Statement Concerning the Abuse of Missionary Children at Boarding Schools

American Society of Missiology Statement

Concerning the Abuse of Missionary Children at Boarding Schools

During the American Society of Missiology’s past two annual meetings, we have listened to powerful testimonies from many adult missionary kid (MK) survivors of physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse at missionary boarding schools around the world. These boarding schools typically receive oversight from multiple Christian mission organizations and Christian denominations.

The experiences of abuse at missionary boarding schools and in other mission settings that we have heard about at recent annual meetings are not new, but until now the American Society of Missiology has largely been complicit in remaining silent about this issue that is so directly related to our own organization’s mission. We acknowledge both the abuses committed and our own silent complicity as sin, we ask for forgiveness, and declare our intention to be silent no more.

Many of these adult MK survivors of abuse have not received the justice or care they deserve from schools that knowingly kept abusers on staff and from missionary-sending organizations and denominations that have deliberately silenced their testimonies out of fear of lost revenue from donors. This is wrong.

The experience of MKs at Mamou Alliance Academy, a boarding school in Guinea, West Africa, became well-known to many with the release of the documentary film, All God’s Children in 2008. Awareness of the abuse at Mamou and elsewhere prompted the formation of the Child Safety & Protection Network to put in place helpful policies and procedures to prevent abuse among participating organizations in the network.

Preventative efforts are crucial, but too often there is a remaining need for rigorous structures of accountability, enforcement, acknowledgment of and redress for past and present wrongs, and timely and appropriate care for survivors of abuse. Survivors of abuse at Hillcrest School in Jos, Nigeria, for example, have yet to receive proper redress for the abuse they suffered at that institution. The Hillcrest Survivors Steering Committee has been formed for that purpose.

As an academic and ecumenical professional society dedicated to “the scholarly study of theological, historical, social, and practical questions relating to the missionary dimension of the Christian church,” the American Society of Missiology pledges to do the following:

• We will strongly and formally encourage our own members and similar academic missiological societies (Evangelical Missiological Society, International Association of Mission Studies, etc.) and missionary-sending organizations to declare their solidarity with MK survivors of abuse.
• We will continue to support the work of MK Safety Net (MKSN), an organization led by adult MK survivors of abuse, by providing a link to their organization’s website on our website and by remaining in conversation with MKSN about ways in which the ASM can be of further support.
• We will encourage our membership, in the classes we teach and in other educational venues, to draw attention to the need for prevention of sexual, physical, psychological, spiritual, emotional and other forms of abuse, and for victim-centered and trauma-informed care for adult MK survivors of abuse in all its forms.
• We will encourage scholarship to address the history and contemporary reality of abuse at missionary boarding schools, including scholarship that analyzes the ways theology is wrongly appropriated to tacitly support abusive practices. We will also encourage scholarship that proposes concrete steps for abuse prevention and that lifts up best practices in the redress of wrongs and the support of adult MK survivors of abuse in all its forms.
• We will provide a modest stipend to assist adult MK survivors who desire to become victim advocates to receive the training that they need.
• We will be attentive to broader issues of abuse of children and other vulnerable persons in mission and church contexts.

REPORT ABUSE: For information on reporting abuse, see the resources provided by MKSafetyNet:  https://mksafetynet.org/?page_id=39.