My husband and I just put on “All God’s Children”, a film about MK life at Mamou (Guinea) boarding school in the 1950s and ’60s.
The old missionary footage is spellbinding. At least it is to me. These are the first action scenes of missionary work in ‘colonial’ Africa that I’ve ever seen. But where I would normally have reservations about the imperialist baggage of missions, I’m actually anxious about the *other* abuses that went on duing this time – sexual abuse of MKs in boarding school by their own “Christian” dorm parents.
Some of those poor missionary parents were really between a rock and a hard place – feeling destined for mission work yet forced to send their kids away. Boarding school was mandatory. How horrific it must have been. Not to mention how it was for the kids.
Children as young as 6 were ‘boarded’. Siblings were separated. Kids were scolded for missing their Mom and Dad, because those feelings ‘undermined’ their parents’ mission work. Kids’ letters to their parents were censored.
Punishment was inevitable. The abuse was cruel and nonsensical. Children were not allowed to use the washroom during class. Teaching sticks were broken over children’s bottoms. Leather belts met any kid still awake after lights out. And sometimes they drew blood.
And then there was sexual assault. Molestation. Rape. Unspeakable crimes committed against lonely and vulnerable kids.
Some of the MK’s parents (now retired) say they didn’t dream, back in the day, that their ‘friends’ were capable of abusing the kids in their care. Evil lurks in the friendliest faces, I guess.
Kids were silenced by fear. Fear of punishment. Fear of hurting their parents, or of ‘ruining’ their parents’ ministry. Fear of angering God, of going to hell. Fear is what they lived, breathed and slept. So they didn’t dare whisper a word of their horror for decades.
“Mental rape.” What a perfect description of what abused MKs live through. It’s amazing how easily the Bible can be twisted (by fundamentalist evangelicals in this case) and wielded at kids as abusively as those wooden paddles and belt buckles.
“It’s not that victims are against forgiveness. Victims are against ‘forgiveness’ as the solution to the problem” because as long as victims forgive the mission organization, the organization doesn’t have to address the issues.
Wow, I’ve been eager to hear how this movie is. I wish it were on blockbuster.com, which is where I usually get my movies! The danger of all of this being so public is that the public will generalize and think that all missions communities suffer such abuses, which is not true. Still, I think the awareness is needed to prevent these things from EVEr happening!