Excerpt from Cherin Marie’s May 1, 2021 email to Bp. Stewart Ruch:

”On Sat, June 29, 2019, [redacted] and I came to the Rez church office for a scheduled meeting with Deacon Val and William Beasley. We were very grateful, Stewart, when you saw us in the waiting area and pulled us into your office to speak with and pray for us. We understood and accepted your apology that you had not been in communication with us, and were grateful when you offered our family the same amount of financial support ($500) that you had given to the Riveras. We were, however, shocked and deeply hurt to hear that you had attended Mark’s first court hearing, and spoken to and prayed with the Riveras, the Yorks, and others in the COLA community, when we had not had any communication with you at all. The only reason I was not also at that court hearing is because I literally did not know about it. No one from COLA, Rez, or Kane County informed me that Mark had been arrested or that legal proceedings had begun, and I was left to find out on my own, days after the fact, because no one from COLA or Rez communicated any of this to my family.

There was one especially painful and jarring thing from our time in your office. You casually mentioned that you were up to date on everything that was going on with Mark’s case because Katherine was speaking with everyone involved and keeping you informed. This was deeply hurtful to hear, specifically because Katherine had not spoken to me at any point, and still has not. This means that Katherine was talking to other people about [redacted] and my family, without ever asking for our side of the story. It was additionally concerning to realize that you had not heard the whole story (because Katherine had, at most, only heard parts of our story, second hand), although at the time I assumed Deacon Val had at least passed on the important details of what I had shared with her a few weeks previously.”

Read more at https://www.acnatoo.org/diocese-of-the-upper-midwest/part-3-victims-mother-speaks