Episode 2

Transcript

“And I totally get it. Like nobody wants to have another crisis again. But reality is reality and you have to deal with it. So you can't pretend that something awful isn't happening just because it overwhelms you. It's happening and it's only going to get worse if you pretend it's not.” 

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 Two: The Parable.

A disclaimer as will be the case for much of this podcast. This episode contains references to sexual assault and child sexual abuse. 

In Episode One, we laid the groundwork for the larger story explaining the basics of the sexual abuse of lay Pastor Mark Rivera, how his church and diocese responded to it, and then pointing to how this local case extended outward to the broader denomination, the Anglican Church in North America, or ACNA, or ACNA. Episode One also offered a number of general introductory ideas. In this episode, we'll continue to do so while also giving voice to some of the victims and advocates you will hear from at length in future episodes. 

We will begin with The Parable. And perhaps it's the parallel. When it comes to difficult stories like this one, I think it is typically effective to place ourselves in another context, to step outside our own story and see it placed in another setting. The germ of the story I'm going to attempt to tell occurred to me about a year ago, although I've heard others suggested as well, specifically on the Bodies Behind the Bus podcast, which has the same aims as the Wall of Silence. 

Our parable takes place somewhere familiar to almost everyone: that of a school. Please note that being a parable, my details are not one-to-one as they relate to Mark Rivera, Christ Our Light Anglican Church, and Bishop Stewart Ruch in the Upper Midwest Diocese. Splitting hairs isn't the purpose here. Instead, my hope is to simply view our story from another vantage point, as a means of discerning how to take action within our own.

You are a relatively new high school teacher. Things are going well. You enjoy your classes, your students, your colleagues. But one day staying late after school, you notice something strange as you're leaving to go home. It's quiet and hardly anyone is around. But then you see a student, a young woman who is in one of your classes, leave another classroom, a few doors down from your own. She's walking slowly and you catch up with her. You say hi. Are you doing okay? Oh, she looks up, somewhat startled. Oh, hey, yeah, everything's cool. I was just, just getting some extra studying in, I needed some help on an upcoming test.” 

It's getting late. And kids are typically awkward like this to begin with. So you basically leave it at that. But you can sense the student is apprehensive and thrown off. You wish her a good night but make a point to check in with her soon and see if everything really was okay. That opportunity comes the next day. After your class with her, you ask her again how she's doing and she asks if she can speak to you for a minute. 

After you take her aside, it takes her a few moments to gather her thoughts. She begins to tell you that the teacher whose room she came out of the night before, that he had started doing things with her, inappropriate things. That he had been talking to her all year and she really started to trust him and like him. She even had a kind of crush on him. And so he started to invite her to sit with him in his car and to come to his classroom after school. If someone asked about it, she could always tell people they were just studying or she was being a student aide, helping him grade assignments. But then he started to get more affectionate in touching her. And from there, other stuff started happening and it just didn't feel right. 

Alarm bells are now going off in your brain – your whole being. What do you do? This teacher – this abuser and molester – is your colleague. He's been around for years and you just got here. As you attempt to stay calm, you also reassure her that she's done the right thing and that you're going to need to go talk to someone in the school administration to let them know. And you also affirm that what has happened to her is not okay, but also not her fault, that the other teacher has done something wrong and violated her. Along with this, you realize that as a teacher, you're a mandated reporter, and local authorities will need to be alerted. 

What happens next is a kind of entering into a hall of madness, as if the abuse the student just brought to light wasn't bad enough. The first person you go to is the school principal; they say they'll take care of this and you ask if they are going to report it to DCFS. You’re told that for now, they're going to bring the student, parents, and the teacher together for a meeting to see what really happened and if they can make things right between them. More alarm bells. But you're new, and you second guess yourself: you're not a school administrator; maybe the principal understands and knows the procedures better than you. 

Each stage along this journey gets worse and worse as you, the junior teacher, attempt to advocate for the student. Through a long series of meetings, you come to discover that the abusing teacher had a known history of grooming and inappropriately touching female students. He was even talked to a few times about it and would stop each time, but nothing legitimate had ever been done about it. People just mostly put up with it. This is how this teacher was. He was touchy. Everybody knew that. 

It was at this time that you felt the need to tell school administration that you are going to take this to DCFS, to the necessary public officials. They tell you, “You really don't have to do that. And do you really want this to blow up in the community? This kind of thing wouldn't be good for the school, you know.” It hits you that you're in some kind of educational nightmare, a dystopia at best. 

Well, you do what's right and you report the teacher without the support of your overseers. Over the coming weeks, the teacher is quietly let go. Nothing is addressed publicly by school officials. Though, internally, there are rumbles. Oddly enough, you soon find yourself without a job as well. And hardly any of the other teachers will talk with you. They can't believe what you did, and that you think this other teacher would do such a thing. Don’t you know how long he's been in the school and how much everybody in the community loves him? 

But then something else happens. Other students start to come forward. And parents as well. Over time, as you learn how to move on from your devastation and rage, you come to find out the superintendent of the entire school system has knowingly hired numerous sex offenders to work for the school district. You were working in a system where the leaders, the authority figures, put children in danger, put them under the care of predators. 

I asked you, what would you do if you found out this was your workplace? Even more, what if this was your school, your hometown, the place you grew up in? And where you are now raising your children? What would you do to make things right? And knowing what you know, would you still respect the superintendent and principal of the school? Would you think they still deserve to hold their position? They've been around for years and are beloved supposedly by all; can you go against that kind of culture? Is change even possible? 

Granted, a situation like this could go two ways. Perhaps the superintendent is beloved by the community, even more so than the offending teacher. In this case, it's easily imaginable that the town rallies behind him, or both of them, finding a way to make all this unpleasantness go away. But these are our kids we're talking about, and how often do people really have a sentimental soft spot for school administrators. 

Instead, what I envision are parents and other people in the larger community, attending school board meetings, calling for the removal of the superintendent, the principal, and any other teachers with a criminal or questionable record. I see parents and students enraged, even as they are devastated, not wanting something like this to stand in their school, in their community. 

However, just think about how all this would tear the town apart, especially if the school board began to ignore the cries of the victims and started shunning that nuisance of a teacher and anyone else who had joined their side. Why do all these people want to destroy the school and our town's reputation? It's them who are the problem. 

Perhaps though, you've already spotted a major element of the story that more than likely would have broken down in real life. All of the teachers and administrators are mandated reporters and should have been trained about their responsibilities and what actions to take in a situation like this and thus part of the parable is semi-ridiculous, though I imagine abuse does fail to get reported even in public schools, either through negligence or intention. Nonetheless, it's sobering to realize the disparity in standards between school and church settings. 

But if such a situation had happened, I wonder if the townspeople would be shamed into backing down? Would they eventually grow tired of advocating for change? Or would their angry calls for justice carry them through to the end? The question is, if people wouldn't allow such an extensive incident to stand within a school setting, why are we so willing to do so within the church? Let the parable stand for those who would listen.

As I said before, this story is meant as a possible real-world parallel to share an inner, deeper story, a thought experiment of sorts, and not a one-to-one comparison. But it is worth pointing out some of the similarities between them. We will tell their story in full in the next two episodes, but here are a few of the major connections. 

After Cherin's daughter disclosed sexual abuse by lay catechist Mark Rivera, Cherin immediately contacted her priest, and the priest scheduled a meeting for the next day. To Cherin's horror, Rivera, the alleged abuser, was also invited. There, Cherin was asked to describe her daughter's disclosure in detail. The truth of the girl's story was questioned, and Cherin was pressured not to report the abuse to the police. Against the leaders’ advice, Cherin did make a call and report her daughter's abuse. Immediately she and her family were shunned by their community and its leaders. 

What Cherin would come to find out later was that during the silence toward her family, the Bishop of the Diocese, Stewart Ruch, was not only meeting with the alleged abuser and his family, but he was also giving the family financial support and seeking to ensure that Rivera had legal defense, including legal counsel from the Diocesan Chancellor. 

Cherin's nightmare continued as a criminal court case against Rivera extended years. At many hearings, she watched as former friends and church leaders sat with Rivera, leaving her to sit alone. More sexual abuse victims of Rivera had come forward, but for two years, Cherin’s bishop refrained from disclosing the allegations to his diocese, which included Rez (Church of the Resurrection), where Rivera had attended and served at for almost 20 years. 

Even when the bishop's handling was challenged, and an investigation was led from the ACNA’s highest level of governance, the province, it became clear that most would choose to stand behind the bishop instead of with the sexual abuse survivors he neglected. 

As in our first episode, I think it's key that we begin to practice listening to survivors and advocates of survivors and we are going to do more of the same now. The accounts and commentaries you're going to hear are all segments from future guests on the Wall of Silence. We will start with Joanna Rudenborg, as her story is so intertwined with Cherin's. Here she recounts the weight of what she was facing and how she decided to go public with how the acts of Mark Rivera were handled by church leadership.

I came forward publicly on Twitter in June of 2021. I had 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. 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 has 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.

Abbi Nye here offers a brief but related reflection about the legitimacy of the presentments surrounding Bishop Stewart Ruch, which were defined in the previous episode, and will be explained in full in an upcoming episode.

There are specific reasons where people can bring presentments against a bishop and you know, have it go to a trial, and those can include violation of the vows and giving just cause for scandal. And Stewart has done both – in spades

Conor Hanson, also a member of ACNAtoo, was in the Upper Midwest diocese and worked with Greenhouse, a related church planting initiative. Here's what he has to say about learning from victims of abuse.

My vision of what pastoral ministry looks like has been profoundly shaped by listening and learning from survivors of abuse, whether it's spiritual abuse or sexual abuse. But also just thinking through power and thinking through, you know, reading the gospels, what does Jesus look like? What is the shape of his life? How do I conform my life to that shape? Does this action fit within the shape of Jesus' life or not? 

No pastor or leader ever gets to tell a victim where they should or shouldn't be. Ever. And you just have to sit with people and be with them. And it's messy. And I think that's the place where Jesus is. And that's where I saw people gathering around this young girl and her mother and saying, Jesus is here with her, because he sees her. And when I really recognized that I was like, what, where else would I want to be? I want to be where Jesus is. And so that's what really made me pursue this route. 

And now I'm a very different person, praise God, than I was five years ago. And it's because of what God has shown me through survivors, through advocates, through a lot of things coming to light that are gross, and ugly, and messy, but we need to look at them. 

I mean, it's always shocking to me that Christians are shocked by this stuff. We of all people should be the ones who truly can look square in the face the ugliness of sin, and death, and corruption, and enter into it, because that's where Jesus is. My fundamental take on the Upper Midwest and Greenhouse is that they are desperate to see God at work. And they are ignorant of the people they hurt in seeking that. And that's really dangerous – that they're so desperate to see God working. And that's not a bad desire. Like I think we all want to see God at work and the kingdom breaking forth. And that's amazing. And yet, we have used that as an excuse to ignore the people and trample the people. In the case of Greenhouse and the Upper Midwest, they've trampled a nine-year-old girl and her family, all in the name of “We want to see God at work”. Look at our godly Bishop, we want to keep our robust gospel ministry going, and that is blasphemous to the name of Jesus.

Next is Eve Ahrens, a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor who helped Cherin and Joanna advocate for themselves to the Upper Midwest Diocese.

It is a whole different ball game after something happens. You have a predator who's spent considerable time grooming the community, right? So before abuse even happens, people have established narratives, they just have things fixed in their minds that are hard to undo, you know, the response to abuse. People just don't want to believe it happened, right. At least, questioning is always the first response, if not outright “No, there's no way that happened”. And then you've got, okay, once people have said that, now, if you're going to kind of try to circle them back to, hey, look, you've been fooled for this long. Here's what happened. The allegations were actually true. No one wants to be the fool. 

You know, you're just in a really ugly place by that point, that you're trying to educate, but about a specific experience that already happened that people already have a fixed narrative in their head about. Whereas when you present it beforehand, and you're like, hey, this could be your pastor, because it's somebody's pastor, when it's hypothetical. People can take that in a little bit easier. When it's after the fact and your pastor did this, and they've been defending their pastor for, you know, months, years, who knows how long, you're not going to shake that foundation easily. So yes, education well before the fact is going to be far far more easier than dealing with anything like this after the fact.

Heather Griffin, a one-time ACNAtoo member, was also in conversations with leaders at the provincial level about how to handle Mark Rivera's case, as well as other abuse cases that we'll cover in later episodes.

I still believe in the Holy Spirit showing up for people that desperately want to know God. And he meets us, I think, in much smaller ways than the modern Charismatic movement tends to focus on with their grandiosity and their national prophecies and whatnot. But I think that you can be in a system with very corrupt leaders and still have a wonderful experience of God and assume that that is because your leaders are not significantly corrupt. After this abuse crisis or abuse mishandling crisis, I just don't think it works that way. I think that the Spirit is just so willing to meet us. I would have understood this theologically, I would have understood that the Holy Spirit showing up is never an endorsement of the institution and the leader, but the degree to which the Holy Spirit will show up, when there's absolute wickedness going on, I think that's shocking to me. And it's very uncomfortable. It makes it very hard to feel safe. 

So part of what goes wrong with Sincerity Culture is people think that if they had good intentions, they're going to have good impact. Because again, it's sincerity plus my reasonable mind that is guaranteed by God for some reason, as long as I had good intentions, and I see myself as having good reason, I'm not responsible for any harmful impact that people claim. Those people are just emotional and unreasonable and unwilling to be pleased. 

Especially if people feel like they really put themselves out for it. If somebody was under a lot of stress, when they were responding to abuse allegations, and see themselves as being overwhelmed or struggling, and have this tacit assumption that if they're sincere, and try hard, and think really hard about something, they should have good impact. Then they just resent anyone who says “actually, no, your efforts are really missing the mark here.” And that leads to demonization and scapegoating of survivors and advocates, which is just-- the self-indulgence of this among ACNA upper leadership is off the charts. 

So I'm on Twitter in July of 2021. And I start seeing this thread go around about the ACNA and abuse mishandling by Joanna Rudenborg. And I was, I put it off for a few days because I'm like, I knew that if I read it, I would be responsible for what I knew. But I could only let myself get away with putting it off for a few days. Because I was in an ACNA parish, and I didn't have the deepest attachment to the ACNA but like, look, if I'm a member of an ACNA parish, I am responsible as a member for making sure that my denomination is handling abuse responsibly, because I knew how devastating this was to people. 

I think of abuse as, an abuse mishandling as like cancer. If it happens within a family, then in terms of, like, the seriousness for the health of the whole body, that is a stage one cancer, but you better take stage one cancer very seriously. Someone who is going to recover from cancer treats that very aggressively so there could be healing and so it won't spread. If you're looking at abuse and mishandling at a parish level, that’s stage two, diocesan level is stage three. What I was seeing in the threads that Joanna posted, talking about their experience of trying to get justice and basic accountability in the Diocese of the Upper Midwest, and what I was seeing from the province told me: this is stage four. It was really clear by how Stewart was responding based on Joanna's documentation. This denomination has no shared standards of how you respond to abuse, which I thought is just hubris. 

You know, because Christians want to think well of people, you know, we want to believe the best, we want to believe that people can change. Like, we all overestimate our ability to spot a predator. I know that I certainly did. And so it's really easy for predators who are skillful at presenting an image of goodness, to go into that zone, where we overestimate our own health and maturity and judgment. And they, they groom enablers, as well as victims. And the way that they groom enablers is by creating a sustained image of goodness. So you think that this person could never, this person would never abuse anyone. 

We all have something to lose if somebody we trusted turns out to be wicked, because you don't just lose your sense of trust in that person. You lose your sense of trust and your ability to trust. You lose your sense of safety in the world. Because you wonder if somebody who appeared so good and decent and normal could be so wicked, who else have I trusted who is like that? And all the safety you had in your little church goes away.

And I totally get it, like, nobody wants to have another crisis again, but reality is reality and you have to deal with it. So you can't pretend that something awful isn't happening just because it overwhelms you. It's happening and it's only gonna get worse if you pretend it's not. I thought that this was worth fighting for. I didn't think the ACNA was super great, but I thought that there were enough really wonderful people in it that we could build something out of however this ended up breaking up. I believed in the church so much. And I believed in about 30% of you, I thought 30% of you would show up, then it was more like 30 people. It has destroyed my hope in what the church can be. 

And it's not just the narcissistic idolatrous leaders who are deceiving us and manipulating us. It is the wonderful people who I love. Some of the best pastors I know are in the ACNA, and almost all of them looked the other way. That I understand. That if an ACNA pastor speaks out, they're risking their career, I understand that. They face retaliation, I know that some of them have kids, and they're the primary breadwinners, and if they spoke out, like, how would they support their families. Like, I can have a lot of compassion on that. I can have a lot of compassion that a lot of the older clergy are so weary from fighting, and they just don't want another fight. And, you know, this is their only source of income, I get that there's a lot at stake. 

But I honestly thought that all of you were keeping up. I thought that 30% of you were doing basic due diligence, that you knew that this was a problem and that you were horrified by it. Even if you felt like your hands were tied, and were afraid of speaking out. I thought that you cared enough to at least be concerned when the only three experts in forming the provincial response to this abuse crisis resigned, I thought that you would give the mildest of damns.

But to find out that some of the best pastors that I know, they would sort of sheepishly tell me, “Oh, I haven't really kept up.” I was horrified by that. And it would happen over and over and over again. And then if they would, you know, spend an hour catching up a little bit, they would want to be treated like they were one of the good ones. As if, like, you know, making minimal effort to become minimally informed for things that are their responsibility as clergy means that they're heroes, and then they resent me for asking them to do more. 

You know, like, I don't expect any one of y'all who are clergy to, like, take all the risks here. I thought that y'all were paying enough attention and would have enough sense to organize. Look, I care about your careers, too. I don't want you to go through this, but reality is reality and you got to deal with it. You got stage four cancer, and you're acting like you can just go be the liver over here.

As we continue to set the stage for what this podcast will be, I want to introduce you to a few other segments you'll hear consistently throughout the episodes. The first is what I'm calling Ongoing Concerns. A podcast like this has numerous potential pitfalls. Over the course of this past year, a number of concerns and self doubts and criticisms have plagued me about how to approach the subject of church abuse and the authorities who handle abuse cases. As these concerns have come to me, I've written them down. And I've also allowed others to voice their own concerns. We'll tackle them in turn incrementally, and as they relate to the subject matter of each episode. Sometimes I'll ask someone else for wise counsel, or consult with a member of ACNAtoo or I'll just offer my own reflection. 

Our initial ongoing concern comes from theologian Stephen Backhouse, who I previously produced the Tent Talks podcast with. I've already interviewed him about a number of my concerns. And if you wanted to listen to the full discussion I had with him, it's already been made available to Patreon subscribers at patreon.com/WallOfSilencePodcast. In our first segment, I simply asked Stephen, what advice would you give me in starting a podcast like this on church abuse? Stephen’s way of following Jesus has very much shaped my life. And I have found his counsel to be incredibly wise over the years. At the same time, his responses are nearly always counterintuitive, and often jarring, as they cause people to take stock of their true motivations. Here's what he had to say, in response to my question

Have an exit strategy, have an off ramp. So, you know, all good things need a good end, right? And it's good if you have an idea, like, this will run, this is a limited series, this will run for, whatever, 20 episodes, and then it will stop. You know, and like actually say that right from the start. Because you can kind of get trapped by the thing you've built, okay? And you are going to need to be able to end it for it to be good because otherwise it might just, you don't know what it's going to become if you don't have an exit strategy, iIf you don't have an endpoint in mind. It might become something you never planned and you can't get out of it. 

You know, it might become just an endless grievance machine. Or it might become fixated on one particular church problem when you're trying to think about other things but you can't because it's just always the one thing. So if you're not clear in your definition of what this is going to be, then it will be hard to, to stop it or to change it. 

If you're not clear at the beginning, the consequences of that is that you're going to hurt real people, because real people are, are really hurting, and they need a platform. And if they think you are the one who's going to solve their problem, or shine a light on their problem, and you weren't ready to do that, or you're not able to do that for to the length that they want, then you're going to hurt them, you know, especially with this, this topic. 

Because there is no end to the topic, like the church abuse is endlessly miserable and it’s happening all the time. And so you do have to kind of be aware of that, like, you're gonna keep poking the hornet's nest, and there's kind of no end to the hornets that are gonna come flying out. So you're the one who's going to have to say, We're done now, right? Because it's, it's not going to naturally end itself, you won't run out of material. 

Naturally, this is what I call the kind of vibrating noise problem, which is that even our algorithms, you know, our Instagram and our Facebook and Twitter and X and all that, they, they absolutely thrive on, on making you angry and anxious. And that's what succeeds. So your topic of your podcast is very much in that angry and anxious mold, It could be. But you, I know you and you're also going to want to offer hope, you're also going to want to offer genuine relationship and community to people in love and grace, you're going to want to do all those things. 

But I've got to tell you, love and grace don't feed the algorithm the same way anxiety and anger do. So just be aware of that. And that the things that are going to be most popular, you might see a spike in interest are actually going to be anxiety and anger things. And we just have to be aware of that. And like have a way to deal with that when it happens, you know. And then the people who get stuck in the cycle of that kind of rolling 24-hour news YouTube commentator kind of stuff is that they're always just chasing after the anger.

And that, you see this with evangelical podcasts. I've seen this. I have some friends who make other podcasts. And they're kind of always looking at what an awful thing evangelicals in America have done. And evangelicals in America do awful things all the time. And yet, my friends are stuck in this podcast cycle where that's all they can talk about. That just fixated on it. And they might want to talk about other things. 

But the problem is the audience is there to be outraged and angry. And they themselves have been hurt by evangelicals in America. And so they want somewhere to talk about their pain. And, but, my podcast friends, they didn't start to just be doing that. That was one of the things they wanted to talk about. But now it's become the only thing that they can talk about. And, you know, I think that that's just worth paying attention to. And also their livelihoods are wrapped up in it in lots of ways. And, and so it's really hard to break out of that cycle. Even though you're aware, you're like, I'm contributing to the problem right now. I'm actually just making it a kind of a voyeuristic sort of celebration of misery right now. And I don't want to do that. 

You know, on a much more positive side, like I would say that your podcast will, it will find its audience, but you don't even know who that is yet, right? So your podcast might not become the next smash hit. But it will find people who, for whom it is an actual lifeline, like maybe even literally a lifeline. We want to treat that with respect, you know, that the people who are, who need it, they really need it. And so then now you've formed a community. Are you ready to have emails from people who, are you ready to have conversation with them outside of podcasts? So you know, be ready for that and be prepared for how you're going to deal with that.

So what might I have to say, in response to Stephen’s advice here? I have to admit, it took me a little off guard, I wasn't expecting that response. However, I will say this: in the midst of doing our podcast over the course of four years, he came to a place where he realized, you know, I think it's time to move on from Tent Talks, at least for now, at least for the foreseeable future. Maybe it'll rise again, in another fashion and for another reason. But for now, it's time to set this podcast aside. So when he told me this, when he told me to have an end in mind, I wasn't all that surprised, to be honest with you. I knew the motivation. I knew the reasoning of where this came from. 

But to be more specific about the Wall of Silence, I'll say this. I don't know how long the podcast will go on. I hope to be able to tell as much of the full Anglican Church in North America story as I can, and perhaps other unrelated but similar stories of church abuse, if I can get to them. So perhaps two full seasons accompanied by follow-up episodes that update the story. Maybe that's how long this will go. If new stories arise, and they need to be told, I want to be able to bring them to light. But I won't be telling endless stories.

Please know, though, if you are hearing a victim story on this podcast, it's because they've been silenced or mistreated elsewhere. They've come to this forum because they've been ignored on another one. And I'll say this, I truly don't want to become part of the endless grievance machine. And I don't want to become the podcast version of a cable news pundit who always needs new content and will rant about anything in the realm of their given subject matter. No, that will not be this podcast. 

Church abuse stories are somewhat endless, as tragic as it is to say that, so it grieves me to think that we're not going to get to everyone's stories. But I also think it's important to say that the end of this podcast will mirror its beginning, meaning that it will be done in community. It won't be my decision alone. I will come to a consensus with ACNAtoo and other Anglicans, and through prayer and discernment and discussion, we will determine together when the endpoint will be at the moment. My pledge is to give this podcast one year and then to discern together with ACNAtoo and others how much longer it needs to go on. 

Another element you'll hear frequently on the Wall of Silence are various works of art that have served as inspirations or conversation partners with the stories of survivors and advocates. As we bring episode two in our general introduction to a close here is a work of art that inspired me along the way in the creation of this podcast. It comes from a lecture by a Holocaust survivor, author and activist, Elie Wiesel, read by the actor Ben Kingsley on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast.

Let us tell tales. 

Let us tell tales—all the rest can wait, all the rest must wait. 

Let us tell tales—that is our primary obligation. 

Commentaries will have to come later, lest they replace or becloud what they mean to reveal.

Let us tell tales so as to remember how vulnerable man is when faced with overwhelming evil. 

Let us tell tales so as not to allow the executioner to have the last word. 

The last word belongs to the victim. 

It is up to the witness to capture it, shape it, transmit it.

When I first heard this, it helped me know I was going in the right direction, that this project was the right thing for me to be taking on. With that in mind, in the mindset of telling the stories of people whose voices need to be heard, let's hear from one final anti-abuse advocate, Audrey Luhmann, a member of ACNAtoo, Here she tells how she was compelled to tell the story of Cherin and her daughter.

For me, personally, I hadn’t done the math on how long it took Ruch to respond to Cherin and her family until, I think, I reached out to Cherin for a different thing and just said, like, “Do you have any proof of that in an email?” And she said, “Yeah, there was this email after…” I want to say it’s like May 21 of 2021. I’m pulling that out, but I think that’s right. Um, where she’s saying, like, “Stewart, these are the ways I’ve been hurt.” Anyway, it was in that email where I realized, like, wait, you mentioned meeting with Bishop Stewart or the first time. You say it’s the first time and you give a date. So I quick did the math, how many days is that since disclosure? I was like, holy crap. That’s 43 days. You didn’t speak to the mother of the daughter, you know, the mother of this little nine-year-old girl who’s just alleged child sexual abuse. You didn’t speak to her for 43 days. That’s six whole weeks! And like, I just had a moment, as a mom, where I didn’t know what to do. It just paralyzed me in my shock.

There have been moments like that, where I have just been so devastated by the facts that I’m seeing in front of me. There was one day where I ran down to the basement in such frustration and just despair. I threw pillows on the floor and then I threw myself on the pillows and I screamed so hard that I tore intercostal muscles. I was sore for weeks! Because I just couldn’t handle, I couldn’t handle holding this information that was so horrific in response. And I thought, I was taking myself back, like putting myself in this mother’s shoes and just thinking how alone I would have been. And how alone I would have felt as this mother who couldn’t protect her daughter. And as she’s trying to advocate for her daughter, she’s seeing these people mishandle and support the abuser right and left. How helpless I would have felt and how just infuriated. And how powerless.

So yeah, you have to sit with it a little bit and examine it and then let it soak in before you realize. Ruch, in his November 10, 2022 meeting that he kept closed to just regular attenders only, he basically told the congregation, “We made some mistakes and there are some things that we will do differently next time.” And then he went on to explain all the things he did well. I’m like, Bishop Ruch, you made mistakes at, like, every possible juncture you could have made mistakes. And these were devastating mistakes. And what do we do with this? I think we need to be, like, both he himself and the community as a whole, who were largely absent and have continued to be silent to these victims, we need to repent in dust and ashes. We need to be lamenting our response, committing to change. We need to feel the full weight of what we did, which was sin.

It's to Cherin’s story that we will turn in the next episode of the Wall of Silence. I hope you'll join us. 

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. Each month there will be extra interviews and conversations released exclusively for Patreon members. Again, that is patreon.com/wallofsilencepodcast. Relatedly, there is also a subscriber option on Spotify. That's another way to get the extra episodes if you desire, again, through another monthly fee. I appreciate you helping to make the show a reality as we lift up the voices of church abuse victims. 

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 work or commission a piece through her Instagram account, @mouthful.of.stars. Please rate and review the podcasts on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast service you listen on. You can find a link to the transcript of this episode through related article links in the show notes. Thanks again for listening