In the Name of Ruth Bender

A long history of abuse at Hesston College demands recognition and answers

Ruth Bender, graduation photo, Hesston College, 1927.

In 1930, at a revival meeting, a pastor named Maurice “M.A.” Yoder asked a 27-year-old woman named Ruth Bender to confess her sins. She described what her father D.H. Bender would later admit to as “fornication” with Ruth when she was a teen.

At the time she spoke up, Ruth was teaching French and Latin…