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In Reply to: Re: New M&P Letter Posted posted by Joseph on January 06, 2008 at 19:42:29:
WHY YOUR APOLOGY MIGHT NOT BE PERCEIVED AS SINCERE
You clearly blame Berg, not yourself: "Dad bears the responsibility..."
You can't apologize for something if you don't feel you've done anything wrong -- if you've done nothing wrong there is nothing to apologize for.
If you don't actually admit to any wrongdoing yourself, you haven't been wrong and therefore don't need to apologize.
You can't apologize for something that "may have happened" -- you can regret that it happened under your watch, but since you are not culpable you still really have nothing to apologize for.
This is not "an apology specifically addressed to each of you" -- it is a form letter and generalized statement.
For a specifically-addressed apology, there has to be a specific incident with: deed, time, place, perpetrator, victim.
What you wrote was a PR statement, not an apology.
When you start apologizing for what you did do, admit culpability as in "I am sorry for personally doing such-and-such and encouraging and ordering such-and-such" and you acknowledge the results of what you did, that would be the beginnings of an apology.
"We sincerely apologize that you were not better protected when you were younger" has no meaning.
"I sincerely apologize I did not protect you Mene, when you were younger, but instead ordered such-and-such to be done to you" would fare a lot better.
"We regret any actions by anyone that were unloving, unkind, hurtful or harmful" has no meaning.
"I regret my actions which were unloving, unkind, hurtful and harmful" would fare better.
"Although we have written a number of apologies in Letters published since 1993" -- if these letters were categorized DO (disciples only), they were not really addressed to non-members now were they?
"whether you are still a [second generation] member or have chosen another path for your life" implies that all second-generation members in The Family chose that path. A lot of them didn't -- they were born into it, many are too young to leave, many are unable to safely leave because of the situation they will find themselves in.
If "leadership were lax" regarding excommunications for "inappropriate sexual behavior" after it was "made an excommunicable offense" in "mid-1989," why aren't you admitting any fault or culpability for teaching as late as 1993, that there really isn't anything wrong with adult-child sexual contact?
"This [sexual contact between adults and minors] is about the only subject where we're really going along with the System, we're playing along with them, we're acting like we believe what we did was wrong, because we have changed, and stopped doing it . . . We need to somehow explain to our [teenagers] that love and loving affection is not wrong. As it says in [Berg's writings], if it's not hurtful, if it's loving, then it's okay. Of course, having actual intercourse with a child wouldn't be okay as it wouldn't be loving, but a little fondling and sweet affection is not wrong in the eyes of God, and if they have experienced the same in the past they weren't 'abused.' . . . We need to explain to our [children] that any experience they may have had along these lines, if it was loving and if it was desired, was not wrong. We need to show them that even if in some case the experience for them wasn't so great, that by comparison to what goes on in the System, it still wasn't 'abuse.'" --[Karen Zerby], Summit '93, Mama Jewels #2, 1992. p.19.
You say, "We wish we could change the past, but sadly that's not possible." Yet this is exactly what you set out to do, rewriting history with a PR statement, omitting the parts where you personally orchestrated the crimes perpetrated on the second generation, where you personally "misapplied the Law of Love."
