Thread by @ladyjessicahaze

Maybe at the point the modern Church resembles corporate America more than it resembles Jesus, it’s time to scrap the whole institution and start from scratch.

(a 🧵 about my complete exasperation with @The_ACNA, also an update on the @MidwestAnglican investigation)

#ACNAtoo

Nov. 7 I asked @The_ACNA Provincial Response Team 10 questions about the upcoming @MidwestAnglican investigation.

They sent responses to each question on Nov. 30.

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1459252829084794885

(It’s taken me this long to put this online because I only have so much energy to deal with @The_ACNA hierarchy anymore. It’s been over a year since I wrote Mark Rivera’s church community telling them what he did to me and asking them please to take care of it. I’m exhausted.)

Possibly the most frustrating thing about these responses is that they are presented as answers to my questions.

They don’t say, “We aren’t really answering this because (legal counsel / confidentiality / your question is silly / we don’t actually know / we don’t feel like it).

Instead, they respond vaguely and incompletely, without explanation or even acknowledgment that they’re straight up ignoring stuff.

This is first-class deflection on par with an HR department addressing the employee who’s asking too directly about the company’s open secrets.

Why is @The_ACNA acting like an incompetent/corrupt corporation scrambling to cover its ass?

Where is the humanity?

Where is Jesus?

Why all the lawyering?

@ArchbishopFoley, what are you trying to protect?

What are you scared of?

Sexual abuse survivors?

The letter I wrote the PRT was long and vulnerable.

I tried to explain what it’s like to have an entire community turn on you and support the guy who raped you, while you flee town then try to confront his bosses about it, etc.

Full letter here:

acnatoo.org/2021-1107-joan…

I told them flat out they didn’t need to respond to that part, that it was just for context, for them to understand how utterly f***ed this situation is. And I meant that.

But I did ask for clear, direct responses to my actual questions. It’s basically the least they could do.

If I’d ever been Anglican, if this denomination had ever been my home rather than just the church that catechized the man who raped me, I would be heartbroken.

As it is I’m angry, mostly on behalf of all the abuse survivors in this denomination getting the message not to bother.

Anglicans, there are statistically 10,000s of sexual trauma survivors in your churches. A good number are children.

If your Archbishop can’t get it together to act like Jesus (instead of a corporate lawyer) to a few who got loud, what message does that send to the quiet ones?

Your #ChurchToo moment is here. You’re not exempt. You’re not better than the Catholics or the Baptists or the rest.

I left the Church when I was 17, and I’m 43. It was broken then, and it’s broken now.

The rest of society is watching skeptically to see if you’re gonna fix it.

I have no investment in @The_ACNA.

It can transform into an institution that protects the vulnerable, or it can burn to the ground. I’m shining a light into the dark corners so that one of those two things can happen.

Because continuing to fail survivors isn’t a valid option.

For anyone out there who still cares, here are the receipts.

What follows are 20 tweets in the format of

Q#: paraphrase of my question + retweet of full question

A#: summary/interpretation of the PRT’s answer + screenshot of full answer

Q1: Is this investigation just into Mark Rivera’s abuses, or also into leaders mishandling those allegations, or those two things but also all the new abuses of power that have come to light?

Will you have all of this independently investigated?

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1459252837263634432

A1: Apparently the new investigation *isn’t* into Mark’s abuses, only the mishandling of allegations?

Meaning after the @GrandRiverSols debacle…@The_ACNA still isn’t going to do active investigative outreach to look for additional victims of Mark Rivera (or Chris Lapeyre)? 🤯

Q2: What trauma-informed experts have you consulted these past months and what have you learned from them?

This was sort of a softball question that gave them an opportunity to brag about the work they’re presumably doing, and yet…

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1459252842208788481

A2: They won’t say whom they consulted or what they learned.

But “at least 3” PRT members have worked with sexual trauma survivors. (They aren’t sure about the rest? Do they talk to each other?)

So what led them to think giving non-answers to abuse survivors is trauma-informed?

Q3: Have you asked (the obvious choice) @netgrace_org if they’ll do the investigation / will you at least promise the investigation will be done to their standards, including @The_ACNA waiving privilege and survivors getting the final report?

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1459252846096879618

A3: They haven’t talked to GRACE, but might?

They won’t commit to basics like waiving privilege and giving survivors the final report 🚩🚩

(Meanwhile we’re supposed to cooperate in their “voting” process; see A9.)

These are seriously The Most Basic Investigation Things Ever 🤯

Q4: When are you going to hire the investigator?

(I asked this in the context of 2.5 years of mishandled sexual abuse allegations including 4, now 5 months of @ArchbishopFoley’s office being involved in all of it.)

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1459252847615250434

A4: They’re “ready to begin the…process” that sets the stage for a pseudo-democratic “vote” (see A9).

So basically, who knows when a firm will be chosen.

Because, again, @The_ACNA didn’t heed #ChurchToo, thus lacks processes, and isn’t allocating proper resources to catch up.

Q5: Will you show the world what you and the investigative firm agree on, so we can see if the whole proposal actually serves survivors or is just going to be a waste of our time and retraumatize us yet again?

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1459252850819665920

A5: They won’t publish the contract they sign with the investigative firm or otherwise commit to disclose the actual investigation parameters.

They will only tell me what they think I need to know — not what I told them I need to know, as a survivor, to be safe 🚩🚩

Q6: Is @The_ACNA going to help #ACNAtoo sexual abuse survivors pay for therapy, and will it be real therapy by qualified professionals, as opposed to pastoral counseling?

Then I asked questions about who qualifies and how, and so forth.

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1459252854670053376

A6: They agree survivors need professional therapy and it seems will pay some part of this 👍🏼

No details (always “soon”), no answer if survivors can be reimbursed for therapists they already see and have been paying out of pocket (this was an urgent, not-hypothetical question).

Q7: How do you define “abuse of power” (a phrase @ArchbishopFoley used in August with reference to the PRT’s expanded purview)?

Then I gave a bunch of examples of known abuse allegations in @MidwestAnglican, to say: does this count? this? etc.

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1459252860466565120

A7: No definition or parameters whatsoever.

All allegations not qualifying per A1 will be investigated by an *internal* 👀 committee, according to undisclosed standards.

(Only public squeaky wheels like me get a third-party investigation? There’s some kind of lesson in that.)

Q8: What’s with asking survivors vaguely to “engage” with the Province without a transparent process, and what are you doing with survivor information (because orgs having private databases on their own abuse survivors seems dangerous)?

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1459252866246275072

A8: No acknowledgement of vague communications being harmful.

They imply some Mark Rivera victims are talking to them but not to @ACNAtoo.

We should trust they’re “empowering” these survivors, even though they haven’t so far empowered me or the survivors I know, in any way.

Q9: How will survivors and the PRT “vote” on an investigative firm?

Who qualifies: victims of rape? grooming? harassment?

How will you reach them?

How will they know enough about the field of independent investigations, to select a good firm?

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1459252877428334593

A9: No real answer to who qualifies; “directly abused” completely sidesteps my question.

Then they imply survivors who haven’t yet “engaged with” the PRT *aren’t* included in the voting process?! Seriously?? 😳

Nothing re: how survivors become independent investigation experts.

Q10: Since @The_ACNA is in its #ChurchToo moment, and the PRT is an ad hoc 8-person volunteer team, what’s the plan?

Will you recommend @ArchbishopFoley assemble a permanent committee to address the allegations piling up from various dioceses?

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1459252893945532418

A10: They’re doing things. Send survivors to them and trust that they will do things.

I could deal with this one response being somewhat vague, since the scope is so large.

But given the other “just trust us” non-answers, it only reads as more of the same.

For context, I read this litany of corporate dodges knowing that survivors, parents of survivors, and concerned ACNA members have written the PRT and gotten far less of an answer than I have.

I know this because people share their emails and the responses with @ACNAtoo.

Given just the amount of abuse and mishandling I personally now know about in @The_ACNA, which is obviously the tip of the iceberg, it is beyond clear to me that @ArchbishopFoley should be throwing every conceivable resource at this. And he just isn’t.

#ChurchToo started in 2017.

But in June 2021, 2 weeks before my first #ACNAtoo thread, @ArchbishopFoley spoke as if abuse were a thing you “hear of” in other denominations.

Something @The_ACNA had little acquaintance with and was vigilant against.

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1408919237175824389

I reminded him otherwise, June 29.

Over 5 months later, his office is still dragging their feet with volunteer committees publishing and emailing maximally vague statements.

Who advises you, @ArchbishopFoley?

Lawyers or Jesus?

Did you think @The_ACNA was going to escape the greater reckoning? That you defied the statistics?

Aren’t you embarrassed that an exvangelical rape survivor had to go on Twitter to alert your congregants that your priests and bishops are mishandling abuse allegations?

How do you sit there issuing statements as if there are plans and processes for this, like it’s all being handled and survivors are being prioritized, when your actual answer is a team of unpaid volunteers meeting once a week, who still can’t answer my basic questions?

It is beyond clear that the official channels for handling abuse in @The_ACNA aren’t just broken, but by and large never existed in the first place, because no one paid enough attention to the writing on the wall (the Catholic Church, #MeToo, #ChurchToo, #SBCtoo), to build them.

Such channels can’t be built overnight, but @The_ACNA is also not taking sufficient steps to construct them.

Survivors can’t wait for that. People are suffering deep trauma from sexual and spiritual abuse and they need help, not bureaucratic deflection.

It’s insulting.

I’m not targeting individuals on the PRT. It’s a thankless volunteer job, and I know the people writing these responses are constrained by the limitations of the system within which they operate, including what @The_ACNA’s lawyers allow them to say (i.e. practically nothing).

.@ArchbishopFoley’s office seems to be doing what @StewartRuch did in early 2021: sending nice women to placate survivors, while men continue to run the show.

I give the women the benefit of the doubt that they have very little real power.

But nice women also don’t placate me.

.@The_ACNA doesn’t seem to realize that nice women I considered actual friends turned on me and chose Mark Rivera, when I came forward a year ago.

By early 2021 I knew all I needed to know about nice people vs. people who will actually stand up for the vulnerable.

I don’t need nice.

I need people who aren’t afraid to face the truth.

I need Christians who actually believe “whatever you do unto the least of these…”

Jesus didn’t hide behind lawyers, and he didn’t have nice words for the kind of people who do.

If your church doesn’t look like Jesus because you’re hiding behind lawyers trying to preserve it, then that church isn’t worth hiding behind lawyers to preserve.

As I explained to the PRT in my Nov. 7 letter, the only thing that has done any perceivable good in this situation in the past year is outing abusers and abusive systems publicly, then connecting with survivors as they come forward to me/@ACNAtoo.

acnatoo.org/2021-1107-joan…

So until @The_ACNA hierarchy actually gets their house in order, what @ACNAtoo’s critics melodramatically call “vigilante justice” (a.k.a. us telling our stories publicly) remains the only reasonable path forward to help survivors and get some modicum of accountability.

Additionally, though fixing @The_ACNA is not a personal objective of mine, survivors telling our experiences online gives ACNA members important information with which to take action directly to help the 10,000s of abuse survivors already in your congregations.

Forget the hierarchy. Forget @ArchbishopFoley. It’s up to you all on the ground. Listen to and believe and center those who have suffered abuse.

Make sure you’re ready for new allegations, but also make sure you’re actively lifting up the abuse survivors already among you.

If supporting vulnerable people in the ways they need it isn’t a central focus of your church, don’t be a church.

And I don’t mean pastoral care. I mean you fight for them when they say fight. I mean you make the uncomfortable choice when they point fingers at a beloved leader.

I mean be ready to set aside all your assumptions about what abuse is, what rape looks like, in order to learn the truth from the people who have actually experienced it.

I mean be ready to stay quiet and listen and resist the urge to make it about you or your preconceptions.

I mean be ready to sacrifice your comfort, your social standing, your friends, your employment or volunteer position, your continued welcome in the community, even your perceived spiritual identity, to side with abuse survivors and to prevent more people from becoming victims.

I mean be ready to confront the darkness in the community you love, whatever it costs you.

If you aren’t ready to do this, you’re less of a church and more of a social club for people who want to invoke Jesus while ignoring what Jesus actually said.

It’s your choice.

#ACNAtoo