River’s Story
Reader content warning: the following account contains descriptions of grooming and sexual abuse.
Who’s Who
“River”: a survivor who alleges grooming by Mark Rivera when she attended Church of the Resurrection while a student at Wheaton College.
Mark Rivera: former Eucharist & prayer minister at Church of the Resurrection and later lay catechist at Christ Our Light Anglican Church.
Church of the Resurrection (Rez): a large ACNA parish located in Wheaton, IL that serves as the Cathedral Church for the Diocese of the Upper Midwest.
Wheaton College: an evangelical liberal arts college in Wheaton, IL.
Glenbard West High School: local high school in Glen Ellyn, IL where Church of the Resurrection met for many years.
As a freshman at Wheaton College, I met Mark when I sat behind him and his family at Church of the Resurrection one Sunday. His oldest child, who was 2 or 3 years old at the time, was playing over the back of the seat, and I played back. After the service, Mark struck up a conversation with me. I loved children, and as an isolated college student miles from home, the Rivera family provided me with a sense of family and normalcy I was missing. Or rather, Mark and the two children he had at that time created that sense for me. I tried to get to know Mark’s wife, but found her quiet and withdrawn. Mark, in contrast, was gregarious, warm, and outgoing. He clearly loved his kids, and they loved him. I felt him to be non-threatening and trustworthy.
For about a year, I saw the Rivera family at church, played with their kids, and sometimes went to lunch with them or with other members of the church. After I became a member of Rez at my first Easter Vigil in 2005, I started to get closer with Mark. He invited me to come up with him to consume the remaining sacrament after Communion one week, and this became our routine. We would stand on the stage at Glenbard West High School, drink communion wine and eat communion bread. This is when the behavior I now perceive as grooming began. It started with unnecessary touching of my back or waist. Then, he began to pull me into prolonged hugs and give me long kisses on the cheek. This would occur while he was also pushing me to drink more of the leftover communion wine.
When Mark poured the communion wine, there were always several large chalices full at the end of the service. I left church inebriated on more than a few occasions.
Mark often served as sub-deacon, and in this role it was his job to pour out the wine after the blessing of the elements. I now know that in most churches, leaders try to decant just enough to serve the congregation with little left over. When Mark poured the communion wine, there were always several large chalices full at the end of the service. I left church inebriated on more than a few occasions.
Mark also served as a prayer minister. Many college students went up for prayer on a weekly basis, myself included. I began to intentionally go to Mark every week, because our relationship felt “special” to me. In this way, Mark learned many of my deepest fears and concerns. After we finished drinking the communion wine in the front of the church, he would ask me to sit with him in the front row of the auditorium to talk further about my “prayer needs.” During these conversations, he began to pull me onto his lap and wrap his arms around my waist.
To be clear, Mark was giving me long hugs and kisses and pulling me onto his lap in a crowded auditorium, in clear view of church leadership. I remember feeling uncomfortable at the time, but thinking, “everyone around me seems to think this is fine, so it must be.” There were always scores of children running around the front of the auditorium, and I remember thinking, “Mark would never do something bad in front of all these kids, especially not in front of his own children!”
To be clear, Mark was giving me long hugs and kisses and pulling me onto his lap in a crowded auditorium, in clear view of church leadership. I remember feeling uncomfortable at the time, but thinking, “everyone around me seems to think this is fine, so it must be.”
At that point in my life, I had been on exactly one very awkward date with a boy in high school, and I had never even kissed anyone. In the churches where I grew up, Purity Culture ruled opposite sex relationships. I’d never received more than a side hug from a man not related to me. One of the things I loved about Rez was that it felt more “embodied” than my childhood churches. I liked that people hugged each other or rested a hand on someone’s back while praying. I was starved for affirming touch, and I was not able to differentiate good touch from bad. I had also been taught by the church not to trust my own feelings or instincts, because these could be “sinful.” Instead, I should be listening for the “still small voice of God” to tell me what to do. In my relationship with Mark, he was a leader in the church: a prayer minister! All of my training from years in the church taught me to submit to this man of authority, and not to trust my own feelings. I was vulnerable and Mark exploited me.
Over the next three years, Mark continued to violate my physical and emotional boundaries. During prayer, Mark would wrap his arm around my shoulders or my waist, hug me, touch his forehead to mine, or place a hand over my “heart,” which meant touching my cleavage or my breasts while we prayed. Looking back, I don’t remember if other prayer ministers touched me in this way or if it was just Mark. In any case, his behavior seemed accepted and normalized by the Church of the Resurrection. He continued to be promoted into positions of leadership in the church during this time. Mark’s actions seemed innocuous when taken individually. The twinges of discomfort I felt were small enough to ignore. Taken together, the impact of his behavior was significant.
Mark and I eventually drifted apart. I graduated from Wheaton and he moved to Big Rock, IL to take a paid youth pastor position at First Baptist Church.
During prayer, Mark would wrap his arm around my shoulders or my waist, hug me, touch his forehead to mine, or place a hand over my “heart,” which meant touching my cleavage or my breasts while we prayed.
The greatest harm Mark did to me was in the ways his grooming set me up for victimization by others. Just before my senior year at Wheaton, I lost a very close friend to suicide. I returned to campus heartbroken and vulnerable. A female Wheaton professor took advantage of my grief and the three years of grooming I had experienced from Mark, and began to sexually assault me. She used techniques very similar to those Mark had used. She groomed me to accept violations of personal space, isolated me emotionally and physically, and provided me with special “privileges” of emotional and physical intimacy that eventually opened a path for sexual contact. This continued for the duration of my senior year, the majority of the assaults occurring on Wheaton’s campus or in off campus housing when this woman would spend the night with me in my apartment. After these nights, I would ask her if she were gay, and she repeatedly said no. She told me there was nothing sexual about what we were doing. Her actions deeply skewed my understanding of sex for years to come.
I moved into the city of Chicago after graduation, and my experiences with Mark and with my professor left me vulnerable to multiple instances of sexual assault from both aquaintances and strangers. I had no sense of my own bodily autonomy, or what constituted “sex.” I did not know how to set boundaries or say no when I was approached by men, which led to sexual encounters that I did not want. I was assaulted by another young woman I met through my Wheaton professor. She was also this woman’s “mentee.”
A female Wheaton professor took advantage of my grief and the three years of grooming I had experienced from Mark, and began to sexually assault me.
Two years after I graduated, my professor called me to tell me she had just realized that she was gay, and she was engaged to a female pastor. We met soon after for brunch. In that one conversation she admitted to me that our prior relationship was inappropriate. She also admitted that she had engaged in similar behaviors with other young female mentees. She now denies that anything ever occurred between us. She was 40 years old when we met; I was 21. She still works with college and high school aged children and young adults as a mentor and life coach.
I think my story is an important part of the conversation happening through #ACNAtoo because I want people to understand that the damage done to children, teenagers, and young adults by an abuser does not stop when an abusive relationship ends. My first sexual experiences as a young adult were nonconsensual and the sexual nature of what was happening was denied by those assaulting me. Because of this, I was sexually active for years before understanding that what I was doing was sex. I didn’t know how to ask consent of another person before initiating sexual contact, and I didn’t know that I could say no to someone initiating such contact with me.
Building a healthy relationship with my body and my sexuality has been the work of almost two decades and a great deal of therapy. I met my wife when I was 30 years old. She was the first partner I ever had who asked for my consent or respected me when I said no. Our relationship has taught me that I was not too broken for relationships. I had been betrayed by a church and faith community that attempted to control me in ways that left me vulnerable and unprepared to enter into healthy relationships as an adult.
I want people to understand that the damage done to children, teenagers, and young adults by an abuser does not stop when an abusive relationship ends.
I am grateful for the courage of other survivors who have come forward with their stories. They have made it possible for me to process and begin healing from my trauma in new ways. I want other survivors to know that their experiences, however big or small they may feel to you, are valid. Your pain and trauma are valid. Your survival is a testament to your resilience and strength.