SANFORD (FL)
NBC News [New York NY]
September 30, 2024
By Elizabeth Chuck
A Christian organization long plagued by allegations of child sex abuse is now facing a lawsuit that accuses the group of failing to protect a girl from one of her peers at its missionary training center.
Ethnos360, a religious nonprofit group based in Sanford, Florida, that was formerly known as New Tribes Mission, sends missionaries and their families to far-flung corners of the world. In 2019, multiple women told NBC News that they had been sexually abused decades earlier by their “dorm dads” — missionaries tasked with caring for children at New Tribes Mission’s overseas boarding schools while their parents served in the field.
The group issued a public apology to the abuse survivors following the NBC News report and said that it had “incorporated significant child safety training” after an independent party commissioned by New Tribes Mission shared recommendations in 2010 amid abuse allegations.
But Monday’s lawsuit alleges that six years after those recommendations were issued, a girl was repeatedly sexually abused by another child on Ethnos360’s missionary training property in Missouri. The lawsuit was filed in Florida’s 18th Judicial Circuit Court and obtained first by NBC News.
“Ethnos360 has had a history of child sexual abuse within their community, at different locations across the globe. They certainly have been educated about this issue,” said the attorney who filed the suit, Boz Tchividjian, a former sex crimes prosecutor and the grandson of evangelist Billy Graham. Tchividjian was the founder and former executive director of Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment, or GRACE, the group hired to make the 2010 recommendations to New Tribes Mission, but now is no longer part of GRACE.
The lawsuit is filed on behalf of the girl alleging the abuse, as well as her parents. The complaint says that both the girl and her alleged abuser, also female, were living with their families on campus while their fathers worked in Ethnos360’s IT department. Tchividjian said the alleged abuse started in 2016 when the girl, identified in the complaint only by her initials, A.W., and the alleged perpetrator were both about 9 years old.
The lawsuit says the abuse took place over several years and ranged from unwanted touching of A.W.’s chest and genital area to penetration of her vagina with a stick and hairbrush. It accuses Ethnos360 of failing “to provide any education or training regarding anything related to peer-on-peer child sexual abuse to anyone living on the Ethnos Campus” and failing to adequately investigate abuse allegations.
A.W. is now 17 years old and has suffered “mental anguish, emotional distress, suicide attempts, eating disorder, humiliation, embarrassment, and loss of capacity of the enjoyment of life,” according to the lawsuit. In an exclusive Zoom interview alongside her parents, she told NBC News that the alleged abuse and the way Ethnos360 handled her claim left a deep imprint on her.
“I’ve overcome a lot, but I still have a lot of struggles, just with PTSD and anxiety,” A.W. said. “I have to take things day by day.”
The lawsuit names Ethnos360 as a defendant. While Brian Coombs, the organization’s director of child safety at the time of the alleged sexual abuse, is not named as a co-defendant, he is mentioned throughout the complaint, which accuses him of not being properly trained in safeguarding children and of failing to ensure that the alleged perpetrator was not left alone with other children after he found out about A.W.
Coombs did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News. Neither did an attorney for Ethnos360.
Past allegations
On its website, Ethnos360 addresses past allegations of sexual abuse against children, saying it “strives to keep children safe by reducing situations of risk, having accountability for adults in contact with children, and training members in our child safety policies.” It also links to a 16-page document with “facts regarding the grievous reality of child abuse that took place in the history of New Tribes Mission.”
Monday’s lawsuit says that A.W. did not tell anyone what was happening because the alleged perpetrator threatened to kill her family if she spoke up. It was not until March 2021, two years after she and her family moved from Missouri to Florida, that A.W. told her parents and a therapist. Her parents reported the allegations to Coombs and to the Florida Department of Children and Families the same month, according to the lawsuit.
The girl was interviewed by Florida officials, who “verified findings of child-on-child sexual abuse” and expressed concern that the alleged perpetrator may have victimized other children and may be a victim of sexual abuse herself, the lawsuit said. Yet Ethnos360 “made no effort” to find out where the alleged perpetrator would have learned about the sexual conduct from, it says.
The lawsuit adds that Coombs promptly reported the alleged abuse to the Missouri Department of Social Services and assured the family that he was implementing a “safety plan” for the alleged perpetrator that would protect other children around her. But in the months that followed, the alleged perpetrator was “left alone with children on multiple occasions,” it says.
In the meantime, the suit says, Missouri authorities “never conducted a substantive investigation or turned the matter over to local law enforcement” and closed the case in the summer of 2021, concluding A.W. was no longer in danger since she and the alleged perpetrator did “not have access to each other anymore.”
The Missouri Department of Social Services declined to discuss the case with NBC News, saying that “information related to specific child abuse and neglect investigations is closed and confidential under Missouri law, except under very limited circumstances.”
Coombs conducted a fact-finding investigation of his own during the summer of 2021 that involved speaking to other families on the Ethnos360 training campus, the lawsuit says.
But when A.W.’s family met with Coombs in October 2021 to discuss the findings of his investigation, they learned that he allegedly concluded that what occurred had been “inappropriate sexual behavior between peers” rather than sexual abuse, the lawsuit says.
A.W. said that made her livid.
“I felt a lot of hopelessness,” she said. “I was like, ‘Well, this is the guy, this is who I’m supposed to get help from. So if he’s not going to give me help, then I guess I’m just not going to get it.’ I just was very lost.”
Discouraged, her parents met with Ethnos360’s then-CEO, Larry Brown, in June 2022 to discuss the situation. Brown allegedly told them “to leave things between God and others because it would be hard on everyone to re-do everything,” the lawsuit says.
Brown did not immediately comment.
A.W.’s parents said they felt like Ethnos360 became indifferent to the issue.
“We were hoping that the mission leadership would take ownership of this problem, that they would show that they value our daughter and all the other families and kids on the campus where we were,” A.W.’s father, Grant Whidden, told NBC News, especially since the alleged perpetrator and her family remained on Ethnos360 property.
Instead, he said, “it felt like once they saw that the state of Missouri wasn’t going to pursue this investigation, they didn’t feel compelled to do anything themselves.”
The lawsuit seeks compensatory damages and a jury trial and alleges that Ethnos360 had a duty to provide training to its employees on how to identify and report child abuse, including peer-on-peer abuse. It also says Ethnos360 breached its duty to A.W. by failing to adequately investigate her claim.
A.W.’s mom, Tracey Whidden, said what happened to her daughter shattered her view of Ethnos360 but not her faith in God.
“I feel that He looks down on leadership and weeps with the way that they’re handling this stuff, and He has righteous anger regarding all of this,” she said. “These leaders are not being held accountable by anyone outside of themselves.”
A.W. said the decision to file a lawsuit “took a lot of thinking and prayer” and that she is hopeful it will help others who have experienced sexual abuse.
“This doesn’t define them,” A.W. said. “They are not a victim. They are a survivor, and there’s hope.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. The hotline, run by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), can put you in contact with your local rape crisis center. You can also access RAINN’s online chat service at https://www.rainn.org/get-help. Confidential chats are available in English and in Spanish.