Southern Baptist leaders lined up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages include stunning new details about specific abuse circumstances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may maintain a database of offenders to forestall extra abuse when high leaders have been secretly protecting a non-public record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its sort in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense inside battles over the way to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different spiritual institutions in america, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total number of abuse cases 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 youngster molesters and other accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Many of the cases referred to in the report were thought-about exterior 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 have been “only to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been concerned extra with protecting the establishment from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors got here forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman only one month after he completed 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 at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl throughout a Panama City Beach, Fla., vacation 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 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 by no means 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 earlier than May 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he known as the small print of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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

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

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned 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. “This is a denomination that is by and through about energy. It's misappropriated power. It doesn't in any method replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report additionally names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three past presidents of the conference, a former vp and the former head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 centered on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual price range that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been told the denomination could not put together a registry of intercourse offenders because it might go towards the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders whereas maintaining it a secret to avoid the opportunity of getting sued. The report additionally includes private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders equivalent to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the convention’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be applied consistent with SBC polity, saying “it might match our polity and current ministries to help church buildings in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “quick motion to sign the Convention’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort on this area.” That very same 12 months, 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 a couple of key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the nationwide institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not read the report yet. Makes an attempt to reach Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they really blindly chose to stay on the same path all these years,” stated 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 load.”

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

The talk over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to imagine 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 also led to the resignation of the Govt 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 choice over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

In line with the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then said: “Our priority cannot be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't immediately 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 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 Government Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked exhausting to try to make something occur, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion into a complicit companion for their very own choice to decide on institutional protection over the protection of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual assembly, comes just weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated focus on subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody providing devoted survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be ready to take meaningful steps to vary our culture because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in an announcement.

Since a long time of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of priests they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the switch 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 sex abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Govt Committee presidents, in response to the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders might be falling into among the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should learn 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 main the Government Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over native churches” but that they'd try to use their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing 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 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 mentioned that the report reveals a need for institutions just like the SBC to hunt exterior experience on intercourse abuse.

“It reveals a stage of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level that has led to many years of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander mentioned. “The query Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How might this happen?’”

The difficulty 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 stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in a similar 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 on this report are breathtaking,” Moore stated. “People will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the good 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 dwelling state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the previous twenty years fighting for reform.