How you can help…
Please stop supporting a culture of silence about abuse. Instead, support justice and healing by honouring survivors’ stories and requiring accountability from MCC.
You can do that by speaking out publicly, asking for an external investigation, supporting survivors, and coordinating your efforts with others:
Speak out publicly, expressing your conviction that allegations this serious need to be investigated properly, in ways that honor survivors and pursue justice and repair, rather than protecting MCC from liability.
How can you do this?
Write to MCC leaders (Board chairs Ron Ratzlaff and Gilberto Perez, Executive Directors Rick Cober Bauman and Ann Graber Hershberger) at mailbox@mcc.org and canada@mcccanada.ca (or at their MCC addresses, which are not posted on their website; email us for details at stopmccabuse@proton.me).
Insist on a transparent, external, independent third-party investigation with full public report, in which the choice of firm and the mandate and scope of the investigation are approved by the MAST steering committee.
Point out that a credible investigation should invite testimony from anyone who feels they have had a “bad ending” of their employment with MCC because of mistreatment or abuse, and from anyone who has reported experiences of violence, sexual or psychological harassment, bullying, or threats to MCC and believes that MCC responded in a harmful way to their reports. Its main goal must not be to protect MCC from liability but to pursue justice and rebuild trust between MCC and its stakeholders as well as those whom it has harmed.
Ask for an end to the use of NDAs and a general release for those who have signed NDAs. Ask MCC to publicly invite those who may have signed a non-disparagement or non-disclosure agreement to come forward and share their stories with an external investigator, without fear of retaliation of any kind.
Consider that public communications will likely have a greater impact than further attempts to advocate for survivors behind the scenes. Copy MAST (stopmccabuse@proton.me) in your letter if you feel comfortable doing so; let us know if we can post your letter in the Supporters sections of our website (we will never post it without your explicit permission).
Sign our petition.
2. Examine giving patterns to stop enabling abuse
Stop collaborating with or promoting MCC until you have clear evidence that concerns have been addressed.
How can you do this?
Examine your giving patterns as individuals, congregations and conferences, and consider how you can adjust these in order to communicate to MCC that you take these concerns seriously and that you are not willing to condone abuse.
Until MCC agrees to an external, independent third-party investigation, stop promoting MCC’s work in your congregations; instead, (temporarily) support other humanitarian organizations, (temporarily) set aside the funds, and/or divert some of donations to a fund to help support an external investigation. Inform MCC of any such steps that you take, or even just of steps you are considering, and emphasize that accountability matters to you.
Some congregations have already taken this step. We hope to be able to share more details about this soon.
3. Coordinate with others (congregations, conferences, agencies, national church bodies, relief sale committees…) in order to maximize the impact of your actions.
MCC has brought many Mennonite organizations and churches together to the table to support peacebuilding and relief and justice around the world. We hope that these organizations can also participate in efforts to hold MCC accountable when it harms people.
Bring up the topic of the open letter and petition in your congregation, make institutional abuse the topic of a Sunday School class, talk about it during coffee break at your
Some congregations and conferences are beginning to show their concern for this situation. Leaders from Pacific Northwest and Central District conferences of MC USA reached out to MAST members to express their support. In December, MAST held a story-sharing event with leaders from these two conferences of MC USA, as well as concerned congregational leaders from Canada, the US and the Netherlands. Five survivors shared their stories. During the two-hour conversation, church leaders brainstormed about how to support survivors and help hold MCC accountable for the abuse of its workers. We look forward to further conversations of this nature. Feel free to reach out to MAST so we can connect you to supportive conferences and congregations who might want to coordinate actions.
4. Reach out to survivors and offer them your caring support.
How can you do this?
Proactively reach out to people who might have had a bad ending with MCC, especially those who have moved to the margins of your communities. Ask about their experiences, listen supportively, believe them, and advocate for them. Invite them to share their stories confidentially with MAST at stopmccabuse@proton.me.
Contact the MAST steering committee at stopmccabuse@proton.me, indicating that you are willing and ready to listen to our stories.
Express to survivors your concern for our wellbeing as members of your Mennonite churches, as hurting former staff members of a Mennonite institution that you support, and as individuals who have taken considerable personal risk to come forward with extremely painful and vulnerable stories. - You can do this by writing letters to the editor of Mennonite publications, commenting on our blog, commenting on #stopmccabuse posts on Facebook, writing your own post on Facebook (use the tag #stopmccabuse), and writing to us directly.
Enter a conversation with us in which you listen to our proposals for how to ensure transparency and independence in any accountability process.
5. Educate yourself about abuse in churches and institutional settings
Learn about how institutional abuse works, how survivors are further harmed when loyalty to an abusive institution takes precedence over concern for individual victims, and about the role that active bystanders can play in healing trauma by making space for stories of survivors and by advocating for truth, repair, accountability, and justice.
How can you do this?
Read reports and analysis of institutional abuse in Anabaptist contexts on the website of the Mennonite Abuse Prevention Network https://mennoniteabuseprevention.org/about/ and Into Account (https://intoaccount.org/reports/ and https://intoaccount.org/our-blog/).
Read Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice by Judith Herman (Basic Books, 2023).
A valuable website about abuse of all kinds within the church is GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment): https://www.netgrace.org/our-values.
A valuable resource about the risks of emphasizing “mediation” and “reconciliation” too soon in a case of institutional abuse is this article by a Christian investigative journalist.