Southern Baptist leaders coated up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages embody shocking new particulars about particular abuse instances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may maintain a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when top leaders had been secretly conserving a private list for years.

The report — the first investigation of its kind in a massive Protestant denomination like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense inside battles over the right way to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other religious institutions in america, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the whole variety of abuse circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and different accused abusers who had been in the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Most of the circumstances referred to in the report were thought of outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company referred to as Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “solely to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were concerned extra with defending the institution from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse points when survivors came ahead, it also states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady only 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 president on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the girl however acknowledged that he had interactions together with her. After the report was launched, 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've never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he called 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.

Sex abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would verify the information round many of the tales they've already shared, but many had been nonetheless shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the highest ranges of leadership.

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

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past presidents of the convention, a former vice chairman 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 financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual finances that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings present, Southern Baptists were advised the denomination couldn't put together a registry of sex offenders because it will go against the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders whereas conserving it a secret to keep away from the potential of getting sued. The report additionally includes personal emails exhibiting how longtime leaders akin to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the conference’s lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be applied per SBC polity, saying “it would fit our polity and present ministries to help church buildings in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “quick motion to signal the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort on this area.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to present extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the national institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not learn the report but. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot about how they actually blindly chose to stay on the identical path all these years,” stated 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 hold the burden.”

During Executive Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to records of conversations on legal matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went in opposition to the recommendation of convention lawyers and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting 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 Executive 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 convention’s attorneys, who are named throughout the report.

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

According to the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 e mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then said: “Our precedence can't be the most recent 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 different Southern Baptist church buildings 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 Govt Committee “turned his back to her throughout her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked onerous to try to make something happen, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” mentioned Brown, who is a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith right into a complicit associate for their very own choice to choose institutional protection over the protection of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual meeting, comes just weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated discuss next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace offering devoted survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be ready to take meaningful steps to change our tradition as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, stated in a press release.

Since many years of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of priests they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to different church buildings. Not like 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 intercourse abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in keeping with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders might be falling into some of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should be taught from Catholic mistakes and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over native church buildings” however that they might attempt to use their “affect” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page didn't instantly 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 job drive on the problem and said that the report shows a necessity for institutions just like the SBC to hunt exterior expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It exhibits a stage 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 said. “The query Southern Baptists need to ask is, ‘How may this happen?’”

The issue of intercourse abuse was a prominent theme in leaked private letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position 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 an analogous 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. “Folks will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, take 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 consider 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 previous twenty years preventing for reform.