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.