No communication

One of the most revealing things to come out of a recent lawsuit against Ethnos360/New Tribes Mission is their repeated denial of responsibility for child safety. Anyone who has watched them claim they have learned from their mistakes and reformed would conclude that they are very involved in child safety and that it's one of their top priorities. While they want you to believe that, their actions indicate otherwise, and their answers to discovery requests in this lawsuit make it blatantly obvious that they will not hold themselves accountable for child safety.

In the image above, you can see the plaintiff requests copies of all documents reflecting communication between Ethnos360 headquarters and the Indonesia field leadership regarding child safety policies, child abuse response, or child safety team operations from 2008 to the present. After laying out their objections, Ethnos360 claims they have none. They are stating in court that for the past 18 years, since before the GRACE report for Fanda was released, they have not communicated with the leadership or child safety team in Indonesia at all. Anyone who has completed the training or heard their promises of better policies and child protection would not expect Ethnos360 to have no communication about child safety at all.

A cursory look at their child safety handbook, one that was in effect during the time period included in these document requests, shows that having no communication between headquarters and an overseas location does not comply with their policy, the guidelines parents taking their children overseas with Ethnos360 would expect the organization to be implementing. It reads, "The Ethnos360 Department of Child Protection must be contacted if there is anyone from Ethnos360 involved. Ethnos360 will work closely with field leadership and child safety teams on each field and will coordinate with them to be part of the response process." When Ethnos360 missionaries received this handbook, they believed headquarters would work closely with field leadership if abuse involved anyone from Ethnos360, but now Ethnos360 is claiming that during that whole time period they had no communication at all, no documentation. This would be an egregious violation of the trust missionaries put in the organization. If Ethnos360 was following this policy, there would be no doubt in their mind that they have documentation that is responsive to this request. They would know for a fact this documentation exists because it would be part of their standard practice. So unless they are choosing to lie in court, they have breached the foundational promises they make to members who choose to take their children overseas with Ethnos360.

If we are to believe this statement made in court, they sent countless Ethnos360 missionary parents and MKs to Indonesia, as well as countless missionaries who may have harmed children, and Ethnos360 didn't follow up, oversee, communicate, or support the safety of children at all for 18 years. Those 18 years include Josh Weeks, the missionary family that was sent from Papua New Guinea to Indonesia after dozens of children were harmed, this current lawsuit, the man who harmed at least one child before returning to the United States, and who knows how many other cases of children being harmed under the watch of Ethnos360. They want us to believe that they did nothing at all about it, that they abandoned those children and ignored the abusers. It's hard to understand how they think this is appropriate. How are they not ashamed of the absolute negligence of claiming they violated their own policy by not communicating at all about child safety?

What would it take for missionaries, supporters, and churches to decide that children aren't safe in this organization and to refuse to enable an organization that will say in court that they hold no responsibility for the safety of the children entrusted to their care?

Collateral Damage 360