Eight Missouri ministers accused of sex abuse in Southern Baptist Conference report • Missouri Unbiased

The Southern Baptist Conference on Thursday released a once-secret and prolonged checklist of accused sex abusers — several of whom are in the Midwest — throughout the denomination.

The 205-page checklist is a compilation of ministers and different church workers who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The record is described as a “fluid, working document” that was additionally incomplete but largely pulls details about abusers from published news reviews.

The publication of the list comes after the release Sunday of a 300-page report by an impartial investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for decades have acquired studies of sexual abuse dedicated by church workers, pastors and others. But those reports had been largely saved secret and, slightly than acting upon and investigating stories of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

“The whole thing needs to be seen for what it is,” wrote former Southern Baptist Conference executive committee member and common counsel D. August Boto in an internal e mail that was published in the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

The crisis rocking the Southern Baptist denomination this week is analogous in many ways to what the Catholic church continues to face. Leaders in both faiths systematically hid details about sexual misconduct, appeared to show more concern about their own authorized liability than the victims and at instances didn't expel accused abusers from positions of authority.

In 2007, Father Thomas Doyle, a Catholic priest credited as one of many first to warn of his personal denomination’s clergy sex abuse disaster, wrote a letter to SBC management conveying his concern that Southern Baptist leaders were repeating the failures of the Catholic church in dealing with sex abuse.

Doyle was advised, “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over native churches,” a response that Doyle considered dismissive, in line with the investigative report. 

That very same year, at the SBC conference in San Antonio, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson made a movement to create a database of Southern Baptist clergy who had been convicted or credibly accused of, or had confessed to sexual abuse. The proposal was meant to “assist in preventing any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, according to the report, and witnesses on the convention recalled little about it besides to specific their opinion that it might “violate local church autonomy.”

In the end, a staffer for the SBC executive committee since 2007 had maintained an inventory of accused ministers and church workers, nevertheless it was kept hidden from the public and even SBC govt committee trustees, in response to the report.

Southern Baptist leaders mentioned publicizing the checklist of credibly accused abusers represented “an initial, but vital, step in the direction of addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform in the Conference.”

“Each entry in this listing reminds us of the devastation and destruction caused by sexual abuse,” stated a joint statement from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, both SBC government committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of these heinous acts find hope and therapeutic, and that church buildings will make the most of this list proactively to guard and care for the most vulnerable among us.”

Lawyers for the SBC government committee researched the checklist of accused abusers, taking steps to confirm info it contained. It left unredacted entries about alleged abusers that may very well be confirmed, whereas redacting entries where someone was acquitted or did not have a final disposition, in addition to information that would determine victims.

Missouri men feature prominently on the list. They embrace:

This story comes from the Midwest Newsroom, an investigative journalism collaboration together with IPR, KCUR 89.3, Nebraska Public Media Information, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. For extra in-depth news from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, we invite you to follow us on Twitter.