Open Letter From Victims of Derek Jones to the ACNA

November 4, 2025

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.” Matthew 23:1-4

Faithful of the ACNA,

Several months ago Rachel Thebeau released a bombshell letter following a cataclysmic breakdown in the Stewart Ruch trial. In it she declared, “The proper channels are now compromised. Our sheep deserve better from our shepherds who are called to lay down their lives for us, not the other way around.” She also remarked, “confidentiality is used [by the Province] as a tool to minimize, scapegoat, and intentionally distort and avoid important facts.” While we cannot confirm the background to her own complaint, we can sadly confirm her conclusions. Indeed in our opinion all the proper channels are compromised and they have been for a long time. We call upon the Province and the College of Bishops to undergo a process of repentance, as well as structural, synodical, and canonical reform.

The throes of this current situation are rooted not only in failures of canon, but more importantly in failures of culture, courage, and character. The background to our current troubles, in our view, is that the church has habitually failed to properly vet its leaders, to which previous misconduct cases like that of Todd Atkinson attest, and furthermore that the College of Bishops has likewise habitually failed to hold each other accountable. These are not new issues, in fact they go back to the very formation of the ACNA and are a direct product of its unresolved DNA. They are features, reinforced by the glue which holds the Province together, negotiated division.

It is due to these features that the Province is now in a crisis of credibility when it comes to its handling of credible cases of abuse, which yesterday evening was further aggravated despite our best efforts to prevent it. Do not for a minute believe the Provincial messaging that “ACNA remains steadfast in its commitment to accountability and to establishing and upholding best practice standards to protect those who experience harm from the Church.” These corporate talking points of the Province are aspirational, they are not descriptions of reality, and there is documentation two miles deep to prove the point. In our opinion, the people who should have the most confidence in the current system are abusers, as they can rest assured almost certainly nothing will happen to them.

Recent statements to the effect that the Province and its leaders are responsible and quick to respond to credible complaints of abuse are also not supported by evidence, which should be apparent to anyone who has read the undisputed background material. The reality is that the victims of the ACNA have been made to wait in silence for years after the original hearers of their reports dismissed them or failed to act, following which Provincial systems often favored the suppression or compartmentalism of the truth, sometimes in our opinion even to the point of taking material shared in confidence to establish narratives that are less than forthcoming and absolving of Provincial inaction. These are systemic issues as well as personal failures. There has been without doubt a fundamental failure, and a dereliction of officership by the church’s leaders. We call upon the ACNA not to have supernatural abilities of discernment or safeguarding, but simply the normal moral clarity and employee systems provided by your average business and secular Human Resources departments.

We submit to you that the College of Bishops in the past has been willfully ignorant, grossly incompetent, and negligent, and that this is attested by the fact that none of them knew that Derek Jones, the previous chaplaincy endorser for the ACNA, registered his personal 501c3 with the Armed Forces Chaplains Board while claiming to represent the entire denomination as the ACNA endorser. No one disputes these facts. What is remarkable is that we have been writing and speaking to the leaders of the Province, and the Provincial misconduct office, of Derek’s malign efforts to avoid Provincial oversight for years. None of this was a surprise to us. We have pages and pages of documents speaking to this effect.

In fact in 2021 a brave priest in our number pointed out the background to this situation to the Archbishop, Foley Beach. Foley has admitted that Derek misled him for years into his Archiepiscopacy by not disclosing that he was in fact a part of the Anglican Church of Nigeria and not fully a canonical member of the ACNA, under whose oversight he was supposed to be under according to Canon 11, but never was. This admission, made by multiple bishops, means that essentially for the last ten years the ACNA has not had control of, or even the basic facts regarding its own endorsing agency. In fact it has not even had the wherewithal to know what questions to ask in order to provide effective oversight of it, putting its 300 or so chaplains in credible risk, which hundreds of pages of evidence can prove beyond doubt. We acknowledge that the ultimate blame resides with Derek Jones but simply state that leaders had a duty to know.

Again, this fact has been pointed out to Provincial leadership, going back at least four and a half years. When this brave priest, acting as a whistleblower, was discovered to have told on Derek Jones’ misbehavior, by going to the Archbishop of the Province and warning him about the issues in his own endorsing agency, all of which are now manifestly known and agreed upon, and for which the Archbishop was ultimately accountable, Derek immediately inhibited him. Foley, instead of acting immediately upon this credible claim of abuse, recused himself, and handed the matter over to the Dean of the Province, Ray Sutton.

Ray Sutton had in that moment a sacred responsibility of jurisprudence that he and others now say is working and effective, but even in this single case he did not go to the one now universally known to have been falsely accused, but to Derek Jones, the abuser, whose view and opinion he later enshrined in his findings. This is just one example in our opinion of the pervasive clericalism that exists within the Province, which favors the claims of clergy over laity and the claims of bishops over priests. Derek in his inhibition made four charges against this priest: 1. “Violation of ordination vows.” 2. “Conduct giving just cause for scandal of offense…” 3. “…willful contravention of the Canons of this Church…” and 4. “Habitual neglect…”

For years Derek weaponized Inhibitions and Letters of Godly Admonition against his own clergy. A standard battery of options to respond his charges usually included (by way of paraphrase from the perspective of the accused) 1. Plead guilty, and I will crush you. 2. Plead not guilty, and submit your response to an investigator under my control, and I will find you guilty, and then I will crush you. 3. Plead Nolo Contendre, no contest, don’t admit that you are guilty, but still I will crush you. 4. Fail to plea, in which case you are assumed to be guilty and I will crush you. This system, used time and time again by Derek Jones was always heads, I win and tails, you lose. No one to our knowledge questioned its canonicity.

Of particular interest in this Inhibition letter is option 3: Nolo Contendre. We will now quote the document verbatim: “…as a condition of an acceptance of a plea of nolo contendere, compliance to certain provisions will be required. Specifically you will be required to: Submit to a psychological examination as outlined below and sign a HIPAA release permitting the resulting determination/diagnosis of that examination to be transmitted to the JAFC, United States Army, and any religious faith group, denomination, communion, or society to whom you might seek employment or ordination in the future should it be adjudicated that your Holy Orders in the Anglican Church are withdrawn.”

Derek then goes on to “direct” the accused to “complete a Mental Health review” and names Dr. William A. Crunk, who is a member of his own executive committee, to “oversee this review and [who] will provide a confidential recommendation to me.” He goes further, “You will submit to testing and interviews as directed by Dr. Crunk…Dr. Crunk’s examination of you will be required to be submitted for you to the JAFC in order to be considered for release from this inhibition. Failure to allow such psychological report to be provided to the JAFC will be just cause, absent all other matters of investigation, to remove you permanently from Holy Orders in the Anglican Church.” By way of note, the Province and Provincial leaders have seen and been in possession of this complete letter of inhibition for four and a half years. The misconduct office has had it since last November.

Bishop Sutton, adjudicating this matter, talking only to the bishop-abuser came to this determination. Quoting directly here again, “As for violation of ordination vows, part of those is submission to your bishop. Bishop Jones asked the chaplains not to speak to other bishops about the subject matter of concern in your jurisdiction. Bishops often may and do need to ask for such confidentiality on sensitive, potentially controversial, and unresolved matters….Contrary to your bishop’s directions, by your own admission you secretly involved the Archbishop…It is further credibly recounted to me by Bishop Jones that you communicated with another bishop.” To summarize, Ray Sutton says that in effect all bishops require secrecy from their priests, which is largely true, and in our opinion part of the problem.

As for the second charge here are Sutton’s findings, “…it would seem that there is support for this accusation. You document on pages three and four of your letter to the church that you fed the Archbishop information directly and indirectly leading him to pursue a course of action in his own communications with the chaplains. Your actions triggered a sequence of communications and miscommunications that have caused scandal and offense among the brethren and even bishops. It will take much effort over time to see reconciliation and resolution among some of them.” A priest is thereby found guilty of causing a scandal by revealing to the head of the Province the man who has been a scandal in their midst for the previous many years, Derek Jones, his own endorser. In the military we call this following your chain of command. In the church there is apparently no such process of whistleblowing, or elevating up the chain, which Sutton himself admits.

“Concerning the claim of ‘willful contravention of the canons of this church,’ it would appear again from your own description of your actions that you intentionally did not follow the canons of this church in dealing with what you perceived to be personal problems with your own bishop, his leadership, and his specific handling of the dual canonical residency of the SJAC. From your own definition of yourself as a ‘whistleblower,’ this appears to be your rationale for circumventing the Biblical process of resolving personal conflicts and jurisdictional concerns by means of circuitous communications around your bishop without including him in the information you were spreading.

As for you self-designation and appointment as ‘whistleblower,’ no such category appears in Scripture or our canons. No doubt there is a way of addressing what is believed to be evil and ‘telling it to the church’ (Matthew 18). Yet, Scripture and the canons based on the Word of God outline specific steps and ways of addressing differences, offenses and sin…the point is the Biblical way to ‘whistleblow’ is ironically through a process of reconciliation and proper communication. Instead, you admittedly communicated information that did not copy in some way your own bishop for there to be the possibility of verification with him and the Archbishop. Your assumptions about the intent of Bishop Jones could have been brought into accountability and your communications not be subject to the allegation of ‘false communications.’”

We would like to forever rule out at this point that Matthew 18 is a process commanded by scripture in which people must confront their abusers. Furthermore, we would like to rule out a rebuttal that we have not followed this process, as all the people we mention have been confronted. When a Christian confronts a person and he doesn’t listen, then gets two or three bishops to confront him with you, and they fail to respond, what is a person to do? The biblical model, according to them, is to go to the whole church, which is exactly what we are doing. At selective points however it seems we have been guided to disregard this model, and instead submit our complaints to the Provincial misconduct office, under the control it would seem of the very people against whom we would like to file a complaint, and who inevitably would be called upon to substantiate and act upon our claims.

Bishop Sutton concludes in his review of Derek’s inhibition, “Therefore, on the basis of your own recounting expressed in your appeal…I have concluded that I will NOT revoke the inhibition. From your own words, it appears to me that Bishop Derek has a prima facie basis for his inhibition…I encourage you prayerfully to consider the options expressed in the inhibition and humbly to turn to your Bishop Derek Jones. Seek his wisdom and counsel, and submit to the godly process trusting the Lord that He will work in you that which is well pleasing in His sight. If after further prayer and contrite consideration you come to the conclusion that you have your ordination vows of submission to your bishop, caused scandalous division among the brethren, and violated the Scriptures and the canons of this church, I exhort you to repent and put your self at the mercy of the Lord and your bishop. If you do not feel you can do this within your own godly convictions, you will have to determine with God’s help which option is best for you. Whatever the case, all options involve a psychological evaluation. You are well advised to pursue immediately that evaluation with Dr. Crunk. My heart breaks for you my brother in Christ with great sadness. Please be assured of my prayers for you and your family.”

The result of this hearing could well have been the immediate removal of a military chaplain’s ecclesiastical endorsement, depriving him of his job complete with pay, benefits, and hard won progress towards a pension in as little as 30 days. It is just one example of the miserable failure of our leaders to address credible claims of abuse. It would be of interest to the Province to know that a two-star Chief of Chaplains of the Army conducted an investigation years ago on the background of this situation and affixed his signature to the findings that this priest was in fact innocent. Obviously the whole College of Bishops must now admit that his actions were appropriate and that he was telling the truth.

Afterwards this priest was tried in abstentia despite Derek knowing he was not canonically under his jurisdiction, with fraudulent documents, and later was put into the Provincial Kintone system, forever marking his record as one under discipline. Now the Provincial office says it cannot remove him, who was put into it not according to process, as that is not the process. This is our canons at work. It is unlikely that this complainant will ever totally recover from the abuse he has suffered at the hands of ACNA leaders, who have made no apologies except for the occasional “we are so sorry this happened to you”. This situation was furthermore never followed up on by the Archbishop, and there is documentary evidence of further appeal to Ray Sutton by Derek Jones to assist him in his authoritarian manipulation of his own chaplains.

In 2023 another situation involving Derek Jones catastrophically failed to be addressed by the Province. A second complainant, being forced to move his endorsement from the REC to the Jurisdiction of Armed Forces and Chaplaincy under false pretenses, which had already been verified in September of 2023 by the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, discovered in the process of his forced application to the JAFC a tithing policy which stated in writing that “10% or more” of a chaplain’s earned income was “required” to be given to the Jurisdiction, even before his local parish, and that furthermore a chaplain must make an annual attestation in writing to these standards. This complainant also discovered in this policy and attestation, apparently unknown even until recently to senior leaders of the Province, even though it has been in the possession of the misconduct office for some time, a statement, “…Nor have I made inquiry or contact to work with any other ecclesiastical authority without the knowledge of the Bishop or in violation of the canons.” If a chaplain was unable to with integrity make this claim, in order to maintain good standing, and thereby presumably endorsement, he was forced to sign, “I am unable to affirm ALL the statements and wish to speak with the Vicar General to set up an appointment with the Bishop.” It is normative for chaplains to speak with other endorsers, in fact many joined the JAFC through this very process. Derek’s system seemed to be allowing people in but not out while requiring them to pay for the privilege. Suffice it to say this complainant did not desire to complete the application, and it was in fact never completed.

These issues go back ten years, and this was not this complainant’s first time being harassed by Derek Jones. Therefore in an effort to keep peace he decided to seek an endorsement in another church. Months later, on December 12th of 2023 Derek Jones, who was not his canonical bishop or endorser, having learned of this chaplain’s intentions though another bishop who he was also manipulating, sent him a scathing Letter of Godly Admonition in which he was accused of things not even possible. In his email Derek remarked, “Do know that I have not yet notified the Chief of Chaplains.” He stated that this chaplain had morally failed. This chaplain was then charged with the same three charges as the previous complainant and given the same four options by which to respond. As Derek Jones was not entitled to a response, since he was neither this chaplain’s canonical bishop or endorser, the complainant wrote and then withheld his response and instead wrote an email to Foley Beach and Bishop Julian Dobbs, the chair of the canonical tribunal. The intention of this email was to notify the Archbishop of the situation while including another senior leader.

On 13 December 2023 at 2:28 pm a message entitled “Harassment from the JAFC and Bishop Derek Jones” was received. This message indicated that a Letter of Godly Admonition had been received by this chaplain the previous day, that it was the first time having received direct email communication from Derek Jones contrary to the claims in his email, that this situation was a symptom of a deeper problem that had been brewing for some time within the ACNA, that the Armed Forces Chaplains Board had already officially discredited Derek’s position, that this letter appeared to be backdated, but most importantly that at the top of the letter was the complainant’s home address, which is a tactic Derek has used on multiple occasions, and that this person and his wife and family were afraid, and felt threatened, and that we were seriously contemplating a restraining order against a bishop of the ACNA. To this day we are afraid, among us are complainants who have had Letters of Godly Admonition delivered to their door by couriers even though they had already been sent electronically. Many bishops on occasion have remarked that it is understandable that we are afraid, one remarking, “I wish I could tell you that you are safe, but I am not sure you are, be careful.” It is because of this real and abiding fear that we have remained anonymous.

In short, Foley never even responded to the email, to this very day, but claims he forwarded it on to Ray Sutton. Bishop Dobbs on the other hand attempted to respond. The complainant remarked to him, “Please advise me on what paths forward exist within the Province. I have kept months worth of documentation that I believe clearly shows my concerns to be valid and worthy of investigation…I do desire that the issues I presented to you and others be brought to the tribunal…I ask for a stay on my canonical orders, my military endorsement, and all other disciplinary measures…until this issue is resolved. I believe [Derek] has no canonical authority himself to depose me…” Dobbs, in an effort to help responded but noted that “The provincial tribunal is not…authorized to investigate accusations against a bishop.”

The complainant then replied, quoting the ACNA’s canons at length, noting that if he didn’t respond Derek was threatening to destroy his career in days, which he had expressed in remarkable detail to his prospective endorser. “‘Title IV, Canon 2, 12 states ‘A Godly Admonition is a written directive from a Bishop with jurisdiction to a member of the Clergy under his jurisdiction. Such admonition shall not be issued until the Bishop shall have met personally with the member of the Clergy – unless for valid reason under these canons the Bishop shall have delegated such meeting to another Bishop – and the issues have been clearly and fairly discussed.’ None of the above criteria have been met in my recent letter from Bishop Jones. The evidence will clearly show I am not a member of the Clergy under his jurisdiction, a central and immediate issue the answer to which would determine how I should canonically respond. Neither have Bishop Jones and I met in person, ever, nor have we fairly and clearly discussed the issues.

In fact, it seems to me that this letter of admonishment that I received was backdated to a time that it could not have been written in order to allege that I was already under church discipline when I sought a military endorsement and canonical residence in another body. I sought this for the sake of peace and also to continue my ministry to Airmen uninterrupted. If the provincial council is not the forum to address this most basic factual question, could you please tell me who is?” The point of this story is that there is further evidence of systemic issues in the Province, that even when bishops in good faith attempt to respond, structural issues exist which canon law has not fleshed out or anticipated, and that can bind even those who are willing to help. In our opinion, current efforts to make canon law even more conciliar will only serve to further complicate and harm the innocent. If anything, we believe more jurisprudence is required. There needs to be an admission that the current system favors those in authority over those of lesser power, who are usually themselves responsible for the failures they are brought in to resolve. We all believe in mercy, forgiveness, and reconciliation. The question is for mercy for who? Mercy for those who have failed, or for those who have been harmed?

There is much more to this second story and there are others still, and a great deal of evidence. We dare anyone to dispute these quotes and claims and are willing to provide primary documents and further corroborating evidence to support every single one of them at their insistence. They are all substantially true. Many of us have had to carry the pain of our situations on our backs for years, hoping that someday Provincial leaders would engage the wheels of justice that are supposedly working, but these issues were not discovered “this Summer” as the original Provincial timeline seems to have suggested, they have been known for years. The right people were confronted at the right time with the right arguments, over and again, and they all failed to act. If we, having as much understanding of the facts as we have, as much evidence, as much advocacy for ourselves well beyond that of ordinary victims, were not listened to, then who will be? Who is safe?

Indeed this Summer Bishop Dobbs was again approached after two years from the previous episode, other newer ones still piling up. It is the opinion of complainants that without his advocacy and courage, so lacking in others, nothing ever would have happened, late as it was. We communicated to the Province at that time in the clearest terms that in our opinion it was only a matter of time before an ACNA chaplain died by suicide due to the malign behaviors of their bishop, knowing at the time that such a death had almost occurred within the previous six months. We told the Province “When that happens, how will you, and every bishop who has known about this and done nothing, for years, ever be able to sleep and night and live with yourself?” Since the supposed departure of Derek Jones from the ACNA we have indeed heard countless heartbreaking stories from friends and colleagues we have long worried about, confirming our worst fears.

Chaplains do some of the most difficult work you can imagine. Complainants have held the hands of thousands of dying hospital patients, responded to dozens of completed suicides, born witness to hundreds of marriages on the brink of failure. They have personally attended to thirty five thousand Afghan evacuees, half of them children, fleeing the Taliban. They have worked in burn units, with neonatal loss, in trauma centers, the VA, and in hospice care. They are willing to run into battle, unarmed, and die for the sake of their ministry. They deserve bishops with at least the moral fortitude to tell the truth and admit what they have done, they certainly do not deserve to be saddled, abused, and manipulated by one who should have been washing their feet.

We call on the ACNA, especially the College of Bishops, to repent of this dreadful cycle of nonsense and to cease and desist its cooperation with the enemies of painful truth and therefore of Christ. We note that we offer forgiveness every day for those who have failed us, and the whole JAFC, by what they have done or left undone, but that reconciliation will require more, much more. Victims should not be getting apologies, that they had to seek out, years after the fact. That is not enough. Most of us have received no apologies at all. Instead, there should be weeping, sackcloth, and ashes. We commend our theory of justice as neither punishment or rehabilitation, but deterrence. We ask, how can there be deterrence if no one knows what you’ve done, if the people who have done these things refuse to admit to them publicly, and if the canonical system itself, to say nothing of Provincial messaging, de facto reinforces that truth holders must go outside of it in order to be seen and heard?

Finally we again plead for repentance, and for canonical, structural and synodical reform. We have not desired to be destructive but constructive, for years. That is our continued desire. We have arrived at the determination that it is more dangerous to the church and to the innocent to do nothing than to continue on in silence as we have been. We ask that people with utterly no credibility of responding responsibly to now undisputed cases of abuse not be allowed to continue leading in them, for the sake of the church. We commend Bishop Dobbs for his heroic response in leading the charge against Derek Jones, long warranted, and note only how much it took in terms of time and evidence and pain absorbed before the system was willing to respond, and even then in our opinion, at the insistence of victims. We acknowledge also the theological issues which have reinforced this system since the beginning of the ACNA, which in our opinion must also be addressed for the sake of unity and coherence, as a house divided against itself cannot stand, and which in turn foment these kinds well documented behaviors and decisions. We pray that the final steps will be towards a Province in communion with itself, living truly in ways consistent with its values and in anticipation of that future Kingdom.

We commend to you this prayer, “Lord, be with all the victims of spiritual abuse and all forms of abuse within and without the church. For those who are surely suffering now that we are not even aware of, we bid your compassion and mercy. We pray that they would be heard, seen, and listened to; that our leaders will have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hands to help. Strengthen them as they take up the roles you have given them, and make them agents of your justice, mercy, and peace. Amen.”

Sincerely in Christ,

“The Chaplains”