The courageous former missionary kids, now young women, who began the blog that lit the fire under the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism’s (ABWE) “Miracle Mountain” now have a facebook page on which they tell those who continue to be concerned enough to read it; that “Eleven months after firing GRACE they have yet to contact us for any reason, let alone regarding their new investigation. Guess they really don’t care for us after all the nice things they said over the past 3 years….sometimes face-to-face and coming from the mouth of their interim president, Al Cockrell. (The new president has made ZERO efforts to contact us. How’s that for godly leadership?)” ELEVEN MONTHS! IS SILENCE GOLDEN OR DOES IT SAY A LOT ABOUT WHAT THE NEW PRESIDENT AND THE ABWE BOARD REALLY THINK ABOUT THESE GIRLS?
Yes, the former ABWE president, Michael Loftis, no longer occupies an office on “Miracle Mountain” which is a good thing. Loftis along with Russ Ebersole and Don Davis have also parted company with ABWE. This is all because a few missionary kids had the courage to speak out. However, these departures from ABWE land only occurred because these former ABWE missionary kids spoke out publicly which got the attention of ABWE and a few others. It is almost certain that if it had not been for these girls NOTHING would have changed at ABWE.
But has enough taken place within ABWE? Oh yes, ABWE has been proud and loud in telling the world they have created a new position of full time child safety officer. Oh yes, ABWE also spent a considerable amount of money to fly their administrators all the way from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and North America to an Investigative Training Conference in Orlando, FL where they “were trained in child abuse prevention and investigation during an intense two-day seminar.”
Nevertheless, with a new staff member assigned to now “protect” the ABWE missionary kids from predators like Donn Ketcham and the purging of several former staff members, Jim O’Neill, ABWE’s new president, “has made ZERO efforts to contact” these courageous girls! UNBELIEVABLE! Doesn’t anyone wonder why Mr. O’Neill hasn’t contacted these girls to just talk to them or to hear their side of the story? Has he been told not to contact them or is he just afraid of what he might hear?
Don’t these girls deserve a hearing from the new ABWE president? Again, why the silence? Yes, there were some changes made but is that all that is required? Do these changes really mean ABWE has changed and can now be trusted to “protect” the present and future ABWE missionary kids when the new ABWE president will not even communicate with the girls who lit the fire on “Miracle Mountain”? One can only speculate!
Before closing it is also very confusing as to why there was not more noise, LOUD NOISE, coming from the churches over the Ketcham, Kempton, Ebersole and Davis collusion and cover-up!? Have the churches arrived at the place where a para-church organization like ABWE is beyond reproach? Also, where was the out-cry from the pastors and the missionaries!
It seems many may hold the view that as long as ABWE missionaries are still “preaching” the gospel, it is permissible to over-look the cover-up of pedophilia and the collusion that took place between the then field administrator, mission president and field council who allowed the guilty pedophile to return home and practice medicine while the abused girl and her family suffered. All the changes ABWE has made will never make up for the mishandling of the pedophile incident on the Bangladesh field! Collusion, favouritism and cover-up was the name of the game then and only time will tell if it has been totally eradicated from ABWE.
After all the personnel and policy changes made at ABWE one would have assumed the new president in his first year would have at least communicated something to these former missionary girls but that assumption would have been wrong. Why, why, why? The present ABWE board and new president do not seem to have learned much if anything from the sinful mishandling of Donn Ketcham and his pedophilia. This lack of communication with the very ones who exposed the ABWE pedophile sore opens the door for speculating that perhaps all the changes at ABWE are just simply superficial. A person just might think the Good Ole Boy’s Club is still alive and well within ABWE.
SHAME on the ABWE’s new president and the board for their lack of communication to the very ones who should have been kept abreast of things regarding the protection of missionary kids from missionary abusers and pedophiles! SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!
