Eight Missouri ministers accused of sex abuse in Southern Baptist Convention report • Missouri Independent

The Southern Baptist Conference on Thursday launched a once-secret and lengthy list of accused sex abusers — several of whom are within the Midwest — throughout the denomination.

The 205-page checklist is a compilation of ministers and other church employees who've been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The record is described as a “fluid, working document” that was additionally incomplete however largely pulls details about abusers from printed news reports.

The publication of the checklist comes after the discharge Sunday of a 300-page report by an independent investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for decades have acquired studies of sexual abuse committed by church workers, pastors and others. However these studies had been largely stored secret and, reasonably than appearing upon and investigating experiences of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

“The entire thing must be seen for what it is,” wrote former Southern Baptist Convention government committee member and common counsel D. August Boto in an inside e mail that was revealed 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 information about sexual misconduct, appeared to point out extra concern about their own legal legal responsibility than the victims and at occasions did not expel accused abusers from positions of authority.

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

Doyle was instructed, “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over native churches,” a response that Doyle considered dismissive, in response to the investigative report. 

That same year, on 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 “help in stopping any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, in response to the report, and witnesses at the convention recalled little about it except to express their opinion that it could “violate native church autonomy.”

In the end, a staffer for the SBC government committee since 2007 had maintained a listing of accused ministers and church staff, however it was kept hidden from the general public and even SBC govt committee trustees, in response to the report.

Southern Baptist leaders mentioned publicizing the list of credibly accused abusers represented “an preliminary, however necessary, step in direction of addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform in the Convention.”

“Every entry on this record reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by sexual abuse,” stated a joint assertion from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, both SBC executive committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of those heinous acts find hope and healing, and that church buildings will make the most of this record proactively to guard and look after essentially the most vulnerable amongst us.”

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

Missouri men feature prominently on the checklist. They embody:

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 more in-depth news from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, we invite you to observe us on Twitter.