A Florida-based Christian organization has been accused of turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse and victimization of young children.
According to NBC News, the lawsuit was filed against defendant Ethnos360, a nonprofit formerly known as New Tribes Mission. Ethnos360 sends missionaries, along with their family members, to sites around the world.
In 2019, multiple women came forward with claims that they had been sexually abused decades ago by their “dorm dads,” or missionaries tasked with caring for children at Ethnos360’s boarding schools.
Ethnos360 has already settled several similar lawsuits, and issued a public apology after NBC News aired survivors’ stories. It also said that it has “incorporated significant child safety training” after an independent third-party commissioned by New Tribes Mission shared its recommendations.
The most recent lawsuit, filed Wednesday in a Seminole County circuit court, says that Ethnis360 “failed to offer any car or professional assistance” to the family of a child who attempted to report sexual misconduct in 2012, about two years after New Tribes Mission purportedly began implanting its new child safety polices.
The plaintiff, Kayla McClain, says that she was about five years old in 2005 when she first met her alleged abuser, Nate Horling. At the time, Horling, his wife, and children—along with McClain and her family—shared housing at a New Tribes Mission site in Indonesia.
McClain claims that she would sometimes play with one of Horling’s children, who was roughly the same age as her. Eventually, McClain says, Horling started using this playtime as an excuse to touch her inappropriately.
Sometime later, Horling allegedly apologized, saying that “he was sorry and instructed her not to tell anyone and blamed her for what occurred.”
The lawsuit claims that, in spite offering an apology, the abuse escalated after both families moved to a different part in 2009; there, at the new site, Horling allegedly assaulted McClain inside of a closet.
Bob Tchividjian, an attorney who has litigated similar cases against Ethnis 360 and who is currently representing McClain, told NBC News that the organization needs to find an effective way to address complaints of sexual abuse and harassment.
“It’s not in a vacuum,” he said. “This is over, and over, and over again.”
In court filings, Tchividjian noted that McClain’s father contacted Ethnos360’s child safety leadership team in Indonesia after his daughter told him that she had engaged in sexual activity with other children—a potential indicator of abuse by an older child or adult.
The lawsuit claims that, even after talking to the family, Ethnos360 never opened an investigation. Instead, it wrote the incident off as “typical sexual exploration between children.”
McClain said that her parents did not find out about the abuse for years and, until now, was too emotionally fragile to consider filing a lawsuit.
“The child safety team never talked to me,” she told NBC News. “I really needed someone who was trained to and knew how to talk to a kid in this situation, because I didn’t know how to share what happened.”
“The abuse that happened was horrible, but what has really affected me is the response from Ethnos and the child safety team and IHART,” she said. “They need to be held accountable. I want the silence to stop.”
Sources
Christian organization long plagued by allegations of child sex abuse faces another lawsuit
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