SHORT SYNOPSIS

DIRECTORS' STATEMENT

FILMMAKERS

PRESS KIT

Short Synopsis

Through the eyes of three families, All God’s Children tells the personal story of the first boarding school for children of missionaries to be investigated for abuse at the hands of the parents’ missionary colleagues. The survivors and parents share their journey of seeking justice, redemption and healing.

The Beardslee, Shellrude and Darr families left North America for West Africa during the 1950s. They followed what they believed to be “God’s Calling” – to spread Christianity throughout the world. Their children however - starting at the age of 6 – were required to attend the boarding school in Mamou, Guinea, run by the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Cut off from their families for 9 months out of the year and without any reliable means of communication, the children quietly suffered emotional, spiritual, physical and/or sexual abuse at the hands of the all-missionary staff.

It took the children decades to acknowledge the effects the abuses had on their lives. When they finally dared to break the silence and speak out, the Church denied all allegations and refused to help. But through years of persistent activism the survivors and their parents finally compelled the Christian and Missionary Alliance to conduct an investigation and acknowledge the abuses. The healing could begin.

The investigation of the Mamou Alliance Academy was the first of its kind but has since inspired investigations at other schools of many different denominations.

Directors' Statement

All God’s Children began as a very personal project. Among the children abused at Mamou Alliance Academy were producer/director Scott Solary’s cousins Keith and Howie Beardslee. When their parents first told us about what happened to the children in Africa and the years of denial by the Christian and Missionary Alliance that anything had gone wrong, we were surprised there hadn’t been more coverage in the media. As we began our research it became clear the incidents at the missionary kids’ boarding school in Mamou were not that unusual – mistreatment of children by missionaries appeared to be a widespread problem among various denominations. Why was nobody talking about it? Again, just like with the abuses in the Catholic Church, it appeared that leaders of certain Protestant Churches also want to keep reports of child abuse silenced.

Knowing all this, we realized we needed to do our part in breaking the silence by spreading the word about some dark secrets of the missionary community. The investigation of the Mamou Alliance Academy was the first of its kind. A few have followed, many of them still ongoing. But even more have not happened yet because the responsible Churches and mission organizations are still trying to keep the silence. We hope that with the help of “All God’s Children” Churches will find it more difficult to deny the requests of victims for compassion and justice.

But we also believe it will enable other silenced victims to speak up and thus begin the healing process for themselves and their families.

With the help of the New York City Media Arts Grant from the Jerome Foundation we began production in 2004.

As we were making the documentary, we realized we were telling a wider story: the story of children, parents and siblings who learn to deal with a trauma first experienced by a child and later felt in after-shocks by the entire family.

We made a conscious choice not to focus on the abusers but on the victims and their families. This is not a film about “why” but about “how to go on from here”. We did however include a spokesperson from the Christian and Missionary Alliance to tell their side since they were involved in the events after the abuse.

While listening to the victims’ accounts was often painful, it was very gratifying to learn that the process of talking to a camera and recording the unheard stories became part of the healing for some of the former students. As children they didn’t have a voice, as adults they were silenced for many years, now their voice was listened to, recorded and hopefully soon amplified when audiences get to watch All God's Children. Therefore many of the subjects of the documentary are willing and interested in attending, participating and even organizing screenings.

Making All God’s Children has been at times a difficult experience but as we see the effect it has on the people in the film, audiences and on our own lives we know we couldn’t have spent this time in a better way.

- Scott and Luci.