Southern Baptist leaders lined up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages include shocking new particulars about particular abuse instances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they might keep a database of offenders to stop more abuse when high leaders were secretly conserving a non-public checklist for years.

The report — the first investigation of its sort in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense inside battles over how you can handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different religious institutions in america, 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 number of abuse instances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly 20 years, survivors of abuse and different concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and other 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 exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization referred to 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 again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who have been concerned more with protecting the establishment from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“While stories of abuse had been minimized, and survivors have been ignored or even vilified, revelations came to mild in recent times that some senior SBC leaders had protected or even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

Whereas the report focuses totally on how leaders dealt with 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 on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., vacation 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 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 within the Guidepost report. I have by no means abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, according to an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that earlier than May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he known as the details of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

Southern Baptists have been immersed in their very own intercourse abuse scandals. Now, they’re debating their response.

Intercourse abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would verify the details round lots of the stories they have already shared, but many had been still stunned to see the pattern of coverups by the highest levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female govt on 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 through about energy. It is misappropriated energy. It does not in any way replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report also names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three previous presidents of the conference, a former vice president 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. 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 funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been told the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of sex offenders because it will go against the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while holding it a secret to keep away from the opportunity of getting sued. The report additionally includes personal emails exhibiting how longtime leaders comparable to August Boto had been 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 attorney sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be implemented in keeping with SBC polity, saying “it would fit our polity and present ministries to assist church buildings in this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “speedy motion to signal the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this area.” That very same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion 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 commission the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report yet. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going 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 within 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 in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to data of conversations on authorized issues among the committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went in opposition to the advice of convention lawyers and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to consider the Govt 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 additionally as soon as served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The decision over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named throughout the report.

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

In accordance with the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then said: “Our precedence can't be the latest cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't instantly 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 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 throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored onerous to try to make something occur, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith right into a complicit partner for their own choice to choose institutional protection over the safety of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual meeting, comes just weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected talk about subsequent steps. Recommendations by Guidepost include offering dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be able to take meaningful steps to alter our culture as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated 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 priests they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the switch of abusers to different church buildings. Not like 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 Govt Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders might be falling into some of the similar 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 action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Executive Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly don't have any authority over local churches” however that they'd attempt to use their “affect” to provide protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” 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 pressure on the problem and said that the report exhibits a need for establishments just like the SBC to seek exterior experience on intercourse abuse.

“It exhibits a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to many years of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander said. “The query Southern Baptists need to ask is, ‘How might this happen?’”

The problem of sex abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked private letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Fee. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an analogous 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 stated. “People will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will think about replacing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s home state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past 20 years fighting for reform.