Southern Baptist leaders coated up sex abuse, explosive report says

Leaders within the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday launched a serious third-party investigation that discovered that intercourse abuse survivors have been often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of practically 300 pages embrace stunning new particulars about particular abuse circumstances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could maintain a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when high leaders had been secretly maintaining a personal listing for years.

The report — the first investigation of its sort in a large Protestant denomination like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense inside battles over the right way to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with different spiritual institutions in the USA, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total number of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly twenty years, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and different accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Many of the instances referred to within the report were considered outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company called Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “only to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were involved more with defending the institution from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

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

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors came forward, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady just one month after he accomplished 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 Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the woman but 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've by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that before Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he referred to as the small print of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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

Intercourse abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would verify the details around many of the stories they've already shared, however many have been nonetheless surprised to see the sample of coverups by the highest levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine govt at 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 way of and through about energy. It's misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any means mirror the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three previous presidents of the convention, 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 Government Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual price range that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been informed the denomination could not put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it could go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders whereas protecting it a secret to avoid the possibility of getting sued. The report also contains private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders akin 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 conference’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be carried out per SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and current ministries to assist churches on this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “rapid action to signal the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort on this space.” That same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to provide extra democratic energy 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, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control 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 succeed in Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they really blindly selected to remain on the same path all these years,” said 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the burden.”

During Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators access to data of conversations on legal matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went towards the recommendation of conference 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 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 Government Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also 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 convention’s attorneys, who are named throughout the report.

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

In line with the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then acknowledged: “Our precedence cannot be the newest cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who told SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in different 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 Executive Committee “turned his again to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked arduous to attempt to make something occur, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” mentioned Brown, who is a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion right into a complicit companion for their own choice to decide on institutional protection over the safety of kids and congregants.”

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

“We must be ready to take significant steps to vary our culture as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in an announcement.

Since decades 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 monks they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the transfer 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 sex abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Govt Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders could be falling into some of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to study from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Government Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over native church buildings” but that they would try to use their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page didn't instantly return a request for remark.

Rachael Denhollander, a former USA gymnast who outed Larry Nassar’s serial sexual assaults, is an adviser on a Southern Baptist activity power on the difficulty and mentioned that the report exhibits a necessity for establishments like the SBC to seek outside experience on intercourse 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 harm,” Denhollander said. “The question Southern Baptists need to ask is, ‘How could this happen?’”

The issue of intercourse abuse was a prominent theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in a similar option 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 mentioned. “Folks will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said he hopes the SBC will consider 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 combating for reform.