September 11, 2010

Bonnie Anderson, D.D.

The Episcopal Church
The General Convention
815 Second Avenue
New York, New York 10017-4503

Dear Bonnie:

While you wrote out of genuine love and concern for our church, your public response of
September 1 to the letter from the witnesses in the June 2008 Ecclesiastical Trial has hurt the
Diocese of Pennsylvania, and is so misleading as to raise the question whether you actually read
all of the trial evidence on which your statements are based.

The Review Court found absolutely no evidence that I am among those who “have been
complicit in maintaining a climate of silence and denial that has inhibited our efforts to end
sexual abuse within our church.” Your letter expressing your “outrage that individuals in
positions of authority” have done so, falsely and unjustly implies culpability on my part. In fact,
there is nothing in my forty-two-year ordained ministry to indicate that I have ever covered up or
looked the other way when I have learned of sexual abuse.

Beginning with the Church Attorney’s first interview of me in February 2007, moreover, I have
consistently expressed my remorse over the abuse as “totally wrong,” and my sincere regret that
I hired my brother, trusted him, and was not sufficiently circumspect to become aware of his
behavior earlier than I did. I do not think, however, that to demand of my brother, as I did, upon
once having actual knowledge of his offense, that he report himself, or be reported by me, to our
bishop, who then deposed him, can accurately be characterized, as it was by the Review Court,
as “totally wrong.” Such is a gross mischaracterization, too, of my honoring of the victim’s
privacy when in her nineteenth year I learned what she had suffered, of my fidelity to her
parents’ subsequent, decades-long request for confidentiality, and of my consistent openness to
inquiry into her abuse by church authorities. My record as bishop demonstrates unequivocally
that I have handled clergy sexual abuse cases appropriately.

The Review Court also found that, based on the statute of limitations, there never should have
been a canonical proceeding against me. The canons provide a statute of limitations because after
a determined period of time accurate recall of pertinent facts becomes so problematic as to make
impossible a just process. The wisdom of such a provision was borne out by the fact that after the
June 2008 trial evidence surfaced that demonstrated that all the witnesses either intentionally
prevaricated or unintentionally misremembered key facts at the basis of their testimony. The
Review Court regrettably failed to advance the interests of justice by proceeding to weigh the
merits of the charges after adjudging negatively the Trial Court’s improper decision on the
stature of limitations. Your passion for justice, for which I have long admired you, would extend,
I should hope, to the Church’s proper use of its canons.

In your “prayer” that the House of Bishops will “prevail upon Bishop Bennison to resign, or
undertake other measures that lead to Bishop Bennison’s removal from office,” and that we find
the “means of dissolving the relationship between a bishop and a diocese that find themselves in
untenable circumstances,” moreover, you fail to heed the Review Court’s warning that “Title IV
courts must guard against allowing that exception [to the statute of limitations] to be used
without proof of actual sexual abuse. This is especially true under circumstances where the
exception is invoked not so much to deal with sexual abuse but, rather, as an effort to use events
in the distant past when the Respondent was a priest to remove a bishop during current times of
conflict within the diocese. To allow Title IV and the sexual abuse exception to the statute of
limitations to be used in this manner diminishes the monumental efforts of the Church to address,
punish and remove incidents of actual clergy sexual abuse.”

Legislatures frequently give voice to public reaction to court decisions, and it is understandable
that in the heat of the moment the House of Deputies, you as its President, and your Council of
Advice, would entertain changes in our canon law. In all fairness to the Church, to the Diocese of
Pennsylvania, and to me, I would hope that, as you do so, you will thoroughly review all the
facts of this particular case and my life’s work, be exacting in your reading of the canons, and
honor the autonomy of our courts and our governance as established in a rule of law.

Sincerely,

Charles E. Bennison, Jr.