Sexual Immorality in the Missions Community: Overtones of Incest?

Abstract

Anecdotal data, known widely to missions administrators, missionaries and missions-related mental health professionals, support the view that sexual immorality does occur in some measure in the missions community. The missions family comprises missionary couples and their children as well as singles quasi-related not by blood or contractual ties but through roles assumed in a system with family-like functions and responsibilities. Because the missions community takes on the character of a quasi-family system, occurrence of sexual immorality carries with it similar components of incest experienced in natural families, including family dysfunction, reactions to exposure of sexual immorality, victims’ self-blaming, power differential between victim and perpetrator, betrayal of victims’ trust, and secrecy. Elements in the quasi-family missions community that foster vulnerability to incest-like sexual harassment and/or abuse are considered together with moral, ethical and spiritual implications.

What Have the past 25 Years of Member Care Research Taught Us?: An Overview of Missionary Mental Health and Member Care Services

“…Difficulties in dealing with separation and stress are not the only psychological difficulties that missionaries experience. Separation anxiety (Bullock 1993), posttraumatic stress, crises that incite trauma (Carr 1994(Carr , 1997, elective mutism (Beck and Hubbard 1987), child molestation and sexual abuse (Kellogg and Hunter 1993), as well as dissociative identity disorder (Rosik and Kilbourne-Young 1999) have all been researched and documented. It seems that missionaries are not exempt from the mental health illnesses experienced in Western society, and their challenges may be augmented by the difficulties of living overseas.…”

Dissociative Disorders in Adult Missionary Kids: Report on Five Cases

“…Denial and and spiritualization may thus be employed as survival skills (Ferguson & Ferguson, 1994;Kellogg & Hunter, 1993;O'Donnell & O'Donnell, 1992;Van Reken, 1987) and inhibit parents from discussing and normalizing their children's distress or trauma response. All of these added stresses missionary parents confront may result in a diminished capacity to ameliorate dissociative tendencies in their children, even when the severe traumatic experiences are perpetrated from outside the family.…”

‘The fruit of consultation’: Findings from an online survey on co‐production as a solution to the challenges of safeguarding children and young people in International Christian work

“…Reviews of past cases of abuse in ICW demonstrate significant mistakes that have been made in international child protection. There is a documented history of protecting the reputation of the institution above the safety of the child, failing to report child abuse, devaluing children (Vieth et al, 2012) and minimisation or denial of abuse in international Christian settings (Kellogg & Hunter, 1993; Dean, 2010). Some youth‐serving organisations were noted to investigate allegations slowly with inconsistent processes and staff being ill‐equipped to respond (Boyle, 2014).…”