Thread by @katierouquine

"Louder for the people in the back":
Decidedly me ⬆️.

Yesterday morning the Anglican Church in North America's Provincial Response Team sent out "A Statement on the Resignations from the Provincial Response Team".

As you might recall, I wrote this team a very concerned email two weeks ago. As of the writing of this post, I've not received any response beyond a generic auto-response email.

I understand my letter might not be a priority over abuse survivors who are writing them, but I did – mistakenly – think it was reasonable to hear something within two weeks.

Part of the PRT's statement from this morning is below:
“Following the announcement of the third-party investigative firm, three members of the Provincial Response Team (PRT) resigned. While we are deeply saddened and surprised by their resignation and public comments,"

"we appreciated their involvement as members of the PRT, which led to achieving our mandate of hiring a firm to undertake this investigation."

"All three joined the rest of the members of the PRT in voting unanimously for Husch Blackwell, along with the majority of the alleged survivors who voted."

"We disagree with assertions in their resignation letter and wish they had discussed those with us before stepping down, but it would not serve the survivors or the investigative process to debate them at this time."

"We believe it is in the best interest of all for the Husch Blackwell investigation to proceed to its conclusion, and we remain committed to the care of survivors."

Do you know who I did hear from in the last two weeks? The three members of the PRT who resigned (before they resigned). Do you know why I heard from them? Because on the fifth day, I posted my letter publicly online and they saw it.

Do you know WHY they didn't see it sooner? Because the PRT has not been making all the emails available TO. THEIR. TEAM. MEMBERS.

Read that again: the team set up to select an investigative firm AND in the meantime be the official channel for people to write in with "questions or concerns about the process" (quote from their website FAQ) is not routing all the emails they receive to the members responsible.

Why? I know it's not simply because I wrote in with just "questions and concerns" because they've also neglected to route emails they've received from people with first-hand accounts of mishandling and – I'll put this generously – "questionable" behavior from ACNA priests.

I know numerous people who received an auto-response or sometimes a brief email response stating the PRT would "review and be in touch". Some of these people are still waiting after sending in accounts four months ago. FOUR MONTHS AGO.

I do not understand.

These members who reached out to me had to hear of my letter through my public social media post. Even though they were the members of the PRT who are most trained in survivor care and response,

they have apparently not been getting many (or any?) correspondence through the official channel the PRT set up to answer questions and concerns from the community and—most importantly—to respond to victims who come forward. How is this excusable?

PRT members, what is the respectable explanation for keeping team members in the dark about information pertaining to the matter at hand? Information you have been charged to steward?

Your site also notes that while, “The PRT is not itself the investigative team or the team providing care to survivors”...“The PRT will also ensure that the survivors are offered appropriate care”.

How am I to understand what appropriate care you are connecting people to when you are not responding to a swath of the people writing you?

Note to the reader: the three former PRT members who reached out and offered their time to hear my concerns are also the only three members who are not in some way otherwise in leadership of the institution that is ACNA.

You can see the details of the remaining five members of the PRT if you go to the FAQ section and select “Who is on the Provincial Response Team”? here: anglicanchurch.net/provincial-res…

Interestingly, this email "glitch" is something the three resigning members noted in their resignation letter (perhaps it is one of the “assertions” the remaining PRT members disagree with?):

"We did not know until this weekend that letters abuse survivors, advocates, and concerned friends experiencing secondary trauma (all needing prompt survivor care!) were not forwarded or often, not even mentioned to us. This constitutes a breach of trust that is insurmountable."

"None of the letters sent addressed to the entire PRT, that are now being sent to us directly from people who had no response or one response and then no follow up, were ever shared with the three of us."

"Every single person who has written us directly believed that Gina and Autumn received their letter and just failed to respond, or didn’t care. This has been going on since September, and is inexcusable. No explanation of how or why this happened will fix this."

"We had no idea about any of these letters, only discovering them on our own when an unanswered one was made public. We met with the writer of that letter,"

"and shortly following received multiple emails from survivors and others who did not realize we had not been seeing their correspondence".

This begs the question, PRT members – when you say in yesterday morning’s statement, "We disagree with assertions in their resignation letter", which of the other assertions do you disagree with?

1) “The ACNA failed to deliver promptly on promises of direct financial assistance, needlessly re-traumatizing victims”.

- Can you provide evidence that financial assistance has actually been delivered to victims *as promised*? I don’t personally need to see the receipts, but can you truthfully answer “yes” to this?

2) “The authority, scope, & decision-making processes for the PRT were unclear and became increasingly so. We have been functioning as 2 (or more) teams in many ways for some time, without clarity on who is in charge of making which decisions or who may have access to what info”.

- Can you provide evidence that you've not been functioning as more than one team, when your whole team doesn't have access to the official email account they’re supposed to be responding to?

I have more examples of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing, so if you need more clarification don’t hesitate to let me know.

3) “The PRT did a terrible job communicating authentically and clearly about process before and after the choice of a third-party law firm to handle the investigation."

"The three of us believe our eventual pick was a strong one, but it was completely undercut by the public statement which used language we knew would inflame and upset survivors."

"Some of that language was removed in front of two of us, then added back in, and published without notifying or discussing with us. That feels deceptive at worst, and dismissive at best."

"Further, we clearly expressed that the survivor letter should either be the public document or be attached to it: one voice, one communication."

"We believed this would be the case, yet the survivor letter was not included in the public release. And the consequences are exactly as we predicted”.

-Can you offer a more sympathetic explanation for why you removed inflammatory and incendiary language in front of concerned team members and then added it back in without them knowing it?

I truly would like to believe better of you, PRT. You could simply have acknowledged in your statement this morning that though three of your members have resigned, you believe it is best to continue moving forward with the investigation.

However, you seem bent on continuing to dig yourselves a hole and breach your own credibility when you claim you disagree with assertions that are fairly obvious to confirm.

Do you understand this situation is getting dangerously and concerningly close to looking like the botched SBC abuse situation? You do not have to keep choosing to hide things and to be just a hair above non-communicative.

I (and many others) are trying to implore you, with sincerity, to choose a path that is full of transparency, integrity, and humility.

Wouldn’t it be a beautiful testimony to see the ACNA handle an abuse scandal *right*? To be the denomination who is actually eager to learn from others’ mistakes? To be a denomination who chooses an emptying of their power, imitating their Savior, Jesus Christ?

After I publicly posted my letter from two weeks ago, I had 38 individual people reach out to me to say they’re concerned about the same things I noted – and that’s just within my meager reach.

If there are misunderstandings on my part, it would behoove you to offer the explanations you can. No one is looking for a “debate”, me included.

Yet it would go such a long way if you have a plausible and respectable reason for – just for starters – (1) keeping emails from your team members, and (2) changing sensitive wording at the 11th hour and signing other people’s names to it.

As I said in my first letter, You CAN do better than this. For the sake of a watching world, I hope to God you still will.

With sincere care,
Katie Robichaud