Healing Wasn’t Welcome There Only My Silence Was: My Experience With the ManKind Project Wasn’t a Rite of Passage. It Was a Lesson in Who Gets to Be Believed.
Not everyone failed me. A few saw. A few tried.
But the spaces themselves — the ones that claimed to be sacred, transformational, healing — chose comfort over accountability.
And that choice cost me.”
Legal Notice
This is a personal testimony grounded in lived experience. All references to individuals or institutions are drawn from direct interactions and publicly available information. I speak only for myself — and for those who were asked to stay silent while harm was made holy.
I Came to Heal. I Found a Script.
When I entered MKP Houston, the local chapter of the ManKind Project USA — a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit that runs male initiation weekends like the New Warrior Training Adventure (NWTA) — I thought I was entering a space for men to speak the truth.
They claimed to offer emotional authenticity, shadow work, men’s healing circles, and sacred containers for transformation. What I found instead was a system where those values only applied as long as your truth didn’t make anyone uncomfortable.
What Actually Happened
In December 2024, I completed the New Warrior Training Adventure with the ManKind Project (MKP) Houston.
A couple of days later, I had a suicidal episode.
Despite being stable for six years — and seeing a trauma-informed therapist — their weekend techniques triggered a mental health crisis.
I shared it at the graduation ceremony for new initiates.
Not for pity.
But for witness.
In March 2025, after ending a psychologically abusive relationship with a man also in MKP,
I started podcasting.
Posting poems.
Telling the truth about what I’d survived.
In July 2025, men from MKP escalated my posts to leadership.
That’s when I got the call.
Judge Mattocks didn’t call to check on me.
He called to tone-police me.
He left me a message saying I was “the common denominator.”
That I was “crying victim.”
That I made men “uncomfortable.”
He defended the group.
He defended my abuser.
He didn’t ask what happened — only how I’d dared to speak.
That’s when I saw it clearly:
This wasn’t about healing.
It was about hierarchy.
They didn’t want the truth.
They wanted containment.
Receipts from the Inside
Let me be clear: MKP Houston leadership did not offer care, transparency, or accountability.
They circulated screenshots of my posts, behind my back.
Not to support me — but to discuss how to manage me.
When I posted about surviving relationship abuse and suicidality they called it a problem. Not a disclosure. Not a cry for help. A problem.
One by one, men began unliking, untagging, and withdrawing.
Some messaged me to reframe my truth as discomfort for them.
No mention of the harm I named.
No accountability for their silence.
Just…“come back” now that your truth can’t touch us.
They wanted me back — but only the version of me that didn’t make them look bad.
MKP’s Language Didn’t Save Me
They say things like:
“Mission of service”
“Shadow work”
“Emotional container”
“Holding your edge”
“Confidential I-Groups”
“Owning your gold”
But when I held my edge?
When I told the truth?
When I brought grief that couldn’t be spiritually bypassed?
They weaponized silence.
They used “feedback” to fracture me.
They pathologized pain instead of processing it.
This Isn’t Just Me. Remember Michael Scinto.
I am not the first man who came to MKP Houston seeking healing and left destabilized.
In 2005, Michael Scinto, a 22-year-old participant in MKP’s New Warrior Training Adventure, died by suicide two weeks after his weekend. His family filed a wrongful death lawsuit, alleging ritual humiliation, emotional coercion, and negligence around mental health support.
MKP settled the case out of court.
Michael didn’t get to tell his story.
But I’m still here.
And I will not let silence be the final chapter.
Why I’m Writing This Now
I almost didn’t write this.
Not because I was unsure. But because I know what happens to people who say the quiet parts out loud.
Especially when those people are Black. Queer. Grieving out loud.
Especially when they refuse to disappear for other people’s comfort.
But silence would’ve been a betrayal, of myself and of every man who whispered, “Thank you” after I spoke. The ones who said, “I felt that too.” The ones who left MKP without a language for what broke.
So I wrote this.
Because I want it on record:
“Not everyone makes it out of healing spaces alive.”
Some leave with scars shaped like sacred circles.
What I’m Calling For
I call on MKP USA to:
Clarify how they respond to mental health crises
Define what support looks like when disclosures of abuse arise
Offer external oversight, not just internal circling
I call on former MKP participants, from Houston, New England, Midwest, California , to speak.
I call on every man who’s ever left an I-Group feeling erased, punished, or pathologized to know this:
You are not crazy.
You are not weak.
You are not alone.
To the Survivors They Tried to Swallow
I speak for the boys who were never allowed to cry. For the men labeled unstable for naming their pain. For the ghosts these systems tried to bury.
I’m not here to be digestible.
I’m here to be unforgettable.
I found joy again.
I found voice again.
I found God, not in their circle, but in my own mirror.
And I will fight with every breath in me to preserve the truth,
to protect the next child of grief,
to dismantle every space that dares call harm holy.
Final Words
They called it a sacred circle.
But it was only sacred —
until I spoke.
If You’re a Former MKP Participant
You can email me in confidence at jacob.newsome@powerofthenarrative.com
If you need someone to bear witness, I will not look away.
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