Southern Baptist leaders lined up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of almost 300 pages embrace shocking new particulars about particular abuse circumstances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they could keep a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when top leaders were secretly maintaining a private record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its sort in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inner battles over how you can deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different religious establishments in the United States, 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 overall variety of abuse circumstances amongst 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 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. Many of the circumstances referred to in the report had been considered outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers were criminally charged.

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

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

While the report focuses totally 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 girl only 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 at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl during a Panama City 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 along with her. After the report was released, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted a statement on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth within the Guidepost report. I have never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that before Could 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he referred to as the small print 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 stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would affirm the information around many of the stories they've already shared, but many had been still shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the highest 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 executive at 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 by means of and thru about power. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any means replicate the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three previous 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 focused on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings present, Southern Baptists have been told the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it will go against the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders whereas keeping it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report also consists of personal emails showing how longtime leaders similar to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the conference’s lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be implemented consistent with SBC polity, saying “it will match our polity and present ministries to assist churches on this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “rapid motion to signal the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort in this area.” That same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to give more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not learn the report yet. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate so much about how they actually blindly chose to remain 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 along. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the burden.”

Throughout Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to information of conversations on legal matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went in opposition to 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 consider the Executive 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 Government Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also as soon as 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 intercourse abuse claims

Based on the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then stated: “Our precedence can't be the newest cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't instantly return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who advised 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 Executive Committee “turned his back to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked arduous to try to make one thing happen, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” mentioned Brown, who is a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion into a complicit partner for their own resolution to choose institutional protection over the safety of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual meeting, comes just weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated talk about next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost include offering dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be able to take meaningful steps to vary our tradition as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in a press release.

Since many years of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of clergymen they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the switch 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 sex abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in response to the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into some of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should study from Catholic mistakes and take action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Government Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually haven't any authority over native church buildings” but that they might try to make use of their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web 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 pressure on the difficulty and said that the report reveals a need for establishments just like the SBC to hunt outdoors expertise on sex abuse.

“It shows a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level 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 difficulty of sex abuse was a outstanding 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 & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an identical 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 on this report are breathtaking,” Moore said. “Folks will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern 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 residence state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the previous 20 years combating for reform.