Eight Missouri ministers accused of intercourse abuse in Southern Baptist Conference report • Missouri Independent

The Southern Baptist Conference on Thursday launched a once-secret and lengthy checklist of accused intercourse abusers — several of whom are in the Midwest — within the denomination.

The 205-page checklist is a compilation of ministers and different church staff who've been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The list is described as a “fluid, working document” that was additionally incomplete however largely pulls details about abusers from printed news studies.

The publication of the checklist comes after the discharge Sunday of a 300-page report by an independent investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for decades have acquired reviews of sexual abuse dedicated by church workers, pastors and others. However those reviews were largely saved secret and, slightly than acting upon and investigating stories of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

“The entire thing needs to be seen for what it is,” wrote former Southern Baptist Conference executive committee member and common counsel D. August Boto in an internal email that was printed in the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

The crisis rocking the Southern Baptist denomination this week is comparable in many ways to what the Catholic church continues to face. Leaders in both faiths systematically hid details about sexual misconduct, appeared to show more concern about their own legal legal responsibility than the victims and at times failed to expel accused abusers from positions of authority.

In 2007, Father Thomas Doyle, a Catholic priest credited as one of the first to warn of his personal denomination’s clergy sex abuse disaster, wrote a letter to SBC leadership conveying his concern that Southern Baptist leaders had been repeating the failures of the Catholic church in dealing with intercourse abuse.

Doyle was told, “Southern Baptist leaders really haven't any authority over native church buildings,” a response that Doyle considered dismissive, according to the investigative report. 

That same year, at the SBC conference in San Antonio, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson made a motion to create a database of Southern Baptist clergy who had been convicted or credibly accused of, or had confessed to sexual abuse. The proposal was meant to “help in preventing any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, in keeping with the report, and witnesses on the conference recalled little about it besides to express their opinion that it might “violate local church autonomy.”

Finally, a staffer for the SBC govt committee since 2007 had maintained a list of accused ministers and church employees, however it was saved hidden from the public and even SBC govt committee trustees, in line with the report.

Southern Baptist leaders mentioned publicizing the listing of credibly accused abusers represented “an preliminary, however important, step in the direction of addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform in the Conference.”

“Each entry in this list reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by sexual abuse,” mentioned a joint assertion from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, both SBC government committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of those heinous acts discover hope and healing, and that church buildings will make the most of this list proactively to protect and take care of the most vulnerable amongst us.”

Legal professionals for the SBC govt committee researched the record of accused abusers, taking steps to verify info it contained. It left unredacted entries about alleged abusers that may very well be confirmed, while redacting entries where somebody was acquitted or did not have a remaining disposition, in addition to data that could identify victims.

Missouri males function prominently on the checklist. They embody:

This story comes from the Midwest Newsroom, an investigative journalism collaboration together with IPR, KCUR 89.3, Nebraska Public Media News, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. For extra in-depth news from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, we invite you to follow us on Twitter.