Having surpassed 1,000 signatures last night, we'd like to thank you personally, encourage you to take further action, and give you an update from Turkey.

Thank you!

You've given voice to our call for justice. It's being heard because of you. A special heartfelt thank you from Hannah (Massaro) Dreher, who had asked the Lord yesterday for 1,000 signatures  by today, when that outcome seemed highly unlikely.

Don't stop now!

Please alert others who care about Wheaton College so that they can sign the petition as well.

An update from Turkey

For obvious reasons, we can't provide names or identifying details, but we wanted to share this update from someone "in contact with someone":

We have heard from a field worker who served in Turkey and attended the church where Dennis pastored. She’s glad the truth is coming out but said it is absolutely infuriating that Ryken did nothing. She always thought there was something “off” about Dennis but assumed he had been vetted.

But even if Dennis Massaro had been vetted, what was there to discover? The allegations of sexual abuse were not public knowledge. Equally possible, though, is that nobody felt the need to vet him—he remained a highly regarded presence on the Wheaton campus. Wasn't that all anyone needed to know?

It gets worse, though

In our first petition update, we described how Phil Ryken failed to raise the alarm when he could have. Dennis Massaro himself reveals another example of how Wheaton College's failures paved the way for this disaster.

How it started

While addressing a church from the pulpit in 2017 (a distressing thought all by itself), Dennis Massaro shared this anecdote:

In 2012, I had worked at Wheaton College as Director of Ministries for twenty years sending students all over the world. In 2012, one of my former students appeared in a church that I was attending. At the end of the service, he said to me, "I can't believe you're here. Your name is on my list. I'd like to get together with you. I have some things I want to talk to you about.... I'm working on my doctoral dissertation. Would you please come to Turkey for three months to be the interim pastor?"

So Wheaton College's specific involvement in this tragedy was at least twofold: Dennis Massaro was first invited to Turkey by a former student who clearly didn't know of any sexual abuse allegations, and he was able to remain there as a pastor in part due to the silence of a sitting president who most certainly did.

How it went

As Julie Roys reports here:

...The former pastor confirmed to me that Dennis would regularly take in men to stay in his house, and his whole reason for doing this supposedly was that these men were needing housing... a lot of them were Iranian refugees, Kurdish refugees...

A Turkish newspaper later reported that Dennis Massaro had engaged in sexual extortion. The newspaper itself wasn't reputable and the article was littered with factual errors, but it's hard to deny that Dennis Massaro was behaving in a manner unbecoming of a pastor: The article included a photograph of him in bed, grinning.

How it's going

To this day, we are not aware of any Wheaton College administrator, past or present, who has apologized for his or her own failures in connection with Dennis Massaro's disastrous tenure as a pastor in Turkey.

That's all for now, but when we hit 1,500 signatures, I'd like to spell out more carefully why we believe Wheaton College should remove the names of former President Duane Litfin and former Dean of Students Sam Shellhamer from the divinity school and college café.