"Forgive and Forget" Can Hinder Healing, Truth
 

Abused Missionary Kids Look For Justice

All rights reserved.
Used with permission of The Plain Dealer.
Copyright 1999 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
May 22, 1999 Saturday, FINAL / ALL
SECTION: RELIGION; Pg. 1F
By DAVID BRIGGS, Religious Reporter - Plain Dealer
 
Lynda Smith-Bugge tried to tell her mother about being hit every day by her third-grade teacher, being forced to sit in her own urine because the teacher would not allow her to use the bathroom, of laying her head on the table at night at boarding school and crying, "I want to go home."

But she said her missionary mother's response was unsympathetic: Good Christian girls don't hate. Jesus says to turn the other cheek.

"I remember this bullet hitting me," the now 50-year-old Smith said, recalling hearing her mother's words as a child at Quito Alliance Academy in Ecuador. "And forever after knowing I would never be protected."

Fast-forward 3 1/2 decades to a group of alumni from Mamou Alliance Academy gathered at an annual church meeting in Pittsburgh in 1995 to call attention to abuses at the school for missionary kids in Guinea, West Africa.

Thousands of church members - in scenes evocative of the Gospel parable of the wounded person ignored by the side of the road - walked right past them. Those who would acknowledge them encouraged the people who were beaten bloody or molested at the church school to pray away their suffering or unconditionally forgive their abusers.

"It was like a huge slap in the face. It was like it was all my fault, my problem. All I had to do was forgive, and everything would be OK," said Beverly Shellrude-Thompson, a Canadian alumnus. "I'm a bad girl all over again if I don't forgive, and being a bad girl was what I dreaded the most as a child."

Testament to persistence
 
That their stories did not end there is a testament to their persistence and a growing awareness that a forgive-and-forget theology not only prevents victims of abuse from healing their own wounded souls, but all too often has been used by religious institutions as a quick fix to end the unpleasantness of allegations of sexual and physical abuse.

Last weekend, at an extraordinary church-sponsored retreat north of Atlanta, the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Christian and Missionary Alliance apologized for decades of emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual abuse of scores of students who attended Mamou between 1950 and 1971, when it closed. Among the abuses, an independent investigation found, students were forced to eat their own vomit, beaten black and blue and bloody and sexually molested.

Church officials also asked forgiveness of some 80 Mamou alumni for not recognizing the gravity of the situation earlier despite several years of informal reports.

"We were wrong in this, and we are sorry," Alliance President Peter Nanfelt said.

The church's investigation, its admission of past abuses and its apology for not acting sooner were all extraordinary acts to break the wall of silence in religious circles that have long sought to portray widespread abuse as a "Catholic problem," referring to prominent cases of sexual abuse involving priests in recent decades.

The Rev. Jim MacDonald, a United Methodist pastoral counselor who works with Mamou victims, said the church often misuses forgiveness "as a way to walk around having to feel the pain, or remember the memory, or even confront themselves."

For victims, asking them to bury their pain and cut short the process of working through their rage and grief at a childhood taken away in physical and sexual abuse can have disastrous results.

The pain persists
 
In its final report, the Independent Commission of Inquiry appointed by the church to investigate Mamou said many alumni reported they suffered later in life from depressive sadness or chronic dread, and several were under professional care for depression. There were reports of several attempted suicides and two completed suicides.

Smith-Bugge is now an artist who is able to express her experiences in sculptures such as "Epiphany Coming Out of Despair," which she displayed at the Mamou retreat. She asked to come to the Mamou weekend because her experiences at a missionary boarding school in Quito were similar. Smith-Bugge is asking the Missionary Alliance to conduct a similar investigation of its school in Quito.

"I was so furious. I was so angry. I was so bitter," she said about the 30 years she kept silent about her abusive childhood.

What added to her anger and self-destructive shame was advice from people such as her father to turn her anger over to the Lord, or to pray it away, as if instant forgiveness was connected to being a good Christian. Being made to feel that her struggle with abuse was her fault was "like a noose around one's neck."

She said it took five years of twice-a-week therapy to confront her past and suicidal thoughts that haunted her adult life.

Akron native and Mamou alumnus David Darr said neither people nor institutions can heal without confronting the past.

Church members who desire instant forgiveness "really want to hinder us being able to grow as a person," he said. "It really flips the table. You're the one with the problem."

If they have one great fear, victims of abuse are concerned other people will have to endure what they went through. Forgiveness without accountability allows the abuse to continue, as has been the case in many churches where abusive pastors are quietly dismissed, only to surface at other churches.

"In short-circuiting healing, you don't have to deal with truth. You don't have to deal with the system. You don't have to deal with confession and repentance, restitution and other important issues of justice-making," said the Rev. Richard Darr, David's brother. "We end up bearing the load for the whole dysfunctionality of the system."
Richard Darr and other alumni find it ironic that as 6- or 7-year-old kids they were beaten or tossed around the room for such acts as leaving a sock on a dressing room table or misspelling the word "vegetable," while adults found guilty of severely sexually and physically abusing children have been encouraged to seek counseling, discipline that amounts to "a slight tap on the wrist."

"What is more helpless than a 6-year-old separated by 500 miles of jungle" from missionary parents? asked Darr. "The perpetrators are the protected. The victims are being made to feel guilty because we can't forgive. It's craziness."

A meaningful appeal

At the retreat at the Simpsonwood Retreat and Conference Center, what many alumni found meaningful was the appeal for forgiveness from church officials, some of whom were initially indifferent or hostile to the first reports of abuse.

"It had the six words I've been looking for from the Alliance for years: I have sinned. Please forgive me," said Robert Neudorf, a Mamou alumnus from Regina, Saskatchewan.

Smith-Bugge said that for three decades she would not enter an evangelical church partly out of fear "that the wrathful God with whom I grew up would make me go through my childhood suffering all over again."

But the mere act of talking to an Alliance official who listened with empathy, rather than defensive rebuttal or denial, held great meaning for her, she said in a letter to the church last fall.

"I am deeply moved that I was listened to and taken seriously. It is amazing how empathy removes bitterness and opens the heart," she wrote. "Even now, tears come to me when I think that all I wanted as a kid at the Alliance Academy was to be seen and to be respected as an individual."

Many Mamou alumni are still working to see that the church puts in place policies to investigate new abuse allegations and respond to victims with compassion. In terms of forgiveness, some alumni said there still is a void in that most of the abusers have not admitted wrongdoing.

"To a degree, we are still held captive by unrepentant sin and unrepentant sinners," Neudorf said.

However, as others have been willing to take their experiences seriously, particularly parents who have stood by their children as they confronted the church about the abuse at Mamou, many alumni have found the ability to offer forgiveness to people expressing sincere repentance.

"Mom and Dad asked each of us for forgiveness. I gave it freely and willingly. And we've moved on from that," Neudorf said.

What so bothered Shellrude-Thompson in her search for justice in the church was that almost everyone was silent. She sacrificed her life to the church, and no one came and walked beside her as she dealt with the pain of abuse by church members.

"I actually do believe in forgiveness. I don't say this to too many people because they want to jump right into it," she said.

"What you can do is join me on the journey. Take your responsibility. Forgive yourself, and let God and us forgive you."

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