I have known walls, 150 year-old walls, erected and fortified by the Mennonite Brethren community of ‘believers’.
January 6, 1860 – January 6, 2010.
Mennonite Brethren celebrate 150 years of their own uniquely Mennonite walls – enclosing, protecting.
I bear witness to what I have seen inside the Mennonite “kingdom of peace”:
Mennonites who rape their child, Mennonites who enable the rape of that child, Mennonites who turn a blind eye to her agony, and Mennonite ‘men of god’ who cover up the crimes, who hold the victim accountable to grant them absolution, and who shield the Mennonite perpetrators – behind their “historic peace church” walls.
All throughout 2010 they will celebrate and congratulate themselves on their success in covering up the crimes of their members; to present their “glorious church” walls without any visible “spot or wrinkle”.
Die Stillen im Lande.
They have responded to the Mennonite victim who dares to raise her voice to ask for justice by rallying to build ever higher walls of recalcitrant obduracy.
And if she lives, or even if she dies for lack of justice after being ostracized outside their walls, the Mennonite Brethren church leaders wash their hands of the injustice, and proclaim that “that action has concluded”
To order it and establish it with judgement and justice
From that time forward, even forever.” (Isaiah 9:6,7)
“… we have often been reminded of the words of the Prophet Jeremiah: “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying ‘Peace, peace’, when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14). In fact, one of the basic affirmations of the ecumenical movement since the earliest times has been the conviction that a durable peace can only be built on the basis of justice. The Vancouver Assembly in 1983, in its statement on “Peace and Justice”, said: “Peace is not just the absence of war. Peace cannot be built on foundations of injustice. Peace requires a new international order based on justice for and within all the nations, and respect for the God-given humanity and dignity of every person. Peace is, as the Prophet Isaiah has taught us, the effect of righteousness”, and it added: “The ecumenical approach to peace and justice is based on the belief that without justice for all everywhere we shall never have peace anywhere”.
Rev. Dr. Konrad Raiser, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, 1999
National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women
December 6
Officially established in 1991, by the Canadian government, as a day of solemn remembrance to mark the anniversary of the murders of 14 beautiful girls who were targeted and slaughtered in the halls of l’École Polytechnique de Montréal.
All across Canada flags fly at half mast. We declare, united as a nation, that violence against women is an outrage against our national values. We declare that we, as a nation, will not tolerate – and will work together to end – violence against women and girls.
The Mennonite church should establish such a day, to mourn and remember and renounce.
A day of solemn reflection to acknowledge their own innocent victims, whom their own adult-water-baptized members have violated and raped inside their Mennonite homes, while their Mennonite brothers and sisters turned a blind eye and their Mennonite pastors silenced the Mennonite victim and demanded that she forgive the Mennonite violators and all those complicit in the crimes.
The Mennonite church should establish a day of solemn Mennonite remembrance and action to confront, expose, root out and overcome the violent crimes committed by their own Mennonite members against their own women and girls.
But that would mean acknowledging and uncovering what they have covered up.
And that would mean taking responsibility – and being accountable – for their own actions.
And that would necessitate radical change.
That would not be the Mennonite church in Canada that I’ve known.
For the past 50 years, the consistent Mennonite response to me – a Mennonite girl born in Canada, raped in her own Mennonite home, by her own Mennonite father, with the implicit consent of her own Mennonite mother – has been to demand my forgiveness, my silence – and their impunity.
I have put my life on the line; I am praying and working for the necessary change.
The Winnipeg Sun article, “10 years of rapes?” quotes “Hans Warner, an assistant professor of history at the University of Winnipeg and an expert in Mennonite history” as saying “people are just shocked” and that “he has never heard of anything like this occurring in a Mennonite community before,” and also quotes “Rick Fast, director of communications with the Mennonite Central Committee Canada in Winnipeg” saying that “he has not heard much more about the incident than what has been reported in the media and declined to comment on it.”
But, according tothis article, Hans Schroeder, who is the director of MCC’s Low German program in Bolivia, visited the colony and talked with some of the victims, families and community leaders, shortly after the arrests and allegations. MCC offered counseling support for rape survivors, but the offer was declined. Read more…
My maiden name is Anne Klassen. I was raised in a Mennonite Brethren family in Virgil, a predominantly Mennonite town in southern Ontario, just outside of Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Every aspect of my life has been dominated and controlled by the attitudes and beliefs of the Mennonite Brethren Church.
Today, I am breaking my silence:
Throughout my childhood, I was sexually molested, assaulted, sodomized, and raped, hundreds of times, by my father – in the Mennonite kingdom of peace.
Mennonites claim that they would never violate their fellow human beings; it would be against their nature. Their founder, Menno Simons, claimed that, “if possible, (Mennonites) would rather die ten deaths than commit such abominations.”
The core Mennonite doctrine of non-resistance was taught to me, as a little girl, to “resist not the evil” that was being perpetrated against me – stripping me of all of my rights to resist or to protest – leaving me no choice but to submit. So no guns or knives or weapons were necessary to coerce me; the doctrine of non-resistance had already disarmed me.
And, not only was I forbidden to resist, I was indoctrinated to believe that I must also, cheerfully, “turn the other cheek”, to be violated again and again and again, without any limits, and show unconditional love to my violator in return for his evil.
I was trained to believe that my father had full rights to my body, whenever he chose or desired – to treat me, as his child, as if I were his young “wife” in common – long before I was ever aware of the roots of the antinomian attitude of license and lasciviousness, and the practice of polygamy and sharing women in common, that date back in the history of the Mennonite/Anabaptist movement to the early 1500’s.
The crimes against me were tolerated; it was my exposure of those crimes that was not.
Based on the evidence of my experience inside the Mennonite community, if Josef Fritzl were a member of the Mennonite community and I were his Mennonite daughter, Read more…
Today, March 15th, has been designated by some as “International Forgiving Day”. I am marking the day by writing this post.
After many years of private pleading, after years of having my request for justice callously dismissed, ignored and denied by my family and other Mennonite pastors and church representatives, I have taken a public stand.
I objected, on the basis of my conscience, to the unconscionable rape of a Mennonite child in the Mennonite kingdom of peace.
I exposed the years of concerted cover-up by Mennonite clergy who “bind burdens too grievous to be borne, and they themselves will not lift a little finger”.
My suffering showed that their demand for unilateral forgiveness both causes and perpetuates the cycle of violence.
The choice to fast was made at the core of my spiritual being. It was to express, with my entire body, in a language beyond words, my thirst for justice.
I had been pleading for justice through the avenues available to me within the Mennonite community for years, and for almost twenty years my requests for justice had been denied.
The sexual abuse that I suffered had been discussed as an open secret for years. My father confessed, in front of the family, that he had raped me. Under the guise of a “pastoral visit”, my pastor, Henry Wiebe, deceptively extracted some of the sordid details of the abuse from me before finally admitting, to my profound shock, that my brother-in-law, Ernie Wiens, had already informed him. Other pastors were also aware that I had been grievously wounded.
But my anguished request for the healing waters of justice was consistently denied.
According to the authors, Helma Schmidt and John Rempel, this sexual abuse policy was “designed to address the issue of sexual misconduct in the Ontario Mennonite Brethren Conference.”
The authors acknowledge the obvious fact that:
contrary to the directives “throughout the scriptures, (where) God calls on people to expose, confront, and abolish evil,”
“if anything, the (Mennonite Brethren) church has (instead) contributed to a conspiracy of silence.“
David Wiebe, CEO of the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, refused to publicly acknowledge that for five full months he had completely ignored me and refused to comply with a single provision of the sexual abuse policy of the Ontario Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
As a former secondary school teacher, as a former principal of Eden Christian College, as pastor of Cornerstone Community Mennonite Brethren Church, as assistant moderator of the Ontario Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, and as the father of a human rights/criminal lawyer, George Wichert knew, in 1991, that he, and his fellow Mennonite Brethren pastors, had a moral, spiritual, legal and ethical responsibility to confront my father with his sins and to report his crimes against me, as a child, to the police.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
My father’s pastor, George Wichert, the former principal of Eden Christian College (Eden High), explains to me – as a victim of multiple sexual assaults and rapes throughout my childhood – how the Mennonite Brethren conspiracy of silence works.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Pastor George Wichert, former assistant moderator of the Ontario Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches acknowledges his silence – subsequent to his discussion in 1991 with pastor Henry Wiebe, former moderator of the Ontario Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches – of the sexual crimes committed against me.
My maiden name is Anne Klassen. I was raised in a Mennonite Brethren family in Virgil, a predominantly Mennonite town in southern Ontario, just outside of Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Every aspect of my life has been dominated and controlled by the attitudes and beliefs of the Mennonite Brethren Church.
Today, I am breaking my silence:
Throughout my childhood, I was sexually molested, assaulted, sodomized, and raped, hundreds of times, by my father – in the Mennonite kingdom of peace.
Mennonites claim that they would never violate their fellow human beings; it would be against their nature. Their founder, Menno Simons, claimed that, “if possible, (Mennonites) would rather die ten deaths than commit such abominations.”
The core Mennonite doctrine of non-resistance was taught to me, as a little girl, to “resist not the evil” that was being perpetrated against me – stripping me of all of my rights to resist or to protest – leaving me no choice but to submit. So no guns or knives or weapons were necessary to coerce me; the doctrine of non-resistance had already disarmed me.
And, not only was I forbidden to resist, I was indoctrinated to believe that I must also, cheerfully, “turn the other cheek”, to be violated again and again and again, without any limits, and show unconditional love to my violator in return for his evil.
I was trained to believe that my father had full rights to my body, whenever he chose or desired – to treat me, as his child, as if I were his young “wife” in common – long before I was ever aware of the roots of the antinomian attitude of license and lasciviousness, and the practice of polygamy and sharing women in common, that date back in the history of the Mennonite/Anabaptist movement to the early 1500’s.
The crimes against me were tolerated; it was my exposure of those crimes that was not.
Not one of my family members or the Mennonite pastors who were informed ever objected, on the basis of his conscience, to the rape of a child in their midst, and I was denied my right to object, on the basis of my conscience – in the very same Mennonite community that has been granted the right to an exemption from military service in Canada on the basis of their claim that they are conscientious objectors.
The high risk sexual offender who violated me was never held accountable by a single member of the Mennonite Brethren community, except me – in the same Mennonite community that pioneered Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA), that is run through Corrections Canada, to hold high risk sexual offenders accountable when they are released from prison into our communities.
Nor were his crimes against his little child ever reported to the police or authorities by any Mennonite pastor – in the same Mennonite community that claims to “respect the authorities … (to) promote justice, righteousness and truth … and (to) obey all laws that do not conflict with the Word of God.”
I was denied and deprived of any assistance, support or compassionate aid as a victim – by the same Mennonite community that conspicuously rushes to the aid of victims (including rape victims) of someone else’s atrocities, with open arms of compassion, abundant resources and financial assistance, through the Mennonite Central Committee worldwide.
My Mennonite Brethren pastor denied all of my repeated requests for a process of mediation and conflict resolution to address the unrelenting condemnation that my whole family was directing toward me for confronting my father, even though he confessed to his crimes – in the same Mennonite community that is credited with pioneering Victim Offender Mediation (VOM) and Victim Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP).
Mennonite Brethren pastors and executive officers of the Ontario and Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches have acted in a “counter-productive” and “self-protective” manner, in direct contravention of the mandate of their sexual abuse protocol, which states that “The goal of the Christian community (of Mennonite Brethren) must be to root out, confront and overcome evil, beginning with the sin in its own midst.”
They have responded with deafening silence, to my repeated requests to follow their own sexual abuse protocol, which states that: “if anything, the church has contributed to a conspiracy of silence … that not only compounds the inner pain of those who have been (sexually) victimized, but it also exposes others to potential abuse.”
My father’s pastor told me that the “number one … absolutely important … giant step forward” for me, as a victim of incest and rape, was first to forgive my father who had molested and sexually abused me, second to forgive my siblings who “felt the way they did about it”, and third, for the “men of God” (like himself) “who were talking about it”, but didn’t “come to my assistance”, that my forgiveness was also “necessary there”, and “that that takes a big, big person spiritually to do that”. When I informed him that “even forgiven sins have consequences” and mentioned justice to him, he said he was “torn”, because “on the one hand” I was saying that I had forgiven, and “on the other hand” I was asking for justice, and he had “difficulty reconciling justice in this.”
Their demand for unconditional forgiveness is the unwritten code of silence and the ultimate weapon to force the victim to relinquish all of her rights and to grant total release to her violator from any obligation, duty, liability, culpability, accountability and justice.
I was forced against my will, to participate in the violations against me, and then forced again to participate in the lie that those violations never happened; so that the myth – that Mennonites do not violate – is never exposed as a lie.
But, in the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “the simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.”
That is why I am here today to announce my water fast for justice. Beginning today, I will eat nothing, and drink nothing but water to bring an end to this Mennonite cover-up.
I am offering the Mennonite community an opportunity, today, to take immediate action to end their conspiracy of silence, by doing justice for me in a way that can be seen to be done.
I have 7 simple requests:
1. End the double standard: address the violation of a child by applying the same standard of justice both inside and outside of the Mennonite community. Recognize and publicly acknowledge that it is the violation that is the wrong, not the exposure of that violation.
2. Conscience by definition must be consistent – otherwise it is merely convenience and not conscience. I am asking the Mennonite community to publicly demonstrate that they will object to the rape of a child by one of their own members as strenuously as they have objected to military service for the past nearly 500 years – or renounce the right to their exemption from military service in Canada, as conscientious objectors.
3. Use the enormous resources at their disposal to harbour, protect and support the victim of violation in their midst, instead of to harbour, protect and enable the offender and those who assist him in evading justice by ensuring that he is never held accountable.
4. Comply with both the letter and the spirit of the laws in Canada regarding mandatory reporting, incest, sexual assault, statutory rape and obstruction of justice – or explain to me and to my fellow Canadians how obeying these laws would be in conflict with God’s Word.
5. Since Mennonite Brethren pastors and church leaders up to the highest executive offices in Canada have acted in a counter-productive and self-protective manner by refusing to honour the stated mandate of their sexual abuse protocol: that “the goal of the Christian community (of Mennonite Brethren) must be to root out, confront and overcome evil, beginning with the sin in its own midst”, they have demonstrated by their own actions that they can not be trusted to act as an objective self-regulating body in this matter. I am asking them to agree to the appointment of a 3rd party investigative body with the power to compel evidence to investigate this matter, as per my previous request to them.
6. The highest compeller of truth in the courtroom is the swearing of the oath, which Mennonites have refused to do for nearly 500 years, claiming that their word should always be taken as truth, both inside and outside the courtroom. I am requesting that they honour their claim by being honest, truthful, forthright and transparent in their response to me, or risk jeopardizing the veracity of their claim.
7. The Mennonite community has argued that the criminal and civil justice system in Canada is retributive and adversarial and thus does not serve the best interests of the victim. They have argued that the state’s use of the force of violence to compel justice is wrong. Through the Mennonite Central Committee they have offered Canadians a new paradigm of justice, referred to as Restorative Justice, as a superior means of addressing the effects of crime by “making things right”.
I am offering the Mennonite community the opportunity to demonstrate to me and to my fellow Canadians just how Restorative Justice compels the violator to change his behaviour toward the victim that he has violated – through the process of repentance, remorse and restitution – “to make things right” in an authentically victim centered restorative justice process – when they are the ones who have exponentially compounded my pain as the victim and exposed me to the violations themselves – with their conspiracy of silence,
OR
publicly admit that they have developed this new paradigm of restorative justice to hold others accountable, but never themselves.
onference – Toronto, Canada – December 16, 2008
