Southern Baptist leaders coated up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of almost 300 pages embody stunning new particulars about specific abuse cases and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they might keep a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when prime leaders were secretly maintaining a private list for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its variety in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense internal battles over handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other spiritual establishments in the USA, 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 entire variety of abuse cases 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 baby molesters and different accused abusers who have been in the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Most of the instances referred to in the report had been thought of exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a corporation known as Guidepost Solutions 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 have been involved more with defending the institution from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“Whereas stories of abuse have been minimized, and survivors had been ignored and even vilified, revelations came 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 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 convention. The report finds that Johnny Hunt, a beloved Georgia-based Southern Baptist pastor who has been a senior vice chairman at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama City Seaside, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the woman however acknowledged that he had interactions with her. After the report was launched, 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 May 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than Might 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he referred to as the small print of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Sex abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the details round many of the stories they have already shared, but many had been nonetheless shocked to see the sample of coverups by the very 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 feminine executive at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This can be a denomination that is by and thru about energy. It is misappropriated power. It does not in any manner 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, together with three past 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 focused on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt 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 have been instructed the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders because it will go towards the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while preserving it a secret to keep away from the potential for getting sued. The report also consists of private emails displaying how longtime leaders resembling August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e mail, the convention’s legal professional despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be implemented in step with SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and present ministries to assist churches on this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “speedy action to sign the Convention’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this space.” That same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to present 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 number of key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report but. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot 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 within the report. “It buoys what we’ve been saying all along. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the weight.”

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

The debate over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to consider 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 also led to the resignation of the Govt 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 conference’s attorneys, who're named throughout the report.

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In line with the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then said: “Our priority can't be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd did not 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 other Southern Baptist church buildings 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 throughout her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked arduous to try to make one thing occur, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion right into a complicit associate for their very own decision to decide on institutional protection over the protection of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual assembly, comes simply weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated focus on next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace offering devoted survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be able to take meaningful steps to change our tradition as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, said in a press release.

Since many years 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 monks they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to other churches. 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 sex abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into among the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to be taught from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was leading the Executive Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually haven't any authority over local churches” however that they might attempt to use their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page did not 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 task force on the problem and mentioned that the report reveals a need for institutions like the SBC to hunt exterior expertise on intercourse abuse.

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

The difficulty of sex abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked non-public 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 the same solution 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 mentioned. “Individuals will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the nice 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 residence state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past 20 years fighting for reform.