All God’s Children
In a recent article in Christianity Today magazine called A Candle In The Darkness, the president of Compassion International, Wes Stafford, tells his story of childhood abuse and deliverance in a West Africa boarding school. Read the full article here.
The boarding school in question is the now closed Mamou Alliance Academy in Guinea, West Africa. Mamou was a boarding school for children of Christian missionaries in Africa run by the Christian & Missionary Alliance (C&MA) denomination from the 1920s until it was closed in 1971. The school boarded over 200 children of missionaries working in surrounding regions. Starting at age 6, the children lived there for nine months of every year. Decades on, Mamou is remembered by many of its past students as “the Auschwitz of missionary kid boarding schools”.
The 2008 documentary All God’s Children shows interviews and live footage of Mamou and reveals the tragic ramifications of the abuse inflicted on these children, with survivors ranging from non-believers to committed pastors, but few without psychological and spiritual damage.
Trailer
Excerpt 1 - “Sacrifice and Church Policy”
Excerpt 2 - “Classroom Abuses”
Excerpt 3 - “Lifelong Consequences”
To its credit, the C&MA responded to allegations by sanctioning an independent inquiry in 1995, releasing a report in 1998. Since the release of this report C&MA has made many drastic and positive changes to it’s educational policies and general procedural approach.
For more information on the documentary, go the the All God’s Children website.
Wes Stafford has written a book Too Small To Ignore: Why The Least of These Matters Most (2007).
tosh
on June 11th, 2010
Stories like these always make me think about spiritual warfare.
Daniel
on August 5th, 2010
My grandmother went to Mamou. While she does not remember being abused herself, she does have a clear memory of seeing a boy being punished for vomitting. His punishment? Being made to eat the vomit.