ELKHART, Indiana (Mennonite Mission Network) – Deb Byler, Mennonite Mission Network’s worker care director, spent four and a half years researching a topic that informs her ministry: childhood sexual abuse and its impact on mission workers. After successfully defending her dissertation – which will be added to the Theological Research Exchange Network – Byler received her Doctorate of Ministry on Dec. 11, 2015, from Columbia International University.
Byler supports and encourages Mission Network’s international workers through personal visits, Skype calls, and e-mails, a role she has held since 2002. Additionally, she plans an annual mission seminar, re-entry retreats, and new worker orientations. A veteran mission worker herself, Byler lived in Guatemala and served the Kekchi Mennonite Church, working with literacy programs and working with women leaders in the church for 12 years.
Her doctoral work is not only a personal academic accomplishment, but is also a meaningful addition to the field of worker care in mission. In preparation for her dissertation, Byler interviewed nine different mission workers, from a variety of mission agencies, who had been sexually abused as children.
At the onset, Byler experienced difficulty from some of the agencies she reached out to. Not all were willing to open up this topic with their workers.
Byler hopes that her dissertation can be utilized as a tool for professionals in member care, or mental health, who work with mission workers as well as with mission workers themselves who were sexually abused as children.
“It is a lot easier to read something than it is to talk about your own experience,” said Byler. “So maybe this is a way to slowly open it up a little bit among mission agencies and mission workers.”
Byler’s overall findings spanned different aspects of how these traumatic events affect the lives of those who were abused. The first was how it impacts their current ministry. The nine workers in question reported that they have come to allow their past experiences to shape them to be more compassionate, more capable of understanding other people’s suffering, and often find themselves acting as formal and informal counselors.
Another significant finding, related to the worker’s ability to function day-to-day, was that five out of the nine had a likelihood of having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This was determined through the Barkley Deficits in Executive Functioning Scale, which is not used for diagnosis but does suggest the need for evaluation in some instances.
This finding supports other studies that have found children survivors of sexual abuse to be more likely to have ADHD. The causation of the correlation between the two is unclear: whether having ADHD makes a child more likely to be abused, or being abused increases the likelihood of developing ADHD; or whether both factors contribute to the correlation between childhood sexual abuse and ADHD.
Based on her findings, Byler recommends that mission agencies address the topic of sexual abuse with their workers. Creating space to talk and begin or continue the healing journey should be a priority.
Byler suggests that an appropriate time to address such a topic would be at a worker orientation, and that offering articles or books allows survivors to engage or share at their own volition. Two books she recommends are Mending the Soul by Steven Tracy and The Wounded Heart by Dan Allender.
“We shouldn’t be afraid to talk about this subject, but we do need to it very gently,” said Byler.
