Southern Baptist leaders covered up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Conference on Sunday launched a serious third-party investigation that found that sex abuse survivors had been typically ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by high clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of practically 300 pages embody shocking new particulars about particular abuse circumstances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may maintain a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when prime leaders have been secretly holding a personal record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its form in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inside battles over find out how to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with different non secular establishments in the United States, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total variety of abuse cases amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost 20 years, survivors of abuse and different concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and different accused abusers who had been within the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Most of the instances referred to within the report were considered outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company referred to as Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were involved more with protecting the institution from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors came forward, it also states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl just one month after he completed 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 at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman throughout a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the lady however acknowledged that he had interactions with her. After the report was released, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted an announcement on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth within the Guidepost report. I have by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, in accordance with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that before Might 13, he was not conscious 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 own intercourse abuse scandals. Now, they’re debating their response.

Intercourse abuse survivors, a lot of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would verify the facts round most of the stories they've already shared, however many have been still surprised to see the sample of coverups by the very best levels of management.

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

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three past presidents of the convention, a former vp and the former head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

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

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been instructed the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders as a result of it could go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders whereas keeping it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report additionally contains personal emails exhibiting how longtime leaders reminiscent of August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the convention’s attorney despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be carried out per SBC polity, saying “it would fit our polity and present ministries to assist churches in this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “fast motion to signal the Conference’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort on this area.” That same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to provide more democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the nationwide institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report yet. Makes an attempt to succeed in Boto on Sunday were 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 along. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the burden.”

During Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators access to records of conversations on authorized matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went against the advice of conference 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 imagine the Govt 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 Govt Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also once served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The choice over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

According to the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 e mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then said: “Our priority can't be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't 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 other Southern Baptist churches in multiple states, has long 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 worked hard to try to make one thing occur, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” mentioned Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith into a complicit associate for their very own choice to decide on institutional safety over the protection of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual meeting, comes just weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated discuss next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embody offering devoted survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be ready to take meaningful steps to vary our culture as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in an announcement.

Since a long time of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of priests they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the switch of abusers to other churches. Not like the Catholic Church, the SBC has a non-hierarchical construction.

In March 2007, the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a priest and canon lawyer who first warned of the looming Catholic sex abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Govt Committee presidents, in response to the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into a number of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should study from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Executive Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually have no authority over native churches” however that they would try to make use of their “influence” to provide protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page did not instantly return a request for comment.

Rachael Denhollander, a former USA gymnast who outed Larry Nassar’s serial sexual assaults, is an adviser on a Southern Baptist task drive on the problem and mentioned that the report exhibits a need for establishments just like the SBC to hunt outside experience on intercourse abuse.

“It shows a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to many years of survivors being victimized and hurt,” Denhollander mentioned. “The query Southern Baptists have to ask is, ‘How might this happen?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a prominent theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in a similar solution 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 said. “Individuals will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said he hopes the SBC will contemplate changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s dwelling state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past twenty years preventing for reform.