one another as I have loved you. And further, that we would be known to be his because we live that love. People have focused on all the other parts of the Bible because they have no idea how to do that most important part. Because it seems impossible. Jesus could not literally have meant what he said, that we should actually or could actually love one another in that way. But we can. And we must. And if we don’t, we are not his.

Jesus also plainly said that we would know them by their fruits. And that the same well cannot bring forth both bitter and sweet. It is one or the other. For years that was a key part of my cognitive dissonance. But no longer. We are not looking to reduce the bitter. Or put more of the sheep’s wool onto the wolf’s back. We are looking for sweet water, for fruit that loves as Jesus loves and as the Father loves the Son.

If we continue to try to legislate righteousness and put up barriers to prevent harm, we are not saving any souls, we are simply doing what the law is designed to do, which is to impose exterior control on people who are not internally guided to do no harm. It is not the saving of those people’s souls that the law brings about. It is only a reduction of harm that they do to others. For them to be saved, they must become as little children. And the fruit of that is unmistakable. We cannot legislate the fruit of the Father’s work. But we definitely know it when we see and taste it.

So I encourage us all to only focus on the wolves to expel them from doing harm. And then to focus on people who seek what Jesus sought for his own. And realize that when we feel tired from pushing, it is only because we are trying to push out the wolf from doing more harm, not to save the wolf. The wolf can only be saved by a Father who can replace the heart of the wolf with the heart of the sheep, and that is nothing but a miracle. However, in this situation, around predator behavior…repentance means voluntarily removing themselves from any contact with sheep as the sheep still are likely to have a strong and expected fear response. And loving others truly from the heart would mean that the predator would begin to understand and feel things from the perspective of the prey, and would understand that they may not be able to both be loving AND in constant contact with most of the sheep, but only with the Shepherd. Fellowship with individual sheep would have to be on those sheep’s terms and not initiated by the person who has been a predator. Much in the same way that a “shut-in” person would be.  And we know how richly the Shepherd is able to pour out on people in those situations. So the predator who has a new heart, which is only a miracle, will not lose any good thing. They will have from the Father the same as all the rest of his children. Love…full and abundant. And the fruit of their new heart will be the same as Jesus…it will do no harm and it will be sweet.

Many of these people we see have spoken good words. And as Jesus said, we can do as they say. But we cannot do as they do. Because what they say may mimic the heart of God. But what they DO reveals what is in their OWN heart. And THAT is bitter and its effect is destructive and hurts people who are soft and have the heart of a child.

I am highly skeptical of listening tours when I see so many people not even hearing the cries of the victims and survivors in so many places. Thousands of victims. Hundreds of perpetrators and many of those in the work all over the world. Just reading the gut-wrenching, soul-sickening story after story on places such as WingsForTruth, which is run by all or nearly all people who are currently “professing” in this fellowship, leads us to know that repentance of all the harm we have made possible is the first step. And we have not seen evidence of that repentance yet. We have seen token words. But we have not seen the acts of repentance, as I describe at the beginning of this email. We know that there are still perpetrators with allegations who are actively in the work and participating in fellowship with people at risk for further harm.

Surely the marks of repentance are what must happen, and there must be mourning as we repent of what we have enabled in this fellowship, and especially in the ministry, year after year, decade after decade. Then we can show that indeed we DO esteem the least as greatest and we DO love one another as the Father loves his Son, and his Son loves us.

Best,

Bryan

Bryan & Celia Hansen