Episode 4

Transcript

My approach, the reason I want to do this, this is why this is important to me is because the story is so big, and there's so many details. And sometimes I think it's just important to stop and go, “Hey, this thing happened. What could have happened?” I'm not assuming that all church leaders are perfect. So it's not as if— I'm not looking for you to say this is 100%. What they had to do that was perfect. It's more about like, everything went so abysmally wrong. And so just, I just want you to point us to the way maybe what should have happened, what would you have hoped would have happened if that was you, if you were Cherin, if you were Joanna. That sound good? Does that sound okay?

This is the Wall of Silence podcast, the ACNAtoo story, an account of church abuse and cover-up in the Anglican Church of North America. Things done and left undone and why we should care about it. This is Episode 4, Cherin’s Story: A Debrief.

The focus of this episode is simple. In the previous episode, we told the story of Cherin, and her daughter's abuse by Mark Rivera, a lay pastor at Christ Our Light Anglican church, a former church plant in the Upper Midwest diocese in the Anglican Church in North America. In this episode, we are going to take some time to unpack what happened to her, asking questions about key moments in her story as a way to contemplate the mistakes her church leaders took at each step. Episodes three and four very much go together as one and I recommend listening to them together if possible—going back to the previous episode if you need a refresher. As in that episode, Abbi Nye and Audrey Luhmann join me once again to answer my questions, this time in their own voices.

It's worth noting that this type of episode will be a consistent element on the Wall of Silence. As we center on the stories of survivors and their advocates, we will also make time to consider the “what if” as a way for churches to learn from the errors of others, whether they be done out of intention or ignorance. This is done in the hopes that something similar won't happen in your community. Perhaps this can be a catalyst to make something right in your community if abuse in this handling already have happened. Before we begin, here's a quick review of the key figures you'll hear mentioned, something ACNA to does at the top of their articles. Besides Cherin, her daughter and Mark Rivera, There's also Fr. Rand York, rector or senior priest at Christ Our Light Anglican, Chris Lapeyre, worship pastor and senior Warden, or the head of their congregational lay leaders. Then there's Charlie Philbrick, the chancellor or lawyer of the diocese, and then Stewart Ruch, the bishop. Here’s our debrief.

After Cherin brought her daughter's accusations to her church leader, to Father Rand, he and another and their church warden, Chris Lapeyre, organized a meeting between Cherin and Mark. What should the leadership have done at that moment? What should their response have been? 

I see this as Rand trying to have his Matthew 18 moment. And as ACNAtoo has repeatedly pointed out, it's inappropriate to apply Matthew 18 to abuse victims. What Rand should have done immediately was call DCFS, remove Mark from all leadership positions, and then let the church know about the allegations so the members could protect their children. 
Yeah, and we might need to stop and just talk for a minute. What is a Matthew 18 moment? What are we talking about? In abuse world, we hear of Matthew 18 thrown out all the time. Matthew 18 is where Jesus is saying, if you have something against your brother, against another person, go to him and bring up that conflict so that he can apologize, you can offer forgiveness, there can be true reconciliation. Now, this is applied in situations across the board, be it misunderstanding or bad assumptions of motive, all the way to sexual abuse and domestic violence and all kinds of spiritual abuse that we see in churches today. In Cherin’s story, we see Matthew 18 being brought up as the way forward when an allegation of child sexual abuse is being disclosed. And then we actually saw that revealed in the Husch Blackwell investigation report that several weeks after Cherin's disclosure, Father Rand sought Bishop Ruch's permission to pursue a reconciliation process between Mark Rivera and Cherin's family. That's a request that Ruch granted. This just demonstrates how much both York and Ruch failed to recognize the gravity of Rivera's crime, the harm he had caused, and the danger he still posed. 

Tell me your observations on this. I have seen Matthew 18 used as a weapon to label the victim or the people in the victim circle, like a family member, like a mother in this instance, to say, look at them. It's always after the fact. Look at them. They're not willing to reconcile. See? They're not willing to follow the biblical principle. What can you say about that in terms of how it's used? 

Oh, it's absolutely used as a weapon. And I think it's not only used as a weapon to accuse people of not being forgiving or willing to reconcile, but it's used as a weapon to prevent them doing anything else. If you go public, sometimes if you even go to the police, you are pursuing some course that is unbiblical because you're not following Matthew 18. The desire to apply Matthew 18 to every situation, I think points to a deeper problem that we see in churches with sin flattening, where we say every sin is sin. It doesn't matter. Oh, he sexually abused a child. They lied. These are all the same in God's eyes, and therefore we can apply Matthew 18 to all of them. And I think that's incredibly naive. 

I think also we tend to misappropriate the importance of forgiveness. A person that is repentant in an abuse situation needs to seek forgiveness from God first and foremost. They may never receive forgiveness from the people they abused. Likewise, the person that is healing from abuse may someday down the road forgive their abuser without ever speaking to that abuser, without ever finding what we would call a proper reconciliation point together. You know, it may never be safe for those two people to ever see each other again. That is just the reality and nature of abuse and harm and injury. So the reconciliation process, sometimes it isn't so much between the abuser and the abused. It's between the abuser and God, and it’s between the abused and God. And Matthew 18 doesn't apply in those situations. 

Another thing that I heard you saying in this, maybe to use a metaphor is the victim is already in the pressure cooker. They're already in a horrible situation. And what Matthew 18 does is it turns up the pressure. It turns up the heat saying, you have to forgive this person and you have 10 seconds to do it. Is that kind of part of the problem that you're describing? It puts them in this horrible, horrible situation where the perpetrator is right across from them or the perpetrator of their child.

Absolutely. I think the healing process can be lifelong. What is the purpose of this reconciliation? Is it really simply so that the surrounding community can feel good, maybe find some closure, and move forward? I mean, who's the priority? And whose healing is the priority?

So, at a certain point in this meeting, Chris LaPeyre asked Cherin to give an account of what her daughter said Mark did to her and Cherin refused in the midst of her own horror, stress and confusion. I mean, I'm being honest here, I'm not exactly sure how she was able to stay strong enough and say no to those repeated requests. But could you offer an explanation as to why this request was so wrong for them as church leaders to ask of her? 

Yeah, it was absolutely right for them not to speak with Cherin's daughter. It's very important for a professional to gather that testimony in what is called a child forensic interview to be used for a criminal court case. Great care needs to be taken so as to not re-traumatize the child. You want them to only have to give their account once so that they can move forward toward healing and then the testimony can be preserved for a court record. 

Now, asking Cherin to describe what her daughter had disclosed to her, that wasn't wrong. But asking her to describe it to them with Mark Rivera, the alleged abuser sitting right in front of her, is beyond inexcusable. Having Rivera at that meeting at all was the first of a long line of mistakes made by church leadership. It only demonstrates they didn't have a clue. They didn't believe that abuse could have occurred. They didn't believe that child sex abuse was that serious or that Mark Rivera, the abuser, was dangerous. More likely, I think it was all of the above. Never, ever, under any circumstance, should the alleged survivor or their family be interviewed together with the abuser. That was traumatizing, and to be honest, it was also really, really dangerous. 

The next question is somewhat simple but still worth unpacking. So the diocesan chancellor, Charlie Philbrick, an attorney, said that neither church leaders or Cherin needed to report her daughter's accusations to the authorities. Do you have any understanding as to why the chancellor thought this? And simply put, what should they have done regarding reporting the abuse to the authorities? What's an alternate universe scenario of what could have happened?

Now, I can't speak to Charlie's motivations or internal thought process, but here's what I'm observing. Charlie's expertise, his legal expertise, is in real estate. But even so, any competence lawyer could have told Rand York that immediate reporting was the best way to protect the church from lawsuits. So Charlie's incompetence led him to misinterpret two important pieces of the Illinois law. 

First, Illinois requires clergy to report child abuse, but it carves out an exception for confession. This means that a person who confesses a crime to a priest is shielded from a mandated reporting law. The carve-out does not apply to a priest who hears about abuse outside of the confessional, and therefore doesn’t have any bearing on Cherin's disclosure. She was not in a confessional setting when she brought this news to Rand. 

Charlie's other misinterpretation was to argue that Rand didn't hear about the abuse from Cherin's daughter himself, and therefore it didn't count as something that needed to be reported, which makes no sense. Illinois law is very clear that even suspected child abuse should be reported. So again, this doesn't apply in this case. Rand York had all of the information he needed to make a report of alleged child sexual abuse to DCFS, and under Illinois law, he was a legal mandated reporter, and he failed in his legal duty to report. 

So did I hear you correctly in the sense that if Mark Rivera had come to Father Rand himself and said, “I'm going to confess something,” that would have been protected under Illinois law? Is that correct?

It would have!

And what do you think about that as a policy, as a law in the state of Illinois? 

I think it's a terrible policy. A lot of states have no such carve-out. Most of the time when we see this carve-out, this clergy penitent carve-out in the mandated reporting laws, it's because the Catholic Church is so powerful in a certain state that they weren't able to pass it without that carve-out for confession. 

Confidentiality about abuse disclosures made in confession is little a bit more murky with Anglicans, athough ACNA Chancellor Scott Ward made his opinion clear in his November 2021 talk, “Handling Issues of Sexual Misconduct.” Ward says "One of the first questions that your legal counsel should be asking is, “Do we need to report to authorities right away? If it's child abuse, you're probably a mandatory reporter, and you have to deal with questions of is there a clergy privilege that relieves us from the mandatory reporting obligation." And my question, of course, is why would any Christ-following priest want to avoid reporting child sexual abuse? 

But again, abusers rarely come to a priest or another member of the clergy and report themselves. They're usually caught, as is the case with Mark. 

One of the telling reflections Cherin gives is that she felt like she needed permission from the church before making a big decision, like reporting her daughter's abuse to the authorities. Looking back at this as her friends and as women who have experienced your own forms of spiritual abuse, what are your thoughts about this horrible situation that she found herself in? How can you unpack the frame of mind that she was in at the time and how the hold that church leadership had over her is indicative of larger patterns and systems of abuse within churches? 

This question deserves or could take an entire podcast episode or more itself. In many Christian communities, we're taught from a really young age to respect and obey our elders. This means that priests or pastors, even lay leaders, hold tremendous authority over life decisions. They greatly influence how we spend our time, who we spend our time with, what we wear, how we view our body, what we eat, how we care for ourselves, what we give our attention to, what vocations we consider pursuing as adults. Even in a broader sense, how we view the world and our place in it. In many of these communities, we're taught, again from a really young age, to trust that the leaders around us know more than we do, better than we do. It's our job to follow their lead, even when we don't feel right about it. And oftentimes, they bring in the spiritual authority. “God told me this, the Holy Spirit led me to give you this word.” We're taught that questioning that leader is bad. We're inculcated to distrust our own gut feelings. And if we identify any feeling of dissonance, we're told the problem's us. So the focus is constantly shifted away from our questions and onto our own self-examination and personal repentance. 

Now, thinking back in my own personal experience, Bishop Stewart gave a sermon in April of 2021. So just days before he released his diocesan letter that disclosed the allegations of Rivera's sexual abuse, his sermon title given was called Who Leads You? It's still on the website, on the Rez website. And at the end of this sermon, he specifically by name platformed a clergy and his wife and told the congregation, “They are good shepherds.” Then he said, “There are good shepherds like this, of which there are dozens in our movement, and I call you to trust them.”

Another barrier that can exist is that one of the greatest false shepherds that I see active now, and follow me on this because it's a bit complicated, but I think it's important is our own self. The rise, the ascendancy of the power of our own souls, of our own souls, to lead us into guidance for our own self to be our main discernment dialogue partner, we talk about it with ourselves, we sort of do ultimately want to do and it can become very complex. And if you're really good at this, like I can deal with my own sin nature, I can rationalize many things to myself as I lead myself. But the main four separate that I'm concerned about as a pastor is people's own selves, and the profound isolation and the understanding that somehow we can actualize ourselves and live in an autonomy of self that actually allows us to be our own hired hands. And the reason it's so dangerous is because the sin nature is so profound, and well, they can live in greater and greater freedom, because you just did lay down his life for us. We're in a constant life journey of overcoming the reality of our sin, nature, and living into Jesus's fullness and divine nature. And it's a process and it's a journey, and he's a shepherd outside of yourself. Beware any who would follow themselves. Beware your own self, beware at times your own gut, beware at times your own thinking. I'm not saying utterly just trust everything that happens in your heart or your mind. But I'm saying test it. And I'm saying be aware of the profundity. Here's your sin nature, we confess our sins everybody, hired hands, but can I tell you from pure lived experience, there are many good shepherds, so many good shepherds, I want to celebrate one of our good shepherds today. They're good shepherds, they have the courage to love others. It's good shepherds like this, of which we have dozens in our movement, that I call you to trust as you trust the Good Shepherd. Brothers and sisters who's leading you, who's guiding you, who's pastoring you? Jesus, the good shepherd, and those good shepherds who trust in Him and give you His Word.

You know, in retrospect I see that sermon as very likely Bishop Stewart's attempt to prepare his congregation to receive the hard letter he was about to release so that we would have total trust in him and the leaders under him.

So you add on top of all of that authority, this far too often promoted and normalized suspicion of authority outside the church and governance outside of the church. For many of us, even simply outside our local church or the larger denomination, there’s  suspicion. And you get this scenario in which Cherin actually found herself in 2019. How could she consider reporting Mark Rivera's abuse to authorities when Rivera was a leader whom she respected and followed for years? The added pressure from leaders like Rand York and Chris LaPeyre encouraged Cherin to remain silent, and that simply served to confirm that her obedience to “not cause harm,” as it would have been viewed – and was viewed – by her church community, and let the church leaders handle the situation, that that was paramount to her daughter's safety. 

Why are we taught this? Why do we come to internalize that our safety, our dignity, and our worth fall far behind the image of the church and God's great work? Should not the church uphold justice and truth and the worth of all persons better and more brightly than any other institution we have in our global society? 

It's so weird what hits you, but this one hit me. Maybe it's because I'm a pastor, I'm a priest. After Cherin reported Mark's sexual assault of her daughter to authorities, Father Rand canceled the baptism of her son. That situation would have been difficult for all involved. At the same time, canceling the baptism is telling. Of course, you cannot get into his head and it's, you know, sometimes pretty tricky to make assumptions. But why do you think Father Rand did this? And what would you like him to have done differently in this case? 

In my opinion, Rand's actions here – canceling the baptism as well as kicking Cherin off the church vestry – suggest that he viewed Cherin's decision to report the abuse as a rejection of her church. And this builds on what Audrey was saying, that we're supposed to view the world and other churches with suspicion. It suggests that Rand saw Cherin choosing her daughter's safety and reporting to the outside authorities as a threat to the church. In a perfect world, COLA would have rallied around Cherin and they could have used her son's baptism as an occasion to affirm that their church was a safe place for survivors and was a safe place to raise her son. And what we saw, of course, was the exact opposite. 

I want to pause here and acknowledge that I word my next question incorrectly about Rivera receiving legal defense support. I've decided to leave it in because it gave Audrey a good chance to address that my initial question wasn't accurate, as well as to clear up the facts about what kind of support he did receive.

Apart from the abuse of Cherin's daughter itself and the enabling of it by leadership, perhaps the most telling moment in Cherin's story is the divide between how she and her family were treated by church leadership versus how Mark and his family were treated. What do you make of this fact that Mark received long-term financial legal defense support and Cherin couldn't even get her daughter's counseling sessions reimbursed? How should Cherin and her daughter have been treated and how should Mark and his family in their turn have been treated? 

I see the church's response demonstrating that they believed Mark was innocent and that Cherin's daughter was lying. And in that scenario, they could justify their response. The church should have prioritized financial legal assistance for Cherin's daughter, but because they didn't believe her, it fell by the wayside. The church should have encouraged Mark's wife to separate from him for her safety and her family's safety.

The only note I’ll add is, in your question, you probably shouldn't word it quite that way because it wasn't long-term that Mark received known legal defense assistance and financial assistance from the diocese. Ruch, in his private meetings, has said that he didn't know that the Riveras would use it for legal fees. He knew the family had significant financial need. So, I just want to stay really factual. We can't attribute motive to Ruch’s provisions. 

And with those have been meetings that Bishop Ruch, people reported on it later. Is that how people find out about that? 

Right. 

Okay. And maybe what I was also thinking of too is in different accounts, it seemed like those people were trying to raise money specifically for his legal defense. 

Yeah, they were. 

Yep, definitely. Okay. And there were people who paid his bond. There were people who forked over gobs of money, but they are tangential. 

The thing is they're not specifically Rez leaders. They're not even regular Rez attenders. They were part of the community around COLA, but not regular COLA attenders. So again, just so that we are clearly sticking to the facts. And maybe it’s important to recognize here that the legal counsel was only given to the Rivera Family and not to Cherin’s family. Similarly, there was a huge discrepancy in the financial assistance given to both parties.

Halfway through the story, Bishop Stewart Ruch finally enters the picture. It was 43 days after she had first told her church leadership. Though I've asked this question in different forms already, what should Bishop Stewart have done differently? What would you have wanted from him, both personally, and if this were happening to you, but also administratively thinking about how church leaders should respond in times of crisis? 

Well, Bishop Stewart should have acted immediately to ensure that Rand York called DCFS to make a report. He should have acted swiftly to ensure Cherin's family's physical safety. And then he should have arranged for immediate trauma-informed pastoral care for all involved. He should have blocked Mark Rivera from attending COLA. And as soon as a report to DCFS had been made, he should have notified not only all the COLA members, but also all of the Church of the Resurrection members because Mark Rivera had been a member of Rez for almost two decades, and he had had access to children the entire time. If Ruch had notified both congregations right away, survivors could have begun to come forward to find support and care. Bishop Ruch should have worked to ensure that Mark Rivera's children were safe. This is a big deal. You need to understand, by the time Bishop Stewart met with Cherin and her husband, that 43 days after her disclosure, another child sexual abuse allegation against Rivera had been disclosed to Bishop Stewart's wife, Katherine. And clergy at Rez had been alerted about several at-risk youth in close proximity to Rivera. So, no known inquiry or reports were made in response. In the months that followed Rivera's arrest and bond release, Bishop Stewart would actually be more aware of further alleged Rivera abuse than the criminal justice system was. So when Rivera was released on bond and allowed to return to his wife and children, Bishop Stewart should have spoken up, and he didn't. 

What do you make of Church of the Resurrection's response to Cherin and her family after returning to Rez and with some finding out about her daughter's accusations? And what do you make of Deacon Val's response that they attend another worship service since their presence was making Rivera and his family members uncomfortable? 

The Rivera kids’ discomfort is not something that we should ignore. Mark’s wife and kids should have been treated like the victims of acute trauma and received tons of support and pastoral care because it is deeply traumatic to have your dad or your husband suddenly be accused of heinous crimes. Consider how awful it would be for kids to have to hear this about their dad, try to begin to reckon with it, and then suddenly a couple weeks later, he’s in jail. The whole string of events is going to be life-shattering.

So what Stewart should have done was encourage Mark’s wife to separate from him for the protection of her kids, offered her material support to do that, and then worked closely with her to arrange trauma-informed counseling and pastoral care for herself and her kids. Stewart (and Val as the leader for pastoral care) should have helped them apply for state assistance and made sure their rent was paid and that they had what they needed. Stewart should have instructed the church to encircle both families, Cherin’s and the Riveras, with love and support during this time, because they were all primary or secondary victims of Mark, and they were all traumatized in the wake of this disclosure.

I want to back up a bit and explain Rez culture for those who aren’t familiar with it. When I attended Rez from 2004-2008, the church website was very clear that their special calling, or charism, as they called it, was healing people from sexual sin. If you look at the archived version of the website from 2003, it states in the history of Church of the Resurrection, “Families from across the Chicago region made it their church home, and the church began taking in new parishioners that in many cases had come from across country to be part of a place that sought to be obedient in offering healing, especially for the sexually wounded and struggling.”
So, Deacon Val McIntyre’s downplay of Cherin’s observations and her subsequent suggestion that Cherin and her family attend a different service demonstrates the Rez commitment to healing and restoration, no matter the cost. It’s in the Rez DNA to believe that God—through Stewart of course—can heal individuals of all forms of “sexual sin.” So restoring those individuals to “wholeness” within the Rez community is essential to prove God’s power, even if that restoration is at the expense of those they have harmed. 

At the points where Mark was first arrested and then released from jail on bond, Cherin mentions that Kane County also didn't notify her of this. Is this an implication that civil authorities also failed her family and not just ecclesial ones? 

100%. Kane County bungled Mark's case time after time. It was a miracle that Cherin's daughter received any measure of justice from the civil authorities. And honestly, a testament to how egregious Mark's crimes were. 

Has any of that ever been addressed? Or is it just kind of…

No…

… the systems are so… you just leave it. You can't do anything about it at this point. 

Well, for so long, Cherin was worried that talking about it would harm her case, that complaining would jeopardize the case. And then because Joanna would have also had the same judge and other things like that, they were worried that it would jeopardize Joanna's case. Now, Mark took a plea deal on that case, so it was a moot point. But yeah, they were scared that it would damage the case if they spoke out and were like, yes, this is really bad. 

I guess technically you could always do some kind of civil suit or something like you could sue the county. 

You could. I don't think they have the bandwidth for that. 

Who does, right? Yeah, exactly.

Just the fact that it took 51 court hearings to put a child sex offender behind bars. I mean, imagine putting a family through that. And then yeah, do they have the bandwidth to go through more? It was harrowing just to watch. Something that I learned through this process is that in a criminal suit, the complainant – the plaintiff – does not get to choose their lawyer. They are assigned a state attorney because the state is actually who is bringing the case. The state officially brings the charges. And so while Mark was able to choose his legal defense, that wasn't the case for Cherin. She was assigned an attorney. And what I watched, just as an observer – as an attendee – is that there is very little control or autonomy given to the alleged victims. They are at the mercy of the court system. 

When it comes to an accused child sex offender receiving an order to not have contact with any minors, does that include their own children or just all other minors? That is, was Mark not allowed to see his own children and thus did he break that condition as well or was that not addressed in his process? 

Right. Well, following a surprise visit by DCFS in June of 2019, after Cherin's call and report, Mark was told that he wasn't allowed to be with his children unsupervised. So for this reason, he sent out an email to his supporters saying he was sleeping in his car. Then he was arrested shortly thereafter. However, he was released on bond a few months later and then placed on electronic ankle monitoring after reports were turned in that he had violated his bond and had had contact with minors. Even so, he was allowed to continue living with his family because he hadn't been convicted for his charged crimes, and there was only one person who had come forward and pressed charges.

With the main questions finished, they felt the need to offer a few more thoughts, mainly by pointing out how our church structures often allow for abuse in leadership control in ways that may not be initially evident.

The UMD Canons have just been updated during the last diocesan meeting last December. And they have changed their Title IV Canon IV, the Accusations and Investigations of Presbyters and Deacons and then Section 3, which is about canonical investigation, presentment, and trial. They’ve changed that ever so slightly. I can read a little bit; it would take me maybe two minutes?

This is a principle that I talk about in my American Government classes when I teach, which is this: that law is ‘boring’ until it’s not. 

What you’re about ready to read, I imagine to some people sounds like a policy. You’re just like, “Okay, fine, yeah,” and you raise your hand, you know, a lot of these meetings it’s “yay” or “nay,” right, and they don’t even do proper votes. They just go “Yay,” and “Oh, the ‘yays’ have it,” and it gets passed, right? I don’t know what their process was, but that’s how it works at my own Synod, oftentimes. And it’s just interesting to me, I think most laws are just like, “Whatever, sure, pass it,” until it affects your family, until it affects your livelihood, or whatever it happens to be. So, by all means, enlighten us.”

n aside, you’re seeing that all over the ACNA right now. I mean, we just went through the Stay Order which was functionally a gag order that Ruch and his lawyer – his chancellor, Charlie Philbrick – brought through in January and February of 2023. The entire canonical disciplinary process was brought to a grinding halt, and why? Because the Canons, because of arguing over the Canons. Canons that probably weren’t given a whole lot of thought back in the early aughts. And now here we are, and suddenly we need to rewrite them because they are ineffective.

And just to be clear about what happened in January and February of 2023, it’s because Bp. Ruch claimed that the first presentment was… what were the words described?

Yeah, he claimed that it was noncanonical, that because the three bishops who had signed the bishops’ presentment had an addendum that said look, we weren’t there. We’re not accusing him of being guilty. We are simply saying, ‘This deserves a trial following the Husch Blackwell investigation.’ Now, what wasn’t publicized was that the Provincial Investigative Team, which was different from the Provincial Response Team, did vote to recommend that a presentment be brought against Bp. Ruch. That wasn’t publicized, and I think it should have been, at least to give some of these three bishops who signed some coverage. Look, they’re just following the recommendation of the very committee that evaluated this report. Ruch didn’t, in his letters that challenged the canonical process – they called it the ‘Ruch Request’ – when he requested the Stay Order, he was saying, ‘This is not a canonical investigation,” basically, that a third-party investigation was not a part of our canons. So he was already questioning the legitimacy of a third-party investigation. And then on top of that he said, “Look, we haven’t followed our canons. These three bishops, you know, they have no reason to bring this against me. They don’t even think that I’m necessarily guilty, they just want a trial.” That put everything in a complete bind. We saw complete silence for months, and then lo and behold, Archbishop Foley went public because he realized that the system was broken! Imagine that!

Title IV Canon IV (Accusations and Investigations of Presbyters and Deacons), and then specifically Section 3, which concerns a Canonical investigation, Presentment, and Trial), the old version says this – and I’ll get to the new version in a minute, it only has one small addition, but that’s monumental – but here is the old version:

“If it is determined by the Bishop or Standing Committee that a trial should occur, then a presentment shall be prepared in accordance with the requirements of this Title IV and the norms of ecclesiastical law. Such rules and procedures shall acknowledge the presumption of innocence of the accused and the right to representation by counsel, shall be consistent with principles of fairness, due process and natural justice, and shall require expeditious handling consistent with those principles. No new rule of procedure shall be made while a matter is pending that affects such matter.

Okay, so the new canons have all of that, but they are prepended before now with this sentence:

“The Bishop and the Standing Committee shall review the findings and recommendation of the investigator, as well as the dictates of the Holy Scripture including, but not limited to, the applicability of 1 Timothy 5:19.”

So, what is 1 Tim 5:19? Here it is: “Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.”

Now, this might not seem like not such a big deal to add into this section of the UMD canons, but think about this: in a case of clergy sexual abuse, the bar that this sets for those bringing allegations ensures that accountability is now unattainable. The abuse - whether the primary sexual abuse or the secondary pastoral care abuse - happens in isolation. That is the very point. What the UMD leaders have just added to their canons has just prevented what we’ve watched play out over the past almost five years because now accountability will not even be possible. And it’s one sentence, one Bible verse.

With Audrey mentioning the addition of the verse from 1st Timothy, it strikes me that at some point in a future episode, we should take a look at the broader passage from 1st Timothy, as well as Matthew 18, which was mentioned earlier in this episode. There's also other passages that set expectations and consequences for church community leaders, and are typically used in situations like these, sometimes to justify different decisions that leaders have made other times to hold people accountable. These verses can be applied in all manner of ways depending on the interpretation and intent behind them. For example, it's interesting to note that in their change to the canon, the UMD did not also add chapter five, verse 20. If you put 19 and 20 together they read, “do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses.” Then verse 20, “but those elders who are sinning, you are to reprove before everyone, so that the others may take warning.” Why wasn't that verse in the proposed Canons as well? We will hear more from Audrey in upcoming episodes, both her personal history with church of the resurrection and her explanation of the presentments against Bishop Stewart Ruch. In a section that was later recorded due to connection issues, here she is with some final thoughts about what she sees when she looks at Jesus, and the disparaging divide between our leaders and those who are vulnerable and broken.

Over and over I see him doing things differently. I see him seeing the broken. I see him offering compassion. I see him using righteous anger, flipping tables. I see him giving up his claim to authority and power, and instead meeting people right in the moment, where they are. I see him acknowledging or giving them - handing back – their dignity. 

I’m sitting with that, and that’s, to be really, really honest, that’s all I can sit with right now. I’m in a place of deep sadness. I’ve loved my church. I’ve loved my leaders. I don’t see them doing the right thing. I’m watching day after day after day survivors suffering. I’m watching survivors walk with such integrity, and it’s the integrity that I thought I would see in my leaders, and I’m seeing it instead in the broken, even in the ones that the leaders have directly harmed. It’s a heaviness that I think, I think that it will not quickly lift.

In our next episode, we begin to tell the story of Joanna Rudenborg. 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 this show a reality has me 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 other work or commission a piece through her Instagram account, @mouthful.of.stars. Please rate and review the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast service you listen on. You can find a link to the transcript of this episode and through related links in the show notes. Thanks again for listening.