Email excerpt from November 24, 2020 email from Eve Ahrens to Stewart and Katherine Ruch:

Immediate safety. 
This is for her own felt sense of safety (even if she is 1000 miles away), but also given the timeline of Mark's behavior that began immediately upon being released on bail, it is not an over-reaction to assume that delay is dangerous.

-Is Mark still at large in the community (within his bail regulations)?  

-Is he living with his wife and children?  Is this being encouraged or discouraged by the church?

-Is their goal to restore him to the community?

-Are they, or how do they plan to, warn the immediate community or those who might come into contact with him? 

Systemic enabling and complicity.
This kind of behavior never occurs in a vacuum and is impossible without a community there to lend credibility, trust and opportunity to the perpetrator.  Collusion seems like a strong word, but as is evidenced, it only takes one credible adult in the community to break with the group narrative in order for the whole thing to collapse.  The fact that this has not happened up until now shows lockstep collusion with a group narrative, even if it is in different degrees of subtlety from different members.

-Is there anyone involved in the process with specific expertise in sexual abuse, grooming, predatory patterns and the way that these patterns manifest in a community? 

-Is this being addressed as a systemic problem rather than an individual "sin pattern"?

-Are the responsibilities of complicit parties being addressed, or is everyone involved being treated as a victim (as everyone excluding the underage parties can be both)?

-Are abuse victims being counseled by a professional with training specific to sexual abuse so they are being treated not just for the trauma of the event, but understand the impact of grooming and personal and community complicity?

Language and co-creation of narrative

-Is the church being intentional about pushing back on the gravitational pull for the community to create a more palatable narrative that accommodates current information?

-Is Mark receiving any counseling with or in conjunction with other community members where he can impact the language or narrative used?

-Are community members recognizing the value of discomfort and disruption and what it might signal them about changes that need to be made within themselves and their community?

-Is the church conscious about correcting nuances of language and narrative? 

This is particularly important to Joanna....examples would include NEVER allowing words like "affair" or consensual to be used in reference to Joanna or to [redacted] (I have already heard both words used in reference to both of them), naming what Mark did in appropriate and truthful terms rather than spiritual or psychological euphemisms (succumbed to temptation, moral indiscretions, bad boundaries, etc.) using the perpetrators name and active voice (i.e. "Mark raped Joanna," not "Joanna was raped").  Has the church done specific education on the impact of language use on narrative co-creation? 

-Do they understand how this is a natural response to disruptive information and is to the detriment of both the victims and of those who need to accurately name the truth and embrace their discomfort of it to find their own healing?

-Are they willing to be intentional about noticing and correcting this kind of language?

-Are they reconsidering narratives created about other parties who have made allegations against Mark?