Southern Baptist leaders coated 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 were often 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 cases and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they might keep a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when prime leaders were secretly conserving a non-public record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its variety in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense inside battles over tips on how to deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different spiritual establishments 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 whole number of abuse instances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost 20 years, 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 have been in the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Many of the instances referred to within the report have been considered exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers have been criminally charged.

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

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

Whereas the report focuses totally on how leaders dealt with abuse points when survivors got here ahead, it also states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl 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 vp on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl during a Panama City Seaside, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the girl but 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 in the Guidepost report. I've never abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in keeping with a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that before Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he referred to as 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 stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would verify the information round lots of the tales they have already shared, however many were still shocked to see the sample of coverups by the very best ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, however it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female government at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This can be a denomination that's by and thru about power. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any method replicate 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, including three past presidents of the convention, a former vice president and the former 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 monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings operate 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 show, Southern Baptists had been instructed the denomination could not put together a registry of intercourse offenders because it could go against the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders whereas protecting it a secret to avoid the possibility of getting sued. The report also consists of private emails showing how longtime leaders comparable to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the convention’s lawyer sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be carried out in keeping with SBC polity, saying “it could fit our polity and present ministries to assist church buildings in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he beneficial “instant action to signal the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort in this space.” That same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to offer more democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report yet. Makes an attempt to succeed in Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly chose to stay on the identical 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the weight.”

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

The debate over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing 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 Executive 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 also led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who are named throughout the report.

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

In response to the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then stated: “Our priority cannot be the newest cultural disaster.” Floyd did not instantly return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who informed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in different 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 Executive Committee “turned his back to her during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked laborious to try to make something occur, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion into a complicit partner for their very own resolution to decide on institutional safety over the protection of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual meeting, comes just weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected focus on next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace providing devoted survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be able to take significant steps to vary our culture as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, stated in a statement.

Since a long time of sex abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of monks they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to different 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 Executive Committee presidents, according to the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into some of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex 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 youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Govt Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over native churches” however that they'd attempt to make use of their “influence” to supply protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Web 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 task power on the problem and mentioned that the report shows a necessity for institutions just like the SBC to seek outside expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It exhibits a degree of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional degree that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander mentioned. “The query Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How may this occur?’”

The problem of sex abuse was a prominent theme in leaked private letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an analogous 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 stated. “Individuals will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, have 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 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 previous twenty years preventing for reform.