My encounter with Donn Ketcham

I say, what a week. About a thousand people have accessed this blog in the past two days following the publication of a Christianity Today article on Donn Ketcham. For only the second time, albinism is the second most popular topic here. So it's only appropriate that I write a little further on the topic, including an account of my own encounter with the good doctor.

But first, an examination of the recently released  ABWE and Donn Ketcham Investigations Final Report. My comments will be interspersed, in italics.

Analysis indicates that there existed, and in some cases exist today, typically unspoken beliefs and attitudes within ABWE that were revealed through the investigation by way of documents and interviews – beliefs and attitudes that contributed to missionary family and ABWE administrative lack of awareness, lack of responsiveness, and poor decision-making regarding policy violations and abuse behaviors and events. The root causes of significant impact include:

1. There existed a prevailing attitude toward authority in evangelical circles, primarily that there was a "spirituality" standard that required unquestioning compliance with authority. This attitude prevented the development of a healthy system of checks and balances and openness to corrective actions. Critical thinking skills were suspended.
This is a prevalent problem in evangelical circles that have been influenced by Bill Gothard or the Patriarchy movement. But, on the mission field, it goes back way further than that--it probably originated in a military mindset.

2. There existed a focus on ministry as being the top priority. Individual needs and voices tended to be dismissed in the service of the "greater good", i.e. ministry and the spread of the Gospel.

There is also a warped sense of priorities: the work must go on, even if the worker is tainted by sin. Yet, nationals are held to a higher standard, and can be summarily dismissed if under suspicion of moral failure.

3. There existed a prevailing attitude about the status of women in the work place. Especially in the historical time period under investigation women were considered "support" personnel. As such, their opinions and observations carried less weight and were easier to dismiss and ignore. Because women were considered of lesser value, it was easier to "send them home" and/or remove them from the mission, i.e. Donn Ketcham’s lovers over the decades.

　This is a good point; it is almost always MEN who are kept on in spite of moral failure; single women are much more expendable.

4. There existed a prevailing attitude toward children relative to the ministry and to adults. Ministry activities were more important than child needs. Children were not to interfere with or block the "ministry". In fact, children were "sacrificed" so that the ministry would not be "discredited." This, in part, led to blaming a child for what was, in truth, the responsibility of an adult. This also led to children not speaking up about what was happening to them. The children saw much that the adults missed.

5. There existed a prevailing belief that missionaries are "more spiritual" than the average Christian, and because of their "sacrifices" are "entitled." This creates a vulnerability to and blindness about wrongful (and even criminal) behaviors, i.e. a tolerance of Donn Ketcham using inappropriate sexual joking and bragging about his sexual exploits with National women.

Missionaries are thought of as more spiritual, due to their biblical training and being in "Full-time Christian Service." There is also the Baptist focus on right theology over right living.

6. There existed a class system of value and importance on the field. A doctor was considered more important than others, which led to a sense of subservience and obedience on the part of the victims and observers who might have otherwise spoken out regarding Donn Ketcham’s abusive behaviors. This class system impacted the Donn Ketcham family as well.

7. There existed an idealization of Donn Ketcham, a doctor, whose charisma garnered many dollars for ABWE and blinded many people to his true character, i.e."How could such a wonderful man who did so much for the Ministry be that bad? was an oft reported sentiment." For example:

a. He became a demigod in the mission. Donn Ketcham contributed to his persona by presenting himself as a strong spiritual leader, preaching, speaking, and leading Bible studies. He often instructed and condemned others on the very sins he was and had been committing for decades.

b. A result of the idealization is that other decision-makers set aside their own opinions and capacities and deferred to Donn Ketcham, including ABWE administrators who were in positions of authority over Donn Ketcham.

8. There existed a customization of ABWE Principles and Practices and consequences for violation of those Principles and Practices for Donn Ketcham while the organization strictly enforced the Principles and Practices and violation consequences for other mission personnel. For example:

a. Donn Ketcham’s paramours were removed from the field in spite of their pleas to return, while Donn Ketcham was allowed to return.

b. One missionary family was sent home and required to attend 2 years of counseling followed by a period of observation for issues related to parenting a high-needs child. Donn Ketcham, on the other hand, was sent to Chittagong (a discipline that was not strictly enforced) and required to complete a recommended possible 30 sessions of counseling, of which he only completed 17, for outright violation of ABWE’s code of behavior. Of note, the missionary family’s requirements for counseling were at Donn Ketcham’s insistence.

c. Counselors selected in the Donn Ketcham matter failed due to inadequate training and experience, a lack of professional certification and licensure, conflict of interest, accepting assignments outside of scope of expertise, and ethics violations as to working with the perpetrator and his victim/survivor.

9. There existed a conflict between administering ABWE as a faith-based entity (grace, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, etc.) versus a corporate/business entity (with protective policies and procedures in place, governance checks and balances, etc.). For example:

a. This confusion allowed compassion and forgiveness to block appropriate legal and administrative actions. Equally, it allowed organizational concerns (i.e. financial, the need for doctors) to repeatedly block appropriate responses to victim/survivors.

b. This confusion resulted in ABWE not reporting to authorities Donn Ketcham’s pedophilia as it became known to the organization over decades.

c. This confusion and lack of following corporate principles and practices in place, resulted in multiple affairs and the sexual and emotional abuse of both adult women and children.

d. This confusion allowed "forgiveness" (a faith-based concept) to be used in the service of corporate avoidance of tough issues, i.e. Donn Ketcham’s preferential treatment, a child being blamed for the sexual abuse perpetrated by Donn Ketcham in order to protect Donn Ketcham’s wife, Donn Ketcham continuing in a leadership role even while home for discipline, and a misleading confession avoiding the truth of child sexual abuse being presented with no supervision by ABWE.

e. This confusion contributed to ABWE’s failure to seek out or use appropriate professional and legal counsel for Donn Ketcham when the organization was aware of and had worked with such professionals in matters affecting other ABWE missionaries.

10. There existed a difficulty with logistics in that time period which resulted in a lack of timely communication between Bangladesh and the U.S. headquarters and vice versa.

a. This isolation tends to make people cling tighter to what is familiar, hence the development of "we’re all family" (aunts and uncles). Such a family sense makes it more difficult for people to have perspective, to ask for information, to critique inappropriate actions, and to see reality, i.e. many still refer to the 13-14 year old missionary kid (MK) victim/survivor as a "consenting (implied) adult".

b. Such an isolated community also creates a "tribal knowledge" where facts are assumed, truth is unintentionally distorted (i.e. time frames, ages) – all of which lead to difficulty "connecting the dots" when abuse happens.

11. There existed a culture of naiveté, due in large part to the underlying mistaken belief that "abuse doesn’t happen in Christian circles."

a. This created an environment in which behavior that would activate a censorship response in most circles was dismissed or ignored.

b. Children’s fears (and in some cases terror) of physical exams with Donn Ketcham was ignored.

c. This attitude also prevented acquisition and dissemination of information about abuse, abuse behaviors, grooming behaviors, and symptoms displayed by abused victims. With no one educated about abuse, or aware that it is a possibility in ANY environment, the mission compound became a fertile field for a manipulator and abuser.

d. Naiveté also made it easy for Donn Ketcham to find, prey on, and intimidate victims and potential witnesses.

A final comment: I wonder if one reason why ABWE leadership was so willing to overlook Donn's sin was that they were blinded by their own guilt in the same areas. An example of this which has come to light is that of  R. C. Sproul Jr.

Okay, now for my encounter with Dr. Ketcham.

It is interesting now to think back to October 1987 and realize that at the time Donn Ketcham spoke in a missions conference I attended, he was already under counseling from ABWE for the very sort of behaviour for which he was not long  afterward expelled. Yet, there he was preaching as an official representative of ABWE. And I must say, he was a very good preacher--I still remember that his subject was Gideon. There was nothing in his persona as a preacher to indicate the darkness that was even then consuming his soul. Nor, I expect, was any big announcement made from that same pulpit 2 years later announcing the fall of that famous preacher. No, such smug announcements were always reserved for the guy from the other theological camp.

UPDATE MAY 2017: As of this February, Donn Ketcham has finally been indicted for sexual molestation. According to the charges, he did continue his deviant behaviour after returning to his Michigan practice, and a former pediatric patient has come forward with criminal allegations of abuse in 1999--just shy of the statute of limitations.

UPDATE JAN 2018: A felony trial almost never takes place within a year of charges being filed, and this case is no exception. Donn is contesting his competency to stand trial.

The sad but true case of Dr. Ketcham, missionary child molester

This is not a gossip column, and The White Man certainly does not take any delight in the misfortunes of others. So it is with some trepidation that I now open up a can of worms regarding the charges of paedophilia against Donn Ketcham, M.D.

Before I start, I should say that I don't personally know any of the Ketcham family, or any of the alleged victims. While I'm certainly less than six degrees of separation removed from the persons and situations of which I now report, I'm far enough out to--I trust--render an impartial account. All the information that follows is from publicly available sources.

First, a bit of background. When Donn was born in June of 1930, his father was the pastor of a Baptist Church and a leader in the movement to purge the American Baptist Conference of modernism--an attempt that was ever met with failure. As Donn grew, his father rose to the forefront of the movement and, as pastor of Baptist churches in Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana, became the President of the separatist General Association of Regular Baptist Churches. An arch-rival for control of the separatist Baptists was J. Frank Norris of Dallas, TX, whose modus operandi was rumor, insinuation, and inflammatory rhetoric. He attacked, for example, Donn's half-sister Lois for having "left the mission field" when she departed Brazil on the verge of death from vitamin deficiency and remained in the States for an extended recovery.

Little Donn was not yet ten at the time, but the event surely had an effect on him. His father, a founder of the Baptist Mid Missions agency under which Lois and her husband served, put out the call for missionary doctors, so that a tragedy like this could be averted. And in fact, when he was only twelve, Donn is reported to have set his sights on becoming a missionary doctor. After biblical training that resulted in his ordination as a preacher of the gospel, he went on to receive top-notch medical training from the University Of Illinois. By 1960 he and his wife Kitty were ready for appointment to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to serve at a new mission hospital being started by Viggo Olsen of the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism.

But there was one problem. Beneath the ideal-missionary exterior, Donn Ketcham kept a hidden secret: he was a serial adulterer, and he preferred virgins. He'd gotten his start while attending public high school in Waterloo, defrauding quite a number of coeds all while planning a missionary career. His father, often on the road and busy with the demands of leading the GARBC, paid little attention to any reports that may have come his way. As for Donn? Well, he was doing nothing illegal--nothing that any hot-blooded young man in his peer group wouldn't want to do anyway--right? And thus commenced a double life that was to continue for some fifty years.

By the time Donn met Viggo Olsen, he had already secretly cheated on Kitty several times--but still had his sights set on being a missionary doctor. With all his theological training, he had no problem passing the mission's rigourous examinations for acceptance. And as a developing surgeon, his skills would remain in top demand on the mission field. Donn and Kitty Ketcham were the first members of Wyoming's Newhall Baptist Church to be appointed as foreign missionaries. Off to East Pakistan they went.

There's something rather unique about being a doctor. Normally a woman would not think of taking off her clothes for anyone else, but will doff everything at a doctor's request. No part of her body is safe from his invasive reach--in fact, her most private parts are his special concern. And a doctor gets to touch, in his profession, parts of a young girl's body that her father will never see. Furthermore, at a mission hospital we have the additional element that the patients know their doctor first of all as a friend, or the father of their friends. So it takes a special kind of a man to be able to do all this without giving in to lust--and, to their eternal discredit, the fundamental Baptists at ABWE who so rigorously grilled their candidates on theology and ecclesiastical separation never took the trouble to find out whether or not Donn Ketcham was that kind of man. The truth is, he was exactly the opposite.

It's not that there weren't signs. No doubt Donn had a reputation as a Lothario from way back in high school. He was well known even at Bible school as a womanizer, and this did not stop when he married Kitty. Yet Don Ketcham seemed to have some sort of Teflon coating that kept him from ever getting in trouble for his picadillos, even when they resented in his sexual partners being expelled for immorality. This pattern was to continue right up into the 1980's, until Donn's proclivity for virgins finally got him in the kind of trouble that no one could overlook. Cover up, yes. But not overlook.

By 1989 Donn had been on the mission field for decades. His children were all grown, but his services were as much in need as ever. There was no reason, professionally, why he couldn't have continued to serve for decades more. But his long string of adulteries finally caught up with him when a 14-year-old girl with whom he'd been involved sexually for two years finally confessed her moral shortcomings to a youth counselor back in the States. When word of this confession made it back to ABWE headquarters, mission leaders realised that something would need to be done.

After interrogating the girl to determine that she wasn't making it all up, they flew her back to Bangladesh to confront Dr. Ketcham. To their relief, he confessed to everything--in writing. Now all they had to do was to implement the standard mission procedure for dealing with moral failure--something they were all too familiar with by then:

1. Send The Missionary Home. This was done as soon as bags could be packed and tickets bought. The sooner he was out of the Situation, the better. And the family of the Victim got the same treatment as that of the Offender. [but according to this report, they remained on the field for a while.]

2. Terminate His Membership in the Mission. This was done more slowly and methodically, to allow time for the Ketchams to find and settle into a new home and job before cutting off their financial support. As ironic as it may seem, no thought was taken of the possible danger to girls Back Home with Donn Ketcham now released from any direct accountability to the mission. They even left it up to him how to explain his release from the mission, using the vague term "moral failure" whenever the topic did come up. No attempt was made to notify the State Medical Board or Child Protective Services that a sexual predator had been turned loose in their state and was now their problem.

3. Damage Control. Missionaries in Bangladesh were told of the offense in similarly worded general terms, and cautioned, "for the good of the work," not to discuss it with anyone. Anyone who asked was just to be told that "the Ketchams had to leave the field." No attempt was made to discover or enumerate his many other victims.

This damage control continued unabated for over a decade. It wasn't until 2002 that anyone thought the matter worth looking into again, but after a few half-hearted attempts it was concluded that there was no sense in digging up the past, and it was put to rest once again, with a little more sugar coating over the rottenness.

It wasn't until this very year, 2011, that a group of rebuffed victims got together and started a blog, in which they identified Dr. Donn Ketcham by name as a paedophile. A few weeks into that, ABWE management were finally roused to life and started the long-neglected Phase II of damage control--actually doing something about the problem. It was too late to hold Donn accountable for his actions, though--by that time the statute of limitations had run out. Even the Michigan State Medical Board wasn't interested in hearing about alleged abuses that had taken place a world away, and in a previous century.

But as more and more people went to the blog, and reports started to air in the local media, there was a rising furor over ABWE's longtime mishandling of the affair. In the aftermath, president Michael Loftis was asked to resign, and ABWE leadership hired another lawyer to guide them through the minefield of liability that was filling up around them.

This brings us to the present. Donn Ketcham, age 81, is still practicing medicine part-time in Allendale, MI. He still receives a monthly pension check from ABWE. That much is known. What hasn't yet come to light are how many girls he's molested in the 22 years since ABWE sent him home; and how much liability ABWE may face for having turned him loose.

Will this case change how mission agencies screen prospective members, or who they deal with moral failures on the field? Probably. Will it be enough to keep any of this from ever happening again? Probably not. The reasons why will be enough to fill up another post.


Donn William Ketcham, M.D.

UPDATE FEBRUARY 2012
It has come to my attention that there is an anthropological distinction between paedophilia and pederasty, with the age of the victim being the deciding factor. Unfortunately for our purposes, pedaresty is used strictly in a homosexual context, so it does not apply to Donn Ketcham's case. But for purposes of distinction, it should be noted that paedophilia refers only to prepubescent victims, and Dr. Ketcham clearly preferred his victims to be at least pubescent. He may have molested younger children, but did not exhibit the preference for prepubescence that is the hallmark of a paedophile (literally, one who 'loves' children).  So charges of paedophilia may be legally, but not anthropologically, correct.
[The term in vogue now is hebephilia--sexual attraction to children going through puberty]

Update April 2012
Many of my readers will be interested in this update:
http://bangladeshmksspeak.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/donn-ketcham-surrenders-michigan-medical-license/ 

Update May 2012
ABWE can't wait for the full GRACE report, goes ahead and apologises, investigates further reports of abuse
http://www.abwe.org/news/article/may-2012-g.r.a.c.e.-investigation-report

Update May 2015
There are more posts on this topic here.

Update August 2016
The investigative news report which has been driving traffic to this post is here. 

Update July 2017
A recent blog post by an ABWE missionary doctor defends ABWE as having adequately dealt with the problem (scroll to the bottom of the page).

The link between missionary medicine and paedophilia

In an earlier post, I revealed that Dr. Donn Ketcham, veteran ABWE medical missionary to Bangladesh, used his position as a means of practicising his favoured form of paedophila. This post has drawn a wide readership and was linked to another blog, one which takes a look at similar shortcomings in mission-board oversight at another mission hospital in Bangladesh,  Baptist Mid Missions' Natore Hospital [Wes has since shut that blog down]. Gary Anderson, president of BMM, has drawn his organisation into the fray by defending the track record of their Bangladesh field in a letter to supporters.

The only other blog still engaged in discussing the issue is the one where it all started, BangladeshMKsSpeak. I'd like to take a look at the report therein by Susan Beals that Dr. Ketcham used some sort of sedative to drug his victims before molesting them. By her description, I expect it was probably Lorazepam, normally used by doctors to 'prep' a patient for surgery. It's most effective when given by intravenous injection, so it would be interesting to see if any of these victims can remember the route by which they were administered the rape drug.

What's interesting to me is how willingly these victims allowed their doctor to find a vein and insert a needle into it, before injecting a harmful substance into their bodies. Why would they allow such a thing, and not bother to even report it to their parents afterward? Well, it has a lot to do, in my opinion, with growing up on a mission station.

Missionary children are jabbed with needles more than anyone else, with the possible exception of soldiers going into a combat zone. In addition to all the usual childhood inoculations, they must submit to some combination of yellow fever, cholera, smallpox, rabies, and tetanus jabs on a basis as frequently as every six months. They are further subject to injections to combat hepatitis or measles should an epidemic threaten. In short, a missionary child is so used to pulling up her sleeve--or pulling down his pants--to receive the needle that it would actually be nothing out of the ordinary, in the course of an office visit, for a child to be told that she needs yet another unspecified injection.

Well, the White Man has not raised his children this way. As do I, they look upon an injection as a form of assault with a deadly weapon, to which one submits only when there is no reasonable alternative. One will not find them readily consenting to some unspecified injection just because they are told by an authority figure that "they need it."

This could result in an unwelcome confrontation with armed representatives of a foreign government the next time they travel overseas--though I hope not. But it won't result in them being office-raped by their doctor--of that I'm quite sure.


UPDATE 2012
It has come to my attention that it is standard procedure for anyone transported to an emergency room to have an intravenous line inserted in their arm without any attempt at gaining prior consent. Thus while my children may be safe in the doctor's office, should an emergency tech wish to administer them a rape drug on the way to the emergency room, there probably won't be much they will be able to do to prevent it.

The mess at ABWE HQ gets ever deeper, and it's not just ABWE being affected

This blog has been deluged for the past few days with searches for news on Donn Ketcham, so I knew something must have gone down. It took a bit of digging, but sure enough: another Baptist missionary has just been implicated in the abuse of missionary kids in Bangladesh.

There's a problem, though: he's the father of one of the founding members of the group of AMK's who set out to expose what went on back there in their childhoods--now a former member, and a vociferous opponent of letting this thing go any further.

It gets worse. ABWE limited GRACE to only investigating Donn Ketcham's peccadilloes, and that investigation continues to plod along. GRACE is accountable to the public, and must be thorough. But what they can't do, per ABWE restrictions on the investigation, is follow any evidence that leads to the exposure of any other missionary. That job has to be left to someone else.

That's the other problem. The "someone else" was a legal team directly hired by ABWE and is accountable to them alone. And furthermore, they managed in just a few months to 'investigate' a whole pile of cases, do all their interviews, and wrap up their final reports and recommendations--all without any public disclosure or outside accountability. Can you say "Damage Control?"

What's happened is that several heads have quietly rolled due to the "preponderance of evidence" raised by their investigations--all before GRACE has even released a preliminary report.

What does this all have to do with me? Well, as someone with close ties to the Western Missionary Movement, I've taken a hard look at The Way Things Were Done and wondered if the organizations that Did Things That Way could ever manage to pull out of the old paradigm and embrace the future. And this latest move by ABWE tells me that, at least as far as regular Evangelical Baptist Missions are concerned (and I use the term generally, now that the specific organization that held that name for 80 years has gone ignominiously bankrupt), the answer is, No. The Phoenix cannot be transformed; it must be burned to a crisp before any new life can arise from its ashes.

So, the Old Guard Missions are going away; what will replace them? Alas, I see only more of the same. As long as a missionary candidate can find 100 churches to support him for an average of $50 a month, Bible College graduates will continue to sign their names on the line to go forth and plant Fundamental Baptist Churches. Mission Hospitals will continue to be built. Some things will be different--boarding schools definitely are still on the way out--but the next iteration of Western Missions will be only marginally different than the last. At least at the beginning--whether this next generation will be able to go farther than the last is capable of remains to be seen.

Stay tuned for a report on how this sort of thing all falls out for a ministry based out of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Has anything really changed?

Although, as I pointed out in my last point, this blog is not attracting any new readers (the vast majority of all visits coming from bots), I owe it to the readers of my past posts to give an update on the topic of child abuse, which often takes the form of child secshual exploytatshun. I've been particularly hard on ABWE for their coverup of Donn Ketcham.
This update regards how well the extensive policies and procedures ABWE have put in place in the years since work: they don't. Although the case in quesition is of simple childe abuse of the mildest form reportable--bullying--the system STILL punished the victims and protected the perpetrators. 

These Baptists don't seem to be any better at handling in-house child abuse allegations than the Mormons. 

The Economic Inevitability of War

My heading reads, "People come to this blog seeking information on Albinism, the Miller kidnapping saga, the Duggar adultery scandal, Tom White's suicide, Donn Ketcham's philandering, Arthur and Sherry Blessitt's divorce, Michael Pearl's hypocrisy, Barack Obama's birth, or Pat and Jill Williams."
These are the main topics that have driven viewers to my blog for the last couple of decades, and I note that The Iran War is not listed as such a topic, even though I wrote on it prolifically back in 2012. It's ironic that what I expended so much effort on researching and predicting, when it finally happened, was such a non-event in the grand scheme of things that it's already been almost forgotten, less than a year later.
But such is the nature of war: every new war is fought because people forgot the lessons learned from the last one.
I grew up studying World War Two. The leaders of my day had all come up through that war, and one of the lessons they learned was that one typical cause of war is treating an enemy like a major trading partner, or a major trading partner like an enemy--especially when one swiches from one approach to the other.
Case in point, Japan. The US government disapproved of Japan invading China, all the while serving as a major trading partner, allowing Japan to build up a huge navy with steel purchased from America. But no problem, that navy wasn't being used to invade China, and the US wasn't at war with Japan. Right?
When the US finally decided that enough was enough and cut off Japan's supply of oil and steel, Pearl Harbor became inevitable.
But alas, the generation that learned that lesson is long gone from power, and the current generation are having to learn it anew for themselves. The West has spent the last three decades enriching Russia by buying their oil and gas--money which Putin stashed in Russia's war chest to get them through the inevitable sanctions that would follow his invasion of Ukraine--kind of like Japan frantically building the ships that would destroy Pearl Harbor in advance of the sanctions that would follow their invasion of China.
Ukraine, for their part, have largely removed the Russian threat--at least the conventional one. But what about China? Over the past three decades, the West moved most of its industrial facilities to this communist nation to save money, which means that now, should they decide to sanction us, we would be as outmatched economically as the American South was when they launched the War Between the States.
This is why wars are inevitable. The love of money drives free people to enable the leaders of enslaved countries, and greed for land drives the leaders of enslaved countries to invade their neighbors.
Free people could, should they so choose, live without supporting dictatorial regimes. But they can always live a little better when they do. But alas, dictatorial regimes are never content to enslave their own poeople; they are also driven to conquer their neighbors. So the cycle of: 1) Build up the enemy's resources while pretending they are not an enemy; 2)Finally admit they are an enemy and cut off supplies to their war chest right about the time it's full anyway; 3) Suffer attack and loss from the very enemy you enabled to infict it; runs its course at least once in every mortal lifetime.
I've lived long enough to see Russia go from a mortal enemy, to a major trading partner, and back to a mortal enemy again, with American-made missles soon to rain down destruction on Russia for the first time in their mutal history. Such is the inevitability of war.