MCC’s response doesn’t add up!

Dwight Krehbiel responds to a letter from Ann Graber Hershberger, denouncing MCC’s ongoing “veil of secrecy.” Dwight writes,

“Your continuing refusal to allow a truly independent external investigation is further evidence of your lack of commitment to transparency… hiding the truth about abuses of MCC from its constituents. The idea that you are doing this to protect survivors is not credible. Are we to believe that the dozens of abuse reports against MCC arose because of how committed you are to protecting survivors?”

He concludes, “the evidence of widespread abuse by MCC makes it impossible for me to support MCC financially and that instead a just response would be to transfer that support to survivors. That is what I have begun to do and plan to advocate with others.”

Read on for Ann’s full letter and Dwight’s full response.

The facilitators' final report on the facilitated conversations between MCC board representatives and John Clarke and Anicka Fast concludes that the process did not lead to healing but caused further harm. They state, “Despite extensive safeguards, intentional efforts to ensure balanced power, and the goodwill of all participants, these facilitated conversations resulted in further harm from MCC to John and Anicka, re-traumatizing them. In our view, this outcome stems from the MCC Board’s failure to engage in trauma-informed practices, inattention to power dynamics, and lack of a culture of accountability.” Read on for selected highlights from the report and for a statement by John and Anicka in response.

MCC boards have ended the facilitated conversations with John Clarke and Anicka Fast prematurely, even as board members in the conversations acknowledge some harm and recognize the need for systemic change.

After three sessions of facilitated conversation (Dec. 3, 10, and 17, 2025) in which John and Anicka began to carefully share their story with two MCC board members, the MCC boards indicated their unwillingness to extend the facilitators’ contract. This meant that the conversations had to wrap up after only two additional sessions, which focused on Q&A with the board members. These final two sessions (Feb. 10 and March 2, 2026) felt much more painful than the first three because John and Anicka no longer felt safe to continue sharing their story after the withdrawal of the commitment to hear them out; the need (on which all parties agreed) to hear some response from the board members to what they had heard so far was in sharp tension with the fact that board members were responding to a very partial and truncated narrative of the events in question. Read on for details and analysis of what was discussed – which included some admissions of wrongdoing by MCC board members and some growing awareness of systemic problems inside MCC – as well as full closing statements from all participants.