Thread by @ladyjessicahaze

Okay, concerned Anglicans have asked what they can do next.

This thread addresses that.

It's also long, dense, and repetitive.

There’s a reason for that. Please bear with me.

(Also, screenshots are just evidence; you can skip them and come back.)

My June 26 thread said “nothing about this process is trauma-informed.”

That referred to the ongoing investigation but also the last 7 months of @MidwestAnglican ignoring us as we explained, over and over, exactly what "trauma-informed" means and why it is so crucial.

It may not be apparent to some readers why I’m providing so much documentation of the process that led to where we are now.

I will explain more at the end of the thread, but you knowing the backstory is 100% necessary to both my sanity and to getting this advocacy done right.

Note: This thread is specifically written for advocates within @The_ACNA who understand the basic psychological dynamics of grooming, abuse, and community enabling.

Others: please read, but know this thread assumes some familiarity with those things.

Basic premise:

Sexual predators accomplish serial abuse by coercing victims into silence. In order to break this silence, come forward, and receive care, victims need a community that *actively demonstrates that it protects victims and not predators.*

November 19, 2020: I disclose Mark Rivera’s rapes and abuse of me to his community.

November 21: @StewartRuch sends me a kind email with an open-ended offer of support.

I am overwhelmed and deputize my friend Eve Ahrens to communicate as my proxy with Bp. Stewart.

November 24: Eve, a professional counselor and former @ChurchRez member, writes Stewart and his wife on my behalf, citing among other things my serious concern that qualified professionals be brought in to educate church leadership and work with victims.

November 24: Eve has a Zoom meeting with Stewart and his wife. Eve explains grooming, abuse, and the Diocese’ responsibility to address systems and dynamics and not allow Mark to keep controlling the community narrative.

Stewart indicates that he understands all of this well.

January 19, 2021: I write Bp. Stewart detailing how COLA and a pocket of @ChurchRez became a blatantly victim-unsafe community starting May 2019, when the first of Mark Rivera’s victims came forward and leaders and others openly supported Mark and shunned the victim’s family.

The Bishop’s wife had told Eve that the church “can’t control what people think.”

So I explain how the church has already strongly influenced how people think and must now actively change course, or victims who've observed predators being protected will never come forward.

I emphasize that @ChurchRez will need to bring in trauma-informed professionals in order to handle this situation properly, and I provide links to resources my team has discussed and endorsed, as a starting point. Here’s just one excerpt:

February 10: We Zoom with Stewart’s response team.

Eve reiterates how COLA has long silenced victims and explains in detail how easily child sexual abuse victims are also inadvertently silenced by parents who try to inquire about abuse but don’t have the tools to do so properly.

February 12: Eve emails Stewart’s team expressing concern about one of their proposed investigative firms and reiterates how crucial it is that an investigator know how to search properly for victims and also provide guidance for parents:

February 15: I reiterate to Stewart’s team that my top investigation priority is a comprehensive victim search and an equally comprehensive, trauma-informed plan in place to field any survivors the search brings forward (1st screenshot).

Eve does the same (2nd screenshot).

February 21: I email with concerns about another investigative firm, reiterating my focus on the delicate work of both finding survivors and then getting them excellent help immediately, while they are in the highly vulnerable place of just bringing forward their abuse:

February 21: A victim’s mother also writes Stewart’s team expressing distress concerning investigators the Diocese is considering and details numerous problems with them. She carefully explains how much additional pain and trauma a poorly done investigation can cause victims.

March 15: I email the Bishop’s team again about firms they are considering, echoing the victim's mother's concerns that they don't even approach the gold standard, @netgrace_org, and reiterating yet again some necessary care parameters for victims.

This email is never answered.

Total silence for 6 weeks.

April 19: I reach out to check on the investigator search.

They've hired one.

I ask basic questions.

They will not speak to us about the investigation, including the firm's name, as this is "contrary to the independence of the investigation."

April 30: A prominent man at @ChurchRez calls Stewart to advocate for us.

Stewart's team leader then asks us to chat “informally” via phone.

We decline.

She sends a friendly email that still answers few of our questions.

May 4: Stewart launches the investigation publicly.

Bp. Stewart’s May 4 launch announcement gives parents absolutely no guidance on how to talk with children and gives zero details indicating that @MidwestAnglican plans to provide professional trauma-informed care for victims who may come forward.

midwestanglican.org/big-rock

It also

--fails to define GRS' scope and thus what stories are relevant
--downplays Mark’s access to vulnerable people and his heavy 20+ year @ChurchRez involvement
--downplays the allegations' number and severity
--reduces 2+ years of a victim's abuse to “several months”

etc.

The announcement does promise that “one of [their] first actions will be communicating how other possible victims or their parents can find help.”

Two months later, we have seen no such communication.

In the wake of Bp. Stewart’s May 4 announcement my team immediately sends crucial follow-up emails explaining to him / reminding him of multiple ways in which his process could do more harm than good to @ChurchRez abuse victims.

May 5: A victim’s mother emails Stewart’s team many @ChurchRez-and-adjacent roles Mark had in 20+ years that weren’t in the announcement (creating a false sense of security as parents assume their children didn't cross Mark's path, as he’s just “a former member of the diocese”).

She also challenges Stewart’s claim that the alleged abuses did not take place on church property or at church events, an unsubstantiated assertion that again serves to improperly assuage parental fears---this time by suggesting that Mark didn’t abuse children at church.

She explains how Mark constantly groomed children during church services and at church functions, sometimes while in clerical robes, hugging, kissing and snuggling them on his lap, and used the churches to shop for “godchildren” and pursue teenage girls to “mentor.”

She urges him to issue an update with this plus

-Mark living on shared property with a school @ChurchRez kids attend
-bond violations (interacting with minors)
-# of victims so far (10)
-allegation types (rape, assault, abuse...)
-criminal charges (9 counts child sexual assault)

Importantly, also, as the mother alludes to, I am the only one of Mark’s known victims that never attended @ChurchRez. Church was Mark’s primary social vehicle for accessing victims. Downplaying that reality in any way, as Stewart’s letter does here, is dishonest and dangerous:

May 6: Eve, the professional counselor, backs up what the victim’s mother said, then reminds Stewart’s team yet again that it’s crucial that parents get help speaking with children about abuse, or this whole investigation could actually silence victims further.

Eve also points out that the mother’s list of Mark’s roles not mentioned in the Bishop’s announcement includes Redeemed Lives group leader.

This means he also had access to vulnerable adults in an exceptionally intimate setting: a perfect storm of abuse opportunity.

To date, Bp. Stewart has not updated the congregation about any of this information, including Mark’s other Rez roles or Rez-adjacent roles, thus leaving in place his first announcement’s dangerous impression that Mark was not that involved with @ChurchRez (etc).

(Also, because @GrandRiverSols does absolutely no outreach, there is zero effort being made to find victims among former Rez-goers, even though Mark attended church there and occupied volunteer roles dating back to the mid-90s.)

May 7: I write Stewart asking that he please make an in-church announcement explaining crucial details his online announcement missed, including the scope and severity of the known allegations and Mark’s additional access points to vulnerable people.

May 7: Stewart replies that he’ll consider my suggestions for a future announcement. No such announcement ever happens.

(May 9: Fr. Steve Williamson delivers an in-church announcement with no details, directing congregants to the Bishop’s online letter.)

May 7: A victim’s mother calls @GrandRiverSols’ head investigator.

We learn that GRS

--has no anonymous reporting option
--offers no victim support
--can’t guarantee victims aren’t named to the client (the Diocese)
--does no outreach to find victims

(screenshots = call notes)

@GrandRiverSols also

--does nothing to show victims they’re safe to reach out to
--doesn't know what will be included in the final report, as that's entirely up to the Diocese
--has no protocol in place to ensure they don't unintentionally compromise victims’ criminal cases

May 8: The victim’s mother and I each write emails to Stewart’s team informing them that we have interviewed @GrandRiverSols, are horrified by the way their process fails to center (or even marginally protect) victims, and will not be participating in the investigation.

No response from Stewart.

May 11: A member of Stewart’s team, who also sits on his Bishop’s council, emails the two of us, cc'ing Stewart, to express sadness over our opting out of the investigation.

May 12: I write an impassioned reply to this woman, lamenting among much else our mounting pile of ignored communications. In this excerpt I refer yet again to the many ways the investigation and announcement have failed victims:

May 18: Eve (the counselor) reaches out to Stewart to remind him yet again about parents needing guidance to talk with children, and offers him an exceptionally qualified professional colleague of hers whom he can enlist to help with this.

Stewart passes Eve off to @ChurchRez’ children’s pastor.

May 19: Eve writes back reminding him how time-sensitive this is, as lack of educational resources at the investigation outset will likely further harm victims.

May 25: Eve finally has a Zoom call with the children’s pastor and the Bishop’s council member.

She re-explains how abusers silence victims and the need for trauma-informed professional guidance for parents and care for victims. They thank her and say they learned a lot.

May 27: Stewart responds to a private email from the aforementioned mother in which she disclosed highly sensitive information about ways in which church leadership failed her in 2019.

He offers for his wife and himself to meet with the mother to discuss this.

May 28: The victim’s mother writes Stewart one final time, explaining why she does not feel emotionally safe to meet with Stewart in person, and lamenting just how much this investigation goes against everything we asked for, for months and months:

She cites specific examples of how Stewart’s vague announcement is causing confusion among @ChurchRez moms, who have investigation-relevant information that they don’t think is what GRS wants.

She begs him again to hire Eve’s professional colleague to come do damage control.

4 weeks later, he replies.

Stewart, June 24: “I am not sure what else I can say at this point.”

And he will be out of the office for several weeks.

He writes back to reiterate how much he cares about the victim’s family but he “could understand how that may sound insincere.”

This sort of response is what we have come to expect.

We are grieved, but not surprised.

June 26: I write a 30-tweet thread explaining our basic story.

Bp. Stewart quickly emerges under public pressure to address my allegations that he’s mishandled this all terribly.

June 29: Bp. Stewart writes a new announcement making concessions he frames as not actually being concessions and reiterates his deep concern for victims.

He still makes no mention of how the Diocese is helping find or care for victims.

midwestanglican.org/update-on-ongo…

Conclusion:

I have zero faith in this investigation. @GrandRiverSols is in no way up to the task of doing what needs to be done. That’s a whole other thread.

Most urgently, though, GRS has no resources to help parents or victims.

Nor does @MidwestAnglican.

@ChurchRez needs to hire an expert, trauma-informed team with no connection to the Diocese to go in and:

1) help parents learn how to speak with children to discover abuse (without doing further harm)

2) provide professional counseling for victims and families who come forward

This is a bare minimum.

And it is not our job to make it happen.

But we don’t want more victims silenced.

We have done this work for months.

Bp. Stewart does not take us seriously.

He has proven he will only listen if you all put pressure on him.

.@The_ACNA advocates *who understand trauma-informed counseling and training*: please help Stewart get this lined up.

You can contact me to get info for the person Eve recommended; I also know there are many other good options.

Thank you.

Postscript: This thread is far from comprehensive. I included what I felt was the minimum needed to effectively represent what’s led to this moment, so when you all succeed you will know that it’s due to public pressure; it is NOT Bp. Stewart listening to victims.

I wrote this long thread because I’m tired of people not knowing how hard we tried. I’m tired of being gaslit by a Diocese that constantly pays lip service to caring, but whose actions contradict this entirely.

This is what abusers do. And I am done being abused.

It is also vitally important for me to provide evidence that Bp. Stewart is not properly motivated to do this work, because this means that it will take *ongoing* oversight by people who *are* motivated, to ensure this process is seen through.

I hope it is also clear that my team and I did everything we possibly could to address these urgent matters privately and in good faith, and that we were finally left with no feasible alternative but to take all of this public and beg for your help.