Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of almost 300 pages include stunning new details about specific abuse instances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they might maintain a database of offenders to stop more abuse when top leaders were secretly holding a private record for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its form in a large Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over the right way to deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different non secular establishments in america, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the whole number of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost twenty years, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and different accused abusers who had been within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Most of the cases referred to within the report have been considered exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex 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 again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been concerned extra with protecting the establishment from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“Whereas tales of abuse have been minimized, and survivors had been ignored or even vilified, revelations came to light 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 handled abuse issues when survivors got here forward, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl 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 chairman at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama City Seashore, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the lady but 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 within the Guidepost report. I've by no means abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that before Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he called the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the details round lots of the stories they've already shared, however many were nonetheless stunned to see the sample of coverups by the highest ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated 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. “It is a denomination that is by means of and through about energy. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any means 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 convention, a former vp and the previous 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 each other, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings present, Southern Baptists were advised the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it might go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders while preserving it a secret to avoid the possibility of getting sued. The report also consists of personal emails showing how longtime leaders such as August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly 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 applied consistent with SBC polity, saying “it might match our polity and present ministries to help church buildings in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “speedy motion to signal the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort on this area.” That same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to provide more democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the national institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not read the report yet. Makes an attempt to succeed in Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly chose to stay on the same path all these years,” stated 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.”

Throughout Govt Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to information of conversations on legal matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went against the advice of convention attorneys and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate 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 Government Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally once served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The decision over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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In accordance with the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then stated: “Our priority can't be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who advised 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 Government Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked laborious to try to make something happen, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith right into a complicit companion for their very own decision to decide on institutional safety over the protection of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual assembly, comes just weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated focus on subsequent steps. Recommendations by Guidepost include providing dedicated survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be ready to take significant steps to vary our culture because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, mentioned in an announcement.

Since many years of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of monks they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the switch of abusers to other 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 intercourse abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Government Committee presidents, in line with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could be falling into a number of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to study from Catholic mistakes and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order 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 brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly have no authority over native churches” however that they would attempt to make use of their “influence” to provide protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page didn't immediately 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 job drive on the issue and mentioned that the report exhibits a necessity for establishments just like the SBC to seek exterior expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It shows a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level that has led to many years of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander stated. “The question Southern Baptists should ask is, ‘How could this occur?’”

The issue of sex abuse was a prominent theme in leaked private letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an identical strategy 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 changing 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 previous twenty years fighting for reform.