February 21, 2021 4:34 PM

Joanna Rudenborg to Anne Kessler

Cc: Eve Ahrens, Cherin Marie, [Advocate A], Brenda Dumper, Stewart Ruch, Eirik Olsen, Steve Williamson

Dear Anne,

I appreciate your urgency in setting up interviews with the three organizations early next week. I realized while reading your last email that maybe our two teams aren’t quite connecting, around our independent investigation objectives, but also that the four of us haven’t sufficiently updated you on everything we’ve been discussing, on our end, as we continue to look into these options. I’ve added the entire team back in to this email (except Helen, whose email address I don’t have), because I want to make sure everyone reads what I have to say here.

This is a long email, so I want to be really clear at the outset that this is an evolving situation, and that the four of us are constantly reevaluating what makes the most sense, as we learn more. Hopefully I’ll be able to explain some of that here, but I can’t guarantee I’ll succeed, so please let me know if this ends up confusing or unclear, and I’m happy to clarify.

Without speaking for everyone on this end, I will do my best to catch you up on how my thoughts have evolved, since I wrote to Stewart a month ago, and since our Zoom call, and my correspondence with Amy at GRACE, and other research. I realize it may seem like I’m changing my mind about what I want, so bear with me. None of my basic objectives have changed; however, I am rethinking the best routes to achieving them, given what we now know.

First, a few things from some of my previous communications:

Urgency: In the January 19th letter to Stewart, I conveyed a sense of urgency. I had a couple of things in mind:
- It had been two months since the community received my letter about Mark, and I had heard nothing from the former members of COLA, nor the diocese, about any concrete action steps being taken towards addressing Mark’s history with the diocese or any of the systemic implications of my and the other victims’ experiences. I wanted to be sure good processes for addressing these things were set in motion as soon as possible.
- A more acute sense of urgency involved personal safety, in terms of Mark’s access to vulnerable people. Melissa, [redacted], and [redacted] still living with Mark was of primary concern. Mark crafting narratives downplaying the harm he had done, and spreading those narratives through the greater community via COLA, was another.
Independent investigation: After deliberate discussion with Cherin about our objectives in reaching out to Stewart and the diocese, I made the independent investigation the primary “ask” in my January email. This decision was based on three things:
- Our team having found GRACE and ascertained them to be a good candidate for conducting a survivor-centered investigation,
- my mistaken assumption that GRACE would be able to perform that investigation for us, and
- my possibly mistaken backup assumption that if they couldn’t, there were other organizations of their caliber out there, that could serve as substitutes.
Lawyers: I wrote in a recent email to you that I wasn’t concerned with whether the people conducting the independent investigation were lawyers or not lawyers. I need to qualify that statement. Amy Stier at GRACE is a lawyer, by background. But she is not a lawyer for GRACE; she is an investigator. As I review the situation more, I am realizing that this matters. One of many things that sets GRACE apart from many organizations in their field, is that they specifically do not litigate, or involve themselves in any way in legal proceedings. More on that further down.

Per the above points: I still have a sense of urgency around issues concerning Mark and his family and COLA, but that is for a separate conversation. Concerning the urgency I have around the independent investigation / organizational assessment / policy review and development / training of staff and leadership: I want these to be priorities, but I am leery of rushing these processes. They are by their very nature long and complex, and there is a reason why GRACE’s investigations and assessments tend to each run 6-12 months. I am highly skeptical of any organization that thinks they could do a sufficiently thorough job, more quickly.

Here’s how I think of this process: We are looking at 20+ years of Mark having access to vulnerable people; an entire church and community system (including Cherin and me, until recently) that failed to recognize signs of grooming and abuse; an entire church (COLA) that failed to handle blatant abuse allegations correctly; and a greater church culture that needs a deep, deep reeducation in sexual abuse as a life-altering spiritual travesty, not merely the “fall” of a good Christian man who took a few wrong turns. Again, this is not to point fingers; as with systemic racism, this has been a huge blind spot for most of us (again, including Cherin and me, not long ago). As white people learning about systemic racism, we will need years of inviting in and hearing black and brown voices, and letting people of color educate us in how they’ve suffered and what they need from us, and having roundtables and trainings and slowly digging further and further in. The same is true in grappling with the plague of sexual abuse: It will involve years of the church community listening to and actively centering survivors, before that community as a body can sufficiently grasp just how serious and pervasive of a problem this is, and can not just respond well to allegations, but prevent most such harm from occurring in the first place. We are at the very beginning of this process. Even I am at the very beginning of this process. I’ve had a crash course, the last 3 months, and I’ve devoted exceptional amounts of time and energy to understanding my position in all this, as both a sexual assault victim and a former enabler, and I am constantly learning new things about these dynamics.

My urgency, then, is to get started, not to get finished. This work will never be finished, but getting off on the right foot is crucial.

In light of that, and of some new information we all have now, I am rethinking my original primary focus on an immediate independent investigation (more concrete reasons on why, below). That reconsideration, and my lawyer point, above, bring me to the organizations on your short list. From our vantage point, as victims and victim advocates, these organizations are fundamentally different than GRACE. Here are just a few red flags that came up for me within five minutes on each of their websites (to be cross-referenced against some bullet points on GRACE, further down):

Lathrop GPM: Their <a href=*https://www.lathropgpm.com/pp/area-188.pdf?12236*>page on Organizational Misconduct</a> tells me, right off the bat, that they have an in-house conflict of interest that makes them untenable. They speak about a “team of attorneys that works diligently to maintain its independence and objectivity.” Then they go on to say that they also have defense teams, who work with their investigation team, to “assist our clients in responding to the media and victim advocacy groups…” etc. “Clients” means you, the diocese; not us, Mark’s victims. If you scroll down to read their “Representative Experience,” you will find that 100% of the litigation they brag about consists of getting organizations off the hook with relation to sexual abuse allegations. Despite the way this entire page is sprinkled with phrases nominally indicating that they care about victims, their approach couldn’t be further from a victim-centered approach. Through a series of stories about how they successfully defended the technical legal distance between admitted perpetrators and the organizations that enabled them to some degree, they are signaling to you, “the client,” that they will do an investigation in such a way that should you run into legal problems in the course of it, they can help you defend yourself on that front, against the victims. The conflict of interest involved in them being “independent” investigators and also defense attorneys couldn’t be more stark.
Rebecca Leitman Veidlinger: This firm seems to mainly deal with Title IX complaints for schools, and their process seems to consist primarily of adjudicating known allegations. Meaning, they are not claiming to find additional victims (one of our centerpiece needs), and their main service is one Cherin and I do not need or want. Cherin and I are both involved in legal cases, where Kane County will adjudicate Mark’s crimes against [Cherin's daughter] and me, and we actually need to be very careful in terms of speaking of the case details beyond the testimonies we’ve already given, since the nature of defense lawyers is to hone in on any tiny seeming discrepancy floating around, and discredit the victims with it. (And unfortunately, due to COLA advocacy and fundraising, Mark now has an exceptional private defense lawyer with an impressive history of helping sexual predators escape prosecution.) We do not need adjudication with the diocese. We know what Mark did to us, and you know what Mark did to us. [redacted] and [redacted], also, have reports on file with the police, and do not need adjudication in relation to the diocese. As far as I know, none of Mark’s known victims or their parents are interested in debating with the diocese whether or not what happened to us actually happened, or whether the diocese is in some way legally responsible for it. We know we are victims; you know we are victims; nobody is questioning whether Mark is a sexual predator (your team named that he is, in our Zoom call). We also know that Mark has held multiple positions of authority within Rez and COLA, dating back over two decades (we have made an extensive, verifiable list of those positions, for the benefit of the third party to be hired). We all know that COLA mishandled [Cherin's daughter]’s allegations, and that mandatory reporters failed to report, and that this ongoing situation continues to cause untold trauma to [Cherin’s family]. That is a significant part of the Mark story that needs to be told, by a third party, in the truth-telling process, in order for things to begin to be made right. At the same time, no one, at this time, that I am aware of, is interested in pursuing civil litigation over this, against the diocese or any parties who gave Mark these various positions of authority. That is not our focus, in terms of asking for an investigation. So unlike a Title IX situation at a university, in our case, there is nothing to adjudicate. There is a story to be told, and much more truth to be revealed, and there are unknown numbers of victims to be helped, and that is what we are looking to do, here. The story that needs telling will not be even remotely complete unless the investigating party can go to every length possible to find the rest of Mark’s victims. It does not sound like RLV will do this, nor do the delicate work of helping the diocese to craft the survivor-focused public statements it needs to craft, nor help survivors get the help they need, once they’ve come forward and exposed themselves and dredged up their trauma. RLV didn’t immediately raise up the concerns Lathrop did, for me, but unless an organization’s specific primary focus is the wellbeing of victims, we can’t trust that they will do what they are inherently incentivized monetarily against doing: focus on the truth, not on the preservation of the institution that hired them. I don’t see any indication that RLV is set up to do what we, the victims, need them to do.
Aequitask: Their home page says they are “fair, fast, and affordable.” Under “fast” they say: “Aequitask’s careful scoping, efficient process, and clear deadlines assure that our investigations are typically concluded within a few days to a few weeks. We deliver trustworthy, actionable results quickly, empowering our clients to make timely business decisions.” I didn’t even read further after this, because I do not want any investigator wrapping up an investigation in days or weeks. Amy specifically told me that GRACE’s investigations take 6-12 months (occasionally longer) because that’s how much time it takes, to do it right. I was not surprised by this; this sounds quite reasonable, to me. Nor (per Aequitask’s claim) am I aware of there being any business decisions this investigation needs to assist the diocese with. The purpose of the investigation, from our perspective, is to uncover the truth, for the sake of repentance, atonement, and cultural transformation. The business of the Church is truth. Any organization that speaks to their clients in a way that implies that the objective is getting this done with and getting back to business, is not serving victims.

Again, those are my five-minute reviews. I didn’t dig deeper, because the red flags felt sufficient to confirm dynamics I’ve come to be immediately wary of, as I read and synthesize news stories about third party involvement in institutional abuse allegations. I don’t expect your team, except Eirik (via his board position and involvement with Julie Roys), to necessarily be familiar with these dynamics, but what the four of us keep seeing, as we follow the Roys Report and others, is that too often, even when a church or other organization enlists third party help, the oversight or investigation doesn’t serve the victims. There are stories like <a href=*https://julieroys.com/hillsong-probe-closed-without-release-public/*>Hillsong’s investigation findings</a> staying concealed from public view even as they claim to be taking steps to change the church culture, or <a href=*https://julieroys.com/investigation-finds-no-evidence-allegations-heuertz-fails-include-victims/*>this highly suspect independent investigation</a> absolving Chris Hueretz of wrongdoing, even though the 30+ complainants who precipitated the investigation weren’t included in it. There's <a href=*https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/us/southern-baptist-convention-sex-abuse.html*>Village Churcht</a> leaning on their partnership with MinistrySafe to demonstrate sufficient attention to child safety, while the victim and her family remain sidelined. There are interventions that prompt institutional steps that make it appear the problem is solved, like <a href=*https://julieroys.com/victim-wheaton-college-chaplain-assistant-resigns/*>this debated chaplain firing </a> by Wheaton College, where a witness who spoke to the investigator (Aequitask) was apparently erroneously labeled as a victim, and a critic close to the situation feels like Wheaton rushed the investigation in an over-corrective reaction to their previous failure to take prompt steps concerning Gilbert Bilezikian. Digging a little deeper, we find that even third party probes that feel successful when we read about them in the media, like Willow Creek’s second and more damning review of Bill Hybels, can often leave victims feeling cold. Meanwhile, multiple sources still inside Willow Creek tell Annemarie that the culture has not changed, despite Hybels’ departure and the highly publicized investigation into his abuse.

Here is the basic dynamic that becomes clear to me, as I read news stories and investigator websites: You, the Anglican Diocese of the Upper Midwest, are the investigator's client; we, Mark’s victims, are an imminent problem the investigator is protecting you against. Because the organization hiring the investigator is paying the bill, and because all organizations possess a natural gravitational pull towards self-preservation, over all else (including truth-telling), almost all the entities who sell investigative services naturally cater to that desire for self-preservation. Some of them are more careful to say the right things about how they care about victims; some are more blatant that they exist simply to protect you from liability. Some likely do see themselves as neutral arbiters of the situation (as though a situation with a predator and his victims can ever be addressed “neutrally,” through “arbitration,” ignoring the inherent, ever-present power imbalance that dramatically favors the predator and the institution that enabled him). Regardless, these organizations are ultimately out to assure you (their client) that your institution will remain safe from civil litigation and legal prosecution; that they can make sure that you do not suffer the full power of the law that may come against you, if allegations are uncovered that threaten to take you to court. Even those that do not directly profit from your potential involvement in litigation still cater to their clients by delivering sterile, professional promises that make you feel that you can handle this situation at a surface level: fire a key person or two, shuffle some leadership, get the abuser in question out of the picture, put some better policies in place, appease survivors with a carefully worded apology, and do better next time.

In essence, they’re all designed to do damage control. Some form of containment. And containment is a very, very different focus than digging as deep as you possibly can to uncover the unvarnished truth, in order to precipitate a process of cultural transformation. The only organization so far that has convinced me that their focus is actually on uncovering the whole truth, and on transforming organizational culture to serve and protect survivors now and ongoing, is GRACE.

I understand that as an institution that does not know yet in what ways it may be legally liable for its mistakes, the diocese has to be concerned with the liability angle. But this is not our focus. While I trust that your team does want to know the truth, I am also becoming concerned that legal liability, or adjudication, or getting this done quickly, constitute competing investigative priorities for you, in which case our two teams' values in this process are fundamentally misaligned.

We want to know the whole story, however long it takes to uncover. We want victims discovered and cared for. We want to see a church system transformed from its blind spots into a place where victims (not just of Mark, but of any perpetrator, inside or outside the church), can go in complete confidence to a well-trained, trauma-informed counselor, and get the help they need, never worrying that they will be shunned, as Cherin and her family were, or dismissed, or pushed to stay silent, or blamed for their own abuse, or otherwise re-traumatized, whether or not the perpetrator is part of the church or diocese.

We want transformation, not adjudication.

I did not expect, when I wrote the email to Stewart a month ago, to be insistent on GRACE as a third party. They were the first organization I became aware of that did investigations; Rachael Denhollander recommended them; their website said all the right things; Annemarie knew them to be the gold standard; I read their literature and watched their videos and could tell, as a survivor, that they “got it.” But at that point, I just assumed there were more GRACEs out there. I thought if they had been doing this for all these years, others must have followed suit, and if GRACE were too busy to help us (the original obstacle I anticipated), it would just be a matter of finding the others.

But since I've talked to Amy, and read other websites, and read more media stories of investigations gone wrong, I find myself wondering if, in fact, there may not be other organizations. No other organization I can find remotely holds a candle to GRACE's approach. They are not different in degree, but in kind.

Here are some bullet points I sent to Cherin, [Advocate A], and Annemarie, after talking to Amy two weeks ago, that were significant to me. (I’ve updated them, with more explanation directed at you, for inclusion here.) You can cross-reference these back to my comments above, on the three organizations in question:

GRACE's typical investigation lasts 6 months to a year. Some have been as long as two years. The goal is to give survivors space and time to come forward, and to put all the many intersecting pieces of the story together, and continue to facilitate the greater arc of the narrative to unfold, so that all discoverable systemic weaknesses can be pinpointed and corrected. Their experience shows that this takes a substantial amount of time, which only makes sense. If you read one of their <a href=*https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56b8d736c6fc088f59ae8925/t/5ddd59e1238a18316c4ce188/1574787555381/GRACE-SPC+FINAL+Report.pdf*>post-investigation reports</a> (<a href=*https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58e680d09f74568059e619f1/t/5f8daf70e69d3c65a2104e72/1603121017534/Executive+Summary+and+Recommendations+TCPC+REDACTED+APPENDIX.pdf*>here’s another</a>, and <a href=*https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b0a335c45776ee022efd309/t/5be80cd240ec9a97ddbd4bd6/1541934291378/NTM+Final+Report.pdf*>another</a>), you will understand why it took them this long, to complete. Nothing of this sort could be accomplished in days or weeks. And nothing less than this is adequate, in terms of truth-telling and bringing healing to victims. To give this more context: The shortest GRACE report I could find (the second one above, investigating an obscure youth pastor in Kentucky) was 33 pages long. By contrast, the <a href=*https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rzimmedia.rzim.org/assets/downloads/Report-of-Investigation.pdf*>entire report</a> by law firm Miller & Martin PLLC, commissioned by RZIM to investigate the arc of Ravi Zacharias’ decades of sexual abuse and predation, is 12 pages long. This is because GRACE, unlike Miller & Martin, doesn’t give a sterile, lawyerly overview sufficient to prove misconduct (the stated objective of RZIM’s law firm’s report); they tell a very personal story, in great detail, in order to get to the bottom of what happened, so the organization can actually understand, repent, and initiate lasting change.
In order to accomplish this, they have a survey they use to look for additional survivors, and anyone who has any relevant information. They encourage the organization to distribute this as widely as possible, ideally on a list serv to the entire church membership, and/or via the church website, and to anyone who is no longer a part of things but was over the course of, in our case, the last 20-25 years. For instance, when they investigate a university, they typically have the university send the survey to the entire alumni email list. She didn’t tell me all their methods, but she implied that given their experience, they’re really good at figuring out how to get the word out and find survivors, which is a central piece of the investigation.
There is no attorney-client privilege (the diocese being the client). They keep survivor information confidential, but they don’t promise to keep anything confidential on behalf of the diocese. That levels the playing field for survivors. This is crucial, since the playing field is completely un-level to begin with, given the obvious vastly disproportionate power of the institution versus the individual survivors. This is the only way I would ever be convinced, as a survivor, to trust an investigator. If the result of the investigation were that I still don’t know how the institution in question handled themselves, throughout the years, because all of that is ultimately kept hidden from me, then truth is not served. Nor is the institution served, because there is still no external accountability. It might as well be an internal investigation, because the whole point of an independent investigation is that a third party can actually hold the system socially accountable, to the victims and the community, something even well-intentioned “internal investigators” just can’t ever do. Meanwhile, victims cannot come forward unless they are protected by a firm promise that their story will not be used against them, and that their private lives will not be exposed to the world. The playing field must be leveled.
Most of GRACE's investigators are ex-prosecutors and lawyers, but they are not a law firm. They steer clear of any involvement in the legal system. They only take cases where the allegations aren’t currently being pursued in a court of law. Their typical case involves adult survivors of childhood abuse, where there is no current mandatory reporting situation, and often the case is too old to prosecute. In the event that victims emerge who are not excluded by the statute of limitations, and decide to file charges, or where minor victims emerge and GRACE as mandatory reporters then report, they generally have to halt the investigation while law enforcement does their thing, to be sure they don’t interfere with that process. They obviously encourage people to report crimes if they are inclined to; they aren’t discouraging victim involvement with the legal system. They just do not interact with law enforcement themselves, except to do mandatory reporting, and then obviously if they are subpoenaed.
Per the last point, GRACE has no subpoena power nor any legal enforcement power (though of course they understand the legal system very well, since they are basically all ex-legal-system). They can’t force the diocese to do anything, or reveal anything. They do draw up a business contract at the beginning that the diocese would sign, but that’s the extent of it. Otherwise cooperation by all parties is voluntary. This assures both the survivors and the institution that GRACE is not involved with “helping” either of them in a future potential litigation situation. GRACE has nothing to gain from potential litigation, in direct contrast to a firm with defense attorneys (such as Lathrop or MinistrySafe), which is actually incentivized to find just enough dirt on the organization to create plaintiffs for a civil suit, or even to find prosecutable criminal allegations, while also building a case for the institution to defend themselves (which the firm then monetarily profits from). GRACE’s firm stance on staying out of legal proceedings allows them to focus on the actual story to be uncovered, not on mining information relevant to adjudication.
They write up a report of their findings at the end of the process (maintaining victim anonymity), and deliver this to the organization and to every reporting victim. All parties have the option to do with the report what they like. This does justice to victims, by maintaining their anonymity, while allowing them to understand how their story fits into the larger picture, and it does not allow the institution to decide unilaterally to keep the investigation findings confidential (which obviously undermines much of the enterprise of truth-telling).

All of these things are important. Almost no one else seems to check any of these boxes, let alone all of them. GRACE’s entire focus, their entire center of gravity, is distinctly different from anything I’ve read or seen anywhere else. So of course it is frustrating to me, that they can’t do an investigation, yet. But I also realize now that their reasons for not doing so align with their survivor-centered focus: They don’t want to risk undermining the possibility of victims getting justice through the legal process, and they don’t want to compromise their neutrality, as an organization, by getting involved with the legal process. I respect these considerations, and now that I understand them, per Amy, I am concerned about how another independent investigator will handle these issues. Certainly any organization that calls itself “independent,” yet stands to benefit financially from legal proceedings, is suspect. I am also concerned about any organization that can’t clearly state how it won’t accidentally undermine the legal process, by operating concurrently with legal proceedings. Cherin and I now know better than to talk to an independent investigator about our legal cases, but many people would not, and could risk losing their court case on a technicality, if the defense in the case subpoenas the independent investigator. Even if the investigator got a detail wrong, themselves, as opposed to the witness misstating something, this could be used in court against the victim, to the benefit of the perpetrator. This is an incredibly important consideration, since both [Cherin's daughter] and I are already facing uphill battles in court, due to the fact that these cases have such a low conviction rate to begin with, combined with the material contributions COLA and COLA-adjacent people continue to make, to Mark’s private legal defense.

Cherin and I feel increasingly that our hands are tied in terms of participating in an independent investigation, due to the open court cases. So right after I got your last email, I emailed Amy asking what a GRACE assessment could accomplish. Their website says the following, under “Assessments vs. Investigations”:

An assessment is by nature proactive or may be in response to a cultural issue an organization may discover. For example, if your organization has been notified that women do not feel comfortable in the culture and environment of your organization, an assessment would be helpful for your organization. Our process, once invited by your institution’s leadership, will typically include conducting a survey to gain a pulse of your organizational culture, interview pertinent individuals with personal experiences or information, gather data to assess the culture, pinpoint any specific areas of organizational growth, and present the organization with findings and recommendations to enhance organizational culture to better meet the needs of those under your care.

This is in contrast to an Independent Investigation, which is usually in response to ongoing allegations.

This is vague, but indicates potential overlap between the two, in terms of painting an accurate, if not complete, picture of the current state of the diocese re: sexual abuse survivors. I want to know if GRACE could use the Mark story in their assessment, including Cherin’s family's experience with COLA, to understand and address institutional failures and blind spots, while still obviously avoiding any interviews with Cherin or me, that could undermine our court cases. If there is a sort of middle road where an assessment covers many of our original “investigation” objectives, I would prefer to start with that, given the apparent dearth of independent investigators able to accomplish those objectives, anyway.

I realize that I am the one who called for the independent investigation, to begin with, and that our original stance was that that had to be the first step. This was the ideal situation, based on the information we had, a few weeks ago. Since GRACE can’t do an investigation (for good reasons), and since I don’t see any other organization so far checking any of the essential boxes GRACE checks, in that department, I feel forced to reevaluate my “ideal situation” recommendation, and move onto a Plan B.

I will let the others speak for themselves, but as things stand, my official stance is that I’d prefer to wait and get a better understanding of what a GRACE assessment might accomplish, and put the brakes on enlisting an independent investigation, unless and until we can find an investigator that can speak to every concern I brought up in this letter, and satisfy Cherin and me that they are able to do a GRACE-level job finding and reporting the truth, not merely performing a perfunctory adjudication that risks leaving victims worse off than we were before.

Thank you, Anne, and the rest of you, for continuing to learn with us. I know this was a lot of information. Please let me know if it was confusing, and if I can clarify anything further. I would have liked to have edited this letter more, to try to explain better, and eliminate redundancies, but it feels important to get it to you as soon as possible, considering the imminence of the scheduled interviews.

One last thing: As I was finishing up this email, I found <a href=*https://religionnews.com/2015/10/16/are-abuse-survivors-best-served-when-institutions-investigate-themselves/*>this article</a> by GRACE’s founder and former executive director Boz Tchividjian, which sums up many of our concerns and may be a helpful perspective on the distinctions I'm trying to make between different types of investigators.

Joanna