Thread by @ladyjessicahaze

Dear @The_ACNA:

As the most outspoken victim of former ACNA Catechist Mark Rivera, as the de facto primary survivor-advocate in this situation for the last 8 months, and as the reluctant founder of #ACNAtoo, I'm begging you:

Please do better than this.

https://twitter.com/The_ACNA/status/1421140517484695556

This July, when Bishop @StewartRuch went on leave (after 2 years of grievously mishandling multiple sexual abuse allegations), you, @The_ACNA, via @ArchbishopFoley's office, finally reached out to say you wanted to listen to ex-Catechist Mark Rivera's victims.

On July 9, @The_ACNA COO Alan Hawkins promised me personally that the Province's "highest aim will be to see this done rightly and with great involvement from all the survivors."

Rev. Hawkins went on to assure me, on behalf of @The_ACNA, that you were all on board with my request that the process going forward be done "in direct sincere, open communication with ACNA victims and their chosen advocates."

Taking Rev. Hawkins up on this, we formed the #ACNAtoo Advocacy Team, a group of concerned longtime Anglicans who'd either worked with me already (advocating for months with @MidwestAnglican) or personally reached out in July, asking how they could help. acnatoo.org

Pause here to remind you that I am not Anglican.

An @The_ACNA church leader raped and abused me, as well as abusing children, teenagers, and young adults.

I started advocating with @StewartRuch / @MidwestAnglican on behalf of all of us, in November 2020.

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1417544824073244674

My team advocated with @MidwestAnglican for months. When they failed us, I went to Twitter.

Without our advocacy, none of this would have happened. Not the @GrandRiverSols investigation, not #ACNAtoo, not @StewartRuch going on leave, not @RNS publishing our stories: none of it.

I'm not Anglican and I'm exhausted. @MidwestAnglican wasted 1000s of combined hours of my & other advocates' time starting May 2019.

As documented, @StewartRuch strung us along for months, ultimately ignored our appeals, and deceived the public about it.

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1411369280734519302

Unable to risk repeating our wasted effort at a Provincial level, my team took Rev. Hawkins up on his promise to work with "ACNA victims and their chosen advocates."

We chose a larger team to handle this going forward: the #ACNAtoo Advocacy Team. acnatoo.org/about-1

We chose the #ACNAtoo Advocacy Team from among people who are a) Anglican and b) trauma-informed.

Each individual reached out directly to survivors to ask how they could help. Each gained our trust by doing what @MidwestAnglican consistently failed to do: center abuse survivors.

The #ACNAtoo Advocacy Team has worked tirelessly to serve #ACNAtoo abuse survivors as well as the survivors & advocates abused by @MidwestAnglican's allegations mishandling.

This has included publishing this July 15 open letter to @ArchbishopFoley: acnatoo.org/news/openletter

I sent the #ACNAtoo open letter privately to @The_ACNA COO Alan Hawkins on July 15, shortly before it was published online.

In the letter, the #ACNAtoo Advocacy Team specifically asks @ArchbishopFoley to respond to our requests publicly, and explains why this is necessary.

Only a public, direct response from @The_ACNA ensures survivors transparency and accountability.

It is also the only way to guarantee we don't repeat the experience with @MidwestAnglican: 1000s of hours of work done, for survivors/advocates ultimately to be silenced and ignored.

It is now July 31 and neither @ArchbishopFoley nor @The_ACNA has responded directly to the #ACNAtoo Advocacy Team's July 15 open letter.

We've only seen indirect responses to parts of the letter, such as Chancellor Philbrick and Deacon McIntyre quietly going on leave.

Behind the scenes, @The_ACNA informs me of each of their public announcements by email half an hour to an hour before it goes out, and invites feedback.

The narrow time window implies my feedback isn't invited to voice concerns about the announcement’s potential survivor impact.

.@The_ACNA could have spared themselves the embarrassment of yet another public misstep by saying, "We want to make sure we are listening to you and acting in ways that are helpful. We want to get your feedback first so we don't cause more harm to victims with our approach."

As it is, survivor / advocate feedback can only be given in response to already-published @The_ACNA announcements.

So my feedback is this:

Please stop making trauma-UNinformed public announcements.

Answer the #ACNAtoo Team's open letter directly: acnatoo.org/news/openletter

Section 1:

Please clarify (as the Province, or ask the Bishops to do so) whether @StewartRuch's mishandling of our sexual abuse allegations, once independently verified, constitutes grounds for his permanent dismissal.

Section 2:

Please clarify why @MidwestAnglican’s Bishop’s Council is still operating if they “highly supported” @StewartRuch’s actions re: Mark Rivera’s victims.

Please update us re: review of the highly irregular @MidwestAnglican Constitution & Canons. acnatoo.org/news/loose-can…

Section 3:

Please communicate publicly whether or not you plan to reassess the invoking of subsidiarity in abuse allegation situations, given how the Province was hobbled in intervening when @StewartRuch repeatedly failed ex-Catechist Mark Rivera's victims for 2+ years.

Section 4:

We were glad to hear (formally or informally) that both Chancellor Philbrick and Deacon McIntyre are now on leave pending investigation of @MidwestAnglican's mishandling of sexual abuse allegations.

Please clarify the disciplinary status of the Rev. Rand York.

Section 5:

Please commit to disclose the names and qualifications of the Provincial Response Team.

Please commit to engage with the #ACNAtoo Team *directly and publicly* to enlist a new *independent* third party investigation of *all abuse allegations within @MidwestAnglican.*

Section 5, cont.:

Please commit to make the independent investigator’s report public at the conclusion of the investigation.

Please commit to allow the investigator to publish that report without oversight or interference from @The_ACNA, to ensure absolute independence.

While the #ACNAtoo Advocacy Team was waiting 2 weeks (and counting) for a direct answer to the Open Letter, yesterday we read a confusing public announcement calling for survivors to contact an as-yet-unformed Provincial Response Team.

https://twitter.com/The_ACNA/status/1421140517484695556

In fact, when the #ACNAtoo Advocacy Team wrote to the email provided for survivors to contact the Response Team, [e-mail], we received this auto-response.

I shouldn't need to explain how harmful it is for a survivor to find the courage to reach out only to receive an auto-response. From a team that doesn’t yet exist.

Also, why is the future PRT fielding survivors, vs. an independent third party with trauma-informed investigators?

Recall that one of the main reasons our advocacy team spent endless hours trying to convince @StewartRuch and @MidwestAnglican to conduct a survivor-centered, trauma-informed investigation was so victims could have a safe way to come forward.

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1411360150883995652

Declaring to the world that @The_ACNA expresses its “deep sorrow for all survivors who have suffered harm and pain as a result of abuse and/or misconduct and for their families and loved ones” does not magically make it safe for survivors to come forward.

https://twitter.com/The_ACNA/status/1421140347183316994

Who is answering these emails, other than the auto-responder letting the survivor know that the Provincial Response Team has not yet been formed?

And who else has access to this email account?

How will these responders ensure the confidentiality of abuse survivors?

Are they mandatory reporters?

Are they qualified to inform survivors who are not minors and not in immediate danger, of their legal rights and options with regards to reporting to authorities?

Are these responders trauma-informed professionals? legal professionals?

Are they Provincial employees or a hired third party?

What guidelines have they been given for responding to survivors who may reach out?

Is their purpose to protect survivors or @The_ACNA?

To what end are survivors invited to contact the as-yet-unformed Provincial Response Team?

What does @The_ACNA mean by “be engaged in the independent investigation”?

Is this a future investigation or the @GrandRiverSols investigation already underway?

Can survivors expect pastoral care and other forms of support, such as licensed professional therapy, if they come forward?

If so, will the survivors have a say in who provides this care to them? If not, what are the names and qualifications of the care providers being offered?

Again, is the purpose of inviting survivors to come forward so that their testimony will be available to investigators?

If so, shouldn't the survivors be informed of this before they contact the as-yet-unformed Provincial Response Team?

If this email is for the purpose of helping investigators make contact with survivors, who are the investigators and whose interests do they represent?

What standards do they use to ensure their methods a) protect confidentiality and b) don't re-traumatize survivors?

If the investigative team consists of @GrandRiverSols, recall that #ACNAtoo survivors have publicly and repeatedly expressed our concerns as to why GRS is not equipped to do a survivor-sensitive, trauma-informed investigation.

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1411365673788350465

Perhaps the purpose of asking survivors to contact the as-yet-unformed Provincial Response Team is to initiate some sort of legal proceeding, as @Weejenbug & @john__perrine discovered when they contacted the Province about their experiences of spiritual abuse in @MidwestAnglican.

If so, will it be explained to survivors that they are initiating a legal proceeding, or will they be left to find out after the Chancellor of @MidwestAnglican informs them that they need their own legal counsel before proceeding with an as-yet unexplained legal process?

The legal process was never explained to @Weejenbug or @John_Perrine, and their concerns about the safety of them contacting the @MidwestAnglican Chancellor (a man credibly implicated in the mishandling of sexual abuse allegations) were dismissed.

https://twitter.com/Weejenbug/status/1415435735327514630

Will @The_ACNA and its as-yet-unformed Provincial Response Team provide any information to the survivors they are asking to come forward about what awaits them (other than an auto-reply email) when they take the risk to disclose traumatizing experiences of abuse?

Or will the leaders of @The_ACNA presume that their own awareness of their sincerity, competence, and general trustworthiness is already manifest to all, and take umbrage that survivors do not trust them with abuse disclosures without evidence of trustworthy actions?

Even if @The_ACNA Province sincerely intends to do well and has appointed qualified professionals who are equipped to approach and respond to survivors in a trauma-informed, survivor-sensitive way, what reasons would anyone else have to know and be confident of this?

.@The_ACNA hasn't disclosed the names & qualifications of the Provincial Response Team or the name & qualifications of a 3rd-party, independent investigative body, provided any explanation as to what survivors who contact them can expect, or answered current survivors' questions.

Is it possible that at this point @The_ACNA is merely attempting to reach more of Mark Rivera's victims in service to Rev. Hawkin’s commitment that @The_ACNA’s "highest aim will be to see this done rightly and with great involvement from all the survivors”?

If so, please state this. And please let us know how many of Mark Rivera's victims have reached out to you, and how you intend to gather their input and integrate it with the standard issue investigation proposal made to you in the #ACNAtoo Advocacy Team's open letter, Section 5.

If *not,* please state this. If @The_ACNA has decided to retain @GrandRiverSols but itself be the point of contact for survivors, or has decided to conduct an internal, non-independent investigation, then we need to know that, as either option is even more problematic.

Cherin (the mother of Mark Rivera's 9-year-old victim) and I compiled the list of Mark Rivera's known victims we provided by email to @StewartRuch and @MidwestAnglican on January 19, 2021.

Between the two of us, we personally know all the victims mentioned in that email.

Several have now told their stories to the media.

Three signed the #ACNAtoo Advocacy Team's open letter.

Several cheer us on behind the scenes but do not wish to be involved directly in this grueling ongoing advocacy effort.

Some are not currently in contact.

It is possible that @GrandRiverSols has uncovered yet more victims of Mark Rivera, and that those victims have or will be contacting the Provincial Response Team.

Obviously the original survivors want to add any additional survivors' voices to the advocacy effort now underway.

I am, however, incredibly concerned that someone at the Province of @The_ACNA has become the point person for fielding survivors, even as the Province has still not responded directly to the open letter published 2+ weeks ago by #ACNAtoo survivors and our chosen advocates.

In a response yesterday to the #ACNAtoo Advocacy Team's concerns about @The_ACNA's tweet encouraging survivors to email a yet-unformed Provincial Response Team, @frandrewgross expressed dismay that unspecified survivors claimed to not be responded to by @The_ACNA.

I am not sure to what @frandrewgross could be alluding other than survivors indicating in this @RNS story that in the 2 years of their allegations being known to @MidwestAnglican leaders, no one ever once reached out to inquire further: religionnews.com/2021/07/28/acn…

What is interesting to me, @frandrewgross, is that by all indications, @The_ACNA and @ArchbishopFoley seem to have learned nothing so far from our extensive documentation of the 2+ years of failed responses of @MidwestAnglican and @StewartRuch to #ACNAtoo abuse survivors.

The #ACNAtoo survivors who told Cherin their stories 2 years ago learned quickly that @The_ACNA did not care about their abuse, as evidenced by the complete lack of outreach on the part of @StewartRuch or anyone in @MidwestAnglican leadership to whom Cherin relayed these stories.

These survivors had already learned, as I told @StewartRuch in my January 19, 2021 letter (where I compiled and reiterated many long-ignored abuse allegations), that the Church did not care.

They’d already learned either to stay silent or to seek help elsewhere.

.@The_ACNA taught them this by empowering and enabling leaders like Bishop @StewartRuch and those under his authority at @MidwestAnglican. .

By the time I engaged @StewartRuch around my own abuse story, and all but forced him to listen to everyone else's, all of the other survivors had long since come to understand that @The_ACNA would never do anything to address ex-Catechist Mark Rivera's abuse of them.

Given the egregious failure of @MidwestAnglican to serve abuse survivors, exacerbated by @StewartRuch's duplicitous public statements in May and June of 2021, why, @frandrewgross, would you or anyone in @The_ACNA expect these survivors to reach out?

Why do you think these survivors spoke to @RNS about their abuse stories but did not respond to some online announcement by @The_ACNA to reach out to the same denominational hierarchy whose leaders have thus far only ignored or re-traumatized them?

Many of these survivors no longer attend @The_ACNA churches, in at least one case (as stated in the @RNS story) in apparent response to Mark Rivera’s abuse. How would that survivor even know to reach out to you?

Why, per your stated expectations, would we encourage her to?

The only reason @The_ACNA has done anything whatsoever at a Provincial level to address @MidwestAnglican's #ACNAtoo abuse survivors is because I went on Twitter a month ago and told my abuse story to the world.

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1408916453848346629

I was also the first of Mark Rivera's victims to speak with @RNS.

Twitter and the news media have respected #ACNAtoo survivors and our pain in ways @The_ACNA has yet to do.

These platforms gave us back our voices after Mark Rivera and then @MidwestAnglican silenced us.

If other survivors saw that @RNS would respectfully field their stories and share them with the public in a trauma-informed way, after @MidwestAnglican ignored or dismissed them for 2 years, of course they went to the news media and not the Province.

Wouldn't you?

.@frandrewgross and @ArchbishopFoley: I have spent 8 months, unemployed and living off savings, working as a full time advocate for #ACNAtoo survivors, trying to get a decent, trauma-informed investigation into abuse and mishandling of allegations in the @MidwestAnglican diocese.

At no step in this process has @The_ACNA hierarchy been remotely trauma-informed or empathetic (in action vs. word) to abuse survivors.

Instead it's been tone-deaf, defensive, self-protective, and resistant to serving the people Jesus called you to serve: the least of these.

All this, while serving up kind-sounding words for public consumption.

What I have learned, as an @The_ACNA outsider, is that your denomination is run by men who will speak of the depths of their own grief to the point of drowning out the real, wrenching grief of abused people.

If it weren't for the other #ACNAtoo survivors, I would have given up and walked away a long time ago.

I do not personally need to save @The_ACNA from itself.

But I made a commitment to #ACNAtoo survivors--to little girls, teenagers, and young women--to stay and fight. So I am.

Also, I have found a light amidst @The_ACNA darkness.

Despite the heartbreaking failures of @MidwestAnglican and the disappointing response so far from @ArchbishopFoley's team, I have met dozens of amazing Anglican clergy and lay people, especially in the last month.

Good Anglicans propped me up when I fell into despair as @StewartRuch's public responses deteriorated further into self-protective deceptions, and then as I wearily entered this new Provincial phase of seeking justice.

Some of them stepped up to form the #ACNAtoo Advocacy Team.

These Anglicans are doing Jesus' work. They're the good Samaritans, and you are so far treating them with as little respect as the church leaders in Jesus' parable would have treated that Samaritan.

They're the ones tending to survivors. They're speaking for us. Listen to them.

Please reread the #ACNAtoo Advocacy Team's open letter. Please respond to each section directly, even if it's only to say that you need more time to form a response to something.

Please have enough respect for survivors and advocates to engage us transparently, in good faith.

.@ArchbishopFoley, @frandrewgross, future @The_ACNA Provincial Response Team:

I leave you with my plea from July 15 (originally January 19):

Please don't be every church. Please be better.

Respectfully,
Joanna Rudenborg
#ACNAtoo

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1415803095842320384