Southern Baptist leaders coated up sex abuse, explosive report says

Leaders within the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday launched a major third-party investigation that found that intercourse abuse survivors had been 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 particulars about specific abuse circumstances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may preserve a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when top leaders had been secretly protecting a personal checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its sort in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over how you can deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different non secular establishments in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 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 cases amongst 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 Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged little one molesters and different accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Most of the circumstances referred to within 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 company referred to as Guidepost Options at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “solely to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were involved more with defending the establishment from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“Whereas stories of abuse had been minimized, and survivors were ignored or 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 dealt with abuse points when survivors got here forward, it additionally 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 conference. 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 during a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the girl however acknowledged that he had interactions together 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 in the Guidepost report. I have never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in response to a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that before Might 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he referred to as the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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

Intercourse abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the details around many of the stories they have already shared, however many were still stunned to see the pattern of coverups by the best levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once 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 by means of and thru about energy. It is misappropriated power. It does not in any method reflect the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past presidents of the conference, a former vp 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 Govt Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt 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 had been advised the denomination could not put together a registry of intercourse offenders because it would go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders whereas conserving it a secret to avoid the possibility of getting sued. The report also consists of private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders resembling August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the conference’s attorney sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be carried out in line with SBC polity, saying “it might fit our polity and present ministries to assist church buildings on this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “quick action to sign the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort in 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 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 few key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not learn the report but. Attempts to achieve Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate so much about how they actually blindly selected to remain on the same 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 hold the weight.”

During Executive Committee conferences 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 said doing so went in opposition to the advice of conference lawyers and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to consider 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 conference’s attorneys, who are named throughout the report.

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

According to the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had obtained “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 precedence can't be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd did not instantly return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who told 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 another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored exhausting to attempt to make one thing happen, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith into a complicit accomplice for their very own determination to decide on institutional protection over the protection of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual assembly, comes simply weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected focus on next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace providing dedicated survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be able to take meaningful steps to alter our tradition because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, mentioned in an announcement.

Since many years of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of monks they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer 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 crisis, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in keeping with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders may very well be falling into a number of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should be taught from Catholic mistakes and take action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Government Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over native churches” but that they would try to use their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant physique 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 drive on the issue and mentioned that the report reveals a need for establishments like the SBC to hunt outdoors experience on sex abuse.

“It exhibits a degree 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 question Southern Baptists should ask is, ‘How might this happen?’”

The difficulty of sex abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in the same 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 stated. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will take into account changing 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 twenty years preventing for reform.