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[princessdi]

This article appeared in our local paper today.   We are really going to have to do much better.........sigh.............

http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_13467672?nclick_check=1

[Emma]

the link did not work for me....sometimes that is a function of being in 

[princessdi]

Hmmm worked for me, but i did think about it might not work....here is the article in it's entirety...

Woman claims she was abused at Pleasant Hill Adventist Academy in mid 1990s
By Malaika Fraley
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 10/01/2009 10:02:46 PM PDT
Updated: 10/02/2009 09:20:19 AM PDT


MARTINEZ — A Contra Costa County woman is suing the Northern California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and a former teacher at its Pleasant Hill Adventist Academy for more than $5 million, saying she was molested when she was a student at the private school in the mid-1990s.

The woman, who is listed as Jane Doe in an amended complaint filed Thursday, said she was a 13-year-old seventh grader at the school, formerly known as the Pleasant Hill Junior Academy, in 1994 when the abuse by her teacher and volleyball coach, Andrew McPherson, began.

McPherson, a registered sex offender in Idaho whose father is president of the church's Idaho conference, could not be reached for comment Thursday. The Northern California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists said it does not comment on pending litigation. A call to the group's attorney was unreturned.

According to a complaint filed in Contra Costa Superior Court, McPherson first started harassing the girl with sexually explicit comments that escalated into unwanted groping, fondling and kissing. The abuse culminated with an incident in May 1996, at the end of the girl's ninth-grade year, when McPherson choked the then-15-year-old on campus, the complaint says.

The church responded to the choking incident by transferring McPherson to its Reno Junior Academy, said the woman's attorneys, Kelly Clark, of Portland, Ore., and Lisa Sapoce, of Oakland. Two years later, McPherson was convicted of having sex with a 15-year-old female student at the Reno Junior Academy and groping another, according to an 1998 report in the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Jane Doe left the school after the choking incident and until now never reported the molestations. She is reporting it now, her attorneys said, because she has come to fully realize the effect the abuse has had on her personally and as a parent.

The attorneys said their client, as well as the Reno victims, would have been spared harm had the Seventh-day Adventists acted on complaints it received as early as 1993 that McPherson was physically, sexually and verbally inappropriate with students in Pleasant Hill. They expect other victims to come forward.

"We suspect, from the information that we do have, that several other girls at the school were similarly treated," Sapoce said.






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[Emma]

Thank you.....hopefully the lessons have been learned and offenders will no longer be shifted
around like pieces on a chess board.

U S A is certainly not the only place where the SDA church has acted in this manner.

[tinka]

Emma,
a few days back, I clicked on a link posted here and it went into I guess what you call the sister link on another place of "Talk" Not sure where I ended up, but it is where the whole thing came out on Melody Firestone. I knew there was some horrific thing wrong and crazy but nothing I thought to this extent.

To me that is beyond the worst imaginable situation if true that it just blew me away unto "sick at my stomach" as the vivid details came into my worst imagination of --"Is this true"

 If it is and Melody actually stated to someone these facts, I cannot imagine anyone not hanging him by his heals. This was the most disgusting yet. and I cannot believe if these are facts how the Adventist Church associates yet or does not stand up to this. I am very sick over this and finally it is questioning my very being of being associated with the organized church or contributing to these insane happenings that are behind closed eyes to the facts.  After all this is being pushed down the Adventists throats to swallow. I will not swallow this disgust without yelling about it. People Have known this all along and still these people on or displayed on tv or public ?? It is the same question I have for Tommy's wife. How does this continue. Do they think we should swallow this and think oh, just forgive?? This is like cancer. It just keeps spreading..... Something is mentally wrong for someone to get in public like this and just think all a normal happening.  What difference is this from the "Bent Stick" guy??

[Emma]

Tinka I do not know any facts surrounding the person you mention, in regard to this story or this type of story.

I was just recalling some similar instances in this country, and hoping the lesson has been well learnt by those in charge.  We have to be careful not to judge yesterday's events by today's management standards, but in any context a person suspected of the abuse of minors should not be placed where s/he can cause further harm.

If anyone is aware of such a cover up, I agree, it is wrong to sit silently and let the abuse proceed.

[princessdi]

Sorry Tinka, but it is all too true. And we have many such situations, not only with teachers, but with pastors and administrators who are abusive to their spouses/families.  Pastors/administrators who have adulterious affairs, etc.  they are simply moved to another location, where they continue to offend.  Not to mention the level of sexual abuse that goes on within churches that is never reported, some of these folks aren't even removed from office.  We really need to get our act together.........

This information in the hands of an even moderately ambitious news reported could explode into something akin to the expose' on tohe RCC.  We were/are doing the same exact thing.

Tinka, do you lose your faith.  Always stay close to God and that of which you have been convicted.  The message is still here, and it has never been about the people.  they will always fail us.

[tinka]

Thank you for the encouragement Di.

I have read and read and believe our future will be so wicked and as much as I do not like it to be, I know the time must be now.  but some of this is so overwhelming that the reality of truth that sets in if fact --is very understandable to me about who could not stand in the end. That must be me because the pain of sin and suffering is tooo much. I think the only ones that can stand is the evil with no conscience. It is true as we face it the only thing we have to hang on is to Jesus. The trials for our family first came from the church and ended up in political corruption because of it.  It is yet quite unknown this horrible story but sympathy and church loyality led us to it. But we are trusting yet!  Thank you and I knew in the end and if we ever met we would automatically like each other. (smile)

[princessdi]

I just want to clarify my last post.  What I was saying was correct was the fact that our church does not deal well with abuse situations.  We do exactly the same thing as the RCC does, in that we move the pastors around when we find a problem instead of resolving the problem.

I don't anything about any issues between Danny and Melody.  Like everyone else, I read the link posted by Bob. That is my only information. Before that, I thought he was a very good father/grandfather.  Still do, that link is kind of subjective.