UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Rhymes with Religion
Boz Tchividjian | Apr 24, 2015
I settled into a window seat of the plane and suddenly found myself in tears.
Last weekend, I had the distinct privilege of meeting with some of the most amazing people on the face of the earth. They gathered together because each had been sexually abused while growing up overseas as children of missionaries. Adding to their pain is the horrific reality that other missionaries perpetrated most of these crimes. To make matters worse, many of these survivors have been re-traumatized by mission agencies that prefer that they remain silent and fade into the darkness. I look forward to devoting a future post to these heroes and what they are teaching me about pain, betrayal, isolation, disappointment, authenticity, joy, hope … the list can go on and on.
As I sat in the plane staring out the window, hoping that nobody would notice my tears, I found myself recalling my work on two independent investigations related to child sexual abuse on the mission field. Dozens of painful memories of interviews with abuse survivors flooded my mind. Their tears, their pain, their tears, their confusion, their tears, their betrayal, their tears, their isolation, their tears, their ongoing disappointments, their tears, their feelings of worthlessness, their tears, and … more tears. My colleagues and I often lament that each of us lost a part of our soul during those agonizing investigations as we confronted the dark underbelly of the professing Christian community.
One of the darkest spots of that underbelly is the silence of missionaries who suspect others of victimizing children, but choose to remain silent and fail to report the crime. Tragically, such silence is all too common. Once in awhile, suspecting missionaries might step forward to voice a concern, only to be intimidated into silence by the leadership. In the meantime, the lives and souls of little ones living in a faraway land are being decimated. The horror of this silence has stayed with me for many years. Can anything be done about overseas American cultures that ignore the suspected sexual abuse of children?
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