Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages include shocking new particulars about particular abuse instances 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 maintain a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when high leaders were secretly retaining a personal list for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its form in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over how to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other spiritual institutions in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the full number of abuse instances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and different concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and different accused abusers who have been in the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Lots of the circumstances referred to in the report have been thought of outdoors 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 an organization referred to as Guidepost Solutions on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who have been involved more with defending the establishment from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses totally on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors came forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl just 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 woman throughout a Panama Metropolis Beach, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the lady but 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 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 Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that earlier than Could 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he called the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

Southern Baptists have been immersed in their own intercourse abuse scandals. Now, they’re debating their response.

Intercourse abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the facts around lots of the stories they've already shared, but many have been still shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the very best ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, however it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female govt on 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 power. It does not in any method replicate 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, together with three past presidents of the convention, a former vice chairman 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 Govt Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual price range that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been told the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders because it could go towards the denomination’s polity — or the way it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders whereas preserving it a secret to avoid the opportunity of getting sued. The report also consists of non-public emails exhibiting how longtime leaders equivalent to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e mail, the conference’s attorney sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be carried out consistent with SBC polity, saying “it might fit our polity and current ministries to help church buildings in this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “instant action to signal the Convention’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort in this space.” That very 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 fee 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 many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not learn the report but. Makes an attempt to reach Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going 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 carry the burden.”

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

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting 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 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 additionally led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

Newly leaked letter details allegations that Southern Baptist leaders mishandled sex abuse claims

In response to the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then acknowledged: “Our precedence cannot be the most recent cultural disaster.” Floyd did not instantly return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who instructed 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 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 Govt Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked exhausting to try to make one thing happen, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion right into a complicit associate for their very own resolution to decide on institutional protection over the safety of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual assembly, comes just weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated talk about subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include offering dedicated survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

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

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of priests they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the transfer of abusers to different churches. Unlike 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 Govt Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could be falling into a number of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should learn from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Government Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly have no authority over native church buildings” however that they might attempt to use their “affect” to provide protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of organising 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 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 activity force on the issue and said that the report reveals a necessity for establishments just like the SBC to seek outdoors experience 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 hurt,” Denhollander stated. “The query Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How could this occur?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a prominent 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 mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in a similar technique 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 mentioned. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said he hopes the SBC will take into account changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s home state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past 20 years fighting for reform.