New Horizons Youth Ministries (parent organization of my reform school, Escuela Caribe) was founded in 1971 by Pastor Gordon Blossom, a former juvenile delinquent who’d served a stint at Michigan’s Floyd Starr Commonwealth Home.* By the time I arrived at Escuela Caribe in January 1990, Pastor Blossom was not active in the “ministry” except during Spiritual Emphasis Week in the Canada branch, Missanabie Woods Academy.* Then he would deliver a sermon in the chapel, segregated by sex, first to the boys, then the girls. I don’t even want to go into details here- but it was awful and we had to sit there and take it because the pastor was speaking and he was always right. Scarred me for years.
Yesterday a fellow alum rocked our cyberwaves- she discovered Pastor Blossom molested one of his daughters, Shirley Jo Petersen, for years. Petersen wrote a book, the Whisper, about healing from sexual abuse. Petersen also alleges (and I believe her) that the pastor physically and emotionally abused her other siblings. She says that in part she has healed because she realizes that he was abused. Which I get on one level, yeah, we all are constantly replicating trauma until we resolve it, but there is no excusing what he did, because at some point you have to face the monster within yourself and change. And I know that I probably am thinking more about my situation than hers.