Michael Wurmbrand, PO Box 5161, Torrance, Ca. 90510, USA, Email: mw@helpforrefugees.com
Dear
sisters and brethren in Christ:
This
sad letter you are reading comes from
Michael Wurmbrand, the son of the late
Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, who spent fourteen
years in the communist prisons of
Romania, author of the book Tortured
For
Christ, a book of valiant
Christian testimony under communist
persecution that has been translated in
over 85 languages. My parents died in
2000-2001.
Against
my express request NOT TO DO SO, the
mission Voice
of the Martyrs of Bartlesville
(VOM),
Tom White,
the past Voice of the Martyrs Chairman
for more than 20-years, committed
suicide in April, 2012, only two to
three hours after an accusation of child
sexual molestation (pedophilia) of a
10-years old girl was formally filed by
her parents with the local police, and
while the Bartlesville, OK. police were
searching to arrest him. This terrible
event made world news. At
the time of his committing suicide, Tom
White had a $140,000+, plus perks, yearly
salary and very substantial travel and
expense accounts used in his extensive and
frequent international travel year
after year.
Since the suspected perpetrator was
dead, the police closed any further
investigation of the sexual molestation. The police
chief and the former mayor of the town of
I asked in
writing of the Voice of the Martyrs Board
of Directors for an independent
investigation, to be undertaken from
outside of VOM. The
investigation in the famous legal action
in England of Jimmy Saville, the BBC
children program head while alive, started
with only 2 cases BUT there were more than
600 pedophilia complaints after Saville
died.
In the last 4 years, the state of
The main
question in the letter I wrote to the
entire Voice of the Martyrs Board of
Directors was worded as follows: “In a Christian
spirit of love and faith, if you want to
continue using the names, persona and
copyrights of my parents, I ask first that
you do not try to accomplish this in an
adversarial way through lawyers, etc. but
rather in an amiable way by fulfilling
only one request for the board to decide
and approve:
Please allow
and pay for an independent “blue ribbon”
commission ... to investigate within the
next two months, back at least two years,
all Tom White’s travel points, contacts
and especially financial expenditures to
establish and put to rest any suspicions
re. child
molestation. …. Sorry,
whether you like it or not, this
unpleasant event that happened to VOM with
its Chairman during twenty years cannot be
dispensed with as just “a family affair”
or an unfortunate sudden decision. If
you do not intend to accept the above
request, the other decision I ask you to
take is not to use the name Wurmbrand
any more….”
Only 4 days
after I addressed this letter to the
board of directors I received a curt
letter of termination of employment.
No “sorry” and no “thank you” for my
founding the organization or the many
years of service! My letter now for
more than two years,
has not been answered!
I should
be entitled to make such a request
since:
Donors should
be aware that:
·
Voice of the
Martyrs (VOM) spent $28
million dollars -- not
on the mission field but to build
its own headquarter thus in economic times
difficult for us all, encouraging
construction in Bartlesville, Oklahoma,
USA, a town of only about 32,000. To my
knowledge, the previous headquarters of
VOM in the same town cost in the
neighborhood of about
$90,000! To read more
type in your internet browser: http://michaelwurmbrand.com/vom-construction-costs.pdf The present
chairman of VOM is a former mayor of
·
This was
done in secret, until the buildings were
erected. Neither I nor the
donors were told of such grandiose
projects. It
is hard to believe this could be done but
correspondence I display on the web see
link below, should
convince you. I worked with VOM from
·
A repeated
offender 3rd degree felon, who as of 2013
was STILL UNDER A-10-YEARS CONVICTION
SENTENCE AS AN EMBEZZLER was named the
Voice of the Martyrs Vice President.
Tens of thousands of dollars out of
your contributions for supposed
missionary work were extended as a
loan to him to pay back some of what he
stole and evemtually escape parole
supervision. To read more on this
convicted felon, type in your internet
browser:
Lindquist-file.pdf
·
All of the
above occurred while, at the same time...
Without any reasons proffered, they sent a
termination of employment letter to me,
Richard Wurmbrand's son, who founded the
mission, four
days only after I asked for an
independent investigation of the
expenses and travels of the suicidal and
suspected pedophile past chairman of
·
Voice of the
Martyrs had agreed reluctantly in 2001 to
help about 100 believers who were
imprisoned 5-10 years for their faith in
communist prisons in Romania, currently
destitute in their 80s and 90s, with
less than $1 (yes, one dollar) a
month. As outrageous as it sounds,
considering tens of millions of dollars
solicited from you, it is documented. It was
raised in
the following year to the value of about 2
tanks of gas/month worth of help only
because I wrote feet of email
messages and renounced a total of over
$100,000 of my salary over four years (I
accepted being paid only $500/month!) just
so these Christian martyrs would be
helped.
To read more on the “VOM claims of
pretended lack of money” type in your
internet browser: http://michaelwurmbrand.com/VOM-claims-lack-of-money.pdf
·
A fundraiser
for VOM was promised to be paid a
percentage or cut of the funds he raised!
We are far indeed from charitable actions
through which one sacrifices for the
interests of others.
After I
brought all of these facts to light, I was asked
also to keep quiet, not to rock the
boat. Before being laid off I was
offered substantial contractual financial
incentives not to “badmouth” VOM. Some
of the organizations endorsing Voice of
the Martyrs have interrelated employees
and interests. When I approached them,
they were shy and sore afraid for their
own interests to
insist my letter be answered. Some
pathetic answers like: “Do not cast the
first stone,” “king Solomon made mistakes
,” “we might also sin” or “promise to keep
correspondence private only” displayed
the hypocrisy to protect the flow of
donations rather
than any interest in protecting
possible children victims! Some
answers were outright sarcastic, as if my
requesting a proper investigation
regarding suspected pedophilia among “Christian
missionaries” would be some joke.
In the past
Voice of the Martyrs had
written a dedication about myself sent to
tens of thousands stating: "To the Rev.
Michael Wurmbrand, who has lived his life
in a fishbowl among both friends and
enemies, and has done so with dignity to
the glory of God. We are grateful for the
numerous personal interviews in which he
shared his memories with patience and
enthusiasm." As
soon as I asked for this independent
investigation, the VOM attitude of respect
towards myself I enjoyed for years turned
into one of incredible vindictiveness.
Christians who were in the know could not
believe how it was possible. The false
answers given to those who inquired were
that this is a personal (?!?) conflict
with Michael Wurmbrand we try to solve
with prayer and mediation! In reality, VOM
employees were expressly forbidden to have
contact with me, so as not
to lose some income and employment
positions from this possibly second
largest employer in
The worst
vindictive act towards myself
though, was the refusal on the part of VOM
of my simple request to dump or allow
myself even pay to withdraw immediately
from the VOM circulation advertising,
about 2,000 copies of Tortured For Christ,
my father’s book, published by VOM with a
preface by, and having right in the
middle, a portrait of Tom White, the past
chairman who had committed suicide after
the police-filed accusation of suspected
pedophilia.
I was answered IN WRITING (by the
convicted felon-embezzler who had meantime
become Vice President of VOM, see above) that
my request is morally wrong. I was
written: “Tom White was VOM”, and
according to VOM, I have no right to ask
that my father’s name not be associated
with this past chairman -- even
if he committed suicide under a strong
suspicion of pedophilia. VOM even claimed
to know apparently better than
the parents of the victim, if there was or
not substance to the police complaint. To
spite me, the book showing Tom’s picture
continued to be widely advertised and even
offered for free for 6 more months
following Tom’s suicide. VOM knew
that during the first month my family
arrived to the
How could I
have foreseen that in a case of blatant
suspected sexual-child-molestation some
Christian VOM leaders I approached,
imitated the priest and Levite in the
Parable of the Good Samaritan, trying
their best re. suspected
pedophilia, to “pass by on the other
side,” so as to maintain their perks!
John the Baptist was not beheaded
because he sermonized in general asking
people to repent. Against his own
personal interest, he put his life at
risk to denounce the sin of Herod, the
ruler of the day. What about
"missionary outreach" to poor "persecuted
Christians?" Voice
of the Martyrs, with its
opulent ($28 million) headquarter
built out of your sacrificial
contributions, makes a mockery of the
sacrifice of persecuted Christians like my
parents. Imagine a surgeon insisting to
operate, having no time to clean his hands
after searching in garbage. What patient
has any use for such a surgeon? The
betrayer of Lord Jesus, Judas, in his apparently most
“unselfish” enunciation of a project to
help the poor, was but a thief. (Indeed
the Gospel of John 12:6 writes: "This he
said, not that he cared for the poor, BUT
BECAUSE HE WAS A THIEF!")
VOM
published even how within months of our
arrival in the United States, from 1967
on, I worked together with my parents
Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand, to start
what is now Voice of the Martyrs.
Recently released documents from the
archives of the Romanian secret police
prove the communists had issued an order
to kill our entire family. See:
http://michaelwurmbrand.com/killing-wurmbrands.htm.
We started what is now Voice of the
Martyrs under a communist sentence of
death.
When I was only a child, the
communists forcefully took away my parents
to communist
prisons. I suffered plenty. My parents
died with a good name. I do not want allow
VOM use my parents good name, to raise
money under false pretenses. I wrote the
VOM directors: “If you enjoy, for
motivations of your own, to wallow in the
mire of suspected pedophilia go ahead ….
If you do not want to accept an
independent investigation and complete
transparency of your dealings, I begged
you do not use my father' long years of
suffering in communist prisons and the
intense suffering of his whole family to
raise money from naive donors ….” I
was written by VOM, when asking help for
formerly persecuted Christians under
communism, now in their 90s, “we are
technically out of money!...there will be
NO check requests approved for anything
other than absolutely essential…” only to
find out later that $9.5 million were
available not for mission work, but for
construction work in Oklahoma (see above
link.)
Christian
parents please protect your children!
Consider how grave it is to allow
your children to trust and be reached by a
missionary organization having had a case
of suspected pedophilia and a suicide
because of it in its midst, and then
terminating me,
its founder so as not to have to respond
to a request for an independent
investigation of possible sexual child
molestation. After all the laudatory words
published of me, they also tried to
badmouth me. If you are a minister, I can
only beg you to share this letter with
your congregation. If you had respect for
Richard Wurmbrand, my father, please send
this letter to all your email and
affiliate lists, Christmas lists, spread
it among your friends.
I tried to
document the facts recited above but think
on your own: How
can “Christian missionaries” in a good
Christian conscience even indulge to
build themselves an opulent $28,000,000
headquarter from your donations, while
withholding help to persecuted
Christians in far away lands badly in
need of your donations? Love
of money is the root of all evil. A
way to stop evil, is
to
stop financing it. If you were
inspired by the Wurmbrand family story of
suffering to donate to Voice of the
Martyrs or its international affiliates in
the
Just
take a moment and look at this miserable
refugee camp in the Philippines picture
published by VOM ( http://michaelwurmbrand.com/philippinescamp.pdf
) and compare it with the
$28,000,000+ opulent headquarters built by
VOM in Bartlesville, OK out of your sincere
donations ( http://mcanawconstruction.com/gallery?id=24
) AND ASK YOURSELF, "Where do my donations
really go?" How can I allow the hoax of
making donors think their undesignated
donations raised by using the name
of the Wurmbrand family are destined
to persecuted widows and orphans while
going in fact to support opulent
constructions in the United States?
If you want to help projects started by my
parents in Romania like the orphanage in
Pascani or some of these formerly
persecuted old Christians, you may send a
tax deductible donation to Help for
Refugees, PO Box 5161, Torrance, Ca. 90510
(Internet address: http://helpforrefugees.com).
I founded the organization in the late
70s, and there is no slick,
expensive newsletter other than
maybe several times a year I report
simply to my friends-donors what has
been accomplished. My father
repeatedly used to say that today’s
poorest Christian should be grateful to
God for being financially better than any
of the first Apostles. Apostle James
wrote: “Pure and undefiled religion before
God and the Father is this: to visit
orphans and widows in their trouble…”
Thanks again for being willing to
help. God Bless, Michael Wurmbrand