Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

Leaders within the Southern Baptist Conference on Sunday launched a significant third-party investigation that found that sex abuse survivors have been often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by prime clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of almost 300 pages include shocking new details about specific abuse instances and shine a lightweight 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 or not they might maintain a database of offenders to stop more abuse when prime leaders were secretly conserving a non-public list for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its variety in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense internal battles over the way to deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other non secular establishments in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the full variety of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly twenty years, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged little one molesters and other accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Most of the circumstances referred to in the report have been thought of outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers have 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 have been “solely to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were involved extra with protecting the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse points when survivors got here ahead, it also states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman only 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 on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama City Seashore, Fla., trip 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 along 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 in the Guidepost report. I've never abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, according to a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before Could 13, he was not aware 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 sex abuse scandals. Now, they’re debating their response.

Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would verify the info around most of the stories they've already shared, however many had been still shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the very best levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated 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 in the report. “This is a denomination that is by means of and through about energy. It's misappropriated power. It does not in any manner 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, together with three previous presidents of the convention, a former vp 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 Govt Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes more 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 advised the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders because it might go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders whereas conserving it a secret to keep away from the potential for getting sued. The report also includes private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders similar to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the conference’s lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be carried out consistent with SBC polity, saying “it would match our polity and current ministries to assist churches in this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “fast motion to sign the Conference’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort on this space.” That same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to present extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not learn the report yet. Makes an attempt to reach Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly chose to stay on the same 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 hold the burden.”

Throughout Government Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to information of conversations on authorized issues among the committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went in opposition to the advice 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, 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 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 decision over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who're named throughout the report.

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

According to the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had received “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 priority cannot be the newest cultural disaster.” Floyd did not instantly return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who told 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 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 Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored laborious to try to make one thing happen, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith into a complicit accomplice for their very own choice to choose institutional protection over the safety of kids and congregants.”

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

“We must be ready to take meaningful steps to alter our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in an announcement.

Since many years of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of monks they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the switch of abusers to different 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 intercourse abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Government Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders might be falling into a number 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 so as to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Executive Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually don't have any authority over local church buildings” but that they'd attempt to make use of their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Web 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 job pressure on the difficulty and mentioned that the report reveals a need for institutions like the SBC to seek outside expertise on sex abuse.

“It exhibits a degree of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and hurt,” Denhollander stated. “The question Southern Baptists should ask is, ‘How might this happen?’”

The problem of intercourse abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in the same 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 mentioned. “Folks will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the nice 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 fighting for reform.