Date: January 19, 2021
From: Joanna Rudenborg
To: Stewart Ruch
Cc: Cherin [redacted], Eve Ahrens, [redacted advocate], William Beasley, Eirik Olsen, Keith Hartsell
Subject: next steps
Dear Stewart,
Thank you for your kind email on December 8th. I have been working on a response for some time, trying to balance the urgency of what I need to say to you, and my concern with saying it carefully and intentionally.
In the end, it became quite long, so I’ve done my best to organize it clearly, including a summary up front and section headings throughout.
First, though, an explanation of/to all this email's recipients:
William, Eirik, and Keith, I cc’ed you because of your Greenhouse connections and leadership roles within the diocese. I assume you are all aware of my November 2020 disclosure to Stewart and others, that Mark Rivera, former catechist of Christ Our Light Anglican, raped me twice and coerced my silence about it, from 2018-2020. I assume you are also aware of [redacted identifying information], also disclosed this past November. And I think you are aware that Cherin [redacted] brought her daughter’s allegations of Mark molesting her, to COLA, back in May of 2019, and that those allegations were gravely mishandled, forcing Cherin and her family to leave the church. I will forward you my full story, in a separate email, and I will tell some of Cherin’s story in this email.
I’ve also cc’ed Eve Ahrens, Cherin [redacted], and [redacted advocate]. Eve is an experienced therapist, who has additional training in the dynamics of manipulation and sexual abuse, through the Allender Center (more on the Allender Center later). Cherin is, as mentioned, the mother of one of Mark’s victims, in addition to being a member of Church of the Resurrection from 1995 until Christ Our Light formed in 2013; her daughter’s case against Mark is currently being prosecuted in Kane County. [redacted sentence]. Each one of these three is a current or former Rez-goer, and each one is intimately connected to both Rez and COLA through myriad social and/or familial ties. They each know well some or all of the six core members of Mark’s community, whose conduct I will be discussing at length in this email. Eve, Cherin, and [redacted advocate] are my front line emotional support team, these last two months, and each of them is deeply invested in this situation. The four of us jointly compiled the list of questions, and the list of resources, that appear at the end of the email.
Summary
Here is an introduction to, and summary of, this email, so you know where it’s going, as you read:
Stewart, you and Katherine have assured Eve and me that the diocese is handling the fallout of my November disclosure by offering counseling to the various people involved, assuring everyone's safety, and consulting with diocesan lawyers to take all the proper steps. Val and Katherine have indicated to Cherin and me, respectively, that the folks from COLA are wrestling with this new information ([redacted] and my disclosures) and facing the reality of what was going on in their church, these past few years, as Mark, their former catechist, led a double life that included him raping me and [redacted identifying information].
I fully believe that you and the diocese have the best of intentions, in your response to this situation, and I appreciate both you and Katherine reaching out to me to offer support, and putting so much time and energy, generally, towards this issue. Unfortunately, every indication I have, two months in, from COLA themselves, points to the fact that dangerously little is being accomplished. Vulnerable people are not safe emotionally and/or physically, and COLA is not facing the reality of what Mark has done, or what they have done while under his influence.
I know this is a bold and painful assertion, on my part. The bulk of this email consists of me explaining my conclusion to you, in detail.
First, I will update you on how COLA has (and mostly has not) communicated with me, in the last two months. Then I will tell you the story of COLA and [Cherin’s family], from May 2019 to present. Then I will explain to you why COLA’s response to me, Cherin [redacted], and [redacted], in the wake of my November email, tells me that the diocese is not yet addressing the Mark Rivera situation in a way that protects vulnerable people and does justice to Mark’s victims and the community.
All of that will set the stage for the list of questions and the list of resources towards the end of the email. The questions are for us to clarify exactly what the diocese has done and is doing, concretely, to address the Mark Rivera abuse situation and its greater implications for the diocese. The resource list is our contribution to your current efforts, to fill in the gaps with education, accountability, and other action steps, where those things are currently lacking.
COLA’s response to Cherin, [redacted], and me, since November 19
There are six or seven people I refer to when I say “COLA,” in this email: [redacted] and Rand York, Chris and [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], and, depending on context that will be obvious, Mark Rivera. Not all of them are equally implicated in every instance where I refer to them collectively, but the group of them were the core membership of Christ Our Light, along with Cherin and [Cherin’s husband] (who were with COLA from its inception, and who each served on vestry and in various leadership roles until they and their children had to leave the church in May 2019). COLA, as you know, is/was a tiny church, and so has been largely steered over the years by Fr. Rand as priest, Mark as catechist, Chris as senior warden and worship leader, and their wives. [redacted] attended both Rez and COLA for years, is tightly intertwined with the three central COLA couples, and also plays a central role in the upcoming story about [Cherin’s family].
These are the communications I have had with these seven people, since I sent the email on November 19:
Chris Lapeyre: On Nov. 25, Chris sent me an apology for his role in covering up Mark’s first assault of me, though he did not say “assault” or “rape,” but rather “encounter.” He included a draft of a letter he had written to “the community” (I’m not sure whom he included in that designation), confessing and asking forgiveness for his role in hiding this from them. I replied promptly, thanking him for the effort but pointing out the deficiencies in his apology to both me and the community, including his failure to explain what he even knew (and thus covered up) about the rape, and his failure to name Mark’s sexual sins (rape, abuse) for what they are. I wrote Chris a total of three emails, requesting clarification and proper naming of things, and have heard nothing back. My last email to him was on Dec. 6.
[redacted]: I know [redacted] by far the least of any of the six. She did not reach out to me in the wake of my email, and I have not reached out to her.
[Redacted] and Rand York: Fr. Rand sent me a two-sentence email Nov. 19, stating his and [redacted]’s love and support, as my godparents. I wrote them both back on Dec. 10, thanking them for this and expressing my desire to open channels of communication and find out where they’re at and how they’re moving forward. The tone of my email was congenial and solicitous of their well-being, versus my more direct and pointed emails to Chris. Neither [redacted] nor Rand has responded in any way, nor have they reached out to [redacted] since my November disclosure, despite [redacted] and [Rand’s wife] being each other’s oldest friends.
[Mark’s wife]: The only communication I’ve received from [redacted] was a quick, scattered text on Nov. 19. I saw it three days after the fact, when I finally turned my electronic communications back on. I asked [redacted], soon after, for advice on reaching out to [Mark’s wife]. [redacted] counseled me not to, that [Mark’s wife] had enough to deal with. I then asked [Rand’s wife] and Rand, in my Dec. 10 email to them, to tell [redacted] I was glad to talk if she wanted to, but would let her lead. I don’t know if they have shared that with her.
Mark Rivera: I have not communicated with Mark in any way since my November 19 email to the community. He sent me a couple of text messages that day, apparently just after [redacted] told him I had disclosed something, including one attempting to get me to call him and tell him exactly what I had told [redacted]. I ignored these. He has not attempted to communicate with me since.
[redacted]: [redacted], unlike Chris, Rand, and [redacted], has responded to me, since November. She was very kind, in her late November emails, and had started to help me in my attempts to communicate further with Chris. Then her life got hectic, in early December. She apologized for a delay in responding to my emails, December 7, then disappeared from communication for the last five weeks, until I texted her about some practical matters indirectly related to the situation, a few days ago. She is still being kind, but it is clear from her responses that she, like the rest of Mark’s community, does not grasp the severity of the situation we are all in.
Here are some of the things that are problematic about COLA’s response to me these last two months, besides [redacted], Rand, [redacted], and Chris’s complete failure to respond to emails I wrote each of them, over a month ago:
Not a single person from COLA has taken responsibility to me, personally, for the way in which their community represented itself, when I moved there in 2017, as a Christian community, and thus a safe space, when, in fact, it was the opposite. None of them has acknowledged that they lent undeserved credibility, as a community, to their church catechist, who raped me twice, in my bed, in my apartment, while his wife and children slept next door. None of them has acknowledged that there is a good reason (now being played out in real time) why I intuitively did not feel safe coming to them, with the information I had, all the way back in 2018. None of them has acknowledged the fact that my November 19 email drew clear lines between Mark raping me and abusing [redacted] ([redacted identifying information]), and the fact that a year and a half ago, Cherin [redacted] brought her daughter’s allegations of Mark’s molestation, to COLA, shortly after which other accounts of Mark’s sexual misbehavior surfaced, and that COLA chose, instead of supporting [Cherin’s family], to actively push them out of the church, and to actively support an alleged child molester, refusing, in most cases, even to listen to the growing body of evidence that he was a sexual predator.
Not only have they not acknowledged any of this to me, but not a single one of them has contacted Cherin, or [redacted] to say that they have realized that Mark is, indeed, a sexual predator, based on two undeniably credible accounts ([redacted] and me), and that they were clearly wrong to dismiss [Cherin's daughter], [redacted], [redacted], and others whom Mark abused, and whose stories they refused even to listen to in detail, or else discounted out of hand.
All of this is unacceptable. In order to fully understand why, you need to know more details of [Cherin’s family]’s story.
The story of [Cherin’s family] & COLA, May 2019—present
Though I did not attend the church, I was neighbors with the seven folks at COLA’s core, and very much enmeshed with this community, when [Cherin's daughter]’s allegations emerged in May 2019, and I watched the saga unfold around me. I was not central to it, but I was complicit in allowing it to happen, something for which I have since apologized to the [redacted] and [redacted] families, and for which I am starting to make amends, by helping bring their stories to light.
On Friday, May 17, 2019, [Cherin's daughter], then 9 years old, confided in her mom that Mark had been molesting her [redacted identifying information]. Cherin immediately texted Fr. Rand and made arrangements to meet with him the following morning, [identifying information redacted]. Fr. Rand said he wanted to confront Mark privately about these allegations, and later that day asked Cherin to attend a meeting with Fr. Rand, Chris, and Mark. At this meeting, Mark denied the allegations, and Chris explained to Cherin that he and Fr. Rand had been advised that they did not need to report these allegations to the police, and said that Cherin didn't need to, either. Chris then asked Cherin to reveal everything [Cherin's daughter] had shared with her, in front of Mark, and asked whether she planned to report this to the authorities and what she planned to do with this information, going forward. Chris, to his credit, did privately admit that Cherin probably needed to report [Cherin's daughter]'s allegations, when he and Cherin were outside together, after the meeting.
Cherin called the police the following Monday morning, after a Rez clergy member advised her to report it immediately. Shortly after that, DCFS visited the Riveras’ home, unannounced, as is customary, to investigate.
When [Cherin’s daughter] first came forward, COLA folks were shocked, and indicated they may believe [Cherin's daughter], but they quickly backed down and flocked to Mark’s defense. The DCFS visit was a major turning point. [redacted] and [redacted], at least, were furious with Cherin for not warning [Mark’s wife] DCFS may show up at her house. When she had filed her police report, the police had advised Cherin not to reveal to anyone that she had done so, and specifically assured her that DCFS would not be involved in this case, given that Mark was not an immediate caretaker to [Cherin's daughter]. So Cherin had felt sure that there was no danger of the Riveras receiving a visit from DCFS. Cherin learned later that the police officer decided to make a report to DCFS separately, on behalf of the Rivera children, due to the seriousness of [Cherin's daughter]'s allegations. But the COLA narrative had already formed: that Cherin had called DCFS, that she had lied to [Mark’s wife] and [redacted] about it, that the DCFS visit had traumatized [redacted] and the children, and that this was all Cherin’s fault. Things went downhill from there. Suddenly everyone showed up with circumstantial evidence that [Cherin’s family] were not credible people, that Cherin was overreacting and being irrational, that [Cherin's daughter] was likely lying, and that Mark was likely innocent.
Immediately after the DCFS visit, then, COLA folks began cutting off communication with [Cherin’s family], to varying degrees. Fr. Rand and [redacted] (Cherin’s aunt and uncle with whom she and her children had lived for two years before she married [Cherin’s husband]) were the first to stop speaking to her. [redacted] immediately cut off all contact with Cherin, and has not spoken to her since she came forward with [Cherin's daughter]'s allegations, despite Cherin saying hello to her in passing at a store, shortly after that. Fr. Rand did not respond to any of Cherin's attempts to communicate with him, aside from a one-line “We will not stop loving [Cherin’s family]" reply. Within a few hours of the DCFS visit, Fr. Rand cancelled baby [Cherin’s son]’s scheduled baptism without any explanation to [Cherin’s family]. He later emailed Cherin, asking her to withdraw from her role as a vestry member, because she had not been attending COLA services.
Chris and [redacted] Lapeyre, meanwhile, were initially open to communication; they visited [Cherin’s husband] and Cherin at their house to speak with them about the situation, and expressed their desire to remain connected. Shortly after, however, during a conversation with Cherin, Chris said he had heard enough and didn't want to hear anything else about Mark, after which time he greatly limited his contact with [Cherin’s family].
Cherin initiated three conversations with [redacted], spread throughout the spring and summer of 2019, but gave up on communicating with her when [redacted] said plainly that she didn't need to hear [Cherin's daughter]'s story because the details didn't matter. It became clear to Cherin that everyone had already made up their minds, and she eventually learned that much of the information she had shared with [redacted] in an attempt to explain the situation and reestablish contact with her close friends and church community, was being used to discredit her family, especially [Cherin's daughter].
Since Mark continued to attend COLA, it was not safe for [Cherin's daughter] to be there, so [Cherin’s family] had to stop attending immediately after [Cherin's daughter]’s story came out. Despite being unable to attend COLA church services, Cherin planned to continue going to COLA's morning prayer, once things calmed down a little bit, since she had regularly attended these services for years, and Mark only attended them on very rare occasions. Then Cherin learned that Mark had been invited to live at the house where morning prayer was being held, although no one had warned Cherin about this. This communicated to Cherin that she was no longer welcome at these services, either.
Overall, COLA made it abundantly clear that [Cherin’s family] were no longer welcome in their church, so [Cherin’s family] began to attend Rez, Cherin’s church home before COLA. But that was also uncomfortable for them, because [redacted] and [redacted] attended services there, and other people at Rez who had caught wind of COLA’s narrative about [Cherin’s family] began avoiding their family, or acting strangely around them. When Cherin reached out to a Rez clergy member about her growing discomfort at Rez, her concerns were dismissed and she was advised to attend a different service, since her family's presence was painful and uncomfortable for [redacted] and [redacted]. As attending a different service was not an option for her family, and she did not feel safe or welcome at Rez any longer, Cherin and her family had to leave altogether, and were without a church home for some time afterwards.
This is roughly what the COLA community narrative-building looked like, in the wake of [Cherin's daughter]’s allegations:
[Cherin's daughter] told a lie once, in some dispute among children, [redacted] remembered. Yes, [Cherin's daughter] comes from a “broken home,” contributed someone else. Her moral compass is off; it’s no fault of her own, but we can’t trust her. She has that weird feeling about her, don’t you agree? a bit of a sociopathic tendency? And Cherin is divorced, [redacted information]. She is damaged, and she's untruthful, too; she lied to [redacted] and [Mark’s wife] about calling the authorities. Also, pointed out someone else, [Cherin’s husband] seemed to have something against Mark, so there’s a good chance he influenced [Cherin's daughter] to turn on Mark and tell lies about him. And, have you noticed how [Cherin’s husband] is suspiciously uptight about people giving hugs and being physically affectionate? He clearly has issues there, so he is probably overreacting to Mark’s natural effusiveness and connection with people, and sexualizing it, in his own dirty mind. [Cherin's daughter] probably picked up on this and is pandering to her stepdad by making Mark out to be a bad guy. [redacted identifying information]. [redacted identifying information], and she is just confused, or under [Cherin’s husband]’s influence, and told the stories about Mark, instead of the real abuser?
I listened to all of this go down, in scattered bits, over the end of May and beginning of June. I watched this basic story coalesce, and take hold in the community consciousness, until some version of it became COLA’s gospel truth. And Mark watched, too, carefully feeding it as he needed to, to protect himself and get rid of [Cherin’s family].
From day one, Mark mangled spiritual concepts in order to create his alibi. On May 18, when Cherin sat down with Rand, Chris, and Mark, to confront Mark about [Cherin's daughter]’s allegations, Mark did not simply say, “I didn’t do it.” He denied ever molesting [Cherin's daughter], then went on to tell Cherin that [redacted] and [redacted] were actually not surprised that [Cherin's daughter] had said these things, because, he said, [redacted] had been acting strangely for some time, to the point that [redacted] and [redacted] had to ask her if someone had been touching her inappropriately. He implied that [redacted] had concluded that both [redacted]’s struggles and [Cherin's daughter]'s allegations against Mark were a spiritual attack against Mark and against the church, and that Cherin and everyone else should dismiss them as such.
In other words, Mark acknowledged that two little girls to whom he regularly had unsupervised access were acting like they were being abused / claiming he abused them. He then told his church that the reasonable explanation for this was that Satan was attacking the community. Satan, by extrapolation of this logic, was torturing or manipulating two 9-year-old children, in very specific ways, in order to frame him, Mark, as a child abuser.
Pause and think about this for a second: Mark either created or encouraged a spiritualized fantasy story to explain away [redacted]’s red flag behavior ([redacted personal information]), delivered it to the parents of his alleged victim, their priest, and the senior warden of the church, and then fit [Cherin's daughter]’s story of his abuse inside of this narrative. Cherin recalls this very clearly, and I recall him telling me some version of this “Satan is attacking our church” story, later, in conversation.
Mark's transparent and ridiculous dodge was actually an incredibly clever improvisation on his part, because the community fell for it. Over the following weeks, despite initial doubts, they absorbed this idea that dark forces were at work (which was the true part), but that Mark was not the conduit of these dark forces, and even, potentially, their greatest victim. That logic, conveniently, made [Cherin’s family] the conduit of the dark forces: vindictive liars bent on destroying Mark’s family. Truly a spectacular piece of narrative building, on Mark’s part.
This would not be the last time false claims to spiritual intuition were used against [Cherin's daughter]. [Mark’s wife] herself later told [redacted], who told me, that [Mark’s wife] felt that Mark could not have molested [Cherin's daughter] when she ([Mark’s wife]) was anywhere nearby, because she would have sensed that something evil was going on, and she never got that sense. (At the time [Mark’s wife] said this, Mark was—as you and [redacted] only recently learned—[redacted identifying information]. He had also managed to rape me, the previous year, while [Mark’s wife] slept next door. While I believe [Mark’s wife]’s claims to spiritual intuition about her surroundings were sincere on her part, they were, nonetheless, tragically wrong.)
These are the sorts of wildly inappropriate ways in which COLA folks, whom I otherwise know to be rational and intelligent people, cobbled together a narrative to convince themselves Mark was not a child molester. This is the defense I assume they are still doubling down on today, in their silence to Cherin and [redacted] and me, and why I know that whatever counseling or intervention is happening with them, right now, it is not coming close to forcing them into reality.
When the Kane County Sheriff’s Department arrested Mark mid-June 2019, they unfortunately solidified his position as a martyr, in Big Rock. "Poor Mark; what if he goes to prison for 40 years for something he didn’t do, all because of this pathological child liar?" went the narrative.
I bought into this narrative: not fully, but to the degree that I felt compelled to “let the courts decide” and otherwise force myself to consider Mark innocent until proven guilty. I came to feel that telling [redacted identifying information] might do exactly what it should do: make [Cherin's daughter]’s narrative more credible, and make people turn against Mark. I was so delusional, faced with the cognitive dissonance of what I knew versus Mark’s “I’m a good guy” facade (as fervently upheld by the entire community), that I came to believe that me speaking the truth would somehow be a disservice to justice.
As it stands, I needn’t have worried about poisoning the well. It does not seem that two obviously credible and accepted allegations of rape and abuse, nor Mark's perpetrating a massive deception on his entire community for at least two and a half years, have done anything to convince his friends that he is lying and [Cherin's daughter] is telling the truth.
In the summer of 2019, with [Cherin’s family] out of the picture, the remaining COLA community rallied to support Mark. [redacted]’s advocacy, in particular, tapped into the money needed to pay Mark’s bond, allowing him to get out of jail, return immediately to [redacted identifying information], and rape me a second time—all while he got more opportunity than ever to play up his victimhood by reinforcing to everyone how jail had traumatized him, and gain unprecedented support from every side. And despite my earth-shattering disclosure two months ago, I have no indication that that support has waned.
When I say the diocesan leadership has not assured the safety of people in this situation, part of what I am referring to is the emotional safety of Mark’s various victims. I am in Utah because Big Rock is no longer a safe place for me. My entire neighborhood back home appears to be in denial about my rapist, and last I heard he is still living in Winfield with his wife and kids, and apparently receiving counseling through Rez. The entire extended community around Mark is not emotionally safe for me or for [Cherin’s family] to be anywhere near, because nobody has made the obvious decision to center Mark’s victims.
If you do not center victims, you center their abuser. This situation is not like a typical marital dispute, or other 50/50 type conflicts. This is a case of a predator and his victims. You cannot be pro-predator, and pro-victim. Centering survivors means actively supporting them in every available way, including making the community safe for them by formally excluding their abuser from it.
This is the exact opposite of what has happened in this situation, and continues to happen, as I write you this. Fr. Rand and COLA not only shunned [Cherin’s family], starting in the spring of 2019, they publicly supported Mark. Fr. Rand, Chris, and [redacted], along with other members of the Big Rock community, attended all of Mark's court hearings, where they talked to and sat with Mark, making it abundantly clear, to anyone watching, whose side they were on. Cherin was also at these hearings, and although she was grateful to have Deacon Val present at the first three, she never had visible priestly support at any point, and attended the numerous subsequent hearings without any clergy or community support.
Again, this is unacceptable. And COLA has not yet admitted it, let alone apologized.
I will be sending an email to [redacted], [redacted], Rand, Chris, [redacted], and [redacted], very soon, explaining my disappointment in how their community is treating Cherin and me, specifically. I will be forwarding that email to the four of you, as I would like you to read, and have on record, what I’ve said to them. The email also contains an incident list detailing as much as I am able to share with them at this time, about ten victims of Mark’s sexual misbehavior. I have included that same list at the end of this email.
Why COLA can’t admit the truth
Please ask yourselves how Mark was able to tell his community that [redacted] was exhibiting signs of sexual abuse, just after another child accused him of sexual abuse, and then convince them that this evidence added up, not to him being a child abuser, but to a Satanic attack on the COLA community, and on him, Mark, in particular.
This is not rational thinking, that people bought this. But it is a version of what happens in almost every case like this. I have been very close to this community, and this situation, for years now, and I obviously have my own painfully intimate knowledge of how Mark operates, that I have just recently begun to face. I have consulted extensively with Eve on dynamics of individual and community manipulation, and spoken with several people (including [redacted], and [redacted]’s and her mutual friend, [redacted]), who have each described to me virtually identical experiences of trying to help an abuse survivor confront the abuser’s community, only to meet with denial, anger, and dismissal. And I have long understood, through endless public accounts of sexual abusers whose communities protected them, that this is the norm, although before this situation, I had never confronted it personally, and certainly never been complicit in it myself, as I was complicit in COLA’s cruelty to [Cherin’s family].
Based on my assembled information and experience, I think I can explain to you more or less what is happening, with COLA.
First of all, by the very nature of this sort of situation, the abuser has spent years developing and promulgating a narrative about himself, which is therefore already deeply embedded in the community consciousness. This is the only way an abuser ever gets away with abusing multiple people over years and years. Mark has spent over two decades establishing his credibility within the community, capitalizing on his proximity to credible people, and inserting himself as deeply as he can into the community's social and spiritual fabric. This makes it incredibly painful and nearly impossible for the adults nearest him ever to admit to themselves what has really happened and what it means for the community. They feel, deep down, that if they pull that thread (“Mark’s basically a good guy”) out of the social fabric, everything they hold dear will unravel.
By necessity, then, the admission that Mark is a master manipulator and a dangerous predator constitutes a serious identity crisis for [redacted], [redacted], Rand, Chris, [redacted], [redacted], and everyone else who needs to believe that their own individual and collective judgment and spiritual intuition could never have allowed for someone to manipulate them, this badly, for this long. Facing the truth would mean they had to admit that Mark successfully used their naivety and capacity for denial to facilitate and cover up his ongoing sexual and emotional abuse of young children, adolescents, and adults, to the point of getting them to actively discredit and socially ostracize his victims.
Because the extent of Mark’s evil is so fundamentally threatening to the community fabric, and because their unintentional yet very real complicity in it would be so devastating to face, every adult close to Mark is compelled, on a survival level, to scramble madly within themselves to rationalize, downplay, compartmentalize, or otherwise rewrite the narrative to keep it within a certain manageable scope. They must force it to fit within what they need to believe—not about Mark, but about themselves, and each other, and their community. I watched this happen, starting a year and a half ago, and I know that it is still happening, because Cherin and [redacted] are still, and I am now, experiencing COLA's silence. I know it, too, because it is tiresomely predictable. It is what happens every time, in every story like this. “We could not have been harboring a pathological abuser in our organization for decades,” says every organization ever confronted with this. “Yes, that happens to others, but not to us.”
It would be somewhat different if my disclosure were the first chance Mark’s community had, to confront his evil, and they were still too dumbstruck to speak to me. But they have had a year and a half to process allegations of Mark’s sexual violation of a child, and they chose to believe what they chose to believe, a year and a half ago. And despite all evidence to the contrary, they can’t seem to escape that belief.
The ripple effects of COLA’s harm
As you know from your work addressing systemic racism, Stewart, there is no such thing as neutrality, in the face of oppression. There is damage that is being done, every day, already, and if you do not vocally take the side of the oppressed, and especially if you do not actively address an egregious act of racism inside your own community, then you are on the side of the oppressor. Your first duty is always to the least of these. And this situation is precisely the same.
COLA’s aiding and abetting Mark Rivera this last year and a half is a diocesan problem, and getting counseling for COLA folks, and for Mark's known victims, is the very least the diocese needs to do about it. I don’t think you can see it clearly yet, but the very public yet also hush-hush Mark v. [Cherin's daughter] saga—going down in plain sight at COLA and spreading in whispers throughout pockets of Rez—has infected the heart of your diocese to the point that it now constitutes a moral crisis.
Every survivor of sexual abuse that attends your churches already has the uphill battle to fight against the shame abusers instill in their victims. Now the ones anywhere near this situation have received the exact message that will silence most of them, indefinitely: COLA, Rez, the Anglican Church, my community, will not believe me, and they will not support me, if I tell them that I have been abused. They will not believe I was abused in the past. They will not believe someone is abusing me now. They will not believe me if someone abuses me in the future. The only way I can limit the damage of my abuse, is to never, ever tell anyone.
That’s the message COLA sent the greater community, and still sends it, every day they ignore Cherin and [redacted] and me, and make our old spaces unsafe for us to come back to, as a punishment for speaking the truth. Until you take dramatic, public action, in the face of this, as a diocese, you are helping them send this message.
Not only will the vulnerable people in your community internalize this message for themselves (“do not speak of abuse”), but as it sinks in, over the years and decades to come, they will continue to spread it, like the contagion it is. Repressing their own experiences of harm, unable to face their own trauma, they will become the adults of the future who silence their children, and other people’s children, when those children risk everything to share the story of their abuse. They may not believe those children, because they have soaked in the practice of denial so long. Or they may believe them, but know that others will not. Expecting that their family will be discredited and ostracized, they will make the cruel decision to silence the victim, so that they do not lose their community. Meanwhile abusers, protected by this growing web of silent complicity, will continue to find new victims to abuse.
There is no end to this, Stewart. One Mark Rivera can poison an entire community, and precipitate indefinite intergenerational trauma, if left unchecked. All through cleverly pushing a twisted spiritualized narrative and playing on the sympathies and good intentions and deep fears of everyone around him, to make himself appear to be the victim, and to make the real victims disappear, or recede into perpetual silence.
Deep harm has long since been done, and is still being done, every minute, as I write you this. The only way to counteract this ongoing harm, the only way to redeem this long-rotten situation in Big Rock, and the ripple effects to the Rez community and beyond, is to take decisive, immediate action, far beyond what I see happening so far.
The ripple effects: one example
When I began to face the extent of the harm Mark did to me, this November, I immediately had to do something even more difficult, which was to face the extent of the harm I had done to others. I owed a massive apology to Cherin and her family, and to [redacted] and her family, and I delivered those as well as I knew how. I owed my deepest apology to [redacted], and delivered that, too, as well as I knew how. I also apologized to [redacted] and [redacted]. The letter I will shortly send to COLA apologizes to the six of them, too, and most specifically to [Mark’s wife], the one whom I harmed most directly and deeply.
I’m learning, as I go, just how many apologies I owe. Several weeks ago, I apologized to [redacted advocate], who is cc’ed on this email. [redacted advocate], as I mentioned at the beginning of the email, is a sexual abuse survivor. She is my friend of several years, [identifying information redacted].
[redacted advocate] watched in horror, starting May 2019, as COLA turned on [Cherin’s family] and coalesced around Mark. She looked on as Fr. Rand posted a nostalgic picture of himself and Mark on Facebook, consistently attended court hearings in support of the defense in [Cherin's daughter]’s case, and participated in intimate social events with the Riveras, all while refusing to communicate with [Cherin’s family]. [redacted advocate] was further devastated to see [redacted] not only disbelieve [Cherin's daughter], but discredit [Cherin's daughter] and Cherin to the entire COLA community, as well as to ([redacted]’s) own extended family, and to Rez leadership and various families at Rez. Every one of these actions re-traumatized [redacted advocate] and directly shook her faith in the church community she has considered her spiritual home, her entire adult life.
The actions [redacted advocate] knew about, in 2019, are nowhere near the extent of what COLA did to [Cherin’s family], but this much was visible to anyone in proximity to the situation, including [redacted advocate], who got her information from me, [redacted], Cherin, and Facebook, after [Cherin's daughter]’s allegations came out.
[redacted advocate] had experienced me as someone who throughout our friendship was outspoken about protecting women and children—and then watched me, too, waver in Mark v. [Cherin's daughter], continue to socialize with the people who shunned Cherin and supported Mark, and make excuses for Mark and the people around him. All while I kept quiet about my rapes and [redacted]’s abuse, until a couple months ago.
I hope you will take a moment to imagine the damage all of this has done to [redacted advocate], emotionally and spiritually, and then extrapolate that to every other person in the extended community (especially current and future survivors of sexual abuse) who saw COLA leadership push [Cherin’s family] out, even as rumors generated inside COLA began to circulate at Rez, disparaging [Cherin's daughter] as a liar who could not be believed because she was “from a broken home," Cherin as a divorcee and [redacted], [Cherin’s husband] as a biased and suspiciously uptight influence on Cherin and [Cherin's daughter], and [Cherin’s family] generally as people without credibility.
The diocese owes apologies, amends, and a public change of course, not just to [Cherin’s family], but to every [redacted advocate] in your congregations.
A note on counseling Mark
I realize the diocesan leadership considers it your duty to counsel everyone in this situation who seeks or will accept counseling, including Mark. I will suggest to you that Mark receiving pastoral counseling at Rez, or through the diocese, is not only fruitless, but incredibly dangerous. Mark is a master at manipulation, and he knows Rez culture and values, inside and out. He knows exactly what to say to you, and even how much to fumble in saying it, to appear humble and contrite and confused. Playing the fool, the innocent, the eager-to-learn guy who was saved by Jesus as a young adult, is his game.
I can almost assure you that Mark does not want your counseling, however much he may need to pretend to you, right now, that he does. He vowed to me repeatedly, over 2+ years, that he would never, ever, tell [redacted] or anyone in the church (except Chris, whom he could control, and to whom he told a limited version) about his double life—and looking back, I believe he never would have. [redacted] (possibly pushed by [redacted]?) and I forced his hand, so he’s rapidly evolving strategies now. But Mark’s redemption, at this stage in his life and at this level of pathology, requires an act of God, not of Rez. Even if some sort of human intervention can help him, the same church system that failed to recognize his manipulative powers, and enabled him for the past quarter century, is most definitely not the human institution that can undertake that intervention. To think otherwise is dangerous arrogance.
Mark’s community from COLA, as well as [redacted] and I, all need professional counseling with experienced counselors who specialize in treating victims of sexual abuse and/or social and emotional manipulation. Mark, though, needs a counselor who is familiar with and able to safely navigate the multiple pathologies he suffers from, which seem to include elements of narcissism, antisocial personality disorder, and sexual addiction, to name just a few possibilities.
Before that can even happen, though, Mark must actually want to change, which I can tell you almost beyond a shadow of a doubt, he does not. Over and over during my abusive “friendship" with Mark, I chose to believe that he must, deep down, really want to have honest relationships with people, really want to live a healed and cohesive life, and that he simply didn’t know how, or was in too difficult of a position to make the changes he needed to make. Over and over I disbelieved him when he made it clear to me that he did not mind lying, that he did not have any problem hiding things from [redacted], that what really bothered him was just that he couldn’t arrange his life to get more of what he felt he deserved. This is the part I should have believed (that he never intended to come clean), but I kept inappropriately projecting my own deep visceral discomfort with deception, onto him. He never once exhibited any difficulty with deception. It was never a struggle, only a sort of puzzle to figure out how to compartmentalize the different parts of his life and lie cleverly enough to everyone, so that he could continue to control what he needed to control.
In retrospect, it’s not his sexual abuse that is the most terrifying thing about Mark. It’s his complete lack of conscience, his complete absence of interest in taking any responsibility for his own choices, or the harm they cause others. He understands the concepts enough to use them to manipulate people, but he does not consider them to actually apply to him. He felt, the entire time I knew him, in the deepest sense, that he was entitled to do as he pleased. When I finally accepted how remorseless he was, it was not difficult to separate myself from him, and to out him. What is difficult, though, is that no one will believe that I witnessed and experienced this: that I was in an emotionally abusive relationship with someone who managed to hold my sympathy for so long by feeding me the line that he was the primary victim of the entire situation—something I actually believe he actually believes, because he is actually that sick.
Mark may appear to go willingly to counseling, but if so, I can almost guarantee you it’s only because he has now assimilated that necessity into his ever-evolving strategy for manipulating all of you. All you are doing by trying to counsel Mark at Rez is opening yourselves up to be fed more of his deception. He will tell his counselor(s) whatever he knows they most want to hear, including facts and mostly-truths and half-truths, probably including little “extra” confessions that seem unnecessary, to make him appear that he’s really coming clean, once and for all. And he will weave all of this into another massive lie, the essence of which is that he is not a child abuser, but just an adulterer and a broken man, and that he is ready to change. I have no doubt he has already shape-shifted into a penitent husband who made a few mistakes but never meant to hurt anybody, but he is so sorry that he did, and he will absolutely name everything just as you need him to name it….all while going back home and telling his family that he had a couple of affairs, or whatever it is he thinks they need to hear, in order to forgive him and trust him again, despite his years of documented lies. And somehow within this he will continue to paint [Cherin's daughter] and [redacted] and [redacted] and [redacted] as the liars, and paint [redacted] and me (to whatever degree he thinks he can get away with it) as women who seduced him, and then hid it from the community, and therefore can’t be believed if we say he’s abusive, because look at how corrupt we are; we are no better than him, we are all broken, we all just need Jesus, and to forgive and reconcile with each other, etc.
In other words, he will, yet again, distort spiritual concepts to serve his selfish ends. He will pervert beautiful ideas like forgiveness, grace, and redemption, to manipulate his church community into a sense of obligation to him, and coerce their pity, ensuring they continue to ignore their actual Christian duty, which is always, first and foremost, to do unto the least of these.
Please, please, do not counsel Mark. If you must provide him with counseling, pay for a professional who is not connected to the diocese in any way, and who specializes in what he needs. Better yet, spend that money on professional counseling for Mark’s family and other victims, and on educating church staff to recognize grooming patterns and other warning signs of sexual abuse (more on this in the Resources section, later on).
A list of questions for the diocese
[Rand’s wife] and Rand said in their one email to me, on November 19, that they “love and support” me. I do not know what that means. Love and support are empty words without action. What I need, right now, in terms of love and support, is to know that those people who have long been friends with my rapist, [redacted]’s abuser, and [Cherin's daughter]’s molester, are facing the truth, and that they will choose us, not Mark. I need to know that diocesan leaders are (to the extent they are able) helping COLA to face reality, and are taking responsibility for COLA’s failure to do so, this last year and a half, and will work to rectify that situation through every avenue available to them.
Because we know you have taken a number of steps in this direction, but we are not entirely sure what these are, we are asking you the following questions. Please write back and reply to these concretely. This is what my three colleagues and I are requesting from you, in response to this email.
Is Mark allowed on Rez property, including attending services or coming in for counseling?
Is COLA shut down permanently, or are services merely suspended for the time being?
Is Fr. Rand currently serving in any capacity at Rez or any other church in the diocese? Is he serving Communion, acting as a prayer minister, taking confessions, or playing any other role that identifies him to any member of the congregation, as an authority figure of any kind?
If not, will the diocese allow Fr. Rand to return to leadership in the Anglican Church, in any capacity, in the future, and if so, what will you require in order for him to do so?
What about Chris (is he now or will he ever be in any leadership roles in any church in the diocese)?
Who, in any leadership position, from Rez or the diocese, is currently in contact with [Mark’s wife]: Stewart? William? Eirik? Rand? Val? Someone else?
Has diocesan leadership identified that Mark is emotionally abusing and manipulating [redacted] and their children, and is also a potential physical danger [redacted identifying information], and that [redacted] needs to take the children and leave the situation and stop having contact with him?
If so, has anyone in leadership advised [redacted] of this, directly and unequivocally? Have they offered logistical and emotional support to help her separate herself and her kids from Mark?
Our current understanding is that Fr. Eirik advised [redacted] to return home from [redacted] to have the kids say goodbye to Mark, almost two months ago, thinking for some reason that Mark was immediately headed back to jail and that it was therefore important for them to see him a final time. Fr. Eirik, if this is true, have you apologized to [redacted] for this egregious error in judgment, which put her and her children directly back in harm’s way [redacted identifying information]? Have you advised her to do the opposite of what you originally advised?
If diocesan leadership does not agree with us that Mark is a grave ongoing danger to the community, and is currently harming his wife and children, what is your exact position on Mark and his relationship to the community and his family?
Are [redacted] and [redacted] receiving counseling through the diocese? If so, are their counselors fully aware of the extent of the various allegations against Mark, including accounts from me, [redacted], [Cherin's daughter], [redacted], [redacted], and the several other people who have told stories of Mark’s abuse or grooming of them, spanning the last 15-20 years? (Again, these accounts are listed at the end of this email.)
Who is counseling [Fr. Rand’s wife] and Rand? Has that person clearly confronted them with the harm they did to [Cherin's daughter] and her family, when Rand misused his position of authority to support Mark and push [Cherin’s family] out of COLA, back in 2019?
Do they understand how their decisions to publicly support an accused child molestor, including regularly attending his court hearings, have effectively silenced any children or adults in proximity to the situation, whom Mark or anyone else may have abused, and who may therefore need counseling and support, but are afraid to come forward?
Has anyone explained these things to Chris, [redacted], and [redacted], all of whom joined [redacted], Rand, and [redacted] in supporting Mark, including going to his hearings and drumming up legal resources for him, while simultaneously forcing [Cherin’s family] out of COLA and cutting off all communication with them?
Has the diocese begun to address the implications of Mark’s long term involvement and volunteer leadership roles at Rez and then COLA, including as the youth group leader at Rez many years ago, and what this means for the diocese going forward? What systemic solutions are you implementing to prevent harm down the road, by other sexual predators who might currently be operating in the diocese, or could be in the future? Do you have a comprehensive plan for keeping your children and vulnerable adults safe? (We have included a resource for this, at the end of the email.)
Have you connected with an organization that can comprehensively train everyone in leadership at your churches in how to handle sexual abuse allegations, in the future, as well as in how to recognize grooming and other warning signs of abuse, when they see them? (We have also included a resource for this, at the end of the email.)
Finally, have you enlisted a qualified, independent party to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the 25 years of Mark’s access to Rez and COLA children and vulnerable adults, in order to actively seek out anyone else whom he may have abused during his tenure at either church, and to ascertain the full truth about the allegations [Cherin's daughter] and [redacted] and others have made? If not, are you willing to enlist the help of GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) to immediately begin an independent investigation into all of this? (Again, check the resources at the end of the email for more information.)
A note about urgency
I know it will take years of work for everyone involved just to begin to heal from this, but this issue carries urgency, and not just because of the harm of silence, to those of us waiting for answers. Every day Mark’s deceit is able to infect the hearts and minds of the people around him (especially his wife and children) translates into many more days on the other end that it will take those people to reckon with and heal from that harm.
Furthermore, while [Cherin's daughter] and [redacted] and I are at least physically safe from further abuse by Mark, due to the support systems we each have, outside Rez / COLA (and hopefully [redacted] is not in any contact whatsoever with Mark), [redacted information] are not safe from him. We know for a fact that [Mark’s wife] leaves Mark alone with his two younger children, in direct violation of the conditions of his bail. [Redacted] has seen this happen twice, in the minimal contact she has with them.) And we know by [redacted] and [redacted]’s own account, back in 2019, as well as Cherin’s observation of [redacted]’s behavior while Cherin was still a part of the community, that [redacted identifying information], all the way back then (including, as noted earlier, [redacted information]). If there is even the slightest chance (and there is far more than the slightest chance), that Mark [redacted information], then every day that goes by is one more day that the diocesan leadership, which has already failed to intervene properly in this situation for a year and a half now, is morally responsible for [redacted identifying information].
Nor can any of us fall into the trap of considering additional abuse as only marginally greater than what has already happened. As [redacted] has stated to me, unequivocally, from experience: every single moment of sexual abuse does extreme damage to the soul of the abused child. Every last instance of harm is its own discrete tragedy.
This situation, then, is urgent. In fact, I can’t imagine a more urgent situation facing the diocese, at this moment.
I deeply appreciate that you told Eve and me that you are open to learning and growing through this situation, Stewart. The four of us (Cherin, Eve, [redacted advocate], and I) would like to collaborate with you and the other diocesan leaders, as this situation continues to unfold, and as we all continue to learn new things. We want you with us, on the side of compassion and justice, decisively and publicly protecting the least of these. The Upper Midwest Diocese has the opportunity to be one of the tiny minority of church bodies that takes swift, comprehensive steps to halt a growing sexual abuse tragedy, before everything comes crashing down. There is still time to be an example to your own community, to the Chicagoland area, to the country, and to the world, of how to do this the right way.
Please do not think you are an exception to the rule. Every great church scandal starts with a Mark Rivera. Every church thinks they will “handle” it. Every church thinks they’re a little bit different, that their predator is a little bit different, that they can get him and his victims counseling, and that will take care of it. Please don’t be every church. Please be better. Use the resources we’ve listed below, or tell us what you’ve found, and are using, that’s comparable. One item on our list is the book What is a Girl Worth?, by the prominent Christian lawyer and courageous advocate Rachael Denhollander, first of his survivors to publicly expose serial child sex abuser Larry Nassar. Here is Denhollander, summing up what I am trying to say here, from inside her own experience of this (Kindle edition, pp. 321-322):
With a heavy heart, I saw again that everyone appreciates advocacy when it’s directed to those “outside the camp,” but when it demands that we evaluate our own faith communities, political parties, favorite sports team, candidates, or beloved leaders, we scramble for reasons why things are “different” in that space. This is the blind spot that keeps abusers protected and convinces victims that it’s never safe to speak up.
Closing thoughts
I know this has to be extra difficult for you, Stewart, being close to so many of these people yourself, for so long, and I want to acknowledge all of the emotional work you and Katherine are doing in that respect, on top of what you are doing in your role as Bishop. I recognize you have a lot of grieving to do, even as you try to take care of others, and make difficult but necessary decisions. From what I can tell, this is the first time you’ve encountered this situation, and I recognize that there is a massive learning curve to that. I am in my own learning curve, confronting for the first time, at 42, the realities of being a rape survivor as well as a person complicit in enabling my own rapist to abuse others. So I know how the cognitive dissonance and emotional turbulence of being caught in the middle of such a situation are overwhelming. I understand my letter may seem aggressive in places, and I want to remind you that it is my obligation in this situation to agitate for justice, to advocate for those who need protection and care, and to keep reminding you all not to fall prey to any narrative that downplays harm or fails to center victims. And I will continue to do this work, with love for the other survivors, even when it involves stating truths that are painful for people to hear.
I hope the resource list below demonstrates our sincere desire to work with you to find solutions, and not merely to present you with the extent of the problems.
I continue to trust, despite my present general disillusionment with the Church, that all of you in leadership have the best interests of everyone at heart, and I look forward to hearing back from you, soon, with answers to our questions.
Joanna
Resources
Here is an example from October 2020, of a church in Kentucky that handled a sexual abuse allegation in an exemplary fashion. Here are the things I want to highlight about the way this church responded:
Pastor Cunningham wrote this open letter and posted it on the church website, for the world to see.
He also preached a sermon in which he acknowledged the abuse allegations, and told his congregation why it was important to take action, and to do so in a public manner.
In his letter, he vows to take the same action the next time allegations arise, and always.
The church elders voted unanimously to submit to an independent investigation, rather than trying to handle it internally.
Pastor Cunningham links to the findings of that investigation, in his letter.
In his letter, he names the abuser and the relationship of the abuser to the church, and thoroughly explains the social context of the allegations as they relate to the church. He explains why, even though the abuser was never on staff at the church, the church’s relationship with the abuser allowed for the abuse to happen, and therefore requires the church to take action. (The alleged abuser in this case is the famous Christian singer Chris Rice, meaning Pastor Cunningham took an especially courageous step in publicly calling for this investigation, considering he was challenging a beloved and powerful icon.)
The church went to the police immediately when the victim came forward with allegations. (Stewart, you did a good job with this, with [redacted] and me, but COLA did the opposite, under diocesan watch, with [Cherin's daughter]’s allegations in 2019.)
In his open letter, Pastor Cunningham promises any victims of sexual abuse that they can come to the church as a “safe, loving, and confidential place” to share their story.
He also, importantly, offers them the independent investigator as a backup, if they do not feel comfortable coming to the church. This is crucial. There’s no reason for a church to assume that, despite their best intentions, victims should or will feel comfortable coming forward to them—especially in the case of a church that has failed victims in the past. There must be a third party option.
He urges other churches who have ever hired the alleged abuser in question, to do their own investigations.
He publicly apologizes to survivors, to the outside community, and to the church community.
He publicly commits to “righteousness over reputation.”
He promises to follow up with updates as the investigation progresses.
Stewart, I hope you and the diocesan leaders will follow Pastor Cunningham’s lead in every respect. News of Mark’s abuse will only spread, informally, and the sooner you take responsibility for it, and repent, publicly and explicitly, as a diocese, the better this will play out, for everyone involved. The last resource on this list offers you an independent investigator option.
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What is a Girl Worth? is a book everyone in Church leadership today needs to read, ideally before there is a sexual abuse crisis in their midst, but most definitely when one is in progress. The author, Rachael Denhollander, is a respected lawyer, homeschooling mother of four, and a leading voice in the Christian world on pro-life and other current issues. She is also the childhood survivor of Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse who publicly broke the silence and paved the way for 200+ other survivors to come forward (which ultimately put Nassar in prison for life), and held USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University publicly responsible for their gross delinquency in dealing with Nassar’s abuse. Denhollander explains in vivid detail, from the standpoint of a survivor, just what sexual abuse does to the soul of the individual and the community.
This is the resource, specifically recommended by [redacted advocate], for preparing your hearts to really deal with the situation in front of you. But it also provides a practical look at how abusers hide in plain sight, and how community-level denial and coverup works. It is invaluable on every front.
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The Allender Center is a Christian organization that specializes in trauma care, counseling, and trainings. They’ve been leaders in the field since long before the conversation entered the public sphere, let alone the church; their founder, Dan Allender, has been teaching on this topic since the ‘80s. The Center is based in Seattle, but they have a number of trained facilitators in the Northwest Chicago suburbs, who have provided trauma training for area ministry and lay leaders, at venues such as Wheaton College. (At the moment, due to Covid, their trainings have all moved online.)
Statistically speaking, hundreds, maybe thousands, of individuals—men, women, and children—who attend your churches, are survivors of sexual trauma, whether or not their abusers operated within the church. Sexual harm is some of the deepest damage done to the human soul, and it is 100% an issue churches must address unflinchingly, and proactively, if they are to be places of healing and redemption. The current situation, for all its misery, is also an invitation, and a challenge, to the diocese, to name sexual abuse for the pervasive evil it is in our society, and to make sure your leaders and your staff are trained—by a healthy, experienced outside organization—in how to address it, as it exists in your midst, already.
The Allender Center's Effective Trauma Care training is a good place to start, and the Narrative Focused Trauma Care offers a more-in-depth follow-up to that. I’m including links so you can get a quick impression of what they offer, but I recommend you talk with Eve before making any decisions. Eve has gone through their trainings, understands their philosophy and process thoroughly, and is connected with people in the organization as well as people who were trained through the organization and now offer their own training services. She recommends the Center and its graduates not just because they are excellent at what they do, but because their spiritual culture and values align closely with those of Rez, likely making them a good fit for the diocese.
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The Child Safeguarding Policy Guide for Churches and Ministries can help you set up an actual structure and processes for dealing with these situations now and in the future. It is co-authored by a psychologist/lawyer and a former prosecutor of child abuse cases.
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The prosecutor who cowrote the above book, Boz Tchividjian, also founded GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment), the organization Pastor Cunningham enlisted to investigate the abuse situation in his church. Rachael Denhollander calls GRACE “the leading Evangelical organization specializing in awareness, education, and investigations of sexual abuse handling by religious organizations.” Their page on independent investigations explains why this approach is essential to dealing with sexual abuse allegations in organizational settings, and why we are asking you to enlist their services in investigating the Mark Rivera case, or in recommending another organization to do so.
[Redacted summary of 10 victims’ stories, which include exposure to pornography, grooming, physical assault, child sexual abuse, indecent exposure, sexual abuse, and rape. 6 of these stories had been told in detail to Church of the Resurrection leaders in June 2019.]