Church Abuse: Joanna’s Story
This is Joanna Rudenborg’s story of the abuse she experienced in the ACNA Diocese of the Upper Midwest (UMD) church, USA. She originally tweeted the story as a 'Twitter thread’ (June 27, 2021), and has given CAAGe (the Campaign Against Adult Grooming) permission to use it to help raise awareness of church abuse and what it looks like. These are her own words.
Who’s who?
The ACNA is the Anglican Church in North America, falling under Archbishop Foley
The Midwest Anglican is a 35 church ACNA diocese, falling under Bp Stewart Ruch
Church of the Rez is the Church of the Resurrection, Anglican Diocese of the Upper Midwest
Joanna’s story:
My neighbor Mark Rivera raped me twice, pressured me to keep this secret, and repeatedly propositioned me to have an affair. Mark was the catechist (lay pastor) at Christ Our Light Anglican [COLA]. My godfather, Rand York, was the priest. COLA members were my neighbors and friends.
Rand York and Marko River at Christ Our Light Anglican Church, Big Rock
The consent lines weren’t blurry. I was blacked out drunk. It’s possible Mark drugged me. Witnesses saw me incoherent. He walked me home each time and raped me there. Since I formed almost no memories, he spun a story that I’d seduced him. I was in shock. I believed his lies.
Mark told his best friend, COLA's senior warden and worship pastor Chris Lapeyre, about the first rape almost immediately. Chris kept Mark's secret indefinitely and would later (November 2020) try to shame me into continued silence when he realized I was coming forward.
The first rape was in 2018. In 2019, a 9-year-old in Mark's church told her mother Mark had been sexually assaulting her. A teenage girl also alleged assaults. Stories surfaced of predatory behavior spanning decades. Mark said this was just Satan attacking the church.
Mark(o) Rivera tweet, 2013
@MidwestAnglican (The Anglican Diocese of the Upper Midwest) removed Mark from leadership in 2019 (one of few appropriate actions to date). But it was his victim's family that were forced out of the church. Church leaders and old friends at COLA and @ChurchRez (The Church of the Resurrection) rallied around Mark with financial, legal, and social cover.
Mark Rivera explains that he has had money from parishoners towards his defence
A dozen+ allegations against Mark include unwanted touching, exposing teens to pornography, indecent exposure, sexual abuse, child sexual assault, attempted child sexual assault, and rape. He's now awaiting trial for child sexual assault and under police investigation for rape.
Kane County Adult Justice Center information on Mark A Rivera
Mark is out on bond in Winfield, IL, living with his wife and two minor children. He’s under court order not to have contact with minors who aren’t his kids, an order he’s repeatedly violated. His wife, who disbelieves the minor victims’ allegations, is his default supervisor.
Mark served in numerous roles in two @MidwestAnglican (Midwest Anglican) churches over a span of 20+ years. Church and diocesan leaders knew of allegations against him two years ago and didn’t notify @ChurchRez (the Church of the Resurrection) members. Another victim and I came forward last November. They still didn’t notify them.
Mark at COLA, 2015
Mark hid in plain sight for years, grooming girls, women, and the entire community to accept physical boundary violations no other male adult could have gotten away with. Every girl / young woman in the following photos is the daughter of a fellow church leader:
Mark had a longstanding habit of formally and informally adopting “godchildren.” He bragged about being godfather to dozens of children in the community, some of whom are now among those alleging grooming and abuse.
After the November 2020 allegations, Bp. Stewart Ruch finally suspended COLA operations. He offered various parties “pastoral care,” including Mark. To date, @MidwestAnglican (The Anglican Diocese of the Upper Midwest) will not pay for professional counseling for the 9-year-old child their catechist serially molested.
After the November allegations, Bishop Stewart also visited and prayed with Mark and his wife. He also reportedly exorcised 10 demons from Mark, whose wife, we are told, then declared Mark much improved. Then, nothing.
Bishop Stewart Ruch III
In January, a group of Mark’s victims and our advocates wrote Bp. Stewart begging him to enlist third-party help. He assembled a committee from his staff and advisors to respond to us. Two of the six members were himself and Canon Eirik Olsen, Fr. Rand's superior and close friend.
Fr. Eirik, Bp. Stewart, Fr. Rand, Mark, and other leaders directly implicated in this scandal (including Fr. Rand’s superior until late 2020, Fr. William Beasley) have all been professionally and/or socially intertwined for decades. The conflicts of interest are staggering.
We asked the Bishop for an independent investigation to
1) find and help other victims
2) report in detail how the hierarchy failed victims and the community.
We sought truth, accountability, and for the church body to learn to address and prevent grooming and abuse.
Investigations are inherently skewed when the entity being investigated is the one paying the investigator. So we painstakingly explained to @MidwestAnglican what investigation parameters they needed to set to ensure actual third party independence. They ultimately ignored us.
@MidwestAnglican hired investigative firm @GrandRiverSols (Grand River Solutions) on April 30 and announced the investigation launch online May 4. Here is that announcement, which contains multiple still-uncorrected factual inaccuracies and several as-yet-unfulfilled promises: Bishop Stewart’s Letter Regarding Devastating Situation in Diocese
The same victims whose advocacy led to this investigation have found ourselves forced to opt out of participating in it. @MidwestAnglican’s flagrant disregard for our most basic requests indicates we would end up like the victims @BozT (Boz Tchividjian, Founder of GRACE and of Boz Law) refers to here:
Boz Tchividjian @BozT, Twitter thread, Jun 13, 2021 (unravelled here for formatting purposes)
I deeply respect and appreciate @R_Denhollander (Rachael Denhollander, advocate and attorney) and her recent thoughts about the importance of engaging in third party assessments/investigation. After almost thirty years of addressing these issues within faith based institutions, I firmly believe that those who conduct independent investigations must earn their credibility by earning the trust of survivors. Such trust comes from a track record of their work & the experience survivors have had with them in past investigations. Guidepost Solutions is currently conducting an investigation of RZIM and thus I think it would be imperative to hear from those victims & fmr employees who have interacted with them. It will also be critically important to review their final report on their RZIM investigation when it is released. For me, the jury is still out on this issue.
Yes, engagement in a process can surely bring about positive change. However, engagement in a process that is designed to allow the institution who is the subject of the investigation to have ultimate control will only further wound the wounded while allowing the institution to claim that the process was legitimate because survivors agreed to participate in it. In the past 30 years I have spoke to countless survivors who deeply regretted their decision to engage in a so called independent investigation only to be re-victimizes and re-marginalized while the institution was celebrated. In addition to listening to endorsements from Rachael (or even me for that matter), let’s take the time to listen to those who have previously interacted with Guidepost Solutions in the RZIM investigation when assessing this suggested process.
[editor additions for context:
The investigation’s fatal flaws are too numerous to cover here, but they follow a predictable pattern; see @R_Denhollander’s recent critiques of the #SBC's initial investigation proposal:
….the EC will only get the benefit of what they allow themselves to get. Ask for waiver, an extended scope and a fully public report. Only the EC can make those decisions, and they are critical pieces of this assessment and training.
@MidwestAnglican has drastically downplayed both their own 2+ years of mishandling this and Mark’s long history with the Diocese. They also won't
1) commit to publish @GrandRiverSols final report
2) set an adequate investigation scope
3) waive client confidentiality privileges
@GrandRiverSols has personally confirmed to us that the final report they compile will go to the Bishop, who will decide what to do with the information. Mark’s victims and @MidwestAnglican’s congregations will only know what he chooses to tell us. This is not accountability.
Grand River Solutions response
@GrandRiverSols couldn't guarantee us they will keep the names of victims who reach out confidential from @MidwestAnglican. GRS also does no outreach. The Bishop's online letter and a single vague in-church announcement are being relied on to find victims going back 20+ years.
Despite our pleas, @MidwestAnglican has still not enlisted qualified professionals to assist victims who may come forward. Parents have been given no guidance on how best to speak with children to discover possible abuse. Nothing about this process is trauma-informed.
Thankfully, due to voices like @reachjulieroys, @R_Denhollander, @netgrace_org, and @BozT, we survivors had excellent tools to identify a sham investigation. This is one. We’ve told @MidwestAnglican so. They continue to shut us out while professing publicly to care about victims.
This [Twitter] thread doesn't begin to address the institutional enabling, mandatory reporting failures, pressure not to contact authorities, severe pastoral care negligence, or absurd levels of spiritual bypassing we've experienced. That information will come out in time.
[To] @The_ACNA leaders out there: Your voice matters. Don’t let #ACNAtoo become the new #SBCtoo. Educate yourselves. Listen to victims. Follow our lead. Ask @MidwestAnglican and @ArchbishopFoley why they are ignoring survivors while claiming to do their best to "be safe places":
#SBCtoo survivors: Thank you for being such an inspiration these past few weeks. Much love also to #IStandWithSGMVictims and all #ChurchToo and #MeToo survivors
Joanna Rudenborg is a member and cofounder of ACNAtoo, a registered not for profit organization in the State of Illinois, which started several years ago in response to mishandling of sexual abuse complaints by the ACNA, the Anglican Church in North America, a tiny denominational offshoot of the Episcopal Church.
Joanna can be found on Twitter as @ladyjessicahaze, and ACNAtoo as @ACNAtoo
Note: I (Claire, CAAGe campaigner) promised Joanna that her text would appear in her own words. From the content here, from the way that victims have been left feeling voiceless, it’s easy to understand why it would be so important to her. The only amends that have been made are to take out links to numerous Twitter accounts (less relevant on a blog) and the addition of some explanation of certain acronyms. Given the amount of evidence that this ‘thread’ alone provides, we at CAAGe sincerely hope that all victims of Mark(o) Rivera find justice and peace, and that the Church finds it in its heart to listen to and support his victims.
