Southern Baptist leaders coated up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday released a major third-party investigation that discovered that sex abuse survivors have been often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by high clergy within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of practically 300 pages include shocking new particulars about particular abuse circumstances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may maintain a database of offenders to prevent extra abuse when top leaders were secretly maintaining a personal checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its sort in a large Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense inner battles over learn how to deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other religious establishments in the USA, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total number of abuse cases amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost 20 years, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and other accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Most of the cases referred to in the report have been considered exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a corporation referred to as Guidepost Options at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “solely to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were concerned more with protecting the establishment from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“Whereas stories of abuse had been minimized, and survivors had been ignored and even vilified, revelations came to light lately that some senior SBC leaders had protected or even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

Whereas the report focuses totally on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors came ahead, it also states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman just one month after he accomplished his two-year tenure as president of the convention. The report finds that Johnny Hunt, a beloved Georgia-based Southern Baptist pastor who has been a senior vice chairman on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl during a Panama Metropolis Beach, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the girl however acknowledged that he had interactions along with her. After the report was launched, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted a press release on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth in the Guidepost report. I have never abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, according to an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that earlier than Might 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he referred to as the details of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

Southern Baptists have been immersed in their very own intercourse abuse scandals. Now, they’re debating their response.

Intercourse abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would verify the facts round lots of the tales they have already shared, but many were nonetheless shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the best ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid feminine govt on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This is a denomination that's through and thru about power. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any approach replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report additionally names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three previous presidents of the conference, a former vp and the previous head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 targeted on actions by the SBC’s Govt Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been informed the denomination couldn't put together a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it might go against the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while keeping it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report additionally contains private emails showing how longtime leaders equivalent to August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the convention’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be applied according to SBC polity, saying “it could fit our polity and present ministries to assist churches on this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he beneficial “immediate motion to signal the Conference’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort in this area.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to offer more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the national institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report yet. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly chose to stay on the identical path all these years,” said Tiffany Thigpen, whose story of sexual abuse in a Southern Baptist church is detailed in the report. “It buoys what we’ve been saying all alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the load.”

During Govt Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to data of conversations on authorized issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went against the advice of convention attorneys and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to believe the Government Committee was not doing the “will of the messengers,” or following the lead of lay leaders who had already voted in favor of doing so. It also led to the resignation of the Government Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally once served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The decision over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

Newly leaked letter details allegations that Southern Baptist leaders mishandled sex abuse claims

In response to the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then said: “Our priority cannot be the newest cultural crisis.” Floyd did not immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who informed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in different Southern Baptist church buildings in a number of states, has lengthy advocated a churchwide database and was met with hostility. The report states that when she met with SBC leaders in 2007, a member of the Govt Committee “turned his back to her throughout her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored laborious to attempt to make one thing happen, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” mentioned Brown, who's a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith right into a complicit partner for their very own decision to choose institutional safety over the safety of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual assembly, comes simply weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated talk about next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody offering devoted survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be able to take meaningful steps to alter our culture because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, mentioned in a press release.

Since a long time of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of monks they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the switch of abusers to different church buildings. Unlike the Catholic Church, the SBC has a non-hierarchical structure.

In March 2007, the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a priest and canon lawyer who first warned of the looming Catholic sex abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Government Committee presidents, in response to the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders might be falling into a number of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should study from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms so as to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Executive Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually don't have any authority over local churches” however that they might try to use their “influence” to provide protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page didn't immediately return a request for remark.

Rachael Denhollander, a former USA gymnast who outed Larry Nassar’s serial sexual assaults, is an adviser on a Southern Baptist process pressure on the issue and mentioned that the report reveals a need for establishments like the SBC to hunt exterior expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It reveals a degree of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional degree that has led to a long time of survivors being victimized and hurt,” Denhollander mentioned. “The query Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How may this occur?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked private letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in a similar technique to how Nikita Khrushchev shocked the Soviet Union when he detailed Joseph Stalin’s crimes in a speech in 1956.

“The depths of wickedness and inhumanity in this report are breathtaking,” Moore stated. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will think about replacing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s home state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the previous two decades preventing for reform.