3rd Party Investigation Bullet Point Navigation Post

This Navigation Post serves as the centralized place to access the catalogued information regarding instances related to abuse in the PRC. While this Navigation Post is in the Narthex forum where anyone without an account can see it, the posts themselves will be posted in the Sanctuary forum which requires an account to access. This way, the people with access to viewing the Bullet Points posts also have the ability to respond so that updates, clarifications, additions, or redactions can be made as necessary to each post in an ongoing fashion as more information becomes available.

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3rd Party Investigation Bullet Points Navigation List:

1. Lamm & Mary Beth Lubbers
   
   
2. Jack Lenting
   
   
3. Todd Lange
   
   
4. Facts, Rumors, & Connections of Points #1-3
   
   
5. Don Faber
   
   
6. Classis East on 1/11/23 to vote on Third Party Investigation using G.R.A.C.E.
   
   
7. Ivan Bleyenberg
   
   
8. Steven Holstege
   
   
9. Hulda Kuiper
   
   
10. Steven Pastoor
    
    
11. Synod Approves Third Party Investigation
    
    
12. How to Report to the Third Party Investigation
    
    
13. WoodTV 8's Ken Kolker needs our help!
    
    

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It has become very obvious that the only path forwards for the abuse problem in the PRC is a 3rd party investigation with public results. A 3rd party investigation is the only standard by which to judge that PR Leadership is doing anything about the abuse problem. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. Going forward, any magazine articles, lectures, speeches, new committees, sermons, meetings, or anything else that happen without mentioning the 3rd party investigation are all efforts to stall, delay, distract, and obstruct it from happening. 

As these stories of abuses became more and more prominent, the PRCA became unable to hide from it any longer. Leadership has been forced to attempt addressing it. We have attended the lectures and speeches. We have read the magazine articles. We have listened to the sermons. Yet the stories keep piling up. As each successive story rears its ugly head, we all hope each one will be the catalyst for things to change. Yet things have not changed. Lives are being ruined at an industrial scale by the PRC, and the pace has not abated whatsoever. PR Leadership has failed. We can no longer hope they will act of their own volition to do the right thing. They have shown all of us, repeatedly, that they will do no such thing. Even as the PR Leadership writes articles in the Standard Bearer citing experts whose unanimous advice is to perform a 3rd party investigation, this investigation has never once been publicly discussed in the PRC. Even if it were, the PRCA has a nasty track record of burying things in endless bureaucracy of church orders and appeals and committees until it dies with a whimper behind closed doors. Anybody with even a passing knowledge of how the PRCA has handled Ronald VanOverloop, Jack Lenting, Jason Bertsch, and many more know that the church will not act of its own accord without pressure. And so we hoped that pressure would organically come from members within the PRC, but we saw how that wouldn't happen either and now things are beginning to cool and the iron is no longer hot. PR Leadership has moved on to speeches about forgiveness. Ronald VanOverloop's sentence is done. Jason Bertsch's sentence is done. The wagons have been circled, the narrative has been chosen, and business as usual is resuming without any institutional reckoning to prevent any of this happening again. The perpetual abuse machine lurches back to life and begins churning out new victims to be ignored. As things begin returning to normal, even Barry Gritters expects the abuse problem to continue, writing in a recent Standard Bearer article:


This article is a slap in the face to the scores of abuse victims the PRCA has produced. It is nothing but apathy and self-victimization wrapped in biblical language. All this article does is show how PR Leadership has tacitly accepted this regular flow of victims and framed it as a normal thing they can expect more of, all of which is chastisement from God. This abominable article shows how PR Leadership has zero understanding of the issue at hand, and instead only plays the "woe is me" victim. Shame on you. This article shows how PR Leadership sees how the abuse is something that is happening to them, rather than something they are ultimately responsible for. PR Leadership is not going to do anything because they don't see that there's anything to be done. It is simply chastisement from God, something that is happening to them, not because of them. To PR Leadership, the PRCA is the real victim here.

And so our hand has been forced. If PR Leadership won't act on the investigation, and PR members won't act on the investigation, then the ex-PR community must act. We're done waiting, sitting on our hands and hoping the PRCA will do the right thing. We, the abused, are tired of waiting for justice. We, the family of the abused, will no longer stay on the sidelines. We, the friends of the abused, demand justice now. We will not allow the PRCA to ignore this any longer. No more stalling. No more games. No more excuses. We will not allow our abused loved ones to suffer in silence any longer, and we will not allow the PRCA business-as-usual to resume and add to the ranks of the abused. Our collective rage and sorrow is no longer directionless, it is pointed and specific. We will use the SBC's 3rd party investigation through Guidepost Solutions as a template, and the ex-PR community throws our full weight behind making this investigation happen. At the very least, we will make enough noise to kickstart the public conversation on it.

We, the ex-PR community, demand the PRCA perform the following:

1. An investigation be performed into the abuse in the PRCA churches and schools, past and present (all abuse including sexual, physical, mental, spiritual, spousal, etc.)
2. Done by a reputable expert 3rd party with no vested interest in outcome
3. With PRC leadership empowering the investigator with the access they need to perform their investigatory work at the denomination-wide level
4. With PRC leadership advocating for individual churches to also empower the investigator with the access they need to perform their investigatory work at the individual church level
5. With PRC school administration empowering the investigators with the access they need to perform their investigatory work at the school level
6. And publicly publishing the final results of the investigation
   

We know that PR members are hearing us, and we know that PR Leadership is hearing us as well. We know the site's audience and reach. Whether or not the PRCA acknowledges this site's existence is irrelevant now. We reach the PRCA directly, completely circumventing a feckless and obsolete leadership that refuses to engage this abuse problem on its face or heed the advice of its own deemed abuse experts. PR Leadership, hear us now, you will begin talking about a third party investigation publicly or we will go to the press. We are forcing your hand. Your power to prevent all this from coming out has expired. You are no longer in control. 

This begins a series of post where we publish the names and actions of abusers. This should not have to happen. Ideally, the central repository that catalogues all the rampant abuse stories should be a trusted investigator. We agree. However, until that happens, we will act as that central repository. We have been working on collecting stories. We have no shortage. We have stories of teachers and principals. We have stories of ministers and professors. We have stories of deacons and elders. We have stories in the rich and powerful families. We're going to be collecting them, cataloguing them, and posting them as bullet points for why this 3rd party investigation needs to happen. And, when the 3rd party investigation does happen, the investigators will have a nice collection of bullet points of where to start their investigation, which we will gladly hand over to them to handle going forwards.

We believe that once people begin sharing their stories, the ball will start rolling and others will come forward. We have to start somewhere. We can't keep going on like we are now, as the format of the forum buries details on abusers over time and things get lost in the shuffle. This mechanism serves to benefit the abusers and keep people from being informed. It allows members and decision makers in the PRC to feign ignorance and bury their heads in the sand as to the extent of the problem. No more. We need structure and referenceability to all these many stories, which is what this Navigation Post is for. As these bullet point entries are posted, please contribute what you know and we will edit the official entries as more details become available. If we each contribute what we know, we can shine a definitive light on this abuse problem that is unable to be ignored. Also, if you have stories of abuse for future bullet point entries that you want to keep out of public comments or if you want to hide your username from who is submitting the story for this series, please DM them to me and I will format them and enter them into the series as the posts grow. The highest priority is placed on anonymity and safety for the survivors of abuse and protecting the identity of contributors. All these stories matter. Your friend's abuse story matters. Your spouse's, parent's, and sibling's stories all matter. YOUR STORY MATTERS. Together we can work towards justice for all those who have been hurt and protecting our loved ones.

Amos 5:24: let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream!

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Bullet Point Series Goals Update - 3/30/2023 (link to standalone post)

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Over the last four months, I have had countless conversations about sexual abuse in the PRC. Some people have told their story a million times, for some I am the first. Some people stay anonymous, some people tell me their names. Some people say specifics, some people deal in generalities. Some people have crystal clear memories, some are hazy. Some incidents happened recently, some a lifetime ago. Some incidents are a blip on the radar, some are the defining moment which the rest of their life story hinges. Some wounds are tended, therapized and healed over, some are gaping open lacerations still bleeding out. 

Some people talking to me are safe now. Some are not. 

My job is to listen. To listen and learn, believe and affirm, lament and console. I asked for trust in this community and I got it. I got more than I asked for, more than I expected, and more than I deserved. You all know who you are. I am eternally humbled. I am trying. I'm trying so hard. As God as my witness, I am trying. I am taking everything I have and throwing it into this work. I will not stop. I cannot. I will spend my days pushing this Sisyphean boulder even if it never moves or starts to roll backwards. If those opposed to justice are hoping I'll tire out, they have made a drastic error in judgement. My commitment remains strong. These are my people. I love them. They deserve to be fought for. I will keep posting new Bullet Points for as long as I need to. Trust me, I have no shortage. 

I started this work hoping to map out the abuse problem and publish reliable, accessible information so that this problem could no longer be ignored. In some ways, the Bullet Points series has already been a success. The abuse problem we've known about for so long here on the ex-PR forum is no longer under the rug in the PRC. The third party investigation is, at the very least, a part of the conversation in the PRC. I have seen my work make an impact. I see the discussions online. I hear the echoes and reverberations of things from the forum making it to real life conversations. I see the overtures being introduced. I see the people who, now aware of what has been kept from them, are trying to do something about it. To the champions out there reading this, we see you. Know that we see you.

People don't know who I am. I am a nobody on purpose. For more than one reason, my anonymity is what enables me to do this work. First of all, it makes it so I don't have to fear retribution. The PRC can't smear me and call me a liar for what I have to say and paint my character as untrustworthy and poison my name to the point where just mentioning my name makes what I have to say discountable offhand. They can't pressure my family and friends to shun me because they don't know who I am. The PRC's silencing tools and threatening mechanisms that have kept this abuse problem buried for so long have no foothold to grip. All the PRC culture can do is label the forum as a den of bitter liars, which it does. A lot. We see that, too. The reality is that there are far more people in this category than there are the champions I mentioned seeing earlier. There are many more invested in undermining the Bullet Points and this forum than there are acknowledging them. We all need to face that fact. Even you champions out there in the PRC. Maybe even especially you need to grapple with that fact. The only reason this abuse awareness has progressed as far as it has is because of the ex-PR forum and the anonymity of it, and that's just the cold, hard truth. And the only reason the forum was able to finally get traction is because of the anonymity catching the PRC's retribution mechanisms flatfooted. Try as they might to discount us, we have the truth on our side. And the truth is mighty ally in this fight for justice. 

The second reason my anonymity is important is because it allows people to not fear talking to me. The complicated web of inter-family politics and power players in the PRC is a non-issue for me, simply because I am a nameless, faceless nobody. People tell me their abusers. What if my last name was Lubbers? Or VanOverloop? Or Lenting? Kamps? Kuiper? Dekker? DeVries? Engelsma? Faber? De Jong? Zandstra? Bleyenberg? Holstege? Griess? Brummel? DeBoer? Ophoff? Langerak? Lanning? Bruinsma? I could go on and on and on here. I could be one of them. You have no way of knowing. What if my last name was something different than those, but you knew I was related to some of them? Or friends with some of them? Or our families are intermarried? How do you think that would affect this work if people knew who I was? Do you think that would temper how an abuse victim might talk to me in outing their abuser? Would it maybe even prevent them from reaching out to me in the first place? Or what if you did come to me and I buried this to protect my name or friend's or family's name? How can you trust that the information you told me wouldn't get to them? Or, what if I was related to the victim? Do you think they want to disclose knowing they'll see me at Christmas? Or Sunday dinner? Or what if we just sit in the same church pews? Or the elder is my best friend's dad? You think the victims want to disclose to them? You see how this all factors in, right? This is why the "third party" is so important. A neutral party must be involved. The neutrality is a variable that affects both the discloser and the disclosee sides of the equation. Any of the PRC's proposed solutions without that element are a non-starter. One of the reasons why my anonymity has functioned to benefit the success of the Bullet Points is because it gives me the illusion of being a neutral arbitrator. The PRC needs a real neutral party, not just an imitation of one. The victims deserve it. Accept no substitute.

The reason why I write this post now is that we need to refocus. We have already gotten the third party investigation into the conversation. We've already gotten traction with some bullet points getting things done in the real world. I am pushing as hard as I can and I feel this boulder moving. I feel the weight shifting as people come alongside me and behind me and push with me. It has given me hope that our efforts are not fruitless. What works, and has been working so far to get us where we are, is to publish real goals of what we're trying to accomplish, just like the header in the navigation post. That's how we got the rug pulled on the commonality of abuse. That's how we got the third party into the conversation. So as the dynamics change and the composition of the fight for justice changes, so too do our goals. So now, since our first goals have been met, here are new goals for champions to use that must be part of the conversation of dealing with sexual abuse in the PRC:

1. Establish the Urgency
   
   What I have discovered is so far beyond my wildest imagination of how bad the scope of this problem might be. It is beyond comprehension. It is beyond my ability to grasp the enormity of it. Every time I think I've hit the bottom, two new bottoms reveal themselves. The reality is that there is no end. There is no bottom. It just. Keeps. Going. I'm still receiving new stories every week. There has not been a single quiet week since the Bullet Points started. There is more here than than I possibly imagined. There are people in danger. Kids. Adults. Spouses. We do not have the luxury of time in figuring this out. Each moment passing is a raped child. Every hour that passes is another contemplation of suicide by someone as young as 12. Every day that passes is another beaten wife held down and forcefully raped against her will. Each continual week we let go is justice delayed and denied for hundreds upon hundreds of victims. The PRC machinery is already playing the SBC playbook, burying things in bureaucracy and committees and church order appeals and doctrinal stances and yadayadayada. Do not mince words here. Firm and emphatic NO to any solution that goes beyond Synod 2023. I cannot overstate to you the urgency of this problem. Please believe me. This is my appeal to believe me that we need to act now. Please, please believe me. This isn't a problem that has the luxury of time or examining doctrines or whatever else gets thrown in as an obstacle. We've got two deaths already tied to abuse in the PRC that we know of. People are dying. People are being raped. Kids. The time for Dutch stoicism is over. Get furious about it and establish the urgency. As the person that many are confiding to, trust me when I tell you we need to act now. 
   
   
2. Shooting down any proposed solution that does not include a neutral third party
   
   I have been monitoring the conversations and the solutions being proposed in the PRC. Lamm Lubber's brother-in-law Professor David Engelsma wants to institute mind-reading elders because he's a crazy old man who thinks he has superpowers and he should rightfully be ignored while his legacy burns to the ground. Professor Russell Dykstra wants to give speeches about books and authors he pretends to understand. Professor Cory Griess wants to go on the lecture tour to talk about how John Calvin solved this problem 500 years ago in Geneva. Individual churches are talking about new policies and how they're going to work on it at the individual congregational level. Consistories are talking about training and people are writing articles. People in the various PR Facebook groups are suggesting all sorts of wild things about what a third party investigation means. Here's the important thing that needs to be focused on by champions: Any and all proposed solutions that do not include a neutral third party need to be shot down one by one. For all the reasons I laid out above and in individual bullet points, the PRC cannot handle this in-house. It can't be done without a neutral third party. The operative word is can't. It has to be a neutral party. All those books and experts Rev. Guichelaar namedropped in the Standard Bearer sexual abuse issue? That's what they say. All those books and authors whose viewpoints Prof Dykstra is pretending to be faithfully representing in his speech? That's what they say, too. The PRC cannot handle this without a neutral third party. A third party investigation isn't one possible solution of a million solutions that we're going to spend a bunch time online discussing and selecting which solution is right. No. The urgency is established. The neutral third party is a necessity. Any other proposed solution without urgency and a neutral third party needs to be aimed at and fired upon until it sits in a crater on the ground amid a pile of smoldering rubble. 
   
   
3. Any proposed solution must include the ex-PR and RPC communities, not just the PRC
   
   This is going to be the hardest pill to swallow. We need champions in the PRC to begin building the bridge outward to the ex-PR and RPC communities in dealing with justice for the sexually abused. I know, I know - there's the perception out there that we all hate each other. Here's the truth: it doesn't matter, even if it were true. Not one iota of that matters in light of what we know. I have listened to so many across all three communities - ex-PR, PR, and RP. There are abusers in the PRC whose victims are now 100% out of the PRC, for reasons I'm sure you all understand. To take a classic Dutch stoic pragmatic standpoint absolved of any emotions or notions about justice: any proposed solution in the PRC that does not include reaching out to the ex-PR and RPC communities will not work. Let's just say the PRC hypothetically institutes a solution to the abuse problem that stays entirely in-house, is continually advertised within every and all PRC church, and is 100% effective at immediately catching abusers to those the solution is advertised to. That solution will leave rapists in your midst, PRC, simply because that rapist's victims are no longer in the PRC. PR's, you need to face that fact. There are so many of us in the ex-PR community that are victims of abuse. It is so many of us. And now with the PRC/RPC split, there's another ex-PR community that houses victims of abuse in the PRC. I vouch for that. Any solution needs to include them, too. All of us across all three of these communities need to take all our hate and swallow it to work together on a third party investigation. Community solidarity and coordination across all three to deal with this is necessary. We need anchor points for each party to begin the bridge-building and begin facilitating conversation between us. We need the anchor points to stand up. I offer myself as the ex-PR community anchor point. Build to me and I will build right back to you. Acknowledge the truth of the Bullet Points and the truth that there are many abused ex-PR's. We will see it. Start identifying other allies in this fight for justice, organize and work together. Here's the blunt truth: PR's, if you don't want rapists to sit next to your daughters and sons on Sunday mornings and evenings, then you need us. And ex-PR's if we want justice, then we need PR's. After this is done, if we want we can all go right back to calling each other heretics and our various reasons for why the other parties are all going to hell. Arguing soteriology is a luxury we don't have time for in the battle for justice. Lives are at stake. We need each other.