Southern Baptist leaders lined up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages include surprising new particulars about specific abuse circumstances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they might maintain a database of offenders to stop more abuse when prime leaders have been secretly conserving a private record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its variety in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over easy methods to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other religious institutions in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the overall number of abuse cases amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly two decades, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and different accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Many of the instances referred to within the report have been thought of outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a corporation referred to as Guidepost Solutions at 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 had been involved more with protecting the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“Whereas tales of abuse had been minimized, and survivors had been ignored or even vilified, revelations came to mild lately that some senior SBC leaders had protected and even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

Whereas the report focuses totally on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors came ahead, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist chief 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 on 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 however acknowledged that he had interactions 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 have by no means abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that earlier than May 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he known as the details of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Intercourse abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the details round most of the stories they've already shared, however many have been nonetheless stunned to see the pattern of coverups by the highest ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, however it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine govt on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This can be a denomination that is by and thru about power. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any approach reflect the Jesus I see within 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 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 targeted on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from one another, 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 present, Southern Baptists had been advised the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of sex offenders as a result of it might go towards the denomination’s polity — or the way it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while keeping it a secret to keep away from the possibility of getting sued. The report also contains non-public emails showing how longtime leaders resembling August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e mail, the conference’s lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be carried out in keeping with SBC polity, saying “it might match our polity and present ministries to help church buildings in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “speedy action to signal the Conference’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort on this space.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to provide extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a few key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report but. Attempts to achieve Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly selected to remain on the same path all these years,” said 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 along. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the load.”

During Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to data of conversations on legal matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went towards the advice of conference legal professionals and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to believe 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 Executive Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally 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 throughout the report.

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Based on the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then stated: “Our priority can't be the latest cultural disaster.” 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 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 Government Committee “turned his back to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored onerous to try to make something happen, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” stated Brown, who's a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith into a complicit companion for their very own determination to decide on institutional safety over the safety of kids and congregants.”

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

“We have to be able to take significant steps to change our culture because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, said in an announcement.

Since decades 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 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 construction.

In March 2007, the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a priest and canon lawyer who first warned of the looming Catholic intercourse abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Govt Committee presidents, according to the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could 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 learn from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Executive Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually have no authority over native churches” however that they would try to make use of their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web page did not 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 job force on the problem and said that the report reveals a necessity for institutions just like the SBC to seek outside expertise on sex abuse.

“It shows 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 harm,” Denhollander said. “The question Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How could this occur?’”

The issue of sex abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive 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 said. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said he hopes the SBC will think about changing 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 two decades fighting for reform.