Anabaptist Sex Offender Watch List

[Aurien]

How many Anabaptists who have committed sexual crimes are ever taken to court? How many sexual crimes committed by Anabaptists are even reported to the law much less result in them being charged?
.

If that's the case, then why put the emphasis on compiling a list vs reporting crimes that happen? that seems to me to be where the focus should be. If crimes happen, they need to be reported.

She already emphasizes that. It's apparent that people still aren't reporting sexual crimes though and I think she's at a loss as to how to protect children in other countries from missionaries like Jeriah Mast. Hence the idea of a list.

[Aurien]

I messaged her yesterday and pled with her. I did see she changed some things. ( I was bothered by her Stanley Fox blog. I wish she would take it down for various reasons)

She’s going for her doctorate.....so what can I say....

One thing I did get is she’s getting info Haiti side while most of us are viewing it through stateside lenses if that makes any sense.

What are the reasons you want her to take down her blog about Stanley Fox?

I’m not gonna comment on this besides saying a lot of my concerns have been addressed here on Mennonet.
I don't understand what her going for her doctorate has to do with this

I’m commenting on the amateur comments. I know she does some things that seems amateur but she has a lot of experience and she does have a few years of education under her belt.

I would like to say that if your concern is that she's accusing Stanley Fox without providing evidence then people made that same argument regarding Paul and Eli Weaver. There were a few people on social media platforms who were particularly adamant that Paul Weaver could not have possibly know and yet CAM's 2nd statement says otherwise. Trudy was correct about both of them knowing. So if that's your concern I suggest giving her the benefit of the doubt regarding Stanley Fox.

[hillperson]

That is not my concern -I said most of the concerns I have were addressed on mennonet

[Aurien]

That is not my concern -I said most of the concerns I have were addressed on mennonet

There are well over a hundred posts on MennoNet about this case. I have neither the time nor the inclination to go back through and read every one of them. If you don't wish to restate your concerns that's fine.

Edited to add:
Sorry. I got it wrong. There are over 500 posts regarding this case on MennoNet.

[Szdfan]

I also would have no problems with a list, if it's based like you say on documented cases. Even if there is no conviction, I would have no problem with a list of Anabaptist people who have been charged in court with some type of sexual crime. I could see that being very helpful in the right circumstances.

Unfortunately, the standard of whether someone has been charged isn’t enough, because most cases of sexual abuse in Mennonite congregations and institutions were/are “handled” internally and never made it to court or law enforcement (this is not just a religious problem, plenty of secular institutions do the same thing). If the person was charged, the MAP list will usually provide that documentation because it’s the easiest to obtain. Court records are public documents.

The MAP list also relies on published news articles or internal church documents as evidence. Conferences that were once part of Mennonite Church, General Conference and now MCUSA did document allegations against pastors. However, they usually kept this documentation in sealed files and didn’t contact law enforcement. This meant that a pastor accused in one conference could often find a church in another conference without the new congregation knowing anything about the allegations.

Sometimes the MAP researchers get lucky and manage to get copies of these internal documents.

Another issue: the statute of limitations often runs out by the time that victims come forward and therefore it’s impossible to charge perpetrators.

I do think there has been some progress in MCUSA and affiliated institutions. I also think there’s a long way to go, because leadership still is extremely resistant to dealing with these issues in appropriate ways. Goshen College has been subject to at least one Title IX investigation in the past couple of years because of sexual abuse by one of its coaches. It’s my understanding that they tried to financially “settle” with one of the victims and get them to sign an NDA (they refused) and the current president has attempt to shame the victims for publicly speaking out about their experience.

[Hats Off]

It is discouraging to read the MAP list and see who is listed and for what reason. It is discouraging to read the responses or lack of responses from Pastors and other church or school leaders when people attempted to inform them of problems. All too often the later response was that they didn't have the training to deal with it or the accused was too nice and highly respected person to make the accusation believable. Or yet again, they thought the issue had been dealt years ago.

Whether Trudy has been amateurish, or too harsh or too bold or too provocative, I believe she still has been doing us a favour. We have obviously been too slow or too lenient or too trusting in the past. Wouldn't it be great if our children and grandchildren would not need to see new names added to the list?

[Szdfan]

Whether Trudy has been amateurish, or too harsh or too bold or too provocative, I believe she still has been doing us a favour. We have obviously been too slow or too lenient or too trusting in the past. Wouldn't it be great if our children and grandchildren would not need to see new names added to the list?

I completely understand Trudy’s frustration and desire to do something to change the status quo. All to often I have seen leaders I respected and institutions I loved dig their heals in and refuse to do the right things for victims. In my experience, the tendency of organizations and leaders to protect predators is as destructive and harmful (if not more) to victims as the sexual abuse itself. This is not a conservative versus liberal issue — liberal Mennonites are just as bad with this.

It is up to us constituents to hold our leadership and institutions accountable and to demand change.

[Neto]

How many Anabaptists who have committed sexual crimes are ever taken to court? How many sexual crimes committed by Anabaptists are even reported to the law much less result in them being charged?
.

If that's the case, then why put the emphasis on compiling a list vs reporting crimes that happen? that seems to me to be where the focus should be. If crimes happen, they need to be reported.

She already emphasizes that. It's apparent that people still aren't reporting sexual crimes though and I think she's at a loss as to how to protect children in other countries from missionaries like Jeriah Mast. Hence the idea of a list.

I agree that the abuse of any one child is one too many, but it seems to me (from my experience working as a missionary myself) that an inordinate amount of attention is being focused on "protecting children from missionaries". Does anyone here realize what the "penalty" would normally be if the parent of a tribal child discovered that a foreigner had molested their son or daughter? In the setting in which we lived, there is no police force - they carry out their own retributions. With difficulty I convinced the father of a murder victim to not kill the perpetrator. (He did shoot over his head, but didn't try to hit him.) Even in the national culture (of Brazil), if a person dies in a traffic accident (regardless of fault), the driver of the vehicle will be severely beaten, if not killed on the spot. (This is a country where not too long ago a soccer referee was killed, beheaded, and his head put on a spike in the middle of the field for an unpopular call.)

[Aurien]

If that's the case, then why put the emphasis on compiling a list vs reporting crimes that happen? that seems to me to be where the focus should be. If crimes happen, they need to be reported.

She already emphasizes that. It's apparent that people still aren't reporting sexual crimes though and I think she's at a loss as to how to protect children in other countries from missionaries like Jeriah Mast. Hence the idea of a list.

I agree that the abuse of any one child is one too many, but it seems to me (from my experience working as a missionary myself) that an inordinate amount of attention is being focused on "protecting children from missionaries". Does anyone here realize what the "penalty" would normally be if the parent of a tribal child discovered that a foreigner had molested their son or daughter? In the setting in which we lived, there is no police force - they carry out their own retributions. With difficulty I convinced the father of a murder victim to not kill the perpetrator. (He did shoot over his head, but didn't try to hit him.) Even in the national culture (of Brazil), if a person dies in a traffic accident (regardless of fault), the driver of the vehicle will be severely beaten, if not killed on the spot. (This is a country where not too long ago a soccer referee was killed, beheaded, and his head put on a spike in the middle of the field for an unpopular call.)

I don't know if anyone from Haiti wants to kill Jeriah but they can't get to him anyway as long as he's in the States. The victims in Haiti are the ones getting death threats right now. Some people who are working or have worked in Haiti are sure that they will hear of some of the boys committing suicide because of the shame and stigma of what Jeriah did to them. So yeah at least in Haiti children need protected from missionaries.
I don't think it's an "inordinate amount of attention" to want to protect ANY children from sexual abuse. So what if the person's family or friends took revenge on the offender? The victim will still have to live with what's been done to them.

[Neto]

She already emphasizes that. It's apparent that people still aren't reporting sexual crimes though and I think she's at a loss as to how to protect children in other countries from missionaries like Jeriah Mast. Hence the idea of a list.

I agree that the abuse of any one child is one too many, but it seems to me (from my experience working as a missionary myself) that an inordinate amount of attention is being focused on "protecting children from missionaries". Does anyone here realize what the "penalty" would normally be if the parent of a tribal child discovered that a foreigner had molested their son or daughter? In the setting in which we lived, there is no police force - they carry out their own retributions. With difficulty I convinced the father of a murder victim to not kill the perpetrator. (He did shoot over his head, but didn't try to hit him.) Even in the national culture (of Brazil), if a person dies in a traffic accident (regardless of fault), the driver of the vehicle will be severely beaten, if not killed on the spot. (This is a country where not too long ago a soccer referee was killed, beheaded, and his head put on a spike in the middle of the field for an unpopular call.)

I don't know if anyone from Haiti wants to kill Jeriah but they can't get to him anyway as long as he's in the States. The victims in Haiti are the ones getting death threats right now. Some people who are working or have worked in Haiti are sure that they will hear of some of the boys committing suicide because of the shame and stigma of what Jeriah did to them. So yeah at least in Haiti children need protected from missionaries.
I don't think it's an "inordinate amount of attention" to want to protect ANY children from sexual abuse. So what if the person's family or friends took revenge on the offender? The victim will still have to live with what's been done to them.

You changed the wording of my statement so missed the point I was making. The boys there needed protection from Jeriah, yes, but by saying they "need protection from missionaries" makes it sound like slander against all of the missionaries there, or perhaps all missionaries everywhere. THAT is untrue, and that is inordinate attention on mission workers, because missionaries are a very low offender group. How many cases can you name, against all of the thousands that happen every day in secular society? That's why I say that while ANY ABUSE of ANY CHILD is too much, the focus on missionaries in not going to be as productive in terms of prevention as a focus on groups of people who are far more likely to offend in this manner. I fear that people will now be afraid to give their lives for missionary work, and the Gospel will suffer. The point I was attempting to make with the remainder of my comments was that the danger of lethal violence against a perpetrator or even a perceived perpetrator is much higher in other countries than here in North America. In the city where we lived a group of taxi drivers took the law in their own hands against a person who had wronged them in some way, only they went to the wrong house, and killed the wrong person. SORRY! Wrong guy. We were often accused of using "mission work" as a front for being gold miners, or of manipulating the tribal people. Here if there is a protest parade of some type you might go over to see what it is about, and listen awhile. Brazil is not generally a violent country, in personal altercations they tend to just cuss one another out, then let it go, but we were strictly warned to stay away from large impromptu gatherings. (Actually, one of our coworkers once witnessed a conflict between civil & military police, where each one called in reinforcements, and they all had their guns out, including machine guns.) What I'm trying to say with these examples is that you do not need to increase the dangers for all missionaries because of one proven case.

I realize that by posting this I may be misconstrued as making excuses for Jeriah's sins against these children, and as attempting to divert ALL attention from ALL missionaries, but not so. I am as horrified as anyone else about this.