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

”Stewart, when we spoke with you briefly in late June 2019 we expressed some of the discomfort we were experiencing at Rez, and you said adamantly that we should continue attending services there. We felt like you truly cared about us being there and this was extremely touching and meaningful to us. Your words gave us the courage to attend a few additional Sunday services, before things became too painful to remain there. We experienced a very real progression of multiple families, who had recently been friendly towards us, suddenly avoiding us, walking the other way if they saw us coming, and not saying more than an awkward “hello” when we greeted them. In some cases it was a night and day difference from the previous week, and I could obviously tell that they had been told “something” about our family. I shared what we were experiencing with Deacon Val, and her response was gut-wrenching. She basically said that we were probably just imagining it, and suggested people might just be uncomfortable and were avoiding us because they didn’t know what to say. She then suggested that we should attend a different service, because our presence at Rez was painful for [redacted] and [redacted] Rivera. In the end we got the message that people at Rez didn’t want us to be there, that Val didn’t care, and that [redacted] and [redacted]’s comfort and protection was more important than ours. To be clear, we love [redacted] and [redacted], but there was nothing loving about the church going along with Mark’s lies to avoid making them uncomfortable. They were identified and prioritized as victims, even though our family, the actual primary victims in this situation, were disregarded and pushed out of the church.”

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