Prominent Anglican bishop takes leave amid persistent accusations of mismanagement of abuse allegations

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The logo of the Anglican Church in North America. Courtesy Image

(RNS) – A prominent Anglican bishop has announced leave after admitting to mismanaging allegations of abuse.

Bishop Stewart Ruch III of the Anglican Church of the Diocese of the Upper Midwest in North America has known since 2019 that former lay minister Mark Rivera had been charged with child sexual abuse. But he only told people in his diocese about the abuse allegations last month – what Ruch called a “regrettable mistake.”

This decision – and the controversy over handling allegations of abuse from Ruch, as well as other leaders in the diocese – caused him to temporarily step aside.

“I want you to be able to trust me as a bishop and pastor,” Ruch said in a public letter released Thursday, July 8. “I think the best way to walk in integrity now is to step back as this process progresses. And as efforts are made to serve survivors of abuse.

Ruch declined to comment for this story.

At least 10 allegations of abuse committed by Rivera by Rivera have been reported to the diocese since 2019, with allegations of rape, assault, child sexual abuse and grooming.

According to a letter from Ruch in May, Rivera attended the Church of the Resurrection – the diocesan seat – in Wheaton, Ill., From the mid-1990s until 2013. According to the mother of a victim, he has also served as minister of prayer, preschool volunteer, youth leader and small group leader.

From 2013 to 2019, Rivera served as a lay minister at Christ Our Light Anglican, a church planted by ACNA in Big Rock, Illinois, many of the founding members of which were from the Resurrection Church.

Rivera was arrested in 2019 and is being prosecuted for sexual assault and predation on a victim under the age of 13. Although Rivera’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment, police said an investigation was underway. Rivera is currently on bail pending trial, which is scheduled to begin on October 21, 2021.

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The first to report Rivera for sexual assault was a 9-year-old whose mother, a member of Christ Our Light Anglican, reported for church leadership in May 2019. The mother said she also informed the leadership of the Resurrection Church in June 2019 of seven other potential victims.

After Rivera’s arrest, Ruch said two more people showed up in November 2020 with allegations against Rivera.

One of them was Joanna Rudenborg, who alleged Rivera raped her twice while living as her neighbor next door. Rudenborg also reported the rape allegations to local authorities. Rudenborg sharply criticized Ruch for not informing the diocese of the allegations or taking immediate action to see if there were other victims of abuse.

“The diocese had my rape story, a second abuse story and the abuse story of a nine year old. So the people upstairs knew about three different stories of abuse or sexual assault… And they made no effort to bring in a third party (investigation), ”Rudenborg told RNS in an interview. . “They also took no action to inform the church congregation of the resurrection that a man who had been involved in the church for years in various capacities was now credibly accused of three really serious things. “

After Rudenborg and a team of survivors and lawyers requested the participation of a third party in January 2021, the diocese publicly shared news of some of the allegations in a May 4 letter and announced that it had hired a third-party investigative firm, Grand River Solutions. The company was selected without input from survivors, according to Rudenborg.

Bishop Stewart Ruch III. Photo via ChurchRez.org

In the letter, Ruch also admitted his mismanagement of the allegations:

“I made some regrettable mistakes in this process. When the initial allegation was made against Mark in 2019, I mistakenly assumed that the necessary criminal investigation was a sufficient next step. I thought it was better to let the county attorney’s office conduct a full investigation leading to a clear decision. I had planned that after this process we would inform the diocese of the court’s decision. I naively expected the trial to take place much sooner than it did.

Following the announcement, Rudenborg and a team of survivors and advocates voiced concerns about Grand River Solutions’ investigative approach. Rudenborg said the firm was inexperienced in providing trauma-informed care for victims and their families and had ineffective outreach strategies to find other potential victims.

After speaking with Grand River Solutions, Rudenborg and the mother of the 9-year-old victim emailed Ruch refusing to participate in the investigation.

On June 26, Rudenborg shared his story of abuse on Twitter.

“Mark has been hiding in plain sight for years, urging girls, women and the entire community to accept violations of physical boundaries that no other adult man could get away with,” he said. she writes, and has included several Facebook photos of Rivera with minors.

According to Rudenborg, Ruch has ignored five calls made by herself and the mother of the 9-year-old victim asking her to release the results of the Grand River Solutions investigation. Yet as Rudenborg’s Twitter thread gained traction online – and after Anglican public theologian and priest Reverend Esau McCaulley intervened on Rudenborg’s behalf – Ruch released a statement on June 29 agreeing to release the full report of the investigation company.

Since then, other members of ACNA’s leadership have expressed concerns about the way the abuse allegations have been handled.

“It took too long to educate the churches involved, the families involved,” said Scot McKnight, an ordained Anglican and author who co-authored a 2020 book on the abuse of power in the church.

“They haven’t tried to find all the cases of sexual abuse. They didn’t bring the survivors into the process so they knew what was going on and what needed to be done, ”McKnight said.

“I am deeply disheartened by ACNA. If ACNA doesn’t handle this matter with Stewart Ruch properly, ACNA will never get over it, ”he added.

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Ruch is considered a prominent bishop in the Anglican Church in North America, which boasts around 127,000 members and just under a thousand congregations. The denomination was founded in 2009 by conservative Episcopalians who disagreed with the views of the Episcopal Church on sexuality. The Church of the Resurrection was founded in the 1950s as an Episcopal Church and became part of ACNA in 2012, according to the church’s website. The church has attracted a number of high profile evangelicals, in part due to its proximity to Wheaton College and the headquarters of Christianity Today magazine.

In recent years, ACNA has had several high profile cases of sexual abuse and misconduct. Bishop James Hobby of Pittsburgh resigned in November 2020 for mismanaging allegations of abuse against a priest in his diocese. Bishop Ron Jackson of the Great Lakes Diocese was defrocked in 2020 after pleading guilty to sexual immorality due to long-standing pornography use.

In 2019, an investigation by GRACE, a nonprofit that deals with sexual abuse in Christian organizations, found that a high profile priest at St. Peter’s Anglican Cathedral in Tallahassee had sexually harassed men in the area. ‘church.

As ACNA works for healing and justice, Rudenborg – who left Christianity after high school, in part, she said, due to concerns over hypocrisy and patriarchy in the church – notes that the church cannot simply focus on individual cases of abuse. It must also take into account the culture that allows the abuse to occur in the first place.

“Justice would go back in time and deal with this from the start,” Rudenborg said. “In a broader sense, culturally, justice is about straightening these systems so that the spaces they create are safe for the vulnerable and hostile to predators.”

Bob Smietana contributed to this report.

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