Southern Baptist leaders covered up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

Leaders within the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday launched a significant third-party investigation that found that intercourse abuse survivors were often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by high clergy within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages embrace shocking new particulars about specific abuse instances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may maintain a database of offenders to forestall extra abuse when prime leaders have been secretly holding a personal list for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its form in a massive Protestant denomination like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different non secular establishments in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total number of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost twenty years, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged little one molesters and other accused abusers who had been within the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Lots of the circumstances referred to in the report have been thought-about exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers had 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 were “only to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who have been involved more with protecting the institution from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors got here ahead, it also states that a main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman just one month after he completed his two-year tenure as president of the conference. 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 Seashore, 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 with her. After the report was released, 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've never abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that earlier than Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he called the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Sex abuse survivors, a lot of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the facts round many of the stories they've already shared, but many had been still surprised to see the sample of coverups by the highest levels of leadership.

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

The report additionally 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 Govt Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual finances that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists were instructed the denomination could not put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders because it would go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while maintaining it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report additionally contains private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders similar to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the conference’s attorney despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be applied according to SBC polity, saying “it will match our polity and current ministries to assist churches on this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “instant motion to signal the Convention’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort on this area.” That same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to present extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report yet. Makes an attempt to achieve Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate so much 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 load.”

Throughout Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to data of conversations on legal matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went towards the recommendation of conference attorneys and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to believe 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 additionally led to the resignation of the Executive Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally once served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The choice over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named throughout the report.

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In accordance with the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then stated: “Our priority cannot 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 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 Government Committee “turned his back to her throughout her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked onerous to try to make one thing happen, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” stated Brown, who's a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith right into a complicit partner for their own resolution to choose institutional safety over the safety of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual meeting, comes simply weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected talk about subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include providing dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be able to take meaningful steps to change our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, mentioned in a statement.

Since many years of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of monks they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to other churches. Unlike 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 Government Committee presidents, according to the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could be falling into a few of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to study from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Govt Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually haven't any authority over native churches” but that they would try to use their “affect” to provide protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web page didn't immediately 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 job force on the difficulty and said that the report exhibits a need for establishments like the SBC to seek exterior expertise on sex abuse.

“It shows a degree of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander stated. “The query Southern Baptists need to ask is, ‘How might this occur?’”

The problem 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 & Non secular Liberty Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in the same way 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 on this report are breathtaking,” Moore said. “Folks will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated he hopes the SBC will contemplate changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s house state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past two decades combating for reform.