Southern Baptist leaders coated up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of almost 300 pages include stunning new details about particular abuse cases and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they might preserve a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when top leaders have been secretly retaining a personal listing for years.

The report — the first investigation of its variety in a large Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over how to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other spiritual institutions 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 entire variety of abuse instances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged little one molesters and different accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Most of the circumstances referred to within the report had been considered outdoors 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 on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “solely to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who have been concerned more with defending the institution from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“While tales of abuse were minimized, and survivors have been ignored and even vilified, revelations got here to mild lately that some senior SBC leaders had protected or even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors came ahead, it also states that a main 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 conference. The report finds that Johnny Hunt, a beloved Georgia-based Southern Baptist pastor who has been a senior vp at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman throughout a Panama Metropolis Seaside, 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 together 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 anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, according to a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that earlier than Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he known as the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

Southern Baptists have been immersed in their very own sex 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 affirm the details round many of the tales they've already shared, but many were nonetheless shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the highest ranges of management.

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

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past presidents of the conference, a former vice president 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 Government Committee, which handles financial 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 decades, the findings present, Southern Baptists had been advised the denomination could not put together a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it will go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders while preserving it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report also contains non-public emails displaying how longtime leaders reminiscent of August Boto had been 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 lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be implemented consistent with SBC polity, saying “it will match our polity and current ministries to assist church buildings in this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “speedy action to sign the Convention’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort on this space.” That same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to present more democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not learn the report yet. Makes an attempt to achieve Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

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

During Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to data of conversations on authorized issues among the committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went towards the recommendation of convention legal professionals and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting 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 as soon as served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The decision over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who're named throughout the report.

Newly leaked letter details 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 crisis.” He then stated: “Our precedence cannot be the newest cultural crisis.” Floyd did not instantly return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who informed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in other Southern Baptist church buildings 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 again to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored onerous to attempt to make something occur, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion into a complicit companion for their own resolution to choose institutional safety over the safety of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual assembly, comes just weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected focus on subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody offering dedicated survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

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

Since decades of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were 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 church buildings. In contrast to 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 disaster, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in keeping with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could be falling into some of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to study from Catholic mistakes and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Government Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually don't have any authority over local churches” but that they might try to make use of their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place 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 task pressure on the issue and stated that the report exhibits a necessity for institutions like the SBC to hunt outdoors expertise on sex abuse.

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

The issue of sex abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an analogous strategy 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. “Folks 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 stated he hopes the SBC will think about replacing 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.