From April through October this year, I served on a temporary committee for the OPC Presbytery of the Southeast, investigating allegations by Stephanie Chernyavskiy against her adoptive parents, the elders of her former church, and a number of other individuals, with accusations spanning roughly two decades and at least three states.
After six months of investigation, at our October presbytery meeting our committee returned a 40-page report, with 49 additional pages of recommendations and appendices. Our conclusion: “the most serious allegations against the people and entities named in our mandate are either unfounded or impossible to prove” (NIC Report, page 3).
It is not my intention to relitigate the contents of the report, which I think stands well on its own. However, in the last few days Mrs. Chernyavskiy has publicly accused our committee of intentionally ignoring her witnesses and evidence as part of a cover-up, writing on Facebook, “Unfortunately the committee of five men declined to interview or speak to my wittnesses and did not include any of my evidence in their report.” This accusation has been amplified by herself and others across social media, and I believe some response is appropriate. (To be clear, the temporary committee was dissolved once our work was done, so I speak only for myself in what follows.)
The Timeline
Our committee was established in April of this year. Shortly afterward, Mrs. Chernyavskiy contacted our presbytery to say she was unwilling to speak with us or share any evidence until the conclusion of an ongoing criminal investigation in Kentucky sparked by her accusations. This investigation ended when a grand jury voted not to indict, and on June 13 Mrs. Chernyavskiy reached out to say she was ready “to share evidence, witness statements, and other forms of evidence such as photographs and emails, messages, etc.”
Our committee then made multiple efforts to hear from Mrs. Chernyavskiy, either in person or through written questions. These efforts were complicated by the fact that she was in the midst of a high-risk pregnancy. On August 27, the committee boiled our inquiries down to four questions which we sent to Mrs. Chernyavskiy via her designated representative, PCA Pastor Tim LeCroy. We never received a response to these questions, but on September 20 Rev. LeCroy forwarded to us a zip file containing four documents (a statement, two lists of specific allegations, and a list of witnesses); a “Primary Evidence” folder with 57 files (largely screenshot images); and a “Secondary Evidence” folder with 251 files (again, largely screenshots).
As of September 20, we did not have permission to share the evidence beyond our own committee. Our committee chairman immediately requested permission to share it with the rest of presbytery along with our report. The exchange which ensued with Rev. LeCroy on behalf of Mrs. Chernyavskiy is extremely important in light of her allegations in the last few days.
NIC Chairman (Sept. 22): “Since this is important for a full consideration of the matter and of Stephanie’s testimony, may we have permission to make it available to our presbytery for their review and evaluation in preparation for our PSE report in October?”
LeCroy (Sept. 23): “Stephanie is willing to take that step, but we are wondering if it may be premature to send out that material without the committee’s report and recommendations to frame it. We are also wondering if the material can be received under executive session to prevent anyone from sharing those materials publicly.”
NIC Chairman (Sept. 23): “Thanks for the response. Our presbytery has a website with a members’ only section that we use to communicate sensitive information when that becomes necessary. We can coordinate with our clerk to have this information in a password protected drive only available to members of the presbytery while also stipulating that it is for presbytery use only.”
LeCroy (Sept. 23): “That is very helpful. Thank you! With that description we are comfortable sharing the information. Stephanie gives her consent.”
This conversation occurred the week before our deadline to submit the report and evidence to presbytery.
Availability of Mrs. Chernyavskiy’s Evidence
Since we had agreed to these terms as a condition for sharing Mrs. Chernyavskiy’s materials with the members of presbytery, we were very careful to abide by them. We added her evidence in full (the 57 primary files and 251 secondary files) to a folder of supplementary evidence which was made available to all members of presbytery more than two weeks before we met on October 17. On October 2, the clerk of presbytery sent an email notifying all presbyters that our report was available. The cover page of the report linked to the supplementary evidence drive, and listed the three main folders of evidence (one of them being Mrs. Chernyavskiy’s collection) available there.
This evidence remained fully available to all presbyters until the last hour of presbytery, at which time I removed Mrs. Chernyavskiy’s evidence from the collection. This was because presbytery had voted to share the report and supporting evidence with several church bodies and interested parties, and we wanted to take care that we did not go beyond the bounds of the permission we had received from Mrs. Chernyavskiy to share her information only with members of presbytery.
Frankly, it is astonishing to me—remembering the care our committee took to avoid mishandling Mrs. Chernyavskiy’s evidence and carefully craft all our recommendations lest they exceed the limited access we had agreed to—that this is now being raised as a mark against us. (I cannot help thinking that if we had been less careful, and had shared her evidence more broadly, then our agreement not to do so would have become the basis for a different accusation.)
Briefly: Mrs. Chernyavskiy’s evidence was available in full to all members of presbytery for more than two weeks prior to presbytery. It was then removed before the evidence was made more broadly available, precisely because this was a precondition for sharing it with presbytery.
Reference to Mrs. Chernyavskiy’s Evidence and Witnesses
Mrs. Chernyavskiy has also alleged that we ignored her witnesses and evidence in the report itself. This is not the case. The zip file we received from her on September 20 included a list of eight named witnesses. Of those witnesses:
- We spoke with two, who were parents of a third and had overlapping testimony.
- We were aware of what two others would testify to, and had listened to one of these witness’ testimony from the grand jury interview and seen written statements from the other. Even stipulating that both witnesses were being entirely accurate, they did not speak to any contested points.
- The remaining three witnesses were characterized to us by Mrs. Chernyavskiy as essentially character witnesses, either past or present. Our report was concerned with objective questions of fact, not subjective judgments of character, and we did not interview character witnesses for anyone involved on either side.
If any one of these witnesses can share anything which contracts a conclusion of our report, I would ask Mrs. Chernyavskiy to share it and embarrass our committee. In fact, I will personally commit to publicly apologizing and reopening the matter at our next presbytery meeting if any of these witnesses can add any substantive fact which counters a conclusion of our report.
As for the 300+ files which Mrs. Chernyavskiy shared, our committee did review them and our report did reference them. A quote from page 36 of the report explains why we did not, and could not, engage with them in greater detail:
If one merely read Mrs. Chernyavskiy’s labels of her evidence, it would appear to support her narrative at every point. However, when one examines the actual files, the conclusion is vastly different. We include the following not to mock, but to demonstrate the outcome of verifying before believing in this case.
A close examination of her evidence showed that a claim to forced labor is actually Rev. Bennett’s expression of gratitude for help in cleaning his home; “fabricating sins” is a minister urging a member under discipline not to participate in Roman Catholic worship; an “escape attempt” becomes a picture of Thanksgiving with the Belden family; a picture at the Mountain Arts Center is “proof” that she was guarded at all times; “Monitored via motion cameras. Always watched” is a picture of Stephanie helping her father carry a hunting stand in August 2014; and “whipping scars” are faint marks with no resemblance to ordinary scars.
It is a strange thing to wait for months to see a collection of evidence, finally get over 300 files, and then page through them while slowly realizing they do not relate in any substantive way to the serious allegations being made. But that is what happened when we received the collection of evidence in September.
I realize my assertion here probably seems implausible. Please recall that I am still bound by the agreement not to share Mrs. Chernyavskiy’s evidence beyond the members of presbytery! Again, I would welcome any evidence which would prove me wrong and counter a conclusion of our report. (But please note that when the evidence consists largely of screenshots without context, something may appear to be relevant at first glance but not actually support the claim being made. We did find several pieces of evidence which seemed concerning until we could piece together what they related to. For example, Mrs. Chernyavskiy has several times shared a screenshot which she says demonstrates she was “forced” to clean Rev. Bennett’s apartment. However, in the screenshot Rev. Bennett thanks Stephanie and two of her sisters, one of them a biological daughter of her parents. Stephanie’s adopted sister appears in the comments on the original post, joking that he better not mess up their work before his wife gets home or she will kill him. This same adopted sister has stated that none of Stephanie’s allegations are true, as quoted in our report and in testimony for the grand jury. We cannot travel back in time to witness the events of that day, but there is little here to suggest the “forced labor” which is alleged.)
It was and is my hope that this matter can die down. I am personally resolved not to post the report online, because my hope is to answer honest questions but not pursue a vendetta against Mrs. Chernyavskiy or anyone else. The story of how we got to this point is long and sad, and full of off-ramps which were not taken. I will happily take any such ramp which presents itself. However, public allegations sometimes require a public response, and I am concerned that those with honest questions not be misled to conclude that our committee suppressed any part of Mrs. Chernyavskiy’s story or evidence.