Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages embody surprising new details about specific abuse instances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may keep a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when high leaders have been secretly retaining a personal listing for years.

The report — the first investigation of its kind in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense inner battles over handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different non secular institutions in the USA, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the whole number of abuse instances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost twenty years, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and other accused abusers who have been within the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Many of the circumstances referred to in the report have been thought of outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization called Guidepost Solutions on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “only to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been involved more with defending the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors got here forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady 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 chairman on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama City Seashore, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the girl however acknowledged that he had interactions with her. After the report was released, 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 have by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, in accordance with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than Could 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he called the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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

Intercourse abuse survivors, a lot of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would affirm the information around many of the stories they have already shared, however many had been still stunned to see the pattern of coverups by the very best ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine executive on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “This is a denomination that is through and through about energy. It's misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any approach replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am 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 chairman 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 churches operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been advised the denomination could not put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders because it might go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while retaining it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report additionally consists of personal emails exhibiting 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 e mail, the conference’s lawyer sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be carried out in line with SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and current ministries to assist churches in this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “fast motion to sign the Convention’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort in this area.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to offer extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report but. Attempts to achieve Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they really blindly selected to remain 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the burden.”

During Government 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 mentioned doing so went towards the advice of convention attorneys and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to imagine 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 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 decision over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named throughout the report.

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

In accordance with the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then acknowledged: “Our precedence can't be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't 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 church buildings 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 Govt Committee “turned his again to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored arduous to attempt to make something happen, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith into a complicit partner for their very own choice to decide on institutional protection over the safety of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual meeting, comes just weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated discuss next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost include providing dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be able to take meaningful steps to alter our culture as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, said in a press release.

Since many years of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church were 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 stop the transfer of abusers to other churches. 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 intercourse abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Government Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could be falling into a number of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to study from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms so as to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Executive Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually don't have any authority over native churches” however that they'd attempt to make use of their “affect” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” 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 said that the report reveals a necessity for establishments like the SBC to seek outside expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It shows a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander mentioned. “The question Southern Baptists should ask is, ‘How may this occur?’”

The issue of intercourse abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Commission. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in a similar way 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 mentioned. “Individuals will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample 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 house state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the previous 20 years fighting for reform.