Date: February 12, 2021
From: Eve Ahrens
To: Anne Kessler
Cc: Cherin Marie, Joanna Rudenborg, [redacted advocate], Brenda Dumper, Stewart Ruch

Thank you Anne for all of your time and research.  I am grateful for the amount of resources and research that is being sought out and the careful thought that is being put into this.

Just to clarify the two pieces where a third party is necessary: I don't think the internal investigation piece should be framed as a legal investigation with the purpose being to clarify judgments about guilt or innocence.  This piece is often investigated by former members of the legal system (due to their experience in the investigative process), but the actual purpose is 1) to create spaces and means for truth to come forward so that other victims can receive care and legal recourse safely, and 2) to collect the most possible data (via victims’ stories) about the entire arc of the predator's behavior, including ways that they gained access to children or vulnerable adults, established credibility through the diocese and church communities, and where other adults failed to recognize red flags of grooming behavior or allowed said access or reinforced credibility of the perpetrator.  These directly serve victims who would likely not otherwise come forward as well as contributing to the thoroughness of the assessment.

The assessment piece, without this information, will be helpful in seeing where protocol was breached in the most overt ways (i.e., mandated reporters should report or perpetrators should not be informed of that report), but will not help the church to understand the systems that a serial predator nearly always creates around them to ensure they have access to victims, implied trust of victims and their families, and that their secrets will be kept or their behavior defended if it becomes known.  Obviously I don't implicate everyone in the ways they were used by a perpetrator as this is often an unwitting role (at least until the secret keeping and defense pieces), but by very nature of the care and trust that's offered and implied in Church communities, they are a natural breeding ground for these systems to take root, so I believe it is their responsibility to be aware of them, be able to pick up on signs quickly, and act quickly and directly to self-correct and dismantle these systems as soon as it appears harm has been done.  Protocol should be developed out of an understanding of these patterns and fundamental changes in thinking and culture.  Procedures on their own can be helpful, but still often fail.  In this case there were good procedures in place (everyone at COLA had child safety training and was a mandated reporter) and it's important to know why the foundation was missing so that every adult that the victim went to for help failed to follow procedures.

In reading through Aequitask's material, I can see that they are very professional and well organized and understand how you would be impressed by their responses.  It seems like their specializations lean toward corporate or institutional investigations of practice and protocol (this is judging by their language, the qualifications of their staff and their apparent target market) that would be well suited to examining failures in processes at the institutional level.  I am concerned that there does not appear to be any indication of trauma informed staff (investigators who don't understand the psychology of victims will be unlikely to know the language or methods to help bring victims forward or instruct parents on how to interview children.  I know we mentioned in the call how the nuances of this are crucial) or a posture that centers victims or survivors.  Assessments done without these components will run into the same issues mentioned above (protocol will be reiterated, but foundational education as to why, or a culture that knows why they support that protocol will still not be there).  Obviously more information would be helpful as the scope of what they described themselves as doing seemed very broad.

Of course involvement with GRACE could only happen with their cooperation.  I still know them to be the gold standard in this particular kind of case, but it is an unfortunate time to be trying to reach them given the leadership transition.  I imagine being the gold standard also makes you hard to get a hold of-I understand they just published the report on the Ravi Zacharias case which was obviously very high profile and with hundreds of victims stateside and internationally, so they may not be able to keep up with new contacts right now.  

Thank you again, it is very heartening to see everyone's openness and desire to better serve the wounded and the vulnerable.

All the best,

Eve Annemarie Ahrens