The connections between sexual abuse and spiritual abuse in the Upper Midwest Diocese
Recently ACNAtoo has sought to bring to light the stories of sexual abuse survivors under the care of the Upper Midwest Diocese (UMD).
Joanna Rudenborg took to Twitter on Jun 26, 2021 to publicly expose former ACNA Catechist Mark Rivera’s sexual assaults and emotional abuse of her – and the subsequent mishandling of these allegations by the UMD. (You can read Joanna’s Twitter thread here)
In the wake of Joanna’s story, numerous survivors have stepped forward, some with their own stories of sexual abuse within the UMD or the greater ACNA (you can read examples here, here, and here), and others who were not sexually abused but who had corroborating stories of being similarly ‘mishandled’ by the same leadership in the UMD – often with traumatic consequences (examples available here and here).
ACNAtoo does not exist simply because an individual was sexually abused. It exists because when individuals brought their abuse to the church for accountability, protection, and church discipline, the abuse was compounded by the subsequent mishandling of their concerns.
What do we mean by mishandling?
In the case of survivors reporting abuses by Mark Rivera, mishandling includes;
Crucial power imbalances being ignored, biasing the entire situation dramatically in favor of the already more powerful (Catechist, Priest)
Victims being disbelieved and dismissed as lacking credibility in contrast to the beloved leader they accused
Perpetrator being approached directly to give ‘their side’ of the story, allowing a skilful manipulator to write the official narrative exonerating himself
Survivor’s mother being coerced into meeting with the perpetrator with a spiritual authority figure and sharing explicit details of the victim’s allegations in front of the perpetrator
Perpetrator being emotionally, financially, and spiritually centered, supported, and protected by key leaders in the church
Victims being emotionally, financially, and spiritually ignored by key leaders in the church
Complete disregard for timely legally mandated reporting by church leadership, extending to leadership discouraging a victim’s mother from reporting her daughter’s abuse
Public coverup including failing to inform congregants of allegations or otherwise protect vulnerable people from the abuser for 2 years
Lack of trauma-informed care or consulted professionals
Lack of urgency to perform crucial outreach to find other potential victims
Lack of transparency with church community to name the severity of the alleged abuse and scope of alleged abuser’s access to vulnerable people over 2+ decades of church involvement and leadership roles
Lack of independent third party investigation that is acceptable for survivors to safely participate in
Initial refusal to publish results of investigation (only later obtained through public pressure)
In speaking about her experiences with UMD leadership leading up to going public, Joanna writes:
‘At its core, abuse is the perverting of human relationship into an act of consumption. In abusing us, Mark Rivera devoured our bodies and souls for his personal gratification. Far from creating a sanctuary for us to rest and heal, the Church picked up where Mark left off and continued to consume: our time, our energy, our physical health, our mental and emotional labor, our dignity, our quality of life. In their refusal to address harm humbly, swiftly, and thoroughly, they forced unhealed survivors into front line advocacy on behalf of ourselves and other vulnerable people. Performing this work has meant sacrificing a therapeutically-paced timeline for facing our trauma. Because our own abuse is the exact reason we stay in the room to help others, we can never make adequate space from the subject, and are left constantly exposed to its assaults. This is the pernicious reality of institutions mishandling abuse allegations: they inevitably steal even more from precisely those people who can least afford it.’
Why does this focus on mishandling matter?
It can be easy in situations like this, once abuse has come to light (thanks only to the public advocacy of the abused) to want to focus on the account of sexual abuse in isolation, with our attention solely on Mark Rivera as the one who needs to be held accountable.
After all, in a better world, such public accountability would not be necessary, because the leaders in charge would have handled the situation in collaboration with the survivors in a satisfactory manner. They would have believed the victim(s), made the appropriate mandated report, advised all congregations of the allegations and the long access of the perpetrator to vulnerable people, immediately removed Mark from all leadership and church-based access to previous or potential future victims, listened to and collaborated with survivors, contracted a trauma and church informed independent third-party investigation, and in doing so followed appropriate outreach procedures to identify other potential victims.
Unfortunately in this case, Mark Rivera is no longer the only perpetrator of great harm.
Indeed numerous others have now been named as individuals in positions of influence, power, and leadership in the Upper Midwest Diocese who had ample opportunity to protect, believe, and advocate for the survivors - but who instead acted in a way that caused great frustration, further harm, and even endangered others to remain accessible to an alleged abuser.
While the recent public complaints of survivors may seem to the casual observer to be unfair demands of perfection, in this case it is important to note that a growing team of advocates spent months, and in one case 2 years, trying to be taken seriously and seek justice for their abuse. In the course of lengthy and costly correspondence with leadership they were unable to find meaningful traction, despite phone calls, meetings, consultations, and countless emails with both local and diocesan leadership.
We can and should hold such church leadership publicly accountable for over two years of inability to adapt and learn. We expect many churches will make initial mistakes when facing complex stories of abuse – but when those mistakes become repeated, long lasting, and stubborn, something else is at play. That something else is the issue which goes beyond mere ‘named individuals.’ No church leader acts in a vacuum. As social beings our environments, as well as the people around us, profoundly and powerfully shape our actions. This means that beyond simply assessing isolated actions of individuals, we must take account of the environment in which individuals act. Expectations, goals, policies, hidden assumptions held in common: all these and more, direct and shape our actions or lack thereof when abuses are brought to light.
It is for these reasons that we wish to make an important connection: that the mishandling of sexual abuse in the church rarely (if ever) happens without the covering of spiritual abuse.
What is spiritual abuse?
ACNAtoo has recently sought to bring clarity to this complex and lesser known category of abuse. Spiritual abuse is a misuse and abuse of power that is connected to spiritual authority. Pastor John Perrine, former church planting resident of the UMD, summarised the recent literature on spiritual abuse and wrote at length on the patterns of coercion and control outlined by Oakley and Humphries. Theologian Scot McKnight, author of A Church Called Tov, also provided the following timely and helpful summary of Lisa Oakley’s work on the subject in his recent newsletter:
‘1) Spiritual abuse is a form of emotional and psychological abuse.
(2) It is characterized by a systematic pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour in a religious context.
(3) Spiritual abuse can have a deeply damaging impact on those who experience it.
(4) This abuse may include: manipulation and exploitation, enforced accountability, censorship of decision making, requirements for secrecy and silence, coercion to conform (inability to ask questions), control through the use of sacred texts or teaching, requirement of obedience to the abuser, the suggestion that the abuser has a ‘divine’ position, isolation as a means of punishment, and superiority and elitism (p. 31).’
From Lisa Oakley’s 2009 doctoral dissertation and her Church Times article.
Dan Allender, noted trauma specialist, speaks of spiritual abuse as a kind of ‘covering’ over other forms of abuse in the church. Under this covering, other abuses (physical, emotional, sexual) are often normalised as acceptable behaviors for an individual due to their spiritually significant status - allowing them to hide in plain sight. (See the Allender Center podcast on the connections between spiritual and sexual abuse here).
The preceding resources delve deeply into the topic of spiritual abuse, but for the purposes of this article and the case of Mark Rivera we want to highlight that the religious context in which it happened and was handled is key to understanding the spiritual abuse that these survivors have experienced on two levels.
Level One – Initial abuse at the hands of a church leader
When a priest, bishop, pastor, or prominent church leader perpetrates sexual abuse they are making use of their publicly affirmed position of spiritual authority to gain access to the victim. The sexual abuse is made more accessible in part because of their particular role as a spiritual authority in the church.
Being sexually abused is one thing, but being sexually abused by a representative of God and His church creates an entirely new dynamic of spiritual abuse.
The asymmetrical power at play between Mark Rivera as a celebrated catechist and public church figure and his victims is extraordinary. Mark did not abuse those who might be considered peers socially; he used his church-afforded spiritual authority and the social status that came along with it to prey on the less powerful: most horrifyingly children and minors at the churches he served in, but also congregants and neighbors.
Level Two – Secondary abuse from the mishandling of church leaders
It then follows that when a survivor brings a story of abuse concerning a church leader to the church itself, they are ultimately seeking accountability and personal sanctuary. They desperately need a place where they as the less powerful will be believed, protected, and advocated for by the institution who gave spiritual authority and power to their abuser in the first place.
Such a survivor typically brings forward their trauma at great personal cost, as revealing such information about a celebrated church leader inevitably provokes a profound crisis in those on the receiving end. Diane Langberg explains the psychological resistance survivors frequently encounter when making such disclosures to church communities:
‘Whenever a situation is destructive to comfortable beliefs, a person’s distress level is high. That’s one of the reasons we don’t want to hear about trauma and injustice.’ (lecture here)
Who wants to challenge the public image of someone who has also been affirmed for doing good in the community? What if the desire to see the leader as ‘all good’ by the community causes them to be immediately disbelieved?
When survivors take the risk to report what has happened at the hands of a church representative they are ultimately giving the church a merciful second chance. This is the crucial moment when a Christian leader with true integrity has the opportunity to ‘stand in the gap’ between the abuser and the abused and hold accountable the misuse of God’s spiritual authority.
For Mark Rivera’s victims the hope was that revealing Mark’s abuse of his spiritual authority to perpetrate sexual abuse would mean he would be held appropriately accountable. In holding Mark accountable, and affording his victims their full belief and support, UMD leaders would break the pattern of spiritual abuse and restore survivor faith in their own spiritual authority as representatives of Christ.
As ACNAtoo has sought to document, this has not been the case.
Instead, Mark was initially believed, supported, and protected by his local church, cathedral church, and bishop. Victims were initially gaslit and disbelieved, then later ignored concerning key aspects of outreach and investigation into their case. Victims were also shunned by their church communities and former friends. In trying to step in and ‘handle’ this situation, a full year and a half after the first allegations were brought to him, Bishop Stewart Ruch operated outside his scope of competence without trauma informed consultation, independent third party oversight, or transparency with the congregations involved.
Being sexually abused by a church leader is one thing, but being disbelieved, minimised, and mishandled by even more Church leaders is abuse on another level – spiritual abuse.
It should come as no surprise that the response to abuse is often reported as more devastating than the abuse itself. The response by church leaders to abuse carries significant weight, because those very church leaders often represent God to the abused.
Significant research reveals that there are serious negative mental health and recovery implications for survivors who are blamed for their abuse or outright disbelieved. Thanks to recent advocacy movements, the phenomenon of victim blaming is now being documented and analyzed at length. The NPR series ‘Believed’ explores in detail the painful journey from disbelief to belief that Larry Nassar’s victims endured in their pursuit of justice. It can be easy to recognise and believe their individual stories now that a critical mass of evidence has formed around the Nassar case, but those who came forward in the early stages did so at great personal cost.
Identifying the systemic pattern of spiritual abuse
Some readers could still think, ‘Yes, the church mishandled this instance of sexual abuse, but can’t they make a mistake? Didn’t the leaders involved apologize publicly? How is the mishandling spiritually abusive?’
These questions are important – because as already stated in the definition of Scott McKnight above, to establish the presence of spiritual abuse, you must identify a systemic and repeated pattern over time. An isolated incident of mishandling may point to incompetence or a mistake that could be owned and learned from – but repeated mishandlings following a similar pattern warrant closer scrutiny, as they are often indicative of unhealthy church leadership culture and practice.
The UMD already demonstrated a concerning and repeated pattern in how they managed to frustrate survivor efforts to bring allegations forward for over two years – this alone warrants a look into the abuse of power, particularly spiritual power and authority.
However, when Joanna took to Twitter to name both abuses, the sexual abuse and spiritual abuse experienced in the UMD, she created a window of bravery for others to step forward and share their own corroborating stories of sexual and spiritual abuse.
Those stories continue to pour into ACNAtoo. Stories that include and confirm that the same leaders in the UMD have mishandled not only this situation, but have harmed other individuals with the same spiritually abusive tactics stated above.
Tactics such as:
Crucial power imbalances being ignored, biasing the entire situation dramatically in favor of the already more powerful (Catechist, Priest, Bishop)
Victims being disbelieved and dismissed as lacking credibility in contrast to the beloved leader they accused
Perpetrator being approached directly to give ‘their side’ of the story, allowing the more powerful person already seen to be more ‘spiritually credible’ to write the official narrative exonerating themself
Priests and church leaders financially, and spiritually centered, supported, and protected by other key leaders in the church
Victims being emotionally, financially, and spiritually ignored by key leaders in the church
Public coverup including failing to transparently inform congregants of allegations or severity and scope of serious concerns
Numerous workplace malpractices and unfair dismissals
Inability to challenge or question leadership decisions without having focus redirected on the character and spiritual maturity of the less powerful
Please note that ACNAtoo is currently holding many of these spiritual abuse stories in confidence for survivors who do not wish to or are not ready to speak publicly about them at this time - although they may in the near future. The subject matter of every survivor’s story is delicate and painful and sharing publicly is not always the right next step for the individual - be mindful that there will always be dozens more stories for every one that is told publicly. The recent RNS article on spiritual abuse in the UMD noted upwards of at least 20 confirmed stories.
ACNAtoo urged the ACNA to pursue a third party investigation into spiritual abuse allegations within the UMD on July 15, 2021, a request the ACNA did not immediately respond to. However, after receiving so many of these allegations in writing directly from UMD spiritual abuse survivors themselves, on August 29, 2021 the ACNA Province’s Executive Committee approved expanding the scope of the Provincial Response Team’s investigation to include canonical abuse of power (spiritual abuse) in the Upper Midwest Diocese.
[If you are reading this and you have a story that could contribute to this investigation, we invite you to share it with the Provincial Response Team and/or ACNAtoo, if you are comfortable doing so. Please consult our UMD Survivor’s Guide for further details and information.]
This inclusion on the part of the Executive Committee holds extreme significance – not only will they investigate the mishandling of the sexual abuse allegations against Mark Rivera, but will now also investigate spiritual abuse within the UMD at large.
A closing word to those who love the church
In a recent interview civil lawyer and survivor advocate Boz Tchividjian stated, ‘I’ve yet to come across a situation involving sexual abuse that doesn’t have a spiritual abuse component to it inside the church.’
If connecting the case of Mark Rivera to the wider leadership culture of the UMD in this way has been difficult for you, you may be tempted to dismiss the stories coming forward as dissenters who want to hit back at a church or diocese that didn’t give them everything they wanted, or who hold different theological positions.
If this is the case, then the number of separately reported overlapping stories should give you cause to reconsider, just as they gave the Province cause to reconsider and ultimately decide to investigate Bishop Stewart Ruch and the Upper Midwest Diocese further. The fraction of these stories so far made public are not isolated incidents. Dismissing them as such is detrimental to the future of the UMD and dangerously complicit in the pattern of minimisation and inability to healthily receive critique.
If you love the ACNA, and in particular the Upper Midwest Diocese, Church of the Resurrection, or Bishop Ruch himself, it can be tempting to see the Mark Rivera allegations mishandling story as it appears in the Bishop’s own public statements: as a singular ‘regrettable error’ by Bishop Ruch, who was out of his depth and trauma uninformed. In his own words,
‘Let me say at the start that I made regrettable errors in this process. When the original allegation came out against Mark in 2019, I mistakenly assumed that the necessary criminal investigation was a sufficient next step. I thought it best to let the county district attorney’s office lead a thorough investigation resulting in a clear ruling. I anticipated that after this process we would inform the diocese of the court’s ruling. I naively expected the trial to occur much sooner than it has.’
Such a statement implies that Bp. Ruch tried his best, but ultimately scrambled and failed once in the public spotlight to honor survivors advocating for safe procedure.
Such a statement implies that whilst Mark Rivera was protected and centered at the beginning by UMD leadership - he is now being held criminally responsible. It implies that regrettable errors were made, but have since been owned and corrected.
This is not the whole truth
‘What happened’ when the sexual abuse was revealed was not simply a ‘regrettable error’’ on the part of well meaning shepherds - it was the devastating demonstration of a spiritually abusive system that will continue to allow this to happen if not properly understood and held to account.
In the words of spiritual abuse expert Wade Mullen, there is ‘something not right’ in the Upper Midwest Diocese. More and more voices are coming forward to confirm that that ‘something’ is spiritual abuse, and demonstrating that under that covering, other abuses will continue to thrive and be disguised and protected by spiritual authority if not questioned and brought to light to be held to account.
ACNAtoo implores you to see the warning signs, to resist turning away, and to resist the normalising of spiritually abusive behavior in the name of preserving a system, however good it may have been or is.
In the case of many abusive systems, it wasn’t that individuals couldn’t see; it was that they saw and didn’t care. Or more importantly, they didn’t care enough to disrupt the status quo that was working in their favor. Of course it is costly and painful to allow yourself to care when it could compromise a relationship with an individual or system that has served you well. Yet it is even more costly for those who are counting on your voice to assist them in being heard and healed. As Joanna Rudenborg so powerfully states:
‘It’s one thing for a single predatory person to isolate and abuse you. The trauma persists long after the abuse ends, but if the community holds the abuser accountable and fully supports the survivor, they create a sanctuary where healing can at least begin. On the other hand, there aren’t words to describe the cruelty of an institution housing and legitimizing and covering for a sexual predator, then forcing his victims to shoulder the burden of holding the predator accountable, of trying to protect others from his violations, even as the institution treats those survivors as adversaries to be defended against rather than deeply wounded people to be honored and protected from further harm. Abuse survivors should never be forced to argue a case for basic accountability and protection, on behalf of themselves or others.’
The question is not, ‘Did the leadership of the UMD sexually or spiritually abuse you?’ but rather, ‘Is there space for you to comprehend that it has abused others?’
If you can comprehend it, in light of the voices crying out, you have a choice to make.
Choose to see, and choose to care.
Spiritual abuse must be weeded out of the ACNA if sexual abuse is ever to be fully exposed and if the ACNA is to have a future truly worth participating in.