Southern Baptist leaders coated up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

Leaders within the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday launched a serious third-party investigation that found that sex abuse survivors had been usually ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by high clergy within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages embrace shocking new details about particular abuse instances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may keep a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when top leaders have been secretly protecting a non-public checklist for years.

The report — the first investigation of its kind in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over learn how to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other religious institutions in the USA, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the overall variety of abuse cases amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly twenty years, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and other accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Lots of the instances referred to within the report have been thought of exterior 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 a corporation called Guidepost Solutions 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 establishment from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“Whereas tales of abuse have been minimized, and survivors had been ignored and even vilified, revelations came to gentle in recent years that some senior SBC leaders had protected and even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors got here ahead, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman just 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 vice president on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady during a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the lady however acknowledged that he had interactions together with her. After the report was launched, 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 within the Guidepost report. I have never abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in accordance with a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he called the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

Southern Baptists have been immersed in their own intercourse 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 details round lots of the tales they have already shared, however many have been nonetheless shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the very best ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid feminine government at 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 way of and through about power. It's misappropriated power. It does not in any means 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, including three past presidents of the convention, a former vice chairman 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 monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from one another, 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 were told the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of sex offenders as a result of it would go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or how 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 also consists of personal emails showing 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 might be implemented consistent with SBC polity, saying “it will match our polity and present ministries to assist churches in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “immediate motion to sign the Convention’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort on this area.” That same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to provide extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not read the report yet. Makes an attempt to achieve Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they really blindly selected 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 burden.”

Throughout Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to data of conversations on authorized matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went in opposition to the advice of conference legal professionals and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to imagine 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 Executive 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 additionally led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

In keeping with the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then stated: “Our precedence cannot be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd did not immediately return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who instructed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in other Southern Baptist church buildings in a number of 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 throughout her speech and one other chortled.”

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

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual meeting, comes simply weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated discuss next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost include offering dedicated survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be ready to take meaningful steps to change our culture as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, said in a statement.

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 revealed lists of clergymen they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the switch of abusers to other churches. In contrast to 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 disaster, wrote to the SBC and Govt Committee presidents, based on the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders might be falling into a few of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to learn from Catholic mistakes and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Government Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over native churches” however that they would attempt to use their “affect” to provide protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web 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 activity force on the difficulty and mentioned that the report exhibits a need for institutions like the SBC to hunt outside experience on sex abuse.

“It exhibits a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional degree that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander stated. “The question Southern Baptists have to ask is, ‘How might this occur?’”

The problem of intercourse abuse was a outstanding 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 & Spiritual Liberty Fee. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in the same method 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. “Folks will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, 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 think about 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 past two decades preventing for reform.