Ms. Phipps:
Your letter rejecting the serious allegations against Mr. Bouvel is both factually inaccurate and by any measure legally insufficient to withstand scrutiny Because the legal insufficiencies are the most egregious, I will address them first:
1) You do not identify the other members of the “reference panel” who supposedly concurred in your dismissal (you are not a bishop and therefore cannot use the “episcopal we” to describe your own actions; your e-signature is not stated to be on behalf of a body as is the practice when someone acts as an agent). Multi-member tribunals work as a body and each signs name to their collective decision. Your list of copyees does not indicate who served on this panel (your letter merely refers to these copyees as “Bishop Diocesan,” and “Intake Officer,” not “members of the reference panel”) If the bishop, the intake officer and you constitute the “reference panel” that appears to be a conflict of interest insofar as the intake officer has already ruled on whether the matter should be referred to a “reference panel.” And in this case, that contradicts what Ms. Wille told me in April: that a lawyer for the diocese would be on the panel and neither Ms. Clark nor Ms. Wille is a lawyer. The failure to identify the other panel members as such is further evidence of the star chamber proceedings which the Episcopal church seems to favor.
2) You mention a “second report” which suggests a “first report.” I was not given the benefit of either document. If these were part of the record which the panel considered, it is a denial of due process to denyme the opportunity to review these. When I last filed a disciplinary complaint against a rubric-defying cleric, I had access to the investigator’s report and could amend my complaint on appeal to allege matters of which I had no knowledge, and could not have known, when the complaint was filed. These canons have not changed in the intervening six years.
3) The canons do not give a pass for those conveying “incorrect information,” which is alleged to be “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” (Canon 4(h)(6)). This was the conduct alleged against Bouvel (Complaint, ¶¶ 18 & 19). This was not a prosecution for perjury where the intent of the accused is at issue. This was a canonical charge, which does not incorporate civil law elements of intent or good faith, as stated in Title IV, Canon 19: “Proceedings under this Title are neither civil nor criminal but ecclesiastical in nature.” Evidently, the panel considered Bouvel’s conduct under the laxer standard of “intentionally and maliciously bringing a false accusation,” and not the standard of “dishonesty ... or misrepresentation.” This is a legal error.
In addition to these errors, your letter is factually inaccurate and to the extent that the other panel members subscribed to the findings, it compels reconsideration:
1) The “incident at The Church of the Ascension” to which you allude resulted in no injury as you claim. No hospital report was ever produced, no police report ever filed, no criminal charges ever brought. This “incident” was a chimera which both the then-bishop and the then-interim rector used to silence me from objecting to the diocese’s policies regarding same-sex marriage. Mr. Bouvel’s “aware[ness]” of this incident was at best hearsay, and if he had ever been called to give in-court testimony to his otherwise unsupported allegations, it would have been stricken from the record.
2) And Mr. Bouvel testified to “violence at other churches,” suggesting that I was a “church violence recidivist” and making me some sort of danger to the church community. That is calumnious as well as a lie. Assuming that the “incident at ... Ascension” was “violence” (a proposition which is false) it was a unique event and therefore Mr. Bouvel’s testimony to the plurality of these acts was “dishonest” and a “misrepresentation.”
3) Mr. Bouvel’s “aware[ness]” of the meeting I had with Messrs. Smedley and Matzke is also hearsay and would have been disallowed in court. At that meeting there was no “discuss[ion] of standards of behavior” at St. Chrysostom’s: I only had to explain what had happened. The “written document,” never produced during Mr. Bouvel’s ill-advised litigation, was never shown to me nor used as a template for the meeting I had with Smedley and Matzke. And if there was “a written document guiding that conversation,” and I was “not ask[ed] to sign it,” then Bouvel’s testimony is further “dishonest” and a “misrepresentation.” Your reliance on this canard is further evidence that the Episcopal church has no regard for truth.
4) You claim to “have found no evidence of malice or intentional misleading of the court” by Mr. Bouvel. But you confuse the allegations of “dishonesty” and “misrepresentations” under Canon 4(h)(6) with the Canon 3(1)(c)standard of “false accusation” which incorporates “intent” and “malice” elements. In August-September 2022 Bouvel was made aware through his lawyer of the critical errors in his testimony: specifically but without limitation that there was a prior “order of protection” against me. Yet he persisted in his fallacious claims and would not withdraw his complaint despite demand. That is malice.
This is not over. I hereby demand that I be afforded whatever appeal or reconsideration rights which I have under Title IV and the local canons to have these allegations properly dealt with and not papered over with blandishments as to “pastoral support,” “upset” and “stress.” I expect that you will be involved in the future and will pray for your finally coming to the light of the abuse which I have received from clergy whose mission is to preach the gospel and nothing more.
If the Diocese of Chicago is serious about having this come to an end, I suggest that you have a lawyer contact me with full power to settle the matter and pay the fees which I should not have had to pay because a cowardly minister had not read either the First Amendment or the Gospel.
Faithfully,
David G. Duggancc via email: Bishop Clark
Suzanne Wille