Bluestem has posted about the genocidal consequences of forced boarding schools on my Dakota neighbors.
Recently, I learned that another neighbor in nearby Marvin, South Dakota, had lived through another boarding school trauma as the child of missionaries in Africa, though one that didn't have the scale of destruction nor cultural genocidal implications and motives of North American indigenous boarding schools.
He's part of the Hillcrest Survivors Steering Committee. On Sunday, the SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) issued the press release republished below: Press Release From the Hillcrest Survivors Steering Committee.
There's been some coverage of the Hillcrest history and struggle in the Christian press. In 2023, The Christian Century's Dawn Araujo-Hawkins reported in Surviving Hillcrest:
Letta Cartlidge created a group for missionary kids who’d attended her boarding school in Jos, Nigeria. The stories of abuse poured in.
It was on a Friday in spring 2021 that Letta Cartlidge decided she had seen enough.
In her backyard in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, a stack of bangles on her arm and an oversized cardigan draped around her shoulders, Cartlidge explained to the Century how on April 15, 2021, James McDowell, a former principal at Hillcrest—a boarding school primarily for the children of missionaries in Jos, Nigeria—admitted in a private Facebook group for Hillcrest alumni that he had “molested” two students during his tenure.
In his post, McDowell, who was at Hillcrest from 1974 to 1984, said he’d already apologized to the two students and offered restitution. But he also wanted to apologize to the wider Hillcrest community for “this breach of trust which these days is considered criminal.”
As Cartlidge, a 1992 graduate of Hillcrest, watched reactions to McDowell’s post pour in, she estimated that about 30 percent of the people who commented were either angry or used it as an opportunity to share their own stories of abuse by other Hillcrest staff. The other 70 percent called McDowell brave for coming forward and assured him of God’s grace.
It was when the 70 percent began verbally attacking the 30 percent that Cartlidge knew she had to do something. The next day, she created a new Facebook group—Hillcrest Survivors—where people who’d had a negative experience at the school, herself among them, could speak freely and begin to process what had happened to them.
By fall 2022, Cartlidge’s Facebook group had 236 members. Perhaps more significantly, it had launched a nine-member steering committee that has started lobbying Hillcrest leadership for a professional, independent investigation of several decades worth of sexual, physical, and religious abuse allegations. . ..
Earlier that year, the editors explored The uncomfortable truth about Hillcrest: How missionary work can create the conditions for child abuse to thrive unchecked.
In August 2022, Christianity Today's Rebecca Hopkins reported in Mission Schools Sexual Abuse Suit Dismissed on Technicality:
North Carolina judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging a missionary agency was responsible for abuse at a boarding school in Nigeria, ruling the statute of limitations in Nigeria prevents him from hearing the case.
“It was a gut punch—building yourself up for things, hoping, hoping, hoping, then having the rug pulled out from under you at the very last moment,” plaintiff Daniel Robinson, the son of Canadian missionaries, told CT.
The suit against SIM—formerly known as Soudan Interior Mission, Sudan Interior Mission, and Society for International Ministries—claims that seven employees at two schools in Jos and Miango, Nigeria, sexually abused children as young as five. The abuse reportedly went on from 1962 to 1981. . . .
[ Daniel Robinson] believed for a long time that he was one of only a couple of people who suffered abuse at Hillcrest School until he found a Facebook group called Hillcrest Survivors. It currently has 227 members.
“I would like to make personally sure that none of the things that ever happened to me and my fellow victims can ever happen to anybody ever again,” Robinson said.
The people accused of abuse include James McDowell, a principal of the Hillcrest school who reportedly confessed last year to “molesting two students.” The official Hillcrest School Facebook group posted a letter from the school quoting the confession in April 2021. McDowell did not return an email from CT seeking comment.
Others named in the lawsuit include a dorm supervisor, dining hall employee, and four more employees. Some of them have passed away. CT was unable to reach the others.
The suit tells stories of abusers sexually assaulting children in the dorms, in cars, and in bathrooms. Survivors say they were given alcohol in some cases, and in others they were told the authorities were just “inspecting” their private parts after showers. . . .
Investigation into boarding school abuse is set
Church agencies reach funding deal with survivors
Both liberal and evangelical Protestant groups are involved
Survivors set precedent, command seat at the table
For almost four years, dozens of adults have lobbied over 15 church agencies to investigate the sexual, physical, racial, psychological and spiritual abuse they say they suffered as kids at a Christian boarding school in Africa.
Now, finally, their efforts seem to be paying off. Eight religious groups that sent missionaries to Hillcrest have agreed to fund and cooperate with an independent probe into the alleged abuse at the school from its founding in 1942 until the present.
"This hard-won commitment means that decades of crimes and cover ups by church staff, volunteers and supervisors will be fully and finally examined and exposed - not by biased church insiders but by credible outside investigators," said Letta Cartlidge of Colorado, who was abused at the facility in the ’80s and early ’90s. "It's been a very long, tough road but now, we have real hope that the horrors so many of us endured will be brought to the surface."
While there are no official estimates of the number of youngsters who were violated over the past eight decades at Hillcrest, the Hillcrest Survivors Steering Committee (HSSC) surmises there could be many hundreds of victims. Although the school was founded to teach children of missionaries, over the decades more than 6,000 children have attended Hillcrest from over 40 different countries around the world. The HSSC has taken dozens of reports from people who say they were hurt at the school, some of whom are as old as 80. And the committee has identified about 50 credibly accused perpetrators of abuse there.
"Those of us who were victimized and are still suffering should never have had to fight so long and hard for this simple, long-overdue step forward," said Nathan Mueller of South Dakota, who attended the facility in the late ’70s. "But I'm confident that this investigation will shed sorely-needed light on long-buried abuse and deter other church officials from ignoring or concealing crimes against kids in the future."
"Survivors of Hillcrest need and deserve comfort, closure, healing and validation," said Dale Gilliland of California, who was abused at the boarding school in the ’60s. "Nothing these mission bodies can do now can give us back our innocence and our childhoods. But they can - and should - investigate, publicize this widespread wrongdoing and compensate those of us who have been so egregiously hurt."
HSSC members have been at the center of writing the proposal for the investigation, selecting the independent investigator and negotiating the final contracts between the missions and the school with Victor Vieth of the Minnesota-based non-profit Zero Abuse Project.
The HSSC has also chosen as their advocate Grace Stewart with Accord, LLC, a firm based in West Virginia. Stewart will be available throughout the investigation to help victim-survivors navigate their pain, supplying resources and support.The missions will pay for her services.
"We're very disappointed these groups refused to join in supporting the investigation. At Hillcrest we were told we were a family. In fact, off campus, we called our teachers and administrators 'Uncle' and 'Auntie.' Today we hear a different story from the missions, 'None of OUR kids were hurt so no need for us to be involved.' To that I say, we are ALL your children," says Cartlidge. "We hope that good Christians across the US, Canada, and Europe, especially those who donate to these organizations, speak to their leaders and press them to embrace the survivors of Hillcrest who were violated at the hands of their very own missionaries. We say to you, do as the Good Samaritan, be compelled by compassion and bind up our trauma so that through truth and justice we may find healing."
The HSCC expects the actual investigation to begin December 2, 2024.
Hillcrest Survivors Steering Committee
*Letta Cartlidge, President
[email protected]
303.505.9141
Denver, CONathan Mueller, Vice
605.237.2108
Marvin, SDHillcrest School
Dele Alabi, Superintendent
[email protected]
WhatsApp number: +234 803 472 0174
Jos, NigeriaJohn Brown, Chairman of the Hillcrest Board of Governors
Jos, Nigeria
[email protected]MISSIONS WHO SIGNED
North American Baptists Conference NAB
Harry Kelm, Executive Director
Roseville, CA
[email protected]
916.783.1524Pioneers UK
Stephen Carling, Director
+44 (0) 1302 710 750 Mobile, +44 (0) 7533 062 584
[email protected]Graeme Simpson, Deputy Director
[email protected]
Doncaster, UK
01302 710 750Global Resonate Mission (Christian Reform Church CRC)
Kevin deRaaf, Director
[email protected]
(905) 336-2920
Burlington, ON. CanadaEvangelical Lutheran Church of America ELCA
Khader El-Yateem, Executive Director of ELCA Service & Justice
Chicago, ILChurch of the Brethren Mission
David Steele, General Secretary
[email protected]
Elgin, ILEvangelical Missionary Church of Canada EMCC
John Cressman, President
Kitchener, ON CanadaSIM Nigeria
Tom Jessurun, Director
[email protected]General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church UMC
Roland Fernandes, General Secretary
Atlanta, GAMISSIONS WHO DID NOT SIGN
*Southern Baptist Convention SBC
Paul Chitwood, President of the International Mission Board IMB
804.353.0151
Richmond, VASomer Novak
Director of Abuse Prevention and Response Administration of the IMB,
[email protected]
m.804.219.1261 | c.804.814.0790*Lutheran Church of the Missouri Synod LCMS
Rev. Dr. Matthew Harrison, President
[email protected]
Staff switchboard: 800-248-1930
St. Louis, MO*SIM USA
Randy Fairman, Director
[email protected]
704.588.4300
Charlotte, NC*SIM International
Phil Bauman, Director
803.802.7300
Fort Mill, SC*SIM Australia
Malcolm Watts, National Director
Tel: +61 2 9580 1422
1300 746 580 / 02 9580 1422
Penhurst NSW 2222, AustraliaWycliffe Bible Translators
John Chiu, Executive Advisor
407.852.3600 : main office
Orlando, FloridaSummer Institute of Linguistics SIL
John Chiu, Director of Human Resources Responses
[email protected]
972.708.7400 : main office Dallas, TXMission Afrika (Danish Lutheran)
Daniel Toft Jakobsen, Secretary General
[email protected]
+45 8672 5050
Viaduktvej 5a, 8260 Viby J, DenmarkAssemblies of God AG World Missions
Kevin Donaldson, COO of AG World Missions
[email protected]
417-862-2781
417-862-3420
Springfield, MOInvestigative agency: https://ZeroAbuseProject.org/
Advocacy agency: https://www.accord.llc/
Bluestem hopes all religious groups agree to fund a probe into the allegations.
Photo: The grounds at Hillcrest, a boarding school in Jos, Nigeria (Photo courtesy of the Hillcrest Survivors steering committee/ Via Christianity Century).
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