Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of almost 300 pages embrace stunning new details about specific abuse cases and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may keep a database of offenders to prevent extra abuse when top leaders have been secretly preserving a non-public record for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its variety in a massive Protestant denomination like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inner battles over handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different non secular institutions in the USA, 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 cases amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost 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 other accused abusers who had been within the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Many of the cases referred to in the report had been thought of exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a corporation known as Guidepost Solutions on 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 concerned extra with protecting the establishment from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse points when survivors got here forward, it additionally states that a major 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 vp on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the lady however acknowledged that he had interactions together with her. After the report was released, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted an announcement on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth in the Guidepost report. I have by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that before May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he known 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.

Sex abuse survivors, a lot of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the details round lots of the tales they have already shared, however many have been still stunned to see the pattern of coverups by the best ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated 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 within the report. “This is a denomination that is by and through about power. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any approach mirror the Jesus I see within 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 previous 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 focused on actions by the SBC’s Government Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Executive 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 had been advised the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders because it will go against the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders whereas protecting it a secret to keep away from the potential for getting sued. The report also includes private emails showing how longtime leaders such as August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the convention’s lawyer sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be implemented per SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and present ministries to assist churches in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “fast action to signal the Conference’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this area.” That same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to give extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the national institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not learn the report but. Attempts to succeed in Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly selected to stay 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 alongside. 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 access to information of conversations on legal issues among the 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 controversy over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting 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 additionally 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 also 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 response to the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then said: “Our precedence can't be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd did not instantly 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 other Southern Baptist churches 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 back to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked exhausting to try to make one thing occur, however 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 companion for their very own resolution to choose institutional protection over the protection of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual meeting, comes simply weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated focus on subsequent steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embody providing dedicated survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be able to take meaningful steps to change our culture as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in an announcement.

Since decades of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of priests they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the transfer of abusers to different church buildings. 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 crisis, 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 a number of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to study from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms so as 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 native church buildings” but that they'd attempt to use their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of setting up 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 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 drive on the problem and said that the report shows a necessity for establishments like the SBC to seek exterior experience on sex abuse.

“It reveals a stage of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander said. “The query Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How might 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 Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an identical 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 on this report are breathtaking,” Moore said. “Folks will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, 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 take into account replacing 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 previous twenty years fighting for reform.