A Perplexing Case Study

Family and Friends,

Day 145 of our Haiti Adventure!

We are all doing very well down here in Haiti.  Today we will have a few English classes, youth group, and leadership training.  Tomorrow we will enjoy church, Men's Promise Keepers group, and hopefully a quiet and relaxing evening.  Should be a great weekend of ministry!  Check out the case study below and please feel free to write a comment as a response...

*THIS POST MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN*

Back in my seminary years we students used to spend time talking through various scenarios that tend to pop up in ministry and trying to decide how we would handle them if confronted with a similar situation. We called these “case studies.” Oftentimes it was very difficult to know what action would be best to take. Two days ago we were thrown into a very challenging, real-life situation and had to make some quick decisions. I won’t tell you what we decided to do, or how it all ended, but will instead present the story to you and let you think about what you yourself would have done.


CASE STUDY

After returning from the market I saw Gertrude (director of the orphanage) sitting under the meeting tent with a young teenage girl. I could tell they were talking about something serious. A little while later Gertrude asked to talk to me and explained what was going on.

The girl came to the orphanage because she was scared of her step-father. She is fourteen years old and a classmate with some of our orphanage girls, and she told us she either wanted to be accepted in the orphanage or she was going to run away to her real father in Port-au-Prince. She explained that while the mom was gone to the mother class at the clinic the other day, the step-father told her that he wanted to have sex with her. She was afraid to tell this to her mom, and the step-father had warned her that if she did so, he would kill her.

Gertrude and I talked the situation over a little bit and agreed that we wouldn’t send the girl back home right away. Instead, we would try to find some way to talk with the mom and let her know what was going on. Our hope was that the mom would protect her daughter and not let her run away to Port-au-Prince, but also not let her get into a bad situation with the step father. Our plan was for myself and Patchouko or Antoine to go to the house, sit down with the parents, and confront the situation.

However, later in the day when I came back from some other appointment, I discovered that the girl was gone. Gertrude explained that she had decided to go home. Darline (a neighborhood girl who works here) walked with her and was supposed to talk to the mom, but when they got close to the house the girl told Darline she didn’t want to go through with it. So Darline came back to the orphanage.

At this point we had to make some decisions. I kept thinking about how the girl might be in danger, and I didn’t feel good about letting her go back to that situation without some kind of confrontation. She had reached out to us for help, and even if she was losing her courage now as she thought about everything, we should still take what she said seriously and follow up on it right away. So Gertrude, Antoine, and I headed up the thirty minute hike to their house.

When we got there the girl ran off into the woods, because she must have known what we were going to do. After a little while they were able to coax her back down to the house, and we all sat down to talk, including her mother, step-father, and an aunt. I explained, with Antoine translating, that their daughter had come to our house asking for help, and we wanted to talk with the family about what she said to us because we were concerned. Then I asked the girl if she would repeat what she had said so that her parents could hear it.

She wouldn’t say anything but just sat there in silence. Finally I asked Gertrude to tell the parents what the girl had said about her step-father. Gertrude spoke for a long time, and I couldn’t follow everything she said, but I could tell the parents were getting pretty worked up. The dad then launched into a long explanation about how his step-daughter was sneaking around with boys after school, and he was having to beat her a lot, and how she was now trying to accuse him of things. The girl continued to sit there blank faced and quiet. The dad said something about how he didn’t want the daughter to live there anymore, but the mom countered with, “If she goes, I go” or something like that.

After a little bit of going back and forth, most of which I wasn’t following, Antoine pulled me aside and explained that Gertrude hadn’t divulged the information about the girl’s accusation of attempted sexual abuse, but had only alluded to the girl being afraid of her step-father because of the beatings. Gertrude was reluctant to put the more serious allegation out there on the table, because she figured the girl was already headed for the beating of her life and that would only make it worse for her. So Antoine and I talked a little more and then went back to the gathering of people and said….

So what would you do in this situation?


May Your Adventure be filled with perplexing choices today as you carry each others' burdens, all for the glory of God!

-The Grimm Family Adventurers