John Clarke and Anicka Fast (Burkina Faso, 2020-2023)
Anicka Fast and John Clarke worked for Mennonite Central Committee in Burkina Faso from 2020 to 2023. They were fired without warning on August 25, 2023, following a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, shortly after escalating their concerns about workplace abuse to Executive Directors and Board chair.
Anicka Fast and John Clarke’s story
Why we are sharing this now
We’ve told our story before in various places, including to Mennonite Church Canada leaders and at a story-sharing event for US Mennonite church leaders in late 2024. However, as we continue to hear from other survivors on a regular basis, to encounter church leaders who might be unaware of the nature of MCC’s abuse, and to hear about MCC leaders implying that there is “much more to the story” than what people have heard about, it feels like a good time to share a more detailed version publicly. (Feel free to read Will Braun’s story in the Canadian Mennonite if you’re looking for a shorter version.)
To be clear, we don’t feel that we need to provide details to justify the curiosity of the public; the allegations presented in the open letter were serious enough to require an external investigation by a firm that survivors approve of, which MCC has still refused to do despite their claims that the Veritas investigation met the requirements. What motivates us is primarily the desire to encourage other survivors that they are not alone, and to educate the broader community about the nature of workplace abuse.
We have included links to many documents (including the proposed NDA, the legal settlement, our grievance, and correspondence with MCC leaders). Written documentation exists to support all the incidents we describe here.
If you read further, you will read a complex story that includes many different interconnected aspects of grief and pain. It can be difficult to relate to an itemized, abstract list of types of abuse, but a narrative can help to bring the complex nature of workplace abuse to life.
As we become aware of an increasing number of other cases of abuse of MCC staff, we are repeatedly struck by the many parallels among our experiences. Several other survivors have shared with us that our description of interactions with MCC leaders (such as Human Resources or International Program staff) matches their experiences closely. Patterns that are starting to sound very familiar to us by now include:
gaslighting language
dismissive responses to reports of abuse at multiple levels
the offer of an NDA
internal investigations as retaliation for raising concerns of equity or financial accountability
unexpected sudden termination, and
various practices of domination, bullying, or casual and demeaning cruelty.
If, by going into further detail, we can encourage others that they are not alone and help to validate that what they experienced was also wrong, then we feel it is worth it.
If you have experienced harm from MCC and want to share your story confidentially with the MAST steering committee, please write to stopmccabuse@proton.me.
Background and hiring process
Anicka grew up Mennonite and John became a member of a Mennonite church as a young adult. We were lifelong MCC supporters. John had looked into SALT before we got married, although he ended up doing a different internship. In our 30s, we had a very positive term of service with MCC in DR Congo from 2009-2012, working as health project coordinators to support the financial sustainability of Mennonite hospitals in rural areas. We wrote a blog about our experiences. We donated regularly to MCC, and after doing further studies and having children, we decided we wanted to work with them again. We applied for the MCC representative job in Burkina Faso and started there in August 2020, for a five-year term. We were so excited to be going back to Africa; in many ways, this was the dream job for which we had been waiting for years. John would be doing most of the rep tasks and Anicka would be part-time rep and part-time seconded to Mennonite Mission Network, and later also Mennonite World Conference, teaching church history and serving as secretary of one of the MWC commissions. We knew that the political context was insecure and increasingly volatile. We were taking on that risk with our eyes open.
When we look back, there were some indications at the beginning that things were not quite right. For example, in our interview we asked to see the MCC policies, to refresh our memories of what we were signing up for and to see what might have changed since our last term had ended 8 years earlier. We were told that the policies were not available to us until we were employed. We thought it was very strange to be signing an agreement to follow policies that we hadn’t even read, but we moved ahead anyway.
Beginning our term (2020-2022)
As we started our assignment, we saw some other issues. International Program (IP) leaders and Human Resources (HR) seemed to not be taking the issue of rep workload seriously enough, although this was mitigated for us because we had supportive Area Directors who advocated for us to be able to hire additional staff. (John once asked an HR Worker Care Specialist how many reps had burned out and she said none that she was aware of. Later, he joined a working group focused on rep workload and learned that others in the group (all IP staff) were all aware of multiple cases of likely burnout.) We observed tension between IP and HR staff. We were concerned that there was no sick leave policy for service workers and that we had no back-up in a crisis. Those were some orange flags. We saw that MCC had become increasingly professionalized and NGO-like, which was not all bad, of course. But we basically still felt at home within MCC, and after the first extremely intense year, we started to settle in and find our rhythm.
The MCC office in Ouagadougou in 2021
A morning staff meeting and devotional time, 2022
In 2022, about halfway through our term, things got far more complicated with the political situation. There were 2 coups d’état, both of which involved scary moments where we had to be in crisis management mode. We started hearing stories of atrocities and violence on a regular basis. Increasingly, our staff members were affected. As leaders, it was part of our job to care for staff, partners, project participants, and others who would come to MCC to tell their stories, sometimes sharing about atrocities and cruel gender-based violence. We were starting to consider evacuation plans for staff. But we still felt that MCC basically had our backs. Our supervisors (Area Directors) were supportive, and we had consistently positive performance reviews.
March 2023 – the harassment begins
In the middle of an extremely challenging and stressful work situation, we got permission from our supervisors to hire two new staff to assist with the heavy workload. During the recruitment process, John constructively raised issues with Human Resources (HR) about potential discrimination within existing recruitment processes, challenges of educational equivalency between different countries, and insensitivity by HR to cultural differences during the interview process. HR did not address these concerns at this time, although at least one HR employee agreed later that John’s concerns about the recruitment process were valid and known within MCC HR but unaddressed as yet.
Everything changed dramatically at the end of March 2023. Suddenly, in the middle of this much-needed recruitment process, an HR staff person in Akron, who had never met us in person and hardly knew us, made a frivolous complaint against one of us. During the investigative HR process that followed, we began to experience psychological harassment from MCC HR. For weeks, HR refused to tell us what the complaint was and insisted we answer questions about the complaint without knowing what we were being accused of. We were isolated from our colleagues and supervisors and given insufficient information about our legal rights and recourses. We were not allowed any advocate during the process. A support person was allowed, but HR refused the one we and our supervisors recommended. We believe at least one member of the “Case Management Team,” as the manager of the person who complained against us, had a clear conflict of interest and should not have been on the team.
The HR people managing the process appeared to have no understanding of our context or concern for our well-being. All that seemed to matter to them was that everything had to be confidential. We did not get satisfactory answers to our questions and, as a result, were prevented from continuing the counselling we needed to deal with the increasing context-related distress we were experiencing. The recruitment process that was so urgently needed was suddenly blocked by HR. This felt cruel and added significant extra work for us. Our repeated pleas for help and reports that we felt unsafe were ignored.
The HR process eventually was concluded early in May 2023 with assistance from a lawyer hired by MCC. He found the complaint “underwhelming” and concluded that it was “unfounded.”
We were deeply shocked by this unnecessary and harmfully aggressive approach. We felt that the underlying concern raised by HR could have been resolved with a short discussion instead of this harsh, heavy-handed, and biased process.
Attempts to get resolution from HR, IP directors, and EDs
Until these events, we had felt reassured that even in a situation of increasing political insecurity, and with a workload that was increasingly unmanageable, we could trust that MCC had our backs. Suddenly, MCC was no longer a safe support. We felt afraid and vulnerable.
Even after the process had concluded, John had to keep struggling to get the holds removed from the hiring process, and to work with a recruiter who felt like a safe person. It felt toxic and unsafe.
At the time, we convinced ourselves that this must be an aberration.
“This is MCC, we thought. We’re going to figure this out, we’re going to talk this through, we’re going to resolve this in a conversation.”
But then things started to get increasingly surreal.
First, we talked with our supervisors, who affirmed our perception that something was not right and advocated for us to the HR directors. They were immediately called into a meeting with the HR Directors. We don’t know what happened in that meeting, but our supervisors then told us they could no longer be involved in any way in advocating for us. This cut us off from our only source of support.
We then started emailing the HR directors ourselves (at the recommendation of our supervisors and IP Director) with questions about how to initiate a conflict resolution process. The HR Directors refused to answer our clear and repeated questions about the process to follow (specifically related to how to address questions of confidentiality without the fear of being accused of retaliation, and related to grievance submission deadlines). We could not get clarity from them about how to move ahead. We were also deeply concerned that there appeared to be no mechanism for accountability for HR Directors in cases such as ours. The confidentiality that cloaked the process appeared necessary in order to protect the identity of vulnerable parties in the process, yet it also prevented any accountability for the individuals managing the process and for the HR Directors.
We decided that we needed to speak out, not only because we had been abused, but because this appeared to be a systemic problem with possible grave repercussions for other IP staff. Someone outside HR needed to intervene. Finally, we decided to reach out to the Executive Directors, Rick Cober Bauman and Ann Graber Hershberger. We felt quite nervous about taking this step, but we reassured ourselves by consulting the MCC Grievance Policy (section 4.2) that states that if there is an issue with HR Directors, one can approach the EDs. We were following MCC policy. We thought that surely – surely! – they would hear us out.
We emailed Rick and Ann on June 15, 2023. We explained that we were experiencing what felt like an abuse of power within HR, and that we felt we were being prevented from resolving the conflict through a conflict resolution or grievance procedure. We asked them to meet with us.
When the EDs finally responded three weeks later, after a reminder, it was deeply shocking to us. They said they had consulted with the HR Directors and that they had “full confidence” in them. They outright refused to meet with us to hear our concern. We hadn’t even explained our concern, and they had already refused to even listen. We were completely disoriented by the fact that top MCC leaders would break the rules we had been trained to follow – they ignored a claim of abuse, and met and consulted with alleged abusers but not with those reporting the abuse. We responded with another plea for them to meet with us, and stated clearly that we were reporting “multiple instances of workplace harassment (including possible instances of racial discrimination) and abuses of power within HR” but received no response. We felt like everything had turned upside down.
Although we weren’t sure what to do next, we thought we would at least initiate a conflict resolution process (under MCC policy 7407) regarding the harmful HR process that we had experienced – even though that wouldn’t touch on what just happened with the HR directors or the EDs. We initiated that on July 12, 2023, and received an acknowledgement.
Early August 2023 – PTSD diagnosis
Meanwhile, we went to the Netherlands for five weeks of approved stress leave and vacation, understanding that the conflict resolution process would move ahead on our return. At this time, it became clear that we were not well. Anicka in particular started to feel significant psychological distress. She consulted a clinical psychologist and he immediately diagnosed PTSD. He was an experienced psychologist from MCC’s approved list of practitioners, with his own West Africa experience. He wrote a letter recommending that MCC allow our family to relocate for six months to a place that felt safe to Anicka. He said she would not be able to work through the trauma if she felt her family was not safe.
At the very same time there was a coup d’état in Niger, the country neighboring Burkina Faso. There was a flurry of emails to cancel a YAMEN placement because of the unrest. Burkina Faso threatened to intervene militarily in support of Niger if the ECOWAS were to attack Niger to try to restore constitutional order. On August 7, Air France stopped flying to Ouagadougou (though other airlines continued). We decided that it was not wise to bring our daughters back to Burkina Faso for a new school year given the political situation and the high likelihood that their schooling would be interrupted. We felt that the situation had crossed a line and Burkina Faso was no longer safe enough for our family.
12-24 August 2023 – Communication with MCC about next steps
We immediately informed our supervisors about the PTSD diagnosis and our concerns about the political situation. They met with us and invited us to propose relocation, but then in a subsequent meeting said that the MCC US IP Director had refused for us to relocate outside Africa. We responded that we wanted MCC to work with us to find a solution that was compatible with Anicka’s medical directives and one that would best support the work in Burkina Faso. We also noted to our supervisors that it was inappropriate that the HR Directors – with whom we were in active conflict – were making decisions about our situation. We asked for policy justification for refusing our request. They were not able to provide us with any policy stating that medical treatment must be sought on the same continent, especially in the case where a country location becomes too unsafe for particular workers. This was the point where we realized there was no sick leave policy for international service workers. Our ADs told us that the decision was now out of their hands. The US IP Director and HR would be reviewing our case and would get back to us with answers to our questions.
At the recommendation of our supervisors, we made a written plea to the IP Director to consider our situation. We asked that MCC work with us to find a solution that respected the medical directive and that took into consideration the needs of the MCC Burkina Faso team. We argued that temporarily relocating to the Netherlands would put us closer to the team than the other options (fewer flights, less time difference). We asked the IP Director to provide the policy information promptly, since our children needed to start school within the next two weeks. We still wanted to believe that MCC would listen to us and work through options with us in good faith while respecting policy, since that been our experience of MCC in the past. The IP director said we would have a call on August 25 – a week later – and she would answer our questions then.
We were distressed that whole week leading up to what was supposed to be a conversation. Our children were very stressed – we were living in a temporary place and they were seeing their parents falling apart and didn’t know where they would be living or going to school next week. John was feeling so unwell that on August 24 he decided he had to stop working. He told MCC he would be taking sick leave – even though there was no sick leave policy. There was no acknowledgement of that email.
During those few days prior to that August 25 call, we also reached out in desperation to the MCC Canada board chair, Ron Ratzlaff for guidance. We approached the board chair because the EDs had outright refused to even listen to our notification of abuse of power and harassment, let alone actually initiate an investigation. Again, we had in mind MCC’s Grievance Policy which states that a complaint against an ED can be brought to a board chair. We had had some positive interaction with Ron during our orientation in 2020, and we thought he would hear us out. But he immediately responded, copying MCC US ED, Ann Hershberger, to say he couldn’t get involved as board chair. In other words, he forwarded our confidential e-mail to at least one of the very people we had alleged was abusing their power. (The very next day we would be fired without cause and without warning by the very person he had told us to go to for help – the US IP Director.)
August 25, 2023 – Termination
When we got on the call with the US IP Director on August 25, we saw to our surprise that an HR Worker Care Specialist was also present, even though we hadn’t been made aware that she would be there. There was no “How are you doing?” There was absolutely no expression of concern about our wellbeing or that of our children. They simply read the firing script to us. They gave no reason for terminating our employment except that “our respective expectations about how to move forward do not seem to find common ground.” They did not offer any response to our relocation request or to our urgent requests for guidance about medical leave or sick leave policies. They did not discuss with us the letters from the psychologist indicating his recommended relocation of our family. They barely took the time to respond to the questions that we could formulate on the spot.
We were in complete shock during that call. Anicka remembers feeling like there was a rushing sound in her ears, and all she could do was take notes and try to absorb the termination letter that they were sending us, that we were supposed to sign within a week. It was through this haze of shock that we realized that they were offering us money in exchange for our silence. We would get approximately $160,000 (plus some moving and medical expenses) if we signed, and approximately 25% of that sum if we did not. The agreement itself was confusing and erroneous. If we signed, we would be promising – on threat of being forced to give back all the money – never to publicly say anything negative about MCC in any forum whatsoever, never to disclose the existence or terms of the waiver and release proposal, never to file any grievance or complaint, and to drop any complaints we had already made, including the conflict resolution process we had initiated (this final point was later confirmed in writing). We learned later that this kind of agreement and the short deadline for reviewing and signing is against the law in much of the USA (including notably in Pennsylvania) and also would have prevented us from making a complaint with the Labour Board of Quebec.[1]
The IP Director and HR person ended the call as quickly as they could, with us barely able to share a few words of lament or ask questions of clarification about the agreement they wanted us to sign within 7 days. We were immediately shut out of the MCC IT systems. We were removed from all MCC WhatsApp groups with no goodbye from our supervisors or colleagues. We were told not to contact colleagues.
The sense of betrayal that we felt right then was unimaginable. We couldn’t absorb the fact that MCC would stoop to such tactics to shut us up when we (and many of the staff that we were responsible for) were in a deeply vulnerable place. It was hard to believe that MCC preferred to offer us a significant sum of money to forever drop all complaints or grievances, apparently so that our complaints about psychological harassment and abuse of power would never be addressed, let alone the systemic issues of racism and discrimination that we had flagged earlier within HR recruitment processes.
After we got off the call, all we could think about was how we were going to live. We couldn’t sign a lease for an apartment without an employer letter. MCC dragged their feet about providing us with even the smaller amount of money, and didn’t even send us the amount that was in our own account with MCC – our own money – which we desperately needed to pay the 10-month rent deposit that we were able to negotiate as the only way to have a place to live. It seemed that they were taking advantage of our financially precarious situation to pressure us to sign their waiver and release letter, so they could silence us and prevent us from filing a complaint with the relevant authorities.
[1] In the United States, various National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rulings prohibit applying blanket confidentiality to workplace policies, including a non-disparagement clause in a severance package, and offering less than 21 days of time to employees over 40 years old to consider a separation agreement. Read 2019 National Labor Relations Board ruling about non-disparagement clauses here, explanation from NLRB here, and link to the OWBPA that explains rights of workers over 40 in separation agreements here. Explanation of 2019 NLRB ruling about confidentiality of employee handbooks here; link to memo here.
September 2023-March 2024 – The aftermath
The next weeks were a haze of agony. It was very soon clear to us that we would not sign MCC’s proposed agreement. We realized that unlike many others in similar situations, we were fortunate enough to be able to manage financially without that payout. We didn’t want to give up our voice or our ability to speak freely about what had happened. We had to cash out retirement funds with a heavy penalty in order to secure a place to live. After several weeks, MCC sent our belongings to us by DHL.
After we informed them that we would not be signing their separation agreement, they sent us the balance of our funds and the smaller amount offered in the termination letter at the beginning of October. By some miracle we got the kids into school and moved into a rental home. We discovered some legal protection and a workers’ compensation program in Québec that we were eligible for. There were months of uncertainty until we got residence permits, until we were well enough to work, and until we found part-time employment. As of April 2025, we are all still getting counseling, and three of us received a formal PTSD diagnosis. The grief of not being able to say an honorable goodbye to friends and colleagues in Burkina Faso was immense and we also were worried for their safety.
During the early weeks after the firing, we started reaching out to friends and people we thought could help. We were deeply encouraged by the support of family in the Netherlands, a local Mennonite church community, and a small group of friends who were willing to help us pursue accountability from MCC. We eventually (in November 2023) submitted a detailed grievance to the MCC Board Chairs. They responded that they would do an “internal” 3rd-party investigation. They communicated with us via their lawyer, which felt intimidating. They hired Veritas Solutions, an investigation company whose stated goal was to help its corporate clients to avoid liability. We were given no input into this process and reluctantly declined to participate in the investigation.
It felt agonizing to have this kind of life-sucking correspondence with MCC. Every email was a trigger, every response took days to write, and it all involved many tears. We kept inviting MCC to meet with us in a “facilitated conversation” with specific conditions that we laid out in our grievance. This meeting still has not taken place (see more details below), although MCC would repeatedly publicly state or imply that we were declining to engage (see examples and analysis, and a summary of our invitations to MCC here).
Meanwhile, the Québec justice system offered us some recourse through a public agency that offers free legal support to people with complaints of illegal termination. They determined our complaints (being fired without just cause, fired while sick, and fired after making a complaint about harassment) to be receivable and we eventually got a court date in January 2025 with the Labor Administrative Tribunal. We hoped this process could provide validation for our contention that MCC had fired us illegally. We were not expecting a significant financial award from this process.
March-November 2024 – Finding other survivors; the open letter; formation of MAST
In March 2024, we finally learned that there were others who had suffered similar treatment at the hands of MCC. This was a huge eye-opener. One person led to another until we had a group of 9 people who had all been fired. We worked together to write an open letter that 7 of us signed. We’ve been encouraged by the outpouring of support for the petition, and by the advocacy of a number of friends, but MCC’s response has been beyond disheartening, and it still feels like Canadian and American Mennonite church leaders have been mostly silent. It has been heart-breaking to hear many more stories from others who have come forward.
In September, a number of open letter signatories and allies formed the group MAST (MCC Abuse Survivors Together). We are aware of 61 cases now (as of May 2025). If ever we thought this problem was limited to recent years, or to just MCC Canada or MCC US, or to just one department of MCC, we now know the abuse is widespread, systemic, and pervasive. The stories that people have shared with us point to the involvement of all levels of MCC leadership in covering up financial fraud, bullying workers, responding inappropriately to reports of sexual harassment and assault, and silencing whistleblowers.
Next steps in our case: investigation, legal settlement, MCC statements
At the end of December 2024, just weeks before our court date, MCC board members shared with us the summary of the investigation report by Veritas Solutions, which was finally completed after almost a year. It concluded that actions by MCC “senior personnel” toward John Clarke and Anicka Fast constituted multiple counts of “harassment.” We felt, and still feel, that the Veritas investigation process (an “internal” third-party investigation whose mandate, scope, and final report were fully controlled by MCC) was severely flawed and biased in favor of MCC leadership. It felt somewhat validating to have some actions of MCC senior staff labeled as harassment. However, we were shocked by the investigators’ conclusion that no “retaliation” occurred, by its dismissal of our claim of bribery by simply stating that it was not “criminal":’ and by its complete lack of reference to our complaint that MCC violated labour law by firing us while were on medical leave and after making a complaint of harassment.
(for more about this: see Canadian Mennonite article and MAST blog post)
In their email to us that accompanied the summary report, MCC board chairs failed to acknowledge wrongdoing or to express apology or regret. Instead, they insisted that “MCC engaged with honesty and integrity in dealing with the situation” and emphasized that although there were “gaps” in “policies and procedures,” MCC would continue to review and learn. They reduced the seriousness of the findings to “complex communication concerns.” We found it appalling that not even a finding from their own biased internal investigation could convince MCC leadership that there was serious wrongdoing worth apologizing for.
In January 2025, we came to a settlement with MCC in the Québec court system. We had initially hoped that our complaints could be heard by a judge, which would offer external validation that illegal activity had occurred. However, we eventually decided to engage in the pre-trial conciliation process offered by the tribunal for several reasons: because we learned that the labor board-appointed lawyer would not represent us in court if we turned down a financial offer from MCC, because we thought that a public financial settlement could offer some measure of justice, because we felt unable to face a hostile court battle without legal representation given the limitations of our health, and because we hoped that MCC boards would meet with us and offer an apology and validation outside of the court process in the facilitated conversations that finally were getting planned with the help of Mennonite World Conference and Mennonite Mission Network leaders and the support of Doopsgezind Wereldwerk. In other words, we believed we could receive this restitution in a way that still left the door open for other steps of restoration – such as full truth-telling, apology, repentance, and remorse – to happen.
Ahead of the conciliation date, we invited MCC by email to make an admission of wrongdoing. We made it clear that we would not accept a settlement that was contingent on an NDA or on a denial of wrongdoing.
The conciliation meeting on January 22 took nine hours and ended after midnight (our time). We got what we had asked for in some ways. No NDA (essential so that we could still talk about our complaint). No denial of wrongdoing. A financial settlement of 180,000 CAD, which we hoped would communicate that MCC employees who are fired are worth something, and that MCC can’t get away with flagrantly breaking labor laws just because it is a religious NGO.
What we didn’t get was an apology. A recognition from Rick Cober Bauman, who was representing MCC, that firing us without warning or cause while were suffering from PTSD and offering money in exchange for our silence about abuse, was just plain wrong. That would have been worth so much. We didn’t get a commitment to an external investigation even just of our case, even after we renounced the right to sue them for anything that the investigation might reveal.
(for more about this: see Anabaptist World article, Canadian Mennonite article, and MAST press release)
Shortly after the legal process concluded, on February 5, 2025, MCC released a public statement in which they stood by their decision to terminate our employment, and even “unequivocally” denied “claims of systemic abuse.” They continued to emphasize MCC’s integrity and care for staff in “difficult and complex situations.” It is hard to describe how painful it was to read what felt like a personal attack on us. We lost all hope that MCC leaders actually wanted to know what went wrong. It seemed all too clear that they just wanted to end this and have it go away.
Next steps
Now that our legal process with MCC has ended, we are still waiting to meet with MCC board members in a planned “facilitated conversation” – which we had asked for already in our November 2023 grievance and repeatedly since then. It was only at the end of 2024 that meetings finally began to be planned with the support of Doopsgezind Wereldwerk and MWC and MMN church leaders. Things seem to be moving forward – MCC has publicly stated its commitment to this conversation and has agreed to a number of our proposed conversation parameters including our choice of facilitators, and the presence of support people and a survivor advocate. However, we are still waiting for their agreement to give us access to our emails, and to grant our request that the scope of these conversations not be limited only to our case but that they include discussions about the need for an external investigation into all allegations, with the possibility of participation by other MAST steering committee members. So far, MCC has not agreed to these conditions despite urging by various Mennonite leaders (see statements by CDC board, Ethiopian Mennonite church president Desalegn Abebe, and former MCC leader Kim Thiessen). In an April 29, 2025 email to Kim Thiessen, shared with Kim’s permission, Ann even states,
“MCC is not planning to undergo another independent investigation with the significant costs, the potential for retraumatizing staff and the staff time overall associated with it. and we have also done several other policy and procedure and culture related reviews.”
We are still hesitantly planning to go ahead and meet with MCC board members in the facilitated conversations, but our hope for a good outcome is increasingly negligible.
The impact
Overall, the time since we were fired has been extremely painful at a personal level. Suffering from PTSD and all its symptoms has been harrowing. MCC’s sustained deflection and hurtful, gaslighting and/or intimidating messaging, both internally and externally, continually retriggers these symptoms. We are on a path toward personal healing, but it is a slow process that often feels like two steps forward/three steps back. Solidarity with other survivors provides encouragement, but our growing awareness of the extent of the harm is sometimes overwhelming.
One of the most painful parts of the whole story for us is the relative silence of our community both within and outside MCC. If the Mennonite community that created and sustains MCC does not step in when its “peacebuilding” agency is revealed to be corrupt and violent, then we begin to lose our faith in Anabaptist peace theology and in the church itself. We have found enough reasons, by God’s grace, to continue in the church, but we are determined to speak out loudly because it’s not okay for our peace organization to treat people this way.
(read an article by Anicka that reflects on abuse in institutions in relation to the 500th anniversary of the Anabaptist movement here)
What we want is very simple. We want MCC to stop hurting people. We want MCC’s constituents to step in and clearly communicate that they refuse to accept this violence. We want support from the church, in a way that respects us as survivors. We want the truth to be known through a credible investigation that is not controlled by MCC. We want MCC to apologize, make things right, and make deep changes in its systems, policies, and processes to ensure, as much as is humanly possible, that this kind of harm will not happen again.
Traffic in Zone du Bois, near the MCC office in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Please sign the petition to demand that cases like these be fully investigated. If you have experienced harm from MCC and want to share your story confidentially with the MAST steering committee, please write to stopmccabuse@proton.me. If you are looking for ways to get advocate for accountability from MCC, check out these ideas: https://www.mccabusesurvivors.org/getinvolved