Southern Baptist leaders covered up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages include shocking new particulars about specific abuse circumstances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may preserve a database of offenders to prevent extra abuse when prime leaders have been secretly keeping a private record for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its variety in a large Protestant denomination like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense internal battles over tips on how to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other spiritual 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 full variety of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and different concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and different accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Many of the cases referred to in the report were thought-about outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers have 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 once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been concerned extra with protecting the institution from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“Whereas tales of abuse have been minimized, and survivors have been ignored and even vilified, revelations got here to mild 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 handled abuse issues when survivors got here forward, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman 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 at 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 physical 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 a statement 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 response to a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before 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 very own sex 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 affirm the info around lots of the tales they've already shared, but many have been still shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the best levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid female government on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “This can be a denomination that's by means of and thru about power. It is misappropriated power. It does not in any method mirror the Jesus I see in 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 previous presidents of the conference, a former vp 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 Govt Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings present, Southern Baptists had been told the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of sex offenders because it might go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or the way it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders while protecting it a secret to keep away from the potential of getting sued. The report additionally consists of private emails showing how longtime leaders akin to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the conference’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be implemented according to SBC polity, saying “it will fit our polity and current ministries to assist church buildings in this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “immediate motion to signal the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort on this space.” That very same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to give extra 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, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not read the report but. Makes an attempt to achieve Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot about how they really blindly chose to remain on the identical path all these years,” mentioned 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 along. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the weight.”

Throughout Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to records of conversations on authorized matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went against the recommendation of convention lawyers and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to consider the Executive 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 Government 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 convention’s attorneys, who're named throughout the report.

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

Based on the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then acknowledged: “Our precedence cannot be the newest 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 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 again to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked exhausting to attempt to make something happen, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” mentioned Brown, who is a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion into a complicit companion for their very own choice to choose institutional protection over the safety of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual meeting, comes simply weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected talk about next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embody providing dedicated survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be able to take meaningful steps to alter our culture as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in an announcement.

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of clergymen they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to different church buildings. Unlike 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 response to the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders might be falling into a number of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to be taught from Catholic errors and take motion early on to implement structural reforms so as to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Government Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really haven't any authority over native churches” however that they would try to use their “influence” to supply protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” 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 process force on the difficulty and mentioned that the report exhibits a need for establishments just like the SBC to seek outside experience on sex abuse.

“It reveals a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level that has led to a long time of survivors being victimized and hurt,” Denhollander said. “The query Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How could this happen?’”

The difficulty of sex abuse was a prominent 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 Fee. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an analogous approach 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, take a look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will consider changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s dwelling state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past twenty years combating for reform.