No longer silent

Christian Century, April 4, 2001 by David Briggs

WHILE THEIR PARENTS were out saving souls in remote African villages in 1974, four little girls were losing their childhoods at the Ivory Coast Academy in Bouake. They muffled their cries then; only now are they and many others like them being heard by evangelical missionary organizations that for so long preached "Forgive and forget."

It's alleged that several nights a week during that school year, dorm parent Carl Schumacher would lead devotional prayers, then come into the girls' sleeping area and molest eight-year-old Annette McNeill, eight-year-old Marcia MacLeod and two other girls. Stories like this one have been whispered in mission agency halls and Christian colleges for decades.

Even after an independent commission of inquiry found in 1998 that more than a dozen children of missionaries assigned by the Gospel Missionary Union were abused from 1950 to 1971 in Guinea, the organization did not offer counseling to the victims. Now, two of the girls abused in 1974 at the Gospel Missionary dorm on the Ivory Coast say they find leaders of the more than century-old mission agency unmoved by their pleas for help.

Carl McMindes, president of Gospel Missionary Union, based in Kansas City; Missouri, declined to respond to the allegations. "That area is being worked on currently, and I'm not free to give any information," he said. Church documents and scores of interviews with former missionary kids, their parents, mission officials, researchers and abuse counselors show that the problem cannot be dismissed as isolated or unproven incidents. Moreover, a growing body of evidence indicates a significant turning point in the way American Protestantism responds to sexual abuse of the children of missionaries.

An inquiry was launched in February by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), one of the largest providers of foreign missionaries. A church commission is investigating allegations of at least 20 people, including eight daughters of mission workers, who say they were sexually abused in the Congo between 1945 and 1978. The PCUSA also announced it had provided pastoral care counselors to the victims and agreed to pay as much as $15,000 per person for individual counseling.

But a breakthrough study of former missionary kids found that nearly 7 percent of a sample of more than 600 missionary children said they had been sexually abused. Silence surrounding abuse created decades of suffering for missionary children and the parents who cared for them through divorces, attempted suicides and bouts of depression. However, some missionary kids are no longer silent.

Annette McNeill and Marcia MacLeod agreed to talk about the effects of sexual abuse and of being ignored, they say, as adults by the Gospel Missionary Union. "The thing that creates the anger is saying no and not helping us. And shoving the situation under the rug, in my mind, has said to me, `I'm worthless. I'm not worth caring about,'" said Marcia MacLeod, now Marcia Foulds.

It was not until the girls went home from boarding school for Easter break in 1974 that one of them told her parents. When confronted by their parents, the other three other girls confirmed the story.

Three fathers went to the school to confront Schumacher. After initially denying the abuse, Schumacher confessed, said two of the fathers, Allan MacLeod and Larry McNeill. "He broke down and wept. He asked us to forgive him," Larry McNeill said. For its part, the mission did forgive Schumacher. Officials also agreed to his plea to remain at the Ivory Coast Academy until the end of the school year, sparing him embarrassment. A woman brought in from the field oversaw the girls' wing.

The incidents were never to be spoken of again. "Most of us had been raised in conservative Christian churches. You keep matters like this out of the hands of unbelievers as much as possible," Larry McNeill said.

Two years after the abuse, sexual images haunted Annette. Sometimes an arm or a leg twitched uncontrollably. She constantly washed her hands; she would spend an hour trying to line up her textbook just so with the straight edges of a table. Still the fifth-grader could not feel clean, or get her life in order. For most of her life, Annette McNeill (now Keadle) suffered from low self-esteem that led her into a short-lived unhappy first marriage and a deep-seated distrust of men.

MacLeod Foulds, now of British Columbia, also had a failed first marriage. She said for years she buried the terror within her. Then she snapped. As she continues in her recovery, all she asks for from the Gospel Missionary Union is an apology and help with her counseling bills.

Carl Schumacher went on to become a field representative for Gospel Missionary Union, visiting churches, conferences and schools as a recruiter for the mission agency. He is retired, living in Arkansas. Schumacher has never been charged with a crime. He declined to respond to the allegations. "That was taken care of, and I just don't want to get into it again," he said. Asked whether he sexually molested the four girls, Schumacher said, "I'm not answering that."