Well, the folks in Bartlesville who read this blog won't be happy about it, but I'm posting the letter below, in its entirety and with Mihai's permission, to follow up on
my previous story.
I have only to add that I don't recommend taking this to the courts, as that is specifically prohibited in 1 Corinthians six.
11/25/13
Dear
sisters and brethren in Christ:
This sad letter you are reading comes from Michael Wurmbrand,
the son of the late Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, who spent fourteen years in the
communist prisons of Romania, author of the book Tortured
For Christ, a book of valiant Christian testimony under communist
persecution that has been translated in over 85 languages. My parents died in
2000-2001 and I am now 74 years old.
Against my express request NOT TO DO SO,
the mission Voice of the Martyrs of
Bartlesville (VOM), Oklahoma,
USA
and its international affiliates, continue to use Richard Wurmbrand,
Sabina Wurmbrand, my parents' persona, pictures, writings and books, my persona
also to obtain your donations!
Tom White, the past Voice of the Martyrs Chairman for more
than 20-years, committed suicide in April, 2012, only two to three hours after
an accusation of child sexual molestation (pedophilia) of a 10-years old girl
was formally filed by her parents with the local police, and while the
Bartlesville, OK. police were searching to arrest him. This terrible event made
world news. At the time of his committing
suicide, Tom White had a $140,000+, plus perks, yearly salary and very
substantial travel and expense accounts used in his extensive and
frequent international travel year after year. Since the suspected perpetrator was dead, the
police closed any further investigation of the sexual molestation. The police chief and the former mayor of the town
of Bartlesville, OK. were personally serving on the
Board of Directors of Voice of the Martyrs. A few other directors are related
to each other or get salaries from the organization.
I asked in writing of the Voice of the Martyrs Board of Directors
for an independent investigation, to be undertaken from outside of VOM. The
investigation in the famous legal action in England of Jimmy Saville, the BBC
children program head while alive, started with only 2 cases BUT there were
more than 600 pedophilia complaints after Saville died. In the last 4 years, the state of Arizona,
for instance, failed to investigate 6,000 cases of children molestation. Being the son of Richard Wurmbrand, a person
of my background and position could have more inside information, than I
can discuss publicly. I asked therefore for an independent investigation!
The main question in the letter I wrote to the entire Voice of the
Martyrs Board of Directors was worded as follows: “In a
Christian spirit of love and faith, if you want to continue using the names,
persona and copyrights of my parents, I ask first that you do not try to
accomplish this in an adversarial way through lawyers, etc. but rather in an
amiable way by fulfilling only one request for the board to decide and approve:
Please allow and pay for an
independent “blue ribbon” commission ... to investigate within the next two
months, back at least two years, all Tom
White’s travel points, contacts and especially financial expenditures to establish
and put to rest any suspicions re. child molestation. ….
Sorry, whether you like it or not, this unpleasant event that happened to VOM
with its Chairman during twenty years cannot be dispensed with as just “a
family affair” or an unfortunate sudden decision. If you do not intend to accept the above request, the other decision I
ask you to take is not to use the name Wurmbrand any more….”
Only 4 days after I
addressed this letter to the board of directors I received a curt letter of
termination of employment. No “sorry” and no “thank you” for my founding the
organization or the many years of service! My letter now for more than a year,
has not been answered!
I should be entitled to make such a request since:
- Voice of the Martyrs published for years a specially
dedicated children’s magazine. This was done by sharing mailing lists with organizations focusing on families and
children;
- My person, my life, and
our family Wurmbrand story was used in this magazine;
- Without my knowledge, without my
permission, a very laudatory biography of mine was written, printed and
distributed to tens of thousands of American children;
- In
order to obtain donations from the parents, the organization tried to gain
credibility and goodwill with tens of thousands of Christian children in home-schooling
families.
Donors should be aware that:
·
Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) spent $28 million dollars -- not on the mission field but to build
its own headquarter thus in economic times difficult for us all, encouraging construction in Bartlesville,
Oklahoma, USA, a town of only about 32,000. To my knowledge, the previous headquarters
of VOM in the same town cost in the neighborhood of about
$90,000! To read more type in your internet browser: http://michaelwurmbrand.com/vom-construction-costs.pdf The present chairman of VOM is a former
mayor of Bartlesville,
and was part of the city leadership.
·
This was done in secret, until the buildings were erected. Neither
I nor the donors were told of such
grandiose projects. It is hard to
believe this could be done but correspondence I display on the web see link
below, should convince you. I worked
with VOM from Los Angeles, California, USA
and never was part of the VOM board of directors. The donors
only saw money spent for projects and they trusted that the word
"projects" referred to missionary work, like helping widows of
Christians killed in Nigeria!
·
All of the above occurred while, at the same time... Without any
reasons proffered, they sent a termination of employment letter to me, Richard
Wurmbrand's son, who founded the mission, four days only after I asked
for an independent investigation of the expenses and travels of the
suicidal and suspected pedophile past chairman of VOM, USA.
·
Voice of the Martyrs had agreed reluctantly in 2001 to help about
100 believers who were imprisoned 5-10 years for their faith in communist
prisons in Romania, currently destitute in their 80s and 90s, with
less than $1 (yes, one dollar) a month. As outrageous as it sounds,
considering tens of millions of dollars solicited from you, it is documented. It
was raised in the following year to the value of about 2
tanks of gas/month worth of help only because I wrote feet of email
messages and renounced a total of over $100,000 of my salary over four years (I
accepted being paid only $500/month!) just so these Christian martyrs would be
helped. To read more on the “VOM claims of
pretended lack of money” type in your internet browser: http://michaelwurmbrand.com/VOM-claims-lack-of-money.pdf
·
A fundraiser for VOM was promised to be paid a percentage or cut
of the funds he raised! We are far indeed from charitable actions through which
one sacrifices for the interests of others.
After I brought all of these facts to light, I
was asked also to keep quiet, not to rock the boat. Before being laid off I
was offered substantial contractual financial incentives not to “badmouth” VOM.
Some of the organizations endorsing
Voice of the Martyrs have interrelated employees and interests. When I
approached them, they were shy and sore afraid for their own interests to insist my letter be answered. Some pathetic
answers like: “Do not cast the first stone,” “king Solomon made mistakes ,” “we
might also sin” or “promise to keep correspondence private only” displayed the hypocrisy to protect the flow
of donations rather than any interest in
protecting possible children victims! Some answers were outright
sarcastic, as if my requesting a proper investigation regarding suspected pedophilia among “Christian missionaries” would be some joke.
In the past Voice of the Martyrs
had written a dedication about myself sent to tens of thousands stating:
"To the Rev. Michael Wurmbrand, who has lived his life in a fishbowl among
both friends and enemies, and has done so with dignity to the glory of God. We
are grateful for the numerous personal interviews in which he shared his
memories with patience and enthusiasm." As soon as I asked for this independent
investigation, the VOM attitude of respect towards myself I enjoyed for years
turned into one of incredible vindictiveness. Christians who were in the know
could not believe how it was possible. The false answers given to those who
inquired were that this is a personal (?!?) conflict with Michael Wurmbrand we
try to solve with prayer and mediation! In reality, VOM employees were expressly forbidden to have contact with me,
so as not to lose some income and employment positions from this possibly second
largest employer in Bartlesville,
OK. Same employees had before
vied to be photographed with me and get my autograph.
The worst vindictive
act towards myself though, was the refusal on the part of VOM of my simple request
to dump or allow myself even pay to withdraw immediately from the VOM
circulation advertising, about 2,000 copies of Tortured For Christ, my father’s
book, published by VOM with a preface by, and having right in the middle, a
portrait of Tom White, the past chairman who had committed suicide after the
police-filed accusation of suspected pedophilia. I was answered IN WRITING (by the convicted
felon-embezzler who had meantime become Vice President of VOM, see above) that my request is morally wrong. I was
written: “Tom White was VOM”, and according to VOM, I have no right to ask that
my father’s name not be associated with this past chairman -- even if he committed suicide under a strong
suspicion of pedophilia. VOM even claimed to know apparently better than the parents of the victim, if there was
or not substance to the police complaint. To spite me, the book showing Tom’s
picture continued to be widely advertised and even offered for free for 6 more months
following Tom’s suicide. VOM knew that during the first month my family
arrived to the United States
in the end of 1966, I had personally
typed on a clunky typewriter four manuscript versions of this book. How could
my request be refused?
How could I have foreseen
that in a case of blatant suspected sexual-child-molestation some Christian VOM
leaders I approached, imitated the priest and Levite in the Parable of the Good
Samaritan, trying their best re. suspected pedophilia, to “pass by on the other
side,” so as to maintain their perks! John the Baptist was not beheaded because
he sermonized in general asking people to repent. Against his own personal interest,
he put his life at risk to denounce the sin of Herod, the ruler of the day. What
about "missionary outreach" to poor "persecuted
Christians?" Voice of the Martyrs, with its opulent ($28
million) headquarter built out of your sacrificial contributions, makes a mockery
of the sacrifice of persecuted Christians like my parents. Imagine a surgeon
insisting to operate, having no time to clean his hands after searching in
garbage. What patient has any use for such a surgeon? The betrayer of Lord
Jesus, Judas, in his apparently most
“unselfish” enunciation of a project to help the poor, was but a thief. (Indeed
the Gospel of John 12:6 writes: "This he said, not that he cared for the
poor, BUT BECAUSE HE WAS A THIEF!")
VOM published even how within months of our arrival in the United States,
from 1967 on, I worked together with my parents Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand,
to start what is now Voice of the Martyrs. Recently released documents
from the archives of the Romanian secret police prove the communists had issued
an order to kill our entire family. See:
http://michaelwurmbrand.com/killing-wurmbrands.htm.
We started what is now Voice of the Martyrs under a communist sentence of death. When I was only a child, the
communists forcefully took away my parents to communist prisons. I suffered plenty. My
parents died with a good name. I do not want allow VOM use my parents good
name, to raise money under false pretenses. I wrote the VOM directors: “If you
enjoy, for motivations of your own, to wallow in the mire of suspected
pedophilia go ahead …. If you do not want to accept an independent
investigation and complete transparency of your dealings, I begged you do not
use my father' long years of suffering in communist prisons and the intense
suffering of his whole family to raise money from naive donors ….” I was written by VOM, when asking help for
formerly persecuted Christians under communism, now in their 90s, “we
are technically out of money!...there will be NO check requests approved for
anything other than absolutely essential…” only to find out later that $9.5
million were available not for mission work, but for construction work in
Oklahoma (see above link.)
Christian parents please protect your children! Consider how grave
it is to allow your children to trust
and be reached by a missionary organization having had a case of suspected
pedophilia and a suicide because of it in its midst, and then terminating me, its founder so as not to have to respond
to a request for an independent investigation of possible sexual child
molestation. After all the laudatory words published of me, they also tried to
badmouth me. If you are a minister, I can only beg you to share this letter
with your congregation. If you had respect for Richard Wurmbrand, my father,
please send this letter to all your email and affiliate lists, Christmas lists,
spread it among your friends.
I tried to document the facts recited above but think on your own: How can “Christian missionaries” in a good Christian conscience even indulge
to build themselves an opulent $28,000,000 headquarter from your donations, while
withholding help to persecuted Christians in far away lands badly in need of your
donations? Love of money is the root
of all evil. A way to stop evil, is to stop financing it. If you were
inspired by the Wurmbrand family story of suffering to donate to Voice of the
Martyrs or its international affiliates in the ICA, as the only son of Richard and Sabina
Wurmbrand, I humbly ask you not to. My
parents’ Christian life-vision has been misused by Voice of the Martyrs.
Tortured for Christ circulated
throughout the world with more than 10,000,000 copies. Inside the $28
million Voice of the Martyrs headquarter prominently named as the Richard Wurmbrand Center,
there is a Wurmbrand museum. My own mother’s Bible to be displayed there was
obtained from me under false pretenses. I have both moral and legal rights
to the persona of my parents, even regarding the unauthorized use of my own
name, pictures, etc. It would take a
very long time and a lot of money to try to stop such use through courts. VOM
would employ the millions of dollars of donations to fight me in court while my income
is very limited. If you still want to help
projects started by my parents, Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand, now hanging in
the air, please help me reclaim my parents and my family
name. Like the first
Christians please ask: “Brethren, what shall we do?” (Book of Acts 2:37) You may write me to address above. God Bless,
Michael Wurmbrand
