Episode 6

Transcript

This is the Wall of Silence podcast, the ACNAtoo story. An account of church abuse and cover-up in the Anglican Church in North America. Of things done and left undone and why we should care about it. This is Episode Six: Joanna's Story, Part Two. 

A disclaimer: this episode contains accounts and references to rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment.

And a second disclaimer: the views and accounts expressed in this podcast do not represent the Diocese of Quincy, or the views of the Bishop of the Diocese of Quincy.

In this episode, Joanna Rudenborg concludes her account of the psychological manipulation, sexual harassment, and rape committed by Mark Rivera. But she also goes on to explain how she came to the realization of Mark's abuse, the part she played in it, and what she decided to do about it, and the devastating, all-encompassing aftermath. Over the years, Joanna has truly done the work to understand what happened to her and why it happened, and she now offers it to us as an example in the hopes that we would learn how to protect our own families, churches, and communities.

The Wall of Silence has been on pause for nearly three months. If you want to hear my brief explanation as to why that happened, I encourage you to go back and listen to the announcement episode I released earlier this week. In that episode, I alluded to the idea that when it comes to responding to abuse, the American Church has found itself too often playing the part of Job's friends. In this instance, Job is the survivor of abuse, or perhaps the advocate of the survivor. They have entered the public square, asking to be listened to, awaiting the reactions of people and their community. Like Job's friends, the Church often gathers to scrutinize, doubt, and demonize the story of the survivor. That didn't really happen, they say. What you're saying is not the full story. The whole truth will eventually come out. The accusatory questions and assertions go on and on.

Why didn't you come forward sooner?

You are an enemy of God, who only wants to tear down the Church.

You shouldn't be attacking God's shepherds like this. Instead, you should go to them if you have something you need to address with them. But the way you've gone about this is not right.

You're not a Christian anyway. Why would we listen to you? Everyone, don't listen to them. They're not one of us.

You're just out to get us and tear down the Church.

You know, I'm not justifying anything that happened to you, but you need to admit you played a part in this and enabled it. You need to be honest that maybe you brought this on yourself.

How can we even believe your story, and that this isn't some personal vendetta against the pastor? How do we know you're not just making things up because you're out to get them and destroy their ministry?

I'm sorry, but if you don't stop speaking out, you are going to be facing legal action. What you're saying is slanderous and worthy of a defamation lawsuit. We'll be consulting with our lawyers.

All of this and more are what Job's friends have spoken to the survivors and advocates of abuse in today's Church. Much of it was certainly said about Joanna Rudenborg. And rather than listen to her, her community rejected and vilified her. But here she is yet again, sitting in the public square, hoping she might be listened to. This is our chance to be another kind of friend to Job. One that sits, listens, holds their tongue, grieves, and simply lets their story stand as it is. Then if we sense the time is right, maybe then we can simply ask, okay, so now what do we do? I hope we can learn to be this kind of friend. In the previous episode, Joanna's story leaves off at the point where she hasn't quite realized she had been raped, gaslit, and manipulated by Mark Rivera. But as her story continues, the realization is about ready to arrive.

So I think the beginning of the end for me was the second time Mark raped me, which was in 2020. At this point, it's two years after the first rape. I've been living with these shattered pieces of myself, learning to compartmentalize. Mark's been in jail for six months for the child abuse allegations and just got out on bail. I've just gone through this terrible breakup with a boyfriend who sexually assaulted me at the very end of our relationship. I still love him and I can't even name the assault as an assault, even though in this case I remember it clearly. And meanwhile, my job in the community has come to an end because I've been doing home care for an elderly woman who's just passed away. So I have no job and no boyfriend and I'm a complete nervous wreck from the assault and the breakup. And now Mark's back in the picture after I'd just gotten used to him being away. But of course I'm still trying extra hard to be nice and give him the benefit of the doubt that he's not actually a child molester.

So it's March of 2020, right before the COVID lockdown, when they're saying you can still gather outside in groups of 10 or less. And Mark's been out of jail for about three months and I get together with some neighbors at his house for a bonfire. At some point after almost everyone's left, I black out again. This time I wake up the next morning at home in my bed, I'm half naked, and I have a couple split second memories of what happened enough to know there was some kind of repeat of two years ago. And I'm absolutely destroyed all over again. This time Mark doesn't show up at my house, so I write him an email saying I know something happened and I'm so upset and ashamed. And I also push back on him a little and say, hey, you know, technically really drunk people can't consent to sex. Because I'm at the point where I'm still mostly blaming myself, but I am getting dangerously close to naming the truth. I think that line in my email is the perfect indication of where I was at those two years, this cognitive dissonance of, hey, Mark, I know you're not a rapist, but this is what rapists do. That line shows how much I couldn't make the connection, couldn't flip that around to say this is what rapists do, therefore Mark is a rapist. But I was getting closer. I'm also really confused at this point because I don't remember drinking very much at the bonfire unlike the night of the first rape where I definitely drank too much. So it's all just not adding up that I could have blacked out so hard. And I'm still too naive to realize he could have put something in my drink. But I'm also getting closer to a space where I might start thinking along those lines. So he comes over to my house and he tells me a story where I essentially assaulted him. He tells me he walked me home and I was being all aggressive and wouldn't let him leave my house. And then he does this really solemn display of his upper arms, like he lifts them up and there are four dark purple bruises on the bottom of each arm, really symmetrical, clearly fingerprints and he tells me that I did that to him. That's how violent I was.

For context here, Mark weighs about 50 pounds more than I do and has massively more upper body strength. And on top of that, I'm just not a violent or even aggressive person sexually or otherwise. But again, he's looking me straight in the eye and telling me this elaborate story and I just completely crumble. To this day, I don't know what those bruises were all about. Some people have guessed that I was actually trying to fight him off. At the time, I had this fleeting thought that I quickly dismissed that maybe he had given the bruises to himself. In retrospect, they were so perfect and so dark that I almost wonder if they were some kind of makeup. But even now, knowing how calculating he is, that still seems incredible to me. So I've accepted that I'll never know, just like I'll never know if he roofied me either of those two nights or if he just got lucky that I blacked out as hard as I did. I also mostly forgot this detail until I was interviewing with the police almost a year later. But part of Mark's story of that night is that while he was walking me home, I stopped in my own front yard to pee in the grass. And I can't conceive of a world where this actually happened. This just isn't remotely in character, even for a drunk version of me. But I think it was exactly the detail he needed to plunge me into as deep a shame as possible to paint me as that out of control to give me one more thing to feel humiliated about. So just like with the first rape, I'm in total shock, except this time I am present enough in my body to feel completely nauseated by all of it. So I apologize for my supposedly violent behavior. He says it's okay. He doesn't need to talk any about it anymore unless I do. So we just don't talk about it.

COVID comes down hard just after that. Social distancing is a thing. I'm planting my garden. I'm unemployed, but I have some savings. So I just start spending most of my time gardening and listening to audiobooks and trying to dissociate from this mess until COVID lifts. And I can get out of town and figure out what to do. One of the audiobooks I happened to listen to during that time was Lolita, which I think is just interesting because I didn't not think about Mark and the child abuse allegations, but I still didn't put it together that I was dealing with a real life Humbert Humbert, even though I could see very clearly in Lolita’s case in the book how Humbert was a remorseless abuser who was rationalizing his abuse to the reader. But I think subconsciously at least the book helped me gain some sort of framework for what an abuser does made it more real to me. I know immediately after I came forward, I used Humbert Humbert as an illustration for Mark because Mark was so similar in the way he acted as though he was hopelessly in love with his victims.

Humbert: While we're on the subject, how did you come to be so late on Saturday afternoon? 

Lolita: Saturday I went to my piano lesson. 

Humbert: Your piano lesson? I thought that was on Wednesday. 

Lolita: No, it was changed to Saturday, remember? Between two and four, Miss Starch Piano. Well, I asked Michelle. She was with me. 

Humbert: Ask Michelle. That's what you always say to me. Well, now for a change, I'm going to ask you something about Michelle. Why does she give me these searching looks whenever she comes to the house?

Lolita: How should I know? 

Humbert: Have you told her anything about us? 

Lolita: No. Have you? 

Humbert: You've told her nothing. 

Lolita: You think I'm crazy? 

Humbert: You spend too much time with that girl. I don't want you to see her so often. 

Lolita: Oh, come on. She's the only friend I've got in this stinkin' world. You never let me have any fun. No, fun. You have all the fun in the world. 

Humbert: We have fun together, don't we? Whenever you want something, I buy it for you automatically. I take you to concerts, to museums, to movies. I do all the housework. Who does the tidying up? I do. Who does the cooking? I do. You and I, we have lots of fun. Don't we, Lolita?

So there's that. Then there's the thing on Facebook with Indiana Jones where I had that first tiny moment of the truth about the other victim trying to get out of my subconscious into my conscious mind. Then there was another moment in the fall of 2020, much when it would all start to make sense, where a third piece of pop culture started jabbing at me. I had this temporary job doing home care for an elderly man, and he loved the movie Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn. So I watched that for the first time with him. In the movie, Audrey Hepburn's character takes some sleeping pills and is all out of it. She's wandering around town and runs into this reporter. The reporter's kind of a sketchy dude, and they end up back at his apartment. She's kind of throwing herself at him. He just gets her in bed and lets her sleep it off. I remember thinking, wait, we're supposed to believe this guy is sort of devious, maybe kind of a bad boy type, not the most upstanding citizen. But even he knows you don't respond to someone's advances when they're under the influence. Like this random character in an old black and white movie knows this. Why can't I expect Mark to know this?

Princess Ann: Will you help me get undressed, please?
Joe Bradley: OK.
[Takes off her neck scarf]
Joe Bradley: Uh, there you are. You can handle the rest.
[Joe pours himself a glass of wine]
Princess Ann: May I have some?
Joe Bradley: No. Now, look…
Princess Ann: This is very unusual. I've never been alone with a man before, even with my dress on. With my dress off, it's most unusual. I don't seem to mind. Do you?
Joe Bradley: I think I'll go out for a cup of coffee. You'd better get to sleep. No, no, no. On this one.
Princess Ann: Terribly nice.
Joe Bradley: Hey. These are pajamas. They're to sleep in. You got to climb into them. You understand?
Princess Ann: Thank you.
Joe Bradley: And you do your sleeping on the couch. See, not on the bed, not on the chair, on the couch. Is that clear?

Why do I give him a pass? Just because he says I was drunkenly coming on to him, which at this point I still believe his story mostly. So I think that's what happened. So watching Roman Holiday was watching what should have happened both nights. Mark walked me home and I feel this growing sense that he's actually just not a good person. Meanwhile, that summer, Mark and his family had ended up moving to a different town. So he's no longer my next-door neighbor. And I suddenly have this physical distance from him again, like when he was in jail. And I think that also helps me have some space to breathe and process things. So a lot of pieces start falling into place that spring and summer. And by fall, I'm planning this long road trip where I'm going to go camping way down south where it's still warm enough to do that and just get away and be alone and try to figure out who I even am and what I'm going to do next.

And right before I leave, things really start snowballing. And I realize that I'm done keeping secrets and I'm going to tell Mark's wife, he's a cheater and a liar. And I don't care what happens after that, but I don't know how I'm going to do this. And I can't even clearly call Mark a rapist yet. I just finally know he's a really bad guy and he needs to be exposed. So I changed my trip plans without telling anyone. And I drive from Illinois to Utah to visit a friend to tell her my story and ask her advice. I feel this very strong conviction that she's the only person who can help me because she used to live near Big Rock and she knows most of the people involved. She's an actual licensed counselor. She was pretty much the only person in the extended community who believed Cherin’s daughter back in 2019 while everyone else was waffling and drifting towards supporting Mark. I don't actually know her that well at this point. She just feels like my only decent option.

But right before I go to Utah, I make sure to see Mark one last time at his new house. And I'm being careful to act normal, hoping he won't know that I'm mostly out of his distortion vortex now. And I watch him try to manipulate me in real time and it's terrifying, but it's also fascinating. He gets me alone away from his wife and kids and asks me if I'll have access to email on my primitive camping trip because he wants to write me about something that happened during the second rape. Obviously he doesn't call it that. He says he hesitated to tell me earlier, but he knows I'm always trying to be a better person. So basically he's implying that he wants to tell me something awful I supposedly did or said when I was blacked out so I can address it for my own personal growth. I can't say for sure, but I think he could feel me getting away just because I was open with everyone that I was going on this soul searching journey. And he wanted to make sure I didn't break free completely and expose him. So he came up with this new way to be able to plunge me back into shame and secrecy. He was making sure I would be out there in nature trying to enjoy myself while also the whole time dreading getting this email and bracing myself to find out the new depths of my apparent perversion. So the last time I saw Mark besides in court much later was the first time I really saw through his facade in the moment to the manipulative person that he was. And even then the word abuser didn't occur to me. It was just more evidence that he was kind of an awful person. I didn't even assume he would lie to me in the email he said he was going to send. I just felt like it was maybe an opportunistic way of continuing to rope me into his double life.

So I arrive in Utah in the middle of a blizzard and stay the night at my friend's house. And the next day we drop her kids off at an activity and we're sitting in the car and I'm terrified to begin. But once I get going, I tell her the whole story just rambling through it. And at the end, she gently points out that not only is Mark a rapist and a child molester, he's a textbook sexual predator who's clearly got his fingers deep in everyone's brains and has been manipulating me since day one. So suddenly this blurry image shifts into focus and all the little pieces finally fit together and I realize it's so much worse than I had understood consciously.

And I end up staying with my friend and writing a letter to Mark's wife that I'm going to forward to a bunch of other people in the community to make sure it's all out there in detail before Mark can start spinning things. This letter ends up being over 10,000 words and it explains what happened in detail over the last two and a half years, except for the young woman because I don't want to out her. So I just make a very vague reference to there being another victim. And I express regret and shame for keeping it all a secret. And I tell the community that I'm terrified of what Mark might do when he finds out. And I never want to see him again. And he's their problem now. It's their moral obligation to look at all the evidence they have and understand that he's a sexual predator and they've all been fooled.

I send this letter on November 19th, 2020. It has maybe a couple dozen recipients if you count spouses of people who received it. And within a day, Bishop Stewart has it, Bishop Stewart being Mark's priest's superior. And I'm getting this weird disappointing smattering of replies and silence from the community. And I'm in Utah freaking out trying to figure out what's happening back in Illinois. And I'm starting to talk to Sharon, the mother of Mark's nine-year-old victim, and talking to the mother of another child victim. And Sharon's in touch with more victims. And we're putting it all together. And I'm realizing in total horror that I'm not just a rape survivor, that I've been enabling my own rapist to get away with abusing other people. And I increasingly feel this deep conviction that I'm going to make amends for my failures and take down the sexual predator once and for all.

I hesitate even to explain my mindset because I've made a lot of enemies since I came forward and went public. And I realize how easy it is for people to say, she's trying to burn down the church because she's acting out of guilt and shame instead of embracing healing and forgiveness. But I believe that when you do harm, you try to repair it. Otherwise, you aren't really sorry. And the harm I did was too vast to repair, but I could still do harm reduction. I could help amplify the voices of the victims the community was silencing. And I could prevent more people from being victimized by raising awareness of the situation that enabled Mark to abuse people for so long. And I don't see any conflict between having compassion for myself as a victim and not blaming myself for being trapped in an impossible situation and also taking responsibility for the terrible harm I did to other people while I was trapped in that situation and trying to do something to rectify that. As my therapist would say to me much later, you don't know what you don't know. And once you know it, you take that knowledge and you do better.

So at the end of 2020, I fly back to Illinois to interview with the police. And meanwhile, I'm learning how the church community completely failed these other victims starting back in 2019 and specifically how they shunned Cherin's family out of the church after her daughter came forward. And now the situation is so much bigger than just me and Mark. And I'm co-writing a letter to the bishop explaining that there needs to be an independent investigation and we need to find and help whatever other victims Mark's had in his quarter of a century in these two different churches. And the bishop seems to be responding well. But meanwhile, my whole community back in Illinois is essentially ghosting me.

So I write some of the core people a second long email as a last-ditch attempt to tell them how bad this all is. And that lands on deaf ears. So essentially the first half of 2021 is this whirlwind of detectives investigating and me and other advocates corresponding with the bishop's response team and me now living in Utah because I'm not safe to go back to Illinois, which I realize is exactly why I didn't tell the community there about any of this sooner, because I knew underneath it all that I would be essentially drummed out once I came forward. And now I've gone from being an abuse victim and an abuse enabler to becoming the default lead advocate for these other victims whose stories were buried. And finally in May, the bishop's investigation launches and we realize that it's a terrible investigation and nothing like what we asked for. Most of my Illinois community at this point is no longer talking to me at all. And they're still not talking to Cherin or admitting that Mark is a child molester. So I start looking at more public options for accountability.

I came forward publicly on Twitter in June of 2021. I'd reached a point where I was so horrified by what Mark had done and so blown away by how his friends and his church were treating the victims that it felt like there was just no other option. It was go public or go home and let the bishop have his investigation, maybe throw Mark and his direct superior under the bus, then back to business as usual, never addressing how the entire system had enabled Mark for decades and then totally failed his victims when they started coming forward. Meanwhile, ever since I came forward, I'd been researching nonstop about sexual abuse cases in churches and how institutions minimize or cover up abuse. So I could see all of that going down in real time in our case.

And I knew that I was the only person in the whole situation who had the wherewithal to take this public. Cherin was exhausted and beaten down from two full years of dealing with being abandoned by her community and endless court dates where her former friends showed up to support her child's abuser. And then, of course, a deeply traumatized little girl who's been sexually abused and now lost most of her friends because the community is treating her like a liar. And none of the other victims are in a position to take the lead either. I'm by far the oldest victim. I'm 42 at this point. The Kane County police are investigating my case against Mark. I'm deep inside the specifics of all these different stories. I don't care who in the world knows my story. I just want the truth out there. And I've been following the Southern Baptist Convention abuse crisis on Twitter, and it just becomes very clear what I need to do next.

So I sit down and I spend days composing this tweet thread, laying it all out, blow by blow. My fellow advocates are helping me edit it to make sure it's airtight. I'm grabbing Facebook screenshots and blocking out people's faces who aren't church leaders. And I'm naming all these leaders who have mishandled the case, tagging the archbishop of the ACNA. This Twitter thread is kind of a long shot. My account has less than 50 followers at this point. I really barely know how to use Twitter. I have no idea about the structure or politics of the ACNA. I'm just hurling this story out into the public sphere to see how it lands. So I hit tweet, and I'm mostly concerned that I worded everything exactly right and got every last fact straight.

And within the hour, it starts spreading. And for the next few days, all I'm doing is trying to keep up with notifications. People are replying, they're retweeting, parishioners in the ACNA are DMing me. All I'm doing all day is answering messages and reading replies and making connections. And within the next two weeks, the archbishop's office is emailing me and Cherin. Religion News Service is writing a story about our case. The bishop makes a public announcement trying to do damage control. I call him out on Twitter with more detailed evidence. He goes on leave. Meanwhile, we're gathering up the people who seem most dedicated to advocating for victims. And we start writing an open letter to the archbishop about what we'd like to see happen as he takes over the investigation from the bishop. And we grab a website and social media accounts. And that's essentially the birth of ACNAtoo.

And I just want to say to any abuse survivors who are listening, every abuse experience is unique and every survivor has their own path forward to healing. I do not encourage anyone to do what I did. Going public with your full name on the permanent record. Please, please don't do this unless you are absolutely determined to and have really thought through the consequences. It will change your life. You could be sued. You will be slandered. The trolls will come out of the woodwork. People will say horrible things about you. And you will be re-traumatized. That's not even a question. For me and my situation, I was not going to be okay internally until I had done everything I possibly could to stop this man and shine the light on the system that enabled him. And I didn't have the space to even feel scared because the path forward was so clear. And I really just didn't care about blowback at the time. For me it was crucial to my healing to find my voice and to use it loudly. And I was really lucky to have support outside Mark's community and geographical distance from him and a solid court case against him. And I was fueled by two and a half years of being mind controlled by a sociopath plus now this burning shame of knowing I enabled him. And I just felt deeply that now that I'd finally retrieved my soul and my identity from this man and escaped this dysfunctional community, that I was going to be as much myself as I possibly could be to purge every last piece of that awfulness out of my life. And being me means being eternally stubborn about naming the ugly things no one wants to talk about and just refusing to back down.

So that's what I did and what I'm still doing. I'm not personally on a mission to reform the ACNA. That's not my job. That's for people inside the church to do, which what I have is my story and what I've learned from it. And that's what I care about telling people because I did not understand how any of this works until it happened to me. To contextualize this more clearly, Mark first raped me right when #MeToo was in full swing. And I was out there on Facebook saying hashtag Me Too about past situations and I had no way to name or even understand that I was inside by far the most abusive relationship of my entire life because Mark's game was just a whole new level of manipulation I'd never experienced before.

If a friend had told me their neighbor had sex with them when he was sober and they were blacked out drunk, I would have said, actually, he raped you. But with Mark's elaborate narrative and his arsenal of control tactics, I just couldn't apply this basic logic to my own experience. And I have always been someone who hates bullies and I thought I supported victims, but my working understanding of abuse and power dynamics was just dangerously shallow. I mean, my married neighbor has sex with me when I'm unable to consent. And a year later, it tells me he's having a secret affair with someone less than half his age and he's a lay pastor who regularly mentors young people. So now I'm facing a textbook case of rape and a textbook case of sexual abuse. And my reaction is I hate all of this. I hate that he's cheating on his wife, but I can't see that the real story is that my supposed friend is actually a sexual predator.

So what this all taught me is that if we do not understand in detail how abusers operate, and most people still don't, then however good our intentions are, we don't know at all how to support victims and we are fundamentally positioned to become victims or enablers ourselves. I hate that I didn't understand this until I was 41. I hate that I had to learn it the hard way and more than anything, I hate that I deeply harmed other victims in the meantime, but I have the entire second half of my life to shout it from the rooftops and I don't plan to ever shut up about it.

So if anyone listening to this is a survivor who isn't safe to come forward, who doesn't have all the privileges I had and all the alignment of the stars to do what I did, I just want you to know that you should do whatever you need to do to get to safety and start healing. Some of us can speak up, most of us can't yet. I talk to those people confidentially all the time and I'm being extra loud on their behalf because I have the privilege to do that.

There is more to Joanna's story if she decides to tell it at some point, specifically about how she attempted to address what happened to her with the Upper Midwest Diocese and Bishop Stewart Ruch. Over the past few years, Joanna has continued to offer insights from time to time about her experience and what she has learned from it on Twitter (or X). As a way of wrapping up this episode, I'd like to offer a few of them now.

In this first example, she addresses the problem of allowing oneself to fall prey to an abuser and sex offender in the first place. It's appalling to even think about, and I imagine most of us listening see ourselves as being above such manipulations. But Joanna has done the work of wrestling through how it did happen to her, and she offers us her insights here in the hope that we would recognize it if we ever found ourselves in similar circumstances. She starts off the thread by quoting part of a text someone sent her, which read, “An honest person is no match for a con man.”

o this, Joanna poses a number of questions and then counters them with the typical response of a manipulative abuser. Are you warm, open, and willing to share your experiences with others? She begins: well, the abuser will leverage their own sharing to extract sensitive information they can then use to manipulate you or even blackmail you. “I remember you mentioned you struggle with a similar kind of shame.” Are you empathetic and relational? The abuser will mirror these qualities to you, appearing to feel you and emphasizing your supposedly unique connection to them to create a bond they can use to control you. “Oh wow, I've never met anyone else who thinks about blank the way I do.” Moving on, are you a dedicated confidant who takes privacy concerns seriously? Well, then the abuser will entrust you with compromising information you don't want to carry but feel obligated not to disclose. Again, they might say, “I'm so thankful I can trust you. You're literally the only person I can talk to about this.” This whole thread is worth contemplating, as Joanna offers numerous examples of how an abuser will exploit someone's relational good intentions. Are you sensitive and careful not to poke at wounds? Quick to admit that your memory isn't perfect? Willing to treat your discomfort as a possible growth opportunity? Always open to how you can serve others? Compelled to help people in crisis? Have a heart for the underdog? The abuser can take advantage of all of these.

In another thread, Joanna warns us of the dangers of seeing the serial abuser as just another sinner needing God's love. To her, this is dangerous at best and lethal at worst. She says, sexual predators wreak havoc on the lives of their victims and on the greater community. And they love nothing more than to be mistaken for regular, everyday sinners. Abusers infiltrate many types of communities. But churches that focus on flashy, dramatic redemption stories are particularly easy targets. Especially if they don't bother to understand the psychology of predatory people. Or ignore that psychology in favor of spiritual bypassing. The best way to understand the psychology of abusers is to listen to their victims' stories. Not all abusers are the same, but they do draw from a standard playbook. People learn to recognize that playbook by listening to many survivor accounts. The themes will begin to emerge. The second best way to understand how abusers operate is to listen to psychology professionals who have worked extensively with abused victims. Not all these people agree with each other, just as not all survivors agree with each other. But again, themes will emerge.

Joanna then mentions two books, The Sociopath Next Door and Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door, both by Martha Stout. She continues by noting that sociopathic people can't form emotional connections, and thus can't feel empathy. Their neurological structure and functioning fundamentally precludes this. And people who can't feel empathy can't feel remorse. This describes an estimated 1-4% of the general population. Most sociopaths are extreme narcissists and are not sexual predators. But predatory behavior and antisocial personalities, not surprisingly, have a sizable overlap. So we need to grasp these psychological issues to properly contextualize sexual abuse and abuser rehabilitation. She ends this thread by admitting the science around sociopathy is complicated and discomforting, especially for Christians, when it, quote, challenges the belief that any person can theoretically be redeemed in this lifetime—And this is now me speaking and not Joanna, I should add—redeemed in a visibly tangible way through a person's outward actions and what they communicate to the world about themselves.

Speaking as a non-Christian, Joanna admits she doesn't have the answers to this, but she does point out that, quote, turning away from the documentation about sociopaths and other deeply destructive people and embracing redemption fantasies is incredibly dangerous. If we don't understand abusers, we easily become victims and enablers, both of which I have been, she says. Moving on, she says, so speaking as someone who learned all this the hard way, the realities of human evil are soul-chilling. Nothing is more tempting to bypass and nothing is more important to face.

Finally, in one more thread, Joanna responds to the reaction that people in a church community often have to the serial abuser. He's such a good guy, they say. He has such a heart for the Lord. To this, Joanna says, thinking from the abuser standpoint, why wouldn't they do everything possible to cultivate a likable everyday persona? How else would they continue to abuse victims with impunity? Cultivating community credibility is the cornerstone of the entire operation. But Joanna understands how easy it is to be fooled because it happened to her. Her realization about this is key. She says, why wouldn't evil masquerade as good? Isn't that the clear strategic choice? Why would people who molest children or sexually abuse adults act like child molesters and rapists? What do we even think that would look like? Do we think they want to get caught? Of course they don't. Of course they require an expert facade. It's so painfully obvious. At the end of the day, we don't want to believe that people who seem wonderful to us can be doing unspeakable things out of our line of sight. It shatters our sense of reality and bulldozes our confidence in our own intuition. We desperately need to believe we have abuser radar, and we just don't. Sometimes we see signs if we know what to look for, and sometimes a sixth sense alerts us if we're able to connect with it. Other times, there's a nice person who seems entirely sincere and we just have no indication whatsoever that anything is off. It's terrifying to admit that any number of people we love and respect could have a truly dark side. It makes us feel incredibly vulnerable, which we are. Abusers count on us caving to this fear and grasping for a nonsensical but soothing lie. He's too nice to be an abuser. And there are abusers who show up creepy, she concludes. There are contexts where people can get away with that, but most predatory people mask it well. So how could such a nice guy be an abuser is a silly question. Try instead: why do I think an abuser wouldn't seem like a nice guy?

Links to all these threads will be provided in the show notes if you want to read them in full. Joanna's story and reflections leave us with no easy answers. But having sat with her words for some time now, I also believe she would not want us walking around paranoid, looking at everyone with an askew glance to discern if they were a predatory serial abuser. Relatedly, in a recent exchange I had with her in preparation for this episode, she finds this process that she's been through and that she is opening up our eyes to be empowering. She says, I have vastly better social and emotional boundaries than I have ever had in my life. I have shed unhealthy relationships and I can finally look back over my life and understand a lot of patterns I didn't understand before, both abusive and just dysfunctional dynamics. I don't think I'm immune to being taken in by someone again, but I do feel better prepared and I think I will probably be able to recognize it much more quickly. A similar point she once told me was that we have to live our lives, hopefully doing the things that bring us joy and being surrounded by the people we love and care about. This should be the norm for all of us.

But Joanna's story bears witness to how that pursuit toward normalcy and the hope of the good life can find itself devastatingly disrupted when an abuser or a sociopath enters our sphere. I hope her story has offered us the opportunity to ponder how it could happen to us. To offer merciful understanding for those it has happened to, and to begin the process of learning how to best safeguard our communities to recognize the signs of an abuser who has entered into our midst. In our next episode, we offer the reflections of a former Church of Resurrection member, writer Kelly Goewey. The episode is called: Survivors Are the Mission.

If you believe in what The Wall of Silence podcast is trying to accomplish, please consider supporting us through our Patreon page at patreon.com/wallofsilencepodcast. As I get to it, there will be extra interviews and conversations released exclusively for Patreon members. But even if I don't, because, well, things have been somewhat difficult, I appreciate the support. I am so humbled that some of you have been willing to give over these past few months, helping to make this show a reality as we lift up the voices of Church abuse survivors. And I'm honored to be able to continue bringing these episodes to you once again.

The Wall of Silence podcast is produced and edited by me, Chris Marchand. I also do the music and our artwork is by Alice Mitchlick. You can find her other work or commission a piece through her Instagram account, @mouthful.of.stars. Please rate and review the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast service you listen on. You can find a link to the transcript of this episode and through related links in the show notes. Thanks again for listening.