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In Reply to: Re: Love's Bridge. posted by Sam AJemian on September 07, 2003 at 11:51:51:
Please do give it enough time.
Concerning the “coming clean” which you’ve said is to go to the authorities to tell them about their former membership in TF. Have you ever been through simple visa registration at the local Uvir in Russia? If they were to do the slightest bit of any such "reporting" of any kind with Russian beurocracy there’d be no end to their problems. The Uvir would be the first ones to hear about it and bye bye visa. In other words "Why are these foreign crackpots coming to bother us with their problems?" Russian authorities don't want any help from outsiders to take care of things such as foreign cults operating in their country. You can see that from reading the news.
Those young people in Perm have left the Family. I know that from first-hand information. I can vouch for that. No one needs to be suspicious of that. It shouldn't be so hard to believe? (You’ve quoted a number of my posts in your Newsletter so if you think those quotes are credible please don’t doubt my credibility on this matter either.)
In fact I'm surprised they stayed in the Family as long as they did, but look how long I ended up staying. I got to know Christina and some of the others who are now still with Love’s Bridge in the mid to late '90s. In a way it's because of people like them I stayed in the Fam so long. None of them are in the Fam now.
For the moment if they still have some connection to FCF, even Grant going there, they need some time to sever the connections and they said they’re working on doing that. FCF funds other charities, some who never even heard of the Fam.
It's not easy running a charity in countries like Russia. You have to know how to wheel and deal. You know, to get a thing like Love's Bridge going as a Fam member, you're at the grass roots, you do it on your own. You raise the money for it on your own. You work at it on your own. It's yours, it's not the Fam's. FCF wasn’t giving us any money, at one point we even wrote and asked and they said no more requests were being accepted. The other home I knew that was getting some funds from them wasn’t getting much at all.
My strong personal conviction is that these admirable young people rightfully see Love's Bridge as their own, not the Fam's. I see no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to call the shots.
The SG ex member community: If we can't give them respect, and acquiesce to their requests, even if there are some aspects of their modus operendi that we don’t agree with, I think something's wrong.
Maybe some of us are offended by the position some SGs have taken that "...some zealous former members want to justify or atone for their own involvement with the group, rather than improve our lives as children." (Jules at the AFF conference)
There’s another important point that someone pointed out to me, that the Family will use what you’ve threatened to do as ammunition against ex-members saying they show no mercy even to ex-members who are out and trying to do some good.
I was in Moscow in the hey-day of Love's Bridge when it was the name of the “Consider the Poor” ministry which a home in Moscow got going. It’s outreach consisted of clown shows, distribution of clothes and toys, etc in orphanages. That was in ‘96-‘97.
At that time a group of SGs, including Christina, a 100% young people team, went to Perm, and they borrowed the name Love's Bridge for their work there in the Urals.
Within a few years Love's Bridge in Moscow became a non entity, people moved on, the Moscow home closed. But a new Love's Bridge had started in Perm as a charity helping street kids. They were not just doing it for PR photo opportunities for fund raising. They really got things done, which is why they’ve done so well and now have a whole bunch of people working with them who by the way don’t know anything about the Family, and never will. Evidence that this was a cover for proselytizing? There’s none, from the beginning, even when they were still in the Fam.
And that’s the fact that matters: they’ve now left the Fam. Isn't that one of the main things we all hope and pray for? That’s just so great! Good for them! And so many young people have indeed left in the last 10 years. The Fam's cream of the crop, their SG leaders, performers, pioneers, missionaries, they've left! We need to give them credit, and help in whatever way we can.
For me, that’s the whole idea, this is what counts. They can now be free from the cultic control. Why should they foolishly announce their former affiliation to some authorities? Which authorities? As I said earlier, people just don’t go to the authorities with stories like that. Not even here in the west. If I went to the director of the school I work for, I don’t think I’d have my job. The last place to do that would be in a place like R.
More important, at the end of the day, the only people these SGs they need to come clean to is themselves, which obviously they’ve done. It frightens me somewhat, the lack of sensitivity, even just rational human decency.
I'm sure they find it a quandary to still have an FCF connection. But other secular non Fam charities do too.
I can see pragmatic reasons why it might take time for them to break the ties. I really wonder how easily and quickly they can move away from FCF. I don’t believe you and I can begin to fathom all the headaches that are involved in keeping a viable NGO going.
Another thought: If FCF makes a financial contribution to their humanitarian work with the street kids, I’d rather it went to people like them, instead of to Family homes just to keep them running.
