Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Conference on Sunday launched a major third-party investigation that discovered that sex abuse survivors were typically ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by high clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of practically 300 pages embody shocking new details about particular abuse cases and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may preserve a database of offenders to stop more abuse when top leaders have been secretly retaining a private list for years.

The report — the first investigation of its sort in a large Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over how one can deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other religious establishments in the US, 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 overall number of abuse cases amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly twenty years, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and different accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Lots of the cases referred to within the report were considered exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization referred to as Guidepost Options at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been involved extra with protecting the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“Whereas stories of abuse had been minimized, and survivors had been ignored or even vilified, revelations got here to light in recent years 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 issues when survivors came ahead, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl just one month after he accomplished 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 chairman on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama City Seaside, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the girl but acknowledged that he had interactions along with her. After the report was released, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted a press release on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth in the Guidepost report. I have by no means abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, according to a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that earlier than Might 13, he was not aware 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 sex abuse scandals. Now, they’re debating their response.

Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would affirm the facts around most of the stories they have already shared, however many have been still stunned to see the sample of coverups by the best levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine executive at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “It is a denomination that's by way of and thru about power. It's misappropriated energy. It does not in any approach replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three past presidents of the convention, 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 Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings present, Southern Baptists had been instructed the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of sex offenders as a result of it will go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while conserving it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report also includes personal emails displaying how longtime leaders corresponding to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the convention’s lawyer sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be applied in step with SBC polity, saying “it might fit our polity and current ministries to help church buildings in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “fast action to signal the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this area.” That very same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to give more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report but. Attempts to succeed in Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate so much about how they really blindly selected 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.”

Throughout Govt Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators access to information of conversations on authorized matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went against the advice of convention lawyers and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing 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 Govt 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 decision over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

In response to the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 email 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 acknowledged: “Our precedence can't be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for remark.

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 lengthy 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 throughout her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked arduous to attempt to make one thing occur, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” mentioned Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith right into a complicit companion for their very own choice to decide on institutional safety over the safety of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual assembly, comes just weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected discuss subsequent steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embody offering dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be ready to take significant steps to change our tradition because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in a press release.

Since many years of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church have 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 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 sex abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could be falling into a number of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should be taught from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Executive Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually haven't any authority over native churches” but that they'd attempt to make use of their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. 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 job drive on the problem and mentioned that the report exhibits a necessity for establishments like the SBC to hunt outside expertise on sex abuse.

“It exhibits a stage 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 mentioned. “The question Southern Baptists need to ask is, ‘How may this occur?’”

The difficulty of sex abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in a similar strategy 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. “Individuals will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated 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 two decades combating for reform.