Date: May 1, 2021
From: Cherin Marie
To: Stewart Ruch

Dear Stewart,

Joanna’s email to you in January outlined some of what my family went through at Christ Our Light after disclosing [Cherin’s daughter]’s allegations against Mark Rivera; it also touched on some painful things that happened to us at Resurrection. In the last two years following [Cherin’s daughter]’s story coming out, my family has been through terrible things at COLA and at Rez which have yet to be acknowledged, spoken to, or resolved in any way, and all the leaders responsible remain, by all public appearances, to be in good standing with the church, still visibly serving in various capacities. I indicated, through Joanna’s email in January, that there were additional failings and things that I wished to share, at COLA and also at Rez. Since no one reached out to me to ask for more of the story, I am taking the initiative here. The fact that no one in church leadership has yet to even acknowledge the part of the story Joanna shared three months ago, let alone asked for the rest of it, has sent my family the message “we don’t care”. So it is very painful to share these additional things with you, but I think it is best that you hear them now, and that you hear them directly from me. This story is specifically about what my family experienced after coming to Resurrection. I would appreciate it if you would ask before sharing this story with anyone else.

As you likely know, my family began attending Sunday services at Rez on May 19, 2019, two days after [Cherin’s daughter] disclosed that Mark Rivera had been sexually abusing her. By our second week attending Resurrection we were almost completely cut off from our Big Rock friends and the COLA community, and in desperate need of help, support, and pastoral care.

Although I reached out to Deacon Val immediately after we began attending Rez, it took four weeks before she made herself available to meet with us, meaning that my family went an entire month at Resurrection before we received any personal pastoral care from the church. On June 16, 2019, we met with Deacon Val and Meghan Robins, where we told them, in detail, what had happened after we disclosed [Cherin’s daughter]’s abuse to Fr. Rand. [Cherin’s husband] and I named five individuals who had concerning and predatory experiences with Mark, in addition to two children in Mark’s community who were exhibiting behaviors that are common warning signs of sexual abuse. Deacon Val assured us that everything we told her would be shared in detail with you, and also that she would be creating pastoral care plans for our family. I’m not sure what went wrong here, but somehow it seems that this vital information was either never shared with you, or you did not consider it serious enough to take any action on. It was not until December of 2020 (a year and a half later) that I learned how little seemed to have been communicated to you. Somehow, I shared accounts and concerns about seven additional victims or potential victims, and none of this was taken seriously or acted on in any way by the church. We did leave the meeting with Val and Meghan feeling loved, heard, and supported, but this feeling slowly diminished over the following weeks, as promises were not kept and eventually we no longer felt safe remaining at Rez.

During our group zoom call in February ‘21 you said that pastoral care plans had been made for everyone, back in 2019, when [Cherin’s daughter] disclosed allegations against Mark. Although Deacon Val promised us that she would be creating pastoral care plans for our family, back in June of 2019, this never actually happened. No one in my family ever received a pastoral care plan from Rez, and the only personal pastoral support our family actually got (aside from Val’s presence at two or three court hearings) was a handful of one on one prayer appointments that I initiated and scheduled with Deacon Val. Some of these prayer sessions were extremely helpful and encouraging to me, but eventually I stopped initiating them because the last few were too painful. At one scheduled prayer appointment with Val I drove 40 minutes to the church office, but she had forgotten about our appointment and was not there. This was an honest mistake, and although I was hurt by it, I forgave her quickly and moved on, but opted to schedule phone prayer sessions after that. A few weeks later we met for prayer again (by phone) but Val called over 30 minutes after our scheduled time and was only able to speak for a few minutes and pray for me very briefly. I had scheduled this appointment many days in advance and was, at the time, in very desperate need of prayer and support, which made the briefness of this call especially hurtful for me. For the following scheduled prayer appointment Val did not call at all. I eventually texted her and was able to have a short prayer session by phone, an hour after our planned time. I have never initiated a prayer session with Val since, and she has not reached out to pray for me either.

[Cherin’s husband] and I were very grateful to have Val come personally to two or three early court hearings at the Kane County Judicial Center. Clergy support was extremely important to us at these difficult hearings, but sadly this did not continue beyond the first few. Although I sent Deacon Val the dates for multiple hearings, weeks in advance, and she promised to reserve each date so she could be there, there were multiple times where I checked in with her the week before to confirm she was able to come, only to learn that she had another commitment scheduled during the hearing time. We eventually stopped informing her about hearing dates, and attended all of the subsequent hearings with no clergy or community support at all. This led to either me or [Cherin’s husband] going completely alone to many of the hearings, as we did not at the time have any friends or family who were able to watch our young baby so that we could at least attend hearings together. I cannot overstate the devastation and trauma of attending court hearings alone, while Mark had a whole support team surrounding him each time (particularly when his support was made up of our closest friends and our priest, who was no longer ministering to us).

On Sat, June 29, 2019, [Cherin’s husband] 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 [Cherin’s daughter] 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.

[redacted paragraph]

At the end of our time talking and praying together you followed us into Deacon Val’s office (where she and William were waiting to meet with us) and instructed Val to reach out to Fr. Keith Hartsell right away, to fill him in on our situation and get him connected with our family to support us. This was a huge relief to us, and we were extremely grateful and encouraged that we would soon be having Fr. Keith on our team, to minister to and support us. Devastatingly, this never happened. The connection with Fr. Keith was never made and because of this our family did not have the priestly and personal support that you intended for us to have. I followed up with Val about this multiple times, asking whether she had reached out to Keith , and asking her to please do so, but she still did not follow through on this. Eventually, months later, I finally asked her for Keith’s email, so I could reach out myself, which she quickly provided. I could not figure out what to say to Fr. Keith, so many months after the fact, and felt too uncomfortable making this request on my own behalf, so I never contacted him. Not only did we never receive help and support from Fr. Keith, we did not receive any financial help from Rez, at any point, including the $500 that you offered us, back in June of 2019 (despite directly asking Val if she could please get that to us).

In November of 2019 I reached out to Deacon Val at an extremely painful and difficult time and asked if Rez could help me get some counseling. Val said absolutely, and gave me a counseling referral right away, assuring me that Rez would be happy to help and encouraging me to schedule an appointment immediately. I did, and paid $250 out of pocket the following week to meet with the therapist Val referred me to. When I followed up with Val the day after my appointment, to ask how we could go about getting reimbursed and how we should arrange payment for future sessions, she said she could only offer me $500 towards counseling ($250 of which I had already spent). As I could not afford to pay for that therapist out of pocket I did not schedule any additional sessions, and never even received reimbursement for the $250 I paid for the first session.

Stewart, when we spoke with you briefly in late June 2019 we expressed some of the discomfort we were experiencing at Rez, and you said adamantly that we should continue attending services there. We felt like you truly cared about us being there and this was extremely touching and meaningful to us. Your words gave us the courage to attend a few additional Sunday services, before things became too painful to remain there. We experienced a very real progression of multiple families, who had recently been friendly towards us, suddenly avoiding us, walking the other way if they saw us coming, and not saying more than an awkward “hello” when we greeted them. In some cases it was a night and day difference from the previous week, and I could obviously tell that they had been told “something” about our family. I shared what we were experiencing with Deacon Val, and her response was gut-wrenching. She basically said that we were probably just imagining it, and suggested people might just be uncomfortable and were avoiding us because they didn’t know what to say. She then suggested that we should attend a different service, because our presence at Rez was painful for [redacted] and [redacted] Rivera. In the end we got the message that people at Rez didn’t want us to be there, that Val didn’t care, and that [redacted] and [redacted]’s comfort and protection was more important than ours. To be clear, we love [redacted] and [redacted], but there was nothing loving about the church going along with Mark’s lies to avoid making them uncomfortable. They were identified and prioritized as victims, even though our family, the actual primary victims in this situation, were disregarded and pushed out of the church.

I know Joanna’s email to you in January recounted Fr. Rand’s, Chris Lapeyre’s, and other mandated reporters at COLA’s failure to report [Cherin’s daughter]’s abuse; I would like to speak to this more. I tried telling Deacon Val, you, and Fr. William, respectively, how absolutely devastating and traumatizing this was for my family. Instead of actually listening to me, each one of you immediately made excuses, explaining that Charlie Philbrick gave that advice to the best of his understanding, that he wasn’t an expert on these matters, and that he never would have given that advice if he had known better. Why did you all seek advice from someone with no experience or expertise in this area? Charlie clearly gave advice outside of his scope of competency; why has he never apologized for that, or been held responsible? What is perhaps the most hurtful and upsetting to me is that Charlie (and presumably all of you) were looking for a way for Fr. Rand to be able to avoid reporting Mark’s abuse of [Cherin’s daughter]. Why was Charlie’s advice even sought out in the first place, instead of a report being immediately made by Fr. Rand, as the law requires, immediately after we came to him for help? None of you have taken any responsibility for what happened surrounding this, or made even the most basic attempt at repentance and reconciliation.

Stewart, you shared with me that you had identified the need for some changes in Greenhouse, and that you wanted my family to be an active part in bringing about the important institutional change and transformation that was needed. I was greatly encouraged by this, especially that you had asked for an independent review of Greenhouse, to look more deeply into all of these things. Months after our conversation with you, on April 22, 2020, I had a short phone call with Fr. Eric Snyder, who was carrying out the Greenhouse review; that was as far as our involvement went. We hoped and expected to be a real part of that process and to have an opportunity to share our story fully, so others could learn from and develop needed changes from it; instead, I was able to share the bullet points of what had happened with Fr Snyder, and that was it. When I received your email in January 2021 (sent by Brenda [Dumper]) saying that the Greenhouse review had been completed the previous fall and you had received the final report, it seemed clear that the results and findings were not to be shared with us. We didn’t actually feel comforted by this – we were deeply hurt and greatly troubled by the fact that we still had no idea what the investigation uncovered and what, if any, positive changes the diocese has taken as a result. We expected and were hoping to see institutional accountability, at least for the fact that Greenhouse child safety training left several mandated reporters thinking they did not have to report allegations of child sex abuse; instead we were omitted from the process, the findings, and any ensuing changes that took place.

When you emailed me in November of 2020, after you and Katherine read Joanna’s email to [Mark Rivera’s wife], you encouraged me to reach out to Father Trevor for pastoral care and support. I need you to know that at that time we had not been attending City of Light for several months, and did not have any church or clergy support whatsoever. I told this to Deacon Val, the following day, and specifically asked her to please let you know that we were no longer attending City of Light and that we did not have any pastoral care in place. I would appreciate knowing whether that ever happened. I got the impression on our [Feb 21’] group zoom call that you thought we were being taken care of pastorally and receiving support and care from City of Light, but I did not have an opportunity to clarify this with you.

When we began visiting City of Light in fall of 2019, I specifically told Deacon Val that our family wished to continue receiving pastoral care from Rez, because it was the only place we had established relationships with the clergy, and because it was ultimately where we really wanted to be attending. Shortly after we began attending City of Light Deacon Val communicated that it would be best for us to receive our pastoral care from City of Light instead of Rez moving forward. This was extremely hard on our family, as [Cherin’s husband] and I had no established relationships with anyone at this new church and did not feel comfortable reaching out and asking for the care we really needed. We connected and prayed with Fr. Trevor early on, and felt very loved and supported by him, but all of this left us feeling completely abandoned by Rez, solidifying the impression that we were not wanted or welcome there.

[redacted personal information]

I realize that I have implicated Deacon Val in many specific and serious ways in this letter. I believe that she is completely unaware of the many ways that she deeply harmed my family, and I do not harbor resentment towards her for what has happened. Her actions were nonetheless grossly negligent at times, and the consequences to our family have been devastating. I do not assume ill intent on Val’s part, but it has nonetheless been impossible not to internalize the message that this sent to me. Val’s collective negligence during our time at Resurrection communicated that I was not at all important to her, that my voice didn’t matter, and that I was not even important enough to make it into her schedule. Since Val was the only church leader we were offered any help from, there was no support at Rez to counteract this message.

I love Val and it grieves me deeply to speak up on these things, but it also wasn’t just Val’s actions and failures that hurt my family. Numerous Rez families chose to listen to gossip and avoid us, while others actively spread rumors and lies about [Cherin’s daughter] and our family. This led to us being ostracized and deeply hurt, while attending your church, and to me receiving a long email from a Rez congregant, accusing me of persecuting Mark. Since the church never took a stand or spoke up in support of [Cherin’s daughter], this was allowed to go unchecked, ultimately driving my family out of Rez, and has now been growing and spreading for almost two years. The damage to my family’s reputation is far reaching. Multiple church leaders, in addition to Val and Meghan, also failed to listen and failed to take meaningful action when presented with stories of multiple victims and likely victims. It should not have taken Joanna and [redacted]’s disclosures to get people to believe [Cherin’s daughter]’s story and to acknowledge that Mark is dangerous – there was ample evidence and a clear pattern of predatory and abusive behavior presented to the church in June of 2019. I believe all of you meant well, but the collective treatment we received from church leadership at COLA and at Resurrection has legitimately traumatized my family.

I want to close by asking you a few questions, which I hope you will in turn prayerfully consider for yourself.

Why is it that in May 2019, when my family came to Rez for help, no one listened or took me seriously? I shared stories of seven different victims and likely victims, and no one did anything.

Why did I not have a voice, in the church I have attended since I was eight years old?

Why didn’t the church believe [Cherin’s daughter], and take a public stand to support her?

Why did no one take ownership for the diocesan chancellor’s devastating advice to Fr. Rand and Chris, and why did no one apologize to my family for it?

Why did no one in Rez leadership identify that having a sexual predator at large in the church was something the entire congregation deserved to know about, so they could take steps to protect their children or find out if their children had been victimized?

Why was my family pushed out of Rez, while the Rivera family was offered pastoral care, priestly support, personal prayer with you and Katherine, and financial support, on multiple occasions, by the church?

[redacted personal information].

I deeply desire to see my childhood church repent and do the right thing, to stand up publicly in support of abuse victims, and to become a safe place where victims are believed and abusers are not protected or harbored. I continue to be heartbroken by the painful inaction I have seen, by all of you.

Cherin