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In Reply to: Re: Correction, it should have said posted by Farmer on December 12, 2003 at 00:28:42:
I have to say, not having “personally witnessed”, okay, yes, that was possible. But IMO anyone in the Family in the late 70's and in the 80's cannot say they didn’t hear about adult minor sex because it was in the pubs, talked about a lot, and it was general knowledge.
Here’s an example of how the knowledge of adult minor sex activity in the Family was very widespread: I remember when the heart sharing era began around '84-'85. I was our little single family home, like many of us in the post RNR era, we were just my wife and our kids, in W. Europe, around the time of the Searchers, and some leaders and other Family personalities started to send in heart sharing types of "confessions" that were then printed out and sent to the home shepherds in the area--we were in European area which included Eastern Europe too. Maybe this was done elsewhere too.
A Peruvian male Family personality, (the same one who is currently being exposed on the MovingOn site in the FCF information blitz), had recently arrived in Europe and he wrote one of these so-called “confessions”. He talked extensivley about his weakness for sharing with underaged teen girls. It was in the same register of heart sharing that someone else might do to confess “I’m materialistic and I get tempted to eat out in Chinese restaurants, etc.”
I heard this stuff, compartmentalized it, I have no excuse, I did not rise up stand up and Bob Marley the whole thing, as I should have. I could have done something, and I didn’t. A year later we got the advisory forbidding adult minor sex, I was relieved and my reaction was “Good, in the Family when something’s wrong it’s corrected.” When the DFing letters came out and the FFing/ESing era ended I felt the same. I don’t agree with how I felt back then because my feelings about it should have been much much stronger, the Family's changes in policy was in no way an attempt to correct the harm done, and to this day the Family officially refuses to make any such effort.
I was one of the people who felt much better when a pub came out that talked about the importance of marriage and parents taking care of their children. I accepted it when Maria said they were sorry for things like the silence restrictions, and that that practice did not come from her. When the rare “conservative” letter or publication came out I was really happy. I guess it was those kind of pubs that factored into why I stayed in the Fam for as long as I did.
Is it possible to give explanations without it being an excuse?
