Excerpt from Cherin Marie’s May 1, 2021 email to Bp. Stewart Ruch:

”During our group zoom call in February ‘21 you said that pastoral care plans had been made for everyone, back in 2019, when [redacted] disclosed allegations against Mark. Although Deacon Val promised us that she would be creating pastoral care plans for our family, back in June of 2019, this never actually happened. No one in my family ever received a pastoral care plan from Rez, and the only personal pastoral support our family actually got (aside from Val’s presence at two or three court hearings) was a handful of one on one prayer appointments that I initiated and scheduled with Deacon Val. Some of these prayer sessions were extremely helpful and encouraging to me, but eventually I stopped initiating them because the last few were too painful. At one scheduled prayer appointment with Val I drove 40 minutes to the church office, but she had forgotten about our appointment and was not there. This was an honest mistake, and although I was hurt by it, I forgave her quickly and moved on, but opted to schedule phone prayer sessions after that. A few weeks later we met for prayer again (by phone) but Val called over 30 minutes after our scheduled time and was only able to speak for a few minutes and pray for me very briefly. I had scheduled this appointment many days in advance and was, at the time, in very desperate need of prayer and support, which made the briefness of this call especially hurtful for me. For the following scheduled prayer appointment Val did not call at all. I eventually texted her and was able to have a short prayer session by phone, an hour after our planned time. I have never initiated a prayer session with Val since, and she has not reached out to pray for me either.”

Read more at https://www.acnatoo.org/diocese-of-the-upper-midwest/part-3-victims-mother-speaks