Southern Baptist leaders lined up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday launched a major third-party investigation that found that intercourse abuse survivors have been usually ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of almost 300 pages embrace shocking new particulars about particular abuse circumstances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may preserve a database of offenders to prevent extra abuse when top leaders had been secretly maintaining a personal record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its variety in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over learn how to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different spiritual institutions in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the past 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 circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly two decades, survivors of abuse and different concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged little one molesters and other accused abusers who have been within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Most of the circumstances referred to in the report have been considered outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company referred to as Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “solely to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been involved more with protecting the institution from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“While tales of abuse were minimized, and survivors were ignored and even vilified, revelations came to light lately that some senior SBC leaders had protected and even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse points when survivors got here ahead, it also states that a main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl only one month after he accomplished 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 on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl during a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the woman but acknowledged that he had interactions 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 within the Guidepost report. I've never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than 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 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 info round many of the stories they've already shared, however many were still shocked to see the sample of coverups by the best ranges 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 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 means of and thru about energy. It is misappropriated power. It does not in any approach replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm 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 previous head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 focused on actions by the SBC’s Govt Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes greater 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 couldn't put collectively a registry of sex offenders because it will go against the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders while conserving it a secret to keep away from the potential of getting sued. The report also contains non-public emails exhibiting how longtime leaders reminiscent of August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the conference’s lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be implemented consistent with SBC polity, saying “it will match our polity and current ministries to assist church buildings on this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “fast action to sign the Convention’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort on this area.” That same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to provide extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report yet. Makes an attempt to achieve Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate so much about how they really blindly chose to stay on the same 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 along. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the load.”

During Government Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued in opposition to 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 said doing so went in opposition to the recommendation of conference legal professionals and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to believe 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 additionally led to the resignation of the Executive Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also as soon as 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're named all through the report.

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

In keeping with the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then acknowledged: “Our priority can't be the newest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who informed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in other Southern Baptist churches in multiple 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 Govt Committee “turned his back to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored onerous to attempt to make one thing happen, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion into a complicit accomplice for their very own choice to decide on institutional safety over the safety of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual assembly, comes just weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected discuss subsequent steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embrace offering dedicated survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be able to take significant steps to alter our tradition because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, mentioned in a press release.

Since decades of sex abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church were 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 forestall the transfer of abusers to different church buildings. Unlike the Catholic Church, the SBC has a non-hierarchical structure.

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 Govt Committee presidents, in line with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could 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 children safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Govt Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really haven't any authority over native churches” however that they might try to use their “influence” to provide protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of setting up 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 immediately 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 task power on the problem and said that the report reveals a necessity for establishments like the SBC to seek 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 hurt,” Denhollander said. “The query Southern Baptists need to ask is, ‘How could this occur?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in a similar 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 said. “People will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said he hopes the SBC will contemplate replacing 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 fighting for reform.