Southern Baptist leaders covered up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages embody stunning new particulars about specific abuse cases and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they might maintain a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when top leaders had been secretly conserving a private listing for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its sort in a large Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense inner battles over find out how to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other non secular establishments in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the overall number of abuse cases amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly twenty years, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and different accused abusers who have been in the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Many of the cases referred to in the report have been considered outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex 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 have been “only 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 liability than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“While tales of abuse had been minimized, and survivors were ignored or even vilified, revelations came to light in recent years 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 forward, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl 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 chairman on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl throughout a Panama City Beach, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the woman but 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 by no means abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, 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 details round most of the stories they have already shared, however many have been nonetheless shocked to see the sample of coverups by the best levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine government 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 by way of and through about energy. It's misappropriated power. It doesn't in any method reflect the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report also names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including 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 centered on actions by the SBC’s Govt Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual price range that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings present, Southern Baptists had been informed the denomination couldn't put together a registry of sex offenders as a result of it would go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while holding it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report also consists of private emails showing how longtime leaders equivalent to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the convention’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be implemented according to SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and current ministries to assist church buildings on this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “fast motion to sign the Convention’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort in this space.” That same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

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 reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a few key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report but. Makes an attempt to succeed in Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they really blindly selected to stay on the same 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 weight.”

During Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to information of conversations on legal matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went against the advice of conference lawyers and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to consider 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 also as soon as 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 all through the report.

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In accordance with the report, Floyd informed 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 acknowledged: “Our priority cannot be the newest cultural disaster.” Floyd did not immediately return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who instructed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in other Southern Baptist churches in a number of 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 again to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked arduous to attempt to make one thing occur, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who's a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion into a complicit associate for their own choice to decide on institutional protection over the protection of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual meeting, comes simply weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated discuss next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody providing devoted survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be able to take meaningful steps to vary our tradition as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, mentioned in a statement.

Since a long time of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of monks they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer 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 intercourse abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Government Committee presidents, based on the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders may very well be falling into a number of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should study from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order 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 short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over local churches” but that they'd try to make use of their “influence” to provide 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 did not 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 activity force on the difficulty and stated that the report shows a necessity for establishments like the SBC to seek exterior experience on intercourse abuse.

“It exhibits a level 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 mentioned. “The query Southern Baptists have to ask is, ‘How might this happen?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Commission. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an analogous option 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 nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will contemplate 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 past twenty years fighting for reform.