The Rt. Rev. Stewart Ruch, bishop of the Anglican Church in North America’s Diocese of the Higher Midwest, has been acquitted on all ecclesiastical prices by the denomination’s Court docket for the Trial of a Bishop. The acquittal comes 5 months since his trial started, three years since formal complaints had been filed, and 6 years since a toddler first reported sexual abuse by a lay minister in Bishop Ruch’s diocese.
“We’re very grateful for the readability of the end result supplied by the Trial Court docket and are desirous to proceed our work with Bishop Stewart as we plant a revival of Phrase and Sacrament,” the Higher Midwest’s standing committee wrote in a December 17 letter. “We’re dedicated to doing all we are able to to make sure safety and look after these in our fold and to rebuild belief the place it has been damaged.”
Following two formal complaints filed by three bishops and 13 clergy and laity that accused him of mishandling reviews of abusive ministers and repeatedly selling at the very least six people with abusive histories, Ruch had been charged with 4 canonical offenses: ordinary neglect of episcopal duties, conduct giving simply trigger for scandal or offense, violation of ordination vows, and disobedience to or willful contravention of the church’s canons.
On December 16 the seven-member court docket discovered Ruch not responsible of every cost, stating in its unanimous 71-page determination that the prosecution, representing the denomination, didn’t meet its burden of proving any canonical violation by the bishop. “The failure of proof on this case is full,” the court docket wrote.
The trial was procedurally tumultuous. After alleging judicial misconduct towards the court docket’s Presiding Officer, the case’s longtime prosecutor Alan Runyan abruptly resigned mid-proceedings in July. He was joined every week later by his assistant prosecutor Rachel Thebeau, who accused the Archbishop, the province’s COO, and the province’s Chancellor of facilitating the Presiding Officer’s alleged misconduct. The province cycled by way of 4 prosecutors over the lifetime of the case, whereas the court docket’s composition remained fastened.
The Ruch matter represents the court docket’s second time listening to a case towards a bishop because the ACNA’s 2009 founding, its first time conducting a trial with reside testimony, and its first acquittal.
“Minimal evidentiary worth”
Key to the court docket’s acquittal was its determination to confess into proof the reviews of three impartial investigations into Bishop Ruch and the Diocese of the Higher Midwest, however solely to assign weight to one among them.
Two years after studying of a 9-year-old congregant’s report of abuse by lay catechist Mark Rivera, who’s now serving a 21-year jail sentence for felony baby sexual abuse and sexual assault towards an grownup lady, Ruch agreed to a third-party inquiry into diocesan dealing with of the matter. The diocese commissioned consulting agency Grand River Options to provide a report, however later requested that the province take up investigative oversight.
Underneath Archbishop Foley Seashore, the province shaped a response staff which chosen regulation agency Husch Blackwell to conduct its personal investigation. Throughout that inquiry, the diocese additional requested that the province examine “further allegations relating to abuse of energy,” a process for which the province employed Telios Regulation.
All three inquiries produced reviews which the court docket admitted into the file, however the court docket thought of solely the Telios report “dependable and probative” as a consequence of professional witness and report creator Theresa Sidebotham’s availability for questioning. “As a result of the Province failed to determine any evidentiary basis for the Grand River Options and Husch Blackwell reviews, the Court docket assigns minimal evidentiary worth to each,” the court docket wrote.
In setting apart the 2 reviews, the court docket typically made completely different findings of reality to what the reviews described. As an illustration, the court docket acknowledged that “no testimony indicated that anybody discouraged reporting” Rivera’s abuse to Illinois’ baby safety providers, whereas the Husch Blackwell report acknowledged that Ruch was contemporaneously conscious of diocesan chancellor Charles Philbrick’s recommendation to the Rev. Rand York – the vicar of the kid sufferer’s congregation which Rivera served – that reporting was not essential, in line with its interviews with all three males.
The court docket discovered that the Telios report, which has not been publicly launched, exonerated Ruch. “Sidebotham concluded that there was no management culpability on the a part of Bishop Ruch, no substantiated allegations of misconduct or canonical violations, and no proof that diocesan constructions failed due to any motion or omission by him. The Diocese’s trajectory – from parish-based safeguarding towards diocesan standardization – mirrored regular institutional progress, not episcopal negligence,” the court docket wrote.
The court docket additionally assigned minimal weight to the testimony of two prosecution witnesses, stating they “had not participated in diocesan management” and “possessed no firsthand information” of Bishop Ruch’s conduct.
Talking with The Dwelling Church, each witnesses disputed this characterization. The primary witness served for nearly two years on the diocese’s standing committee and two of its subcommittees, and the second witness led in making a deanery baby safety coverage, then served on a diocesan process power to create its first protecting requirements within the aftermath of the Rivera disclosure.
“The [court decision] states many times that an excessive amount of of the testimony on the prosecution facet was secondhand, based mostly on emotion or opinion relatively than on firsthand expertise,” the primary witness informed TLC. “Initially, that’s false, and second of all, it’s actually offensive to see misrepresentations of 1’s service within the official file.”
“The court docket’s description of the event of safeguarding within the [Upper Midwest] doesn’t comport with my expertise as a Pastor to Kids and Households within the diocese for almost twenty years,” the second witness added.
Ruch’s protection witnesses included 5 bishops, who testified that Ruch acted “in accordance with safeguarding expectations” and didn’t exhibit “patterns of neglect or inattentiveness.”
A sequence of monks, deacons, and laypeople from the diocese additionally testified, persuading the court docket with respect to the cost that Ruch habitually promoted abusive ministers – a few of whose backgrounds included solicitation of a prostitute and second-degree tried homicide, and a few of whom reoffended – was not negligence however “troublesome and imperfect work of helping fallen women and men who sought vocational calling” that Ruch undertook with sincerity.
“Irreparably tainted”?
The court docket’s determination to usher in some new proof additionally influenced its verdict. In an April order, the court docket had initially dominated that the subject of the province’s investigative course of itself was to not be raised at trial. As an alternative, it might think about solely the alleged info within the formal complaints towards Bishop Ruch.
However in his July 19 resignation letter, Runyan alleged {that a} court docket member improperly questioned a witness for over an hour utilizing proof excluded by that April order, calling the procedures “irreparably tainted” consequently. He referred to as for the transcript of the trial – which was digital and closed to the general public – to be launched to the entire church, which the court docket didn’t grant.
The court docket attributed its new consideration of the investigative course of to a lately “eroded” assumption that the investigations had been overseen by a Board of Inquiry, the canonical physique which later thought of prices based mostly on the investigations’ findings and indicted Ruch for trial, relatively than the by ad-hoc staff the province had assembled in 2021.
Runyan had served on that staff, and when Ruch moved in Could 2024 to disqualify Runyan as prosecutor based mostly on that service, the court docket discovered no difficulty with the staff’s investigatory oversight at the moment and denied the movement.
By the point of the decision, the court docket believed it was the province’s practices that had been irreparably tainted. Nearly half of its prolonged determination harshly criticized the ACNA’s investigative processes, which it described as “an extended and complicated chain of institutional miscommunication, investigative mismanagement, inside provincial pressure, procedural irregularities, sustained public strain, and the absence of constant canonical course of,” redounding to a detrimental evaluation of the prosecution’s proof.
The choice additionally closely chastised Runyan, calling his resignation and accusation of judicial misconduct “insupportable.” It additional deplored the “narrative seize” and “distorting affect” effected by on-line public dialogue and the work of grassroots advocacy teams like ACNAtoo, which was shaped in 2021 to highlight abuse within the diocese.
“It’s now devastatingly clear that if an abuse sufferer needs to report abuse within the ACNA… they have to now bear the extra burden of making certain they aren’t perceived as being ‘captured’ by narratives the ACNA deems illegitimate,” ACNAtoo responded in a assertion. “As an alternative of humbly studying from individuals or sources they may choose to keep away from, the ACNA has relegated survivors’ personal tales to the class of propaganda.”
The court docket recommended Ruch’s “shepherd’s coronary heart” and located that he responded to harsh criticism with “humility, a posture of studying, and a demonstrated willingness to hear, repent the place hurt was prompted, and modify his conduct accordingly” – a tonal distinction which has gathered some response.
“Even his expensive errors [the court] made into alternatives to reward a maturing chief,” the second prosecution witness informed TLC. “It’s unlucky for individuals hoping for some solace who actually suffered throughout that point.”
A denominational FAQ states that in response to earlier considerations in regards to the investigative processes within the Ruch case and to Runyan and Thebeau’s latest judicial allegations, its School of Bishops and its Govt Committee resolved to fee “an impartial evaluation” of the trial’s procedural occasions. They anticipate the evaluation to be carried out in early 2026.
Landmark implications
The landmark case has judicially concluded with out risk of attraction, and other than its personal deserves could set a controversial precedent for the denomination’s coming trials of its former chaplaincy bishop, the Rt. Rev. Derek Jones, and of its archbishop, the Most Rev. Steve Wooden. The identical court docket will sit to listen to each circumstances.
Whereas the court docket didn’t depend on it for its verdict, it superior a idea in its determination that every one sponsors of formal complaints towards bishops should have “firsthand information” of every allegation. Since such formal complaints could solely be canonically filed by three bishops or by ten clergy and laypeople, this interpretation may require as many as ten eyewitnesses for a given act, presenting a excessive bar for sexual misconduct allegations specifically.
“An excellent religion studying of the Canons clearly signifies [that] accusers should solely be required to declare the credibility of such prices … with cheap certainty of time, place and circumstance,” the complainants within the Wooden matter, who allege that the archbishop made continuous sexual advances towards a feminine workers member, wrote in a revised cowl letter to their criticism in November.
Some have interpreted the court docket’s excoriation of the province’s procedures throughout the Ruch trial as an indictment of the ACNA’s disciplinary constructions themselves. The American Anglican Council, whose leaders are on the helm of the denomination’s efforts for Title IV disciplinary reform, acknowledged that “the proceedings revealed that Title IV was requested to bear weight it was not designed to hold in its present kind.”
Others have taken the decision as an indication that church self-discipline is functioning correctly. Based on Chad Graham, who prosecuted the case that deposed former bishop Todd Atkinson, the choice represents the “golden thread” of “innocence till confirmed responsible.”
“The Church ought to have a good time and take confidence: the system labored, and labored properly, discerning fact amid ache and complexity. Courts should not infallible – human judges err – however right here, women and men of excellent religion reviewed voluminous proof and reached a reasoned conclusion to exonerate Bishop Ruch,” Graham wrote in a weblog publish.“This determination has been met with a variety of reactions,” the Rt. Rev. Julian Dobbs, who’s appearing as archbishop throughout Wooden’s inhibition, wrote to the province on December 18. “As members of 1 physique in Christ Jesus, it’s each our responsibility and privilege to bear with each other in love and to uphold each other in prayer as all of us course of and reply to the choice from the Court docket.”
Arlie Coles is a lay Anglican from the Diocese of Dallas who writes about fashionable Episcopal historical past and polity. She can be a machine-learning researcher serving on Normal Conference’s Job Power on Synthetic Intelligence and Mental Property.
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