No GRACE in Sexual Abuse Investigation of Missionary Kids
Reviewing decades-old abuse allegations isn’t simple, as firing by Baptist missions agency shows. From Christianity Today April print edition.
It sounds straightforward enough: A missions agency faced with decades-old allegations of sexual abuse within its ranks hires an outside organization to investigate.
But add to that mix physically and emotionally scarred victims and dueling standards of proof, and the scenario becomes much more complex.
Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE) gained prominence in 2009 when New Tribes Mission (NTM) hired it to review sexual abuse claims. In November, it launched a similar third-party investigation for Bob Jones University. Now a Baptist missions agency has challenged the group’s methods and terminated their relationship.
Nearly two years ago, the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE) hired GRACE to investigate allegations that Donn Ketcham, a former missionary in Bangladesh, sexually abused missionary kids in the 1980s and that the agency had botched its handling of the claims.
But just weeks before the planned release of a final report, ABWE—whose board in 2011 fired its former president, Michael Loftis, and demanded the resignations of other top officials as the agency confronted “past mistakes”—announced it would work instead with a new firm.
The Ross News 