Executives of Portland-based Mercy Corps knew co-founder Ellsworth Culver had been credibly accused by his daughter of serial sexual abuse but allowed him to continue at the renowned international relief agency in a top role for more than a decade.

The $471-million-a-year charity twice rebuffed Culver’s daughter, Tania Culver Humphrey — 25 years ago when she first detailed her allegations to Mercy Corps officials and then again last year when she asked them to reexamine how they handled the initial review.

Ellsworth Culver traveled the world as president and later senior vice president of Mercy Corps. He’s pictured here in Honduras in the early 1980s. His daughter, Tania Culver Humphrey, says Culver liked having his photo taken with children while working abroad. (Photo courtesy Tania Culver Humphrey)

After his daughter’s original accusations, Culver remained a prominent figure within Mercy Corps and continued to serve as its public face, meeting with global leaders and spearheading efforts to expand into China until his death in 2005.

Humphrey is now 48, an art teacher living in Northeast Portland with her husband and their two teenage children. She says her father sexually abused her from preschool into high school.

The Oregonian/OregonLive typically does not name victims of sexual abuse, but Humphrey requested that she be identified.

Tania Culver Humphrey, 48, decided this year to come forward publicly with her account of repeated sexual abuse by her father Ellsworth Culver. She told executives at Mercy Corps of her allegations in the early 1990s but the organization allowed her father to maintain his role as the international organization’s public face until his death.

The news organization reviewed Humphrey’s medical and mental health records from her teen years, as well as two child abuse reports to the state and hundreds of pages of Humphrey’s personal records, including journal entries, poems and drafts of letters. All of those documents are replete with references to Culver’s sexual abuse of his daughter.

The 10-month investigation into Humphrey’s allegations identified eight friends from her childhood and teen years who confirmed that Humphrey told them about the abuse at the time. Three said they saw Culver grope or molest her in a car or during sleepovers. Two said they saw injuries on her legs and neck that Humphrey explained were from her father’s use of force or restraints during the assaults. One of her friends from St. Mary’s Academy in Portland came forward in the course of reporting this story with her own account of sexual abuse by Culver.

Humphrey had not been in contact for years with most of the women who corroborated her account.

Humphrey said she first told Mercy Corps about the allegations in 1992 when she was in college. Over the following two years, board members reviewed her claims. Three Mercy Corps board members interviewed her in the offices of a downtown Portland law firm where she said she told them her father had masturbated on her, touched her inappropriately, kissed her in a sexualized manner and forced his penis into her mouth while showering with her.

The organization eventually concluded her account was troubling but inadequate. Culver denied the allegations and was never criminally charged with abuse. Dr. Raymond Vath, the board chairman at the time, wrote to Humphrey, telling her the charity would take a “redemptive approach” with Culver and thanked her for “helping improve Mercy Corps.”

“We cannot undo the traumas you experienced in the past, but in the future Mercy Corps people will be treated with fairness and respect, and your sacrifice will bring blessing to not only the staff but to the recipients of our programs internationally.” — Raymond Vath, Mercy Corps board chairman, April 5, 1994

Last fall, Humphrey’s husband contacted the organization’s integrity hotline after he said his wife endured a particularly difficult period that involved flashbacks, trouble sleeping and other fallout from the abuse and her treatment by the board.

The experience “had a profound impact on her life,” Chris Humphrey wrote in a follow-up email to the relief agency’s general counsel.

“She is still trying to heal, and contacting you now is part of that healing process,” he wrote.

Mercy Corps eventually replied that it stood by its initial assessment, saying its officials had previously found “insufficient evidence.”

Mercy Corps CEO Neal Keny-Guyer

Mercy Corps CEO Neal Keny-Guyer on Tuesday called the news organization’s findings “deeply shocking and troubling” and apologized to Humphrey for Mercy Corps’ mishandling of her allegations in the 1990s and again last year.

“I’m reeling,” Keny-Guyer said in an emotional interview in Mercy Corps’ Old Town offices. He said the news organization’s findings “changed everything.”

“They are heartbreaking, they are horrifying,” he said. “My profound apology goes out to Tania and her family.”

He pledged an independent review of Mercy Corps’ response to Humphrey and confirmed that longtime board member and Portland attorney Robert Newell resigned in light of the findings. Newell investigated Humphrey’s allegations in the 1990s.

‘I told them enough’ In this documentary, Tania Humphrey, rebuffed again by Mercy Corps, finally tells her story

The revelations threaten to damage Mercy Corps’ sterling image as one of the world’s preeminent charitable institutions. It employs 5,500 people and oversees relief operations in more than 40 countries.

Meanwhile, Humphrey has struggled to come to terms with her father’s abuse and the lack of meaningful intervention from those in a position to help.

As the #MeToo movement gained momentum, she saw others speak publicly about their own experiences. Their disclosures, and the fact that survivors were believed, prompted her to come forward and push for Mercy Corps to admit to what she sees as its failures.

Humphrey said her father should have faced consequences but instead was lionized by Mercy Corps, which until Monday featured warm tributes to Culver on its website and on the walls of its headquarters. The organization scrubbed those tributes from its site and took down Culver’s photos.

“I want to stand up and say I mattered then,” Humphrey said, “and I matter now.”

Undated photographs of Ellsworth Culver with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, right, and Cuban President Fidel Castro. Center: A bin holding the dolls Culver bought for his daughter Tania. (Photos of Culver with Castro and Arafat, courtesy Tania Culver Humphrey) CULVER REMAINED GLOBE-TROTTING EMISSARY

This undated photo shows Dan O’Neill, left, and Ellsworth Culver in Honduras. The men were colleagues and friends. O’Neill was one of three Mercy Corps executives who questioned Tania Culver Humphrey in the early 1990s about her allegations of sexual abuse by her father. (Courtesy Tania Culver Humphrey)

Culver, known as Ells, was seen by friends and colleagues as an idealistic yet ambitious dreamer guided by a deep Christian faith. A Seattle native and son of missionaries, he helped found Mercy Corps with Dan O’Neill, a fellow humanitarian activist, in the early 1980s. For more than two decades, Culver served in top posts in the organization, first as president, then senior vice president.

The men envisioned a force for good that would help the world’s poor through emergency aid, education and development projects. Together, they helped build Mercy Corps into an organization on the Forbes 2018 list of the nation’s largest charities. It touts $4 billion in assistance to more than 220 million people in the last 40 years, making it a heavyweight in the world of humanitarian relief. According to its latest financial statements, the organization received $174 million in U.S. government grants and the rest from grants, contributions and other sources.

The Mercy Corps brand carries prestige and influence. It counts Google and Starbucks among its corporate partners. Last month, the rock group R.E.M. released a song to benefit Mercy Corps’ hurricane relief efforts in the Bahamas. Its staff members regularly comment on pressing issues of the day, from the Ebola crisis in the Congo to the Trump administration’s suspension of development money for Central America.

Mercy Corps “would have a seat at the table” alongside the biggest names in international relief, like World Vision, said David P. King, a professor at Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. King said Mercy Corps has “a great reputation for doing that frontline” relief work and a rising stature in the world of international development.

“I’ve only come recently to understand that you did not feel safe at home and with me. How truly sad that you had to go through such an awful experience.” — Ellsworth Culver, letter to Humphrey around the time of the Mercy Corps investigation

During Mercy Corps’ formative years, the charismatic Culver was often the center of attention in public and at work. A deacon in a Presbyterian church in Southwest Portland, he seemed equally at ease with refugees as he was with foreign rulers like Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro.

He engaged in shuttle diplomacy, influencing policy in places like the Middle East and North Korea, where he traveled nearly two dozen times. He was recognized by North Korean leaders for his efforts to arrange aid and development projects as relations between Washington, D.C., and Pyongyang deteriorated.

After Mercy Corps completed its inquiry into Humphrey’s abuse claims, Culver was demoted and dispatched worldwide as a senior vice president. He maintained a grueling schedule well into his 70s and sent his family long updates from troubled regions. On a trip to Indonesia in 1998, six years after his daughter’s allegations came to light, Culver marveled at a throng of impoverished children surrounding his Mercedes as he made his way through Jakarta.

He noted to The Oregonian reporter who accompanied him on the trip that the children were desperate and would do “anything they can do” to survive, according to an account published in the newspaper.

Oregonian obituary, Aug. 17, 2005

Culver’s death at age 78 from complications due to cancer-related surgery was front-page news in The Oregonian. At the time, Keny-Guyer, who was not employed by the organization when it investigated Culver, heralded Culver’s role as a citizen diplomat, crediting him with getting Mercy Corps into places like Kosovo before Yugoslavia’s collapse and into Central Asia as the Soviet Union fell.

Keny-Guyer back then said Culver “always had this smile in his eyes.”

On Tuesday, Keny-Guyer said he had not known that the Mercy Corps board had investigated child sexual abuse claims against Culver. He said he first learned of the allegations last year.

O’Neill, one of the Mercy Corps officials who investigated Humphrey’s claims, spoke at a memorial for Culver held in Washington, D.C., and later wrote a tribute to his friend, calling Culver “the silver fox.” O’Neill said Culver was a senior statesman and a “rare soul of emotionally touching humanitarian sensibilities — a man of family, faith, compassion and diplomatic flair.”

O’Neill retired from Mercy Corps this year. He declined to be interviewed and did not respond to written questions, referring a reporter to Barnes Ellis, the organization’s senior legal counsel. Ellis did not answer written questions.

Doctor’s notes from Portland Adventist Medical Center, December, 1988 MERCY CORPS SOUGHT ACCESS TO ABUSE RECORDS

A different man emerged at home, according to Humphrey. She was his youngest child and the only child from his second of three marriages. The family lived in California, the Washington, D.C., area, Arizona and Colorado before settling in Lake Oswego, where they lived from 1980 through 1991.

As a young adult, Humphrey told a prayer group that her father had abused her for years. Kim Weber, a member of the group, said Humphrey lived with her family around that time. She said she spent countless hours talking with Humphrey about Culver’s abuse. Weber described Humphrey as “very straightforward and very honest.”

“It was real,” Weber said. “I knew that she was truthful. There was no question in my mind ever that any of it was ever made up or imagined.”

Kim Weber, who accompanied Humphrey to a 1993 interview with Mercy Corps officials, reflects on the experience: “Do I think they should have done something about it? Absolutely. They should have believed her. I don’t think it would have been that hard even back then to find corroboration for what she was telling them.”

Humphrey said one of the women in the prayer group told her husband about the abuse allegations. Then, she said, the husband alerted Newell, who was an acquaintance. Newell is a corporate litigator with extensive trial experience. He is a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine in Portland.

In August 1992, Humphrey, then 21, said she received a call from Newell. She said he asked if the allegations were true. When she said yes, he said Mercy Corps planned to investigate.

Tania Culver Humphrey says her father took Polaroid photos of her in sexual poses as a child. She’s tormented by the idea that her father may not have destroyed them and that they’re still circulating. She thinks of that today when she sees photographs of herself doing ordinary things in childhood, like wearing a dance costume. (Right: courtesy Tania Culver Humphrey)

Humphrey said she gave Mercy Corps her medical records from three hospitalizations for treatment of an eating disorder in her teens and a summary of her therapist’s counseling notes. Humphrey was hospitalized twice in 1986 and again in 1988. Records show she was treated at St. Vincent Hospital and Medical Center and Portland Adventist Medical Center.

Medical professionals documented her disclosures, which included her father kissing and touching her in a sexual manner, masturbating on her and putting his hands in her pants. A summary of Humphrey’s revelations also noted that she slept with her parents, who were naked, until eighth grade. Josephine Culver, Humphrey’s mother, acknowledged that the three of them slept together nude, but said she could not “imagine it was when (her daughter) was older.”

In their notes, treatment staff wrote that Humphrey talked about the abuse having happened in the past. The records include references to Humphrey being abused between the ages of 10 and 12, when she was in fifth grade through eighth grade, or that it “happened a long time ago.”

In one report dated Dec. 18, 1988, a psychologist wrote that Humphrey reported her father had kissed and touched her sexually and that Culver had established a “sexual abuse dynamic” with his daughter.

Center: Humphrey says she’s wearing her father’s underwear held up with rope in this photo. She was 6. “It’s not an innocent photo,” she says. “He wanted me to dress up and do a show for him. And I remember sitting on his lap afterwards and him putting his hand under the underwear.” Photo with toys: Humphrey remembers staging this photograph when she was 5 or 6. She arranged her stuffed toys on her bed and asked her mother to snap a photo. The photograph triggers strong emotions for Humphrey. She says her father ejaculated on her toys after abusing her. Others: Humphrey was 9 when her parents took her on a trip to Asia and Europe. Her father at the time was an executive with another humanitarian organization called Food for the Hungry. He co-founded Mercy Corps two years later. Humphrey says she and her father stayed apart from her mother for some of the trip. During that time her father sexually abused her, she says. (Courtesy Tania Culver Humphrey)

Center: Humphrey says she’s wearing her father’s underwear held up with rope in this photo. She was 6. “It’s not an innocent photo,” she says. “He wanted me to dress up and do a show for him. And I remember sitting on his lap afterwards and him putting his hand under the underwear.” Others: Humphrey was 9 when her parents took her on a trip to Asia and Europe. Her father at the time was an executive with another humanitarian organization called Food for the Hungry. He co-founded Mercy Corps two years later. Humphrey says she and her father stayed apart from her mother for some of the trip. During that time her father sexually abused her, she says. (Courtesy Tania Culver Humphrey)

The notes of her disclosures about when the abuse occurred and when it ended at times conflict with the account she gives today. As a teen, Humphrey said she worried that if she acknowledged it was ongoing, police would get involved and that would drive her family further away.

She wrote about those fears in a journal entry dated July 1989, just after she had graduated from high school. “I thought he’d lose his job all of the big people he knows all of them would think I was a terrible person, that I ruined everything … and how could I do this to such a wonderful, strong, self-giving, dedicated, Christian man and loving father,” she wrote.

It scares me when he breathes heavy on me and gives me hard long kisses, and gets mad if I don’t kiss him the way that he likes me to — Humphrey’s writing from one of her journals

Humphrey’s response is common for teenage victims of sexual abuse, particularly when the offender is a family member, said Rachel Petke, a licensed clinical social worker for CARES Northwest, which conducts evaluations that may aid police in criminal investigations of child abuse.

Minimization is common due to a mix of fear, shame and guilt that victims often feel, she said.

“I can’t tell you how many teens I have talked to where they have just said, ‘I really didn’t want to say anything. I just wanted it to stop and I thought if I said enough it would stop,’” said Petke, who has more than 15 years of experience as a forensic interviewer of children and teen victims of abuse.

Sharon McIntosh, a counselor who saw Humphrey on and off for years beginning at age 15, wrote a counseling summary for the Mercy Corps inquiry. She wrote that Humphrey showed signs “consistent with one traumatized at an early age by sex abuse, physical and emotional abuse.”

McIntosh also wrote that Humphrey had been raped twice by other men and was sodomized at a neighbor’s house when she was a young child.

Records show Mercy Corps sought access to child abuse reports made to the state during Humphrey’s teens. Two reports made clear Humphrey disclosed that Culver abused her, but the identities of the people who made the reports are redacted. It is not clear whether Mercy Corps received those child welfare documents.

Click to see full reports

McIntosh confirmed she made the first report. She said it was the first of two she attempted to make to the state. She said her second call was dismissed by a state worker who, she recalled, told her “the family is already in treatment.”

The report McIntosh said she made was marked valid and noted that the “investigation has shown abuse/neglect occurred.” In a section marked “disposition,” the report notes Humphrey was in counseling and the abuse had ended.

It also said the complaint was referred to the Lake Oswego Police Department on Feb. 20, 1987. The police agency said records from that time have since been purged.

The name of a Lake Oswego police detective, Don Forman, is written on the form. Forman said he has no recollection of the matter. The Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office said it has no record of an investigation being submitted for prosecution.

The second report, which Humphrey believes was made by a high school teacher the following year, was more detailed and said Culver would kiss his daughter, lie on top of her and fondle her. “He would breathe heavily and obviously be aroused,” the person told the child welfare worker.

The document noted that Humphrey’s disclosures referred to abuse that took place years earlier and that the statute of limitations had passed. At the time, the statute of limitations on felony sexual abuse was three years.

Humphrey does not recall talking to state child welfare workers or the Lake Oswego police. Her mother said she also was not approached by authorities after the reports were made.

The state declined to discuss its handling of the allegations with the news organization, citing the confidentiality of child abuse reports.

On June 25 of this year, Humphrey spoke by phone with a manager for the Oregon Department of Human Services in the presence of a reporter. Deena Loughary told Humphrey that the state’s child abuse protocols have changed since the 1980s. Based on her review, Loughary could not say why the state failed to protect Humphrey.

“We can’t tell from the documentation that’s in archives what did or didn’t happen on your case,” she said.

Humphrey met with Mercy Corps officials (from left) Robert Newell, Raymond Vath and Dan O’Neill at the law offices of Davis Wright Tremaine in downtown Portland in 1993. FATHER’S FRIENDS LEAD QUESTIONING

Humphrey said she agreed to turn over her records to Mercy Corps initially because she assumed they corroborated her account. She thought the documents, coupled with her statement, would prompt Mercy Corps to remove her father.

“They marched in in their big bully suits and attitudes and really did a number on her.” Pam Faatz, support group leader who accompanied Humphrey to the interview

Instead, she said Mercy Corps’ actions made her feel as if she were on trial.

“It was obvious from the very beginning that I had to prove it,” she said. “I had to prove I was not lying.”

In the spring of 1993, Newell, a board member at Mercy Corps when Culver was president, arranged to interview her. He served as her main contact, she said. She recalled speaking with him at least five times during the Mercy Corps inquiry. During one conversation, she said he told her to keep the investigation to herself.

Newell declined to answer questions about his interactions with Humphrey and his role in the review.

But in a written statement, Newell on Tuesday said the board took Humphrey’s allegations “very seriously when they were brought to our attention.” He called the investigation challenging and said it was unclear at the time why state child welfare authorities had not intervened.

“But nothing changes the fact that no one should endure what she has described, especially not as a child at the hands of her father,” Newell wrote. “It is as troubling to me now as it was back then.”

Humphrey’s therapist advised her against meeting with Mercy Corps board members and in a letter to the organization said she thought Humphrey needed a lawyer.

“I thought that was the chicken going into the wolves’ den. I knew they would have very powerful lawyers.” Sharon McIntosh, Humphrey’s counselor

“I thought that was the chicken going into the wolves’ den,” McIntosh said in a recent interview. Humphrey gave McIntosh permission to speak about their counseling sessions.

But Humphrey was determined to be heard. She brought two friends to the meeting: Pam Faatz, the moderator of a sexual assault survivor support group Humphrey attended, and Weber, the woman whose family she was living with at the time.

Robert Newell, Dan O’Neill and Raymond Vath participated in the interview, she said. Humphrey had seen the men at Mercy Corps events and said her father considered O’Neill a close friend. Humphrey still has photographs of O’Neill with her father and personal notes O’Neill and his wife sent to her in her teens and early 20s.

Faatz said the men greeted Humphrey with “cool acknowledgment.” Humphrey arrived on time and, Faatz recalled, was made to wait about half an hour for the men to call her into the conference room at Newell’s law firm. Weber said she too recalled waiting for the meeting to begin.

Humphrey said she told the men her father touched her inappropriately, masturbated on her and forced her to engage in oral sex. She said he kept a book in the home that contained multiple references to sex with children and she saw it next to a Bible and a pornographic magazine. Her mother, Josephine Culver, told the news organization that she never saw the book.

Humphrey was uncomfortable during the interview, she said. One of the men asked to record the exchange and she said she declined. She remembered that each of them had a yellow legal pad in front of them on the table.

“They were asking me about my memories and different things and I was trying to talk,” she said. “I was so scared and nervous.”

Faatz said she tried to ease Humphrey’s nerves.

Left: Sharon McIntosh was Tania Culver Humphrey’s mental health counselor on and off during Humphrey’s teens and early 20s. McIntosh first met Humphrey when the teen was treated for an eating disorder. Humphrey went home for a brief period during treatment and returned with a book her father had stored in the garage. The book included references to sex with children. “It’s hard not to cry when I think about it,” McIntosh says. “That was clear to me that something was going on there and it’s not OK.” Right: Pam Faatz met Tania Culver Humphrey when Faatz was leading a sexual abuse recovery program in the early 1990s. She says Humphrey told her of her plans to meet with Mercy Corps executives. “Her goal at that time was similar to what I think it is now: to be heard and validated or recognized,” Faatz says.

“I think I probably put my hand over the back of her chair just to reassure her, ‘Tania I’m here,’” Faatz said.

Faatz and Humphrey said the line of questioning suggested skepticism about Humphrey’s account.

“They were trying to discredit her,” Faatz recalled, “that her memories were wrong, that this is a good man, her father.”

Humphrey said the men asked how she could be sure it was Culver who abused her, if she could identify her first memory of abuse and what she saw when her father masturbated against her body.

“I felt like it was just like on TV when you see people being cross-examined by opposing people,” she said. “That is what it felt like. They kept asking me challenging questions like they were trying to catch me in a lie.”

When they questioned whether her memory was accurate, she recalled firing back.

“You know when a penis is in your mouth. It’s not something else,” she said she told the men.

Faatz said she could sense the meeting had depleted Humphrey.

“I seem to remember that she was starting to get really — she was melting,” Faatz said. “And hurting.

“I said this girl needs you to be safe for her, to hear her, to believe her and you have a problem to clean up,” Faatz said. “You have someone who is dangerous and has no business running free.”

Faatz said she abruptly ended the meeting and pulled Humphrey up from the chair.

Humphrey said she emerged feeling she had done something wrong. The encounter, she said, left her feeling humiliated.

She said she suspected the men viewed her as “too weak or damaged” to be believed.

The episode angered her father, she said. He demanded that she apologize to one of her sisters for embarrassing the family, she recalled.

“My whole life felt like it got uprooted like a plant and splayed out in the sun,” she said.

Letter from Raymond Vath to Humphrey, June 15, 1993 MERCY CORPS FINDS ‘INSUFFICIENT’ EVIDENCE

That month, Vath followed up with a letter.

“I am always impressed how women like you can come to sessions where you do not know others very well and reveal very troubling personal experiences,” he wrote to Humphrey.

Vath said the records that Mercy Corps had obtained “were not very precise in describing the abuse” and said he and others “assumed” her allegations “were not too serious” since authorities did not pursue them.

He pressed Humphrey to turn over even more information, such as her “earliest diaries,” and asked to speak with a teacher in whom she had confided.

Humphrey contacted a lawyer, Diana Craine, who sent a letter to Newell, blasting Mercy Corps’ tactics and revoking the organization’s rights to Humphrey’s personal information.

View note Excerpt from letter lawyer Diana Craine sent to Mercy Corps.

“She is concerned about your continued demands on her and the emotional toll that is taking,” Craine wrote. “I have advised her that she does not need to meet with you again because you should have sufficient information from her at this point.”

Craine called Mercy Corps’ efforts to access Humphrey’s personal records inappropriate and described Mercy Corps’ treatment of Humphrey as “exploitative.” She wrote that the organization had enough to act.

Yet Mercy Corps persisted and Newell wrote to Craine asking for another meeting with Humphrey.

Humphrey said she did not provide any additional material.

Mercy Corps at the time consulted an expert in “recovered memory,” according to a letter the organization sent to Humphrey last year. Humphrey said she was never interviewed by such an expert.

Vath wrote what appears to be one final letter in 1994, telling Humphrey that Mercy Corps “explored” her complaints and looked for signs that Culver was dysfunctional.

“As we on the board believe in a redemptive approach to problems we are attempting to give opportunity for growth to all involved in the organization, including your father,” he wrote. “It will take some time to repair the problems that were more deep rooted than we were aware.”

Vath said Humphrey’s complaint led Mercy Corps to carry out a “rather careful evaluation,” though he did not tell her what that involved or what happened as a result.

Around this time, Culver’s role in the organization changed. He became a senior vice president. The board also ordered Culver to take a 30-day leave of absence.

Culver was told to “deal with his own issues and to reflect on his management of Mercy Corps,” Keny-Guyer said this week.

Humphrey’s mother, Josephine Culver, said Culver told her that Mercy Corps said he “was manipulative and inappropriate.” He told her the organization said “he needed to correct that part of his personality.” She said she doesn’t recall being interviewed by Mercy Corps and does not remember Culver being punished when the investigation ended.

Humphrey said her father told her that Mercy Corps ordered him to attend multiple counseling sessions, though he told her he went to only one.

For years after the inquiry ended, Culver traveled to impoverished countries, promoting Mercy Corps’ work. Keny-Guyer said Culver’s job as an executive would not have put him in direct contact with children or refugees. He said Mercy Corps never received any other sexual abuse complaints about Culver.

Criminal cases involving sexual abuse of children often rest on the victim’s account because these crimes typically occur in secret. Humphrey’s case stands out because she provided consistent accounts over a long period and had extensive contemporaneous documentation of her disclosures to adults. Veteran prosecutors said her allegations should have been enough to at least initiate a criminal case.

Doug Goodman, an expert in nonprofit human resources management and a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, said nonprofits should refer allegations like Humphrey’s to police or hire a third party to investigate.

Other best corporate practices include enlisting an outside entity, placing the accused on leave and reporting the outcome to the accuser, he said.

When it comes to sexual abuse allegations, even those that are years old, donors and victims expect charities to act, he said.

“I think many people just want it recognized that they were victims of this, that yes something happened and that the organization was wrong in the way that they handled it,” Goodman said.

Chris Humphrey and Tania Culver Humphrey have been married 21 years. The couple have a daughter and son. Chris Humphrey, 51, says his wife’s childhood trauma and the failure of Mercy Corps to take meaningful action against Culver have haunted her since he’s known her. “Everyone worshipped him, his entire family,” he says. “Everyone at Mercy Corps worshipped him. He was the great Ells Culver. He was untouchable. I can see why you don’t say anything against him. I can see how it was very difficult for Tania.” DECADES LATER, MERCY CORPS DECLINES TO INVESTIGATE

Humphrey tried to move on. She married and had a family. Her husband, Chris, is an engineering geologist.

Chris Humphrey said he has watched his wife suffer for years from the aftermath of her father’s abuse. Last year, after she experienced another round of flashbacks, he went online to research Mercy Corps’ sexual misconduct and ethics policies. He came across a policy that outlined how the organization responds to complaints and treats survivors.

“I can assure you there is no interest here in relitigating the underlying events.” Barnes Ellis, Mercy Corps senior legal counsel, November 2018

After two of its workers were accused of sexually exploiting refugees in Greece in 2017, Mercy Corps overhauled its policies. The organization said it would “first and foremost take into account the safety, security and well-being” of victims of abuse and exploitation.

It also established an ethics team staffed by investigators and pledged to “quickly and thoroughly follow up on all allegations.”

Last November, Chris Humphrey emailed the new integrity hotline to ask Mercy Corps to consider whether its original investigation meets “your current ethical standards.”

The correspondence was forwarded to Barnes Ellis, the senior legal counsel. Ellis emailed Humphrey three days later to ask if the couple could meet in person or talk by phone. He said he wanted to know “just what it is that you think Mercy Corps can do now to help your wife gain closure on whatever occurred between her and her father and her family some 24 years ago.”

Ellis’s message was blunt:

“I can assure you there is no interest here in relitigating the underlying events.”

Chris Humphrey again asked Mercy Corps to investigate how it handled its inquiry.

Ellis told Humphrey the files from the investigation “no longer exist” and without those records Mercy Corps could not provide a “meaningful review.”

Ellis said Mercy Corps representatives spoke with the board members who took part in the inquiry. He wrote that Humphrey’s allegations at the time were “reviewed carefully.” That review, he wrote, included an interview with Culver, who he said underwent a lie detector test.

“They believe they made every effort to look into and understand the facts,” Ellis wrote, adding that Vath was a psychiatrist with “extensive relevant experience.”

“Based on their review,” he wrote, “they concluded that there was insufficient evidence to require any further action by Mercy Corps.” Ellis offered to meet with the Humphreys in person.

Chris Humphrey tried one more time. On Dec. 9, he sent a three-page email with a bullet-point list of questions.

He signed both his and his wife’s names.

They said they never heard back.