Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages embrace surprising new particulars about particular abuse circumstances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may preserve a database of offenders to forestall extra abuse when prime leaders have been secretly holding a personal listing for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its kind in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inside battles over the way to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other religious institutions in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the overall number of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly twenty years, survivors of abuse and different concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and other accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Most of the cases referred to within the report had been considered exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers had been criminally charged.

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

“While stories of abuse have been minimized, and survivors have been 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 came ahead, it also states that a main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl 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 vice president on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama City Beach, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the woman however acknowledged that he had interactions along 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've never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before May 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 very own intercourse abuse scandals. Now, they’re debating their response.

Intercourse abuse survivors, a lot of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would affirm the facts around most of the stories they have already shared, but many have been still shocked to see the sample of coverups by the best levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid female government on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “This is a denomination that is by way of and thru about power. It's misappropriated power. It does not in any approach reflect the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report additionally names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past presidents of the convention, a former vice president 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 Executive Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings present, Southern Baptists were told the denomination could not put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it would go against the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders while preserving it a secret to keep away from the potential of getting sued. The report also consists of personal emails showing how longtime leaders equivalent to August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the convention’s attorney despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be carried out consistent with SBC polity, saying “it would fit our polity and present ministries to assist churches in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he beneficial “speedy action to signal the Conference’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort in this area.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to present more democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report reveals 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 but. Makes an attempt to achieve Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they really blindly chose to remain 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 along. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the burden.”

Throughout Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to records of conversations on authorized matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went against the advice of convention lawyers 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 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 also led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who're named throughout the report.

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

According to the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had received “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 most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for comment.

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 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 Executive Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked exhausting to try to make one thing occur, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith into a complicit accomplice for their own resolution to decide on institutional protection over the protection of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual meeting, comes simply weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected discuss next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embrace providing devoted survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be ready to take significant steps to alter our tradition as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, stated in a press release.

Since a long time of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of clergymen they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to other churches. 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 sex abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, according to the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into a few of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should learn from Catholic errors and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really haven't any authority over local churches” however that they might try to use their “affect” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant physique 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 process power on the issue and stated that the report shows a necessity for institutions just like the SBC to seek exterior experience on intercourse abuse.

“It exhibits a stage of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional degree that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander mentioned. “The query Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How could this occur?’”

The issue of sex 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 & Spiritual Liberty Commission. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in the same way 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 in this report are breathtaking,” Moore said. “Individuals will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated 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 20 years preventing for reform.