Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages embrace surprising new particulars about particular abuse circumstances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could maintain a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when top leaders had been secretly preserving a private list for years.

The report — the first investigation of its type in a massive Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense inner battles over deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other religious institutions in america, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total number of abuse circumstances among Southern Baptists was small.

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

The report, compiled by an organization referred to as Guidepost Solutions on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been concerned more with protecting the institution from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“Whereas stories of abuse had been 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 totally on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors got here ahead, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman only one month after he completed 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 vp on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama City Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the girl however acknowledged that he had interactions together 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've by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in keeping with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that before May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he referred to as the small print of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Intercourse abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the information around many of the stories they've already shared, however many had been nonetheless stunned to see the pattern of coverups by the highest ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine government at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This is a denomination that is via and through about energy. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any approach replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with 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 centered on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been instructed the denomination could not put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it could go against the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders whereas maintaining it a secret to keep away from the potential of getting sued. The report additionally contains non-public emails displaying how longtime leaders such as August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the conference’s legal professional despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be implemented consistent with SBC polity, saying “it will match our polity and current ministries to help church buildings on this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “fast motion to signal the Convention’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this space.” That same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to give extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage 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 achieve Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate so much about how they really blindly chose to stay on the identical path all these years,” said Tiffany Thigpen, whose story of sexual abuse in a Southern Baptist church is detailed within the report. “It buoys what we’ve been saying all alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the weight.”

During Govt Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators access to data of conversations on legal issues among the committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went towards the recommendation of convention legal professionals and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to imagine the Government 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 Government 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 choice over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named throughout the report.

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In line with the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 e mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then said: “Our precedence cannot be the most recent cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't instantly 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 different Southern Baptist churches 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 Govt Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked exhausting to attempt to make one thing happen, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion right into a complicit companion for their own determination to choose institutional protection over the safety of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual meeting, comes simply weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected discuss subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace offering dedicated survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be ready to take significant steps to change our tradition as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, mentioned in an announcement.

Since a long time of sex abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of priests they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the transfer of abusers to other church buildings. In contrast to 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 intercourse abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, based on the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into a few of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should learn from Catholic mistakes and take action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Govt Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over native churches” however that they would attempt 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 physique for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web page didn't immediately 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 issue and stated that the report exhibits a need for establishments just like the SBC to hunt outside experience on sex abuse.

“It shows a stage of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to a long time of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander mentioned. “The query Southern Baptists should ask is, ‘How may this occur?’”

The problem of intercourse abuse was a prominent theme in leaked private letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Fee. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an analogous technique 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 good we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will contemplate replacing 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 20 years fighting for reform.