Southern Baptist leaders coated up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages include surprising new particulars about specific abuse circumstances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted requires 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 stop more abuse when prime leaders had been secretly retaining a non-public record for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its form in a large Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inner battles over tips on how to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different non secular institutions in america, 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 amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost 20 years, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and different accused abusers who had been in the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Many of the circumstances referred to within the report were thought-about outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company referred to as Guidepost Options at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have 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 protecting the establishment from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors got here ahead, it additionally states that a major 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 convention. 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 throughout a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., trip 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 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 within the Guidepost report. I've by no means abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in keeping with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that earlier than Might 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he known as the small print of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Intercourse abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the facts round many of the stories they've already shared, however many have been nonetheless stunned to see the sample of coverups by the very best ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid feminine govt 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's by way of and thru about energy. It's misappropriated power. It doesn't in any approach reflect the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report also names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three past presidents of the conference, a former vice president 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 monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists were told the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of sex offenders as a result of it will go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while maintaining it a secret to keep away from the possibility of getting sued. The report also contains private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders equivalent to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the convention’s attorney despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be applied according to SBC polity, saying “it might fit our polity and current ministries to assist churches in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he beneficial “immediate action to sign the Conference’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort on this area.” That same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to offer 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 number of key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report yet. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much 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 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 in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to information of conversations on authorized issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went towards the recommendation of convention legal professionals and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy 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 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 all through the report.

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

According to the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then stated: “Our precedence can't be the latest cultural disaster.” 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 different Southern Baptist churches in multiple 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 Government Committee “turned his back to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored exhausting to try to make something occur, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” mentioned Brown, who's a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith right into a complicit associate for their own choice to choose institutional safety over the protection of youngsters 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., where members are anticipated discuss next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost include offering devoted survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be ready to take meaningful steps to vary our culture as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, mentioned in a press release.

Since many years of sex 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 switch of abusers to different church buildings. Not like 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, based on the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into some of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to learn from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Government Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly haven't any authority over local church buildings” however that they might try to use their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web 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 activity drive on the problem and said that the report reveals a necessity for institutions like the SBC to seek exterior experience on sex abuse.

“It shows a degree of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander mentioned. “The question Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How might this occur?’”

The problem of sex abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an identical approach 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. “People will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample 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 residence state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the previous 20 years preventing for reform.