Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages embody shocking new particulars about specific abuse circumstances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may keep a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when top leaders had been secretly retaining a private listing for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its form in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense inside battles over easy methods to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different non secular establishments in the United States, 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 variety of abuse circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost 20 years, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and different accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Lots of the instances referred to within the report had been considered 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 a corporation referred to as Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “solely to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been concerned extra with defending the institution from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“Whereas stories of abuse had 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 or even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors came ahead, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl only one month after he accomplished 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 during a Panama Metropolis 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 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 never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in accordance with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that before May 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 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 release would verify the info around many of the stories they've already shared, however many have been still stunned to see the sample of coverups by the very best levels 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 female govt on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “It is a denomination that's by and through about power. It is misappropriated energy. It does not in any method replicate the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report additionally names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past presidents of the conference, 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 Govt Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been told the denomination couldn't put together a registry of intercourse offenders because it could go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while protecting it a secret to keep away from the potential for getting sued. The report additionally contains non-public emails exhibiting how longtime leaders corresponding to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, 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 applied in keeping with SBC polity, saying “it might fit our polity and present ministries to help church buildings in this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “instant motion to signal the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort on this area.” That very same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

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 exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report yet. Makes an attempt to succeed in Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they actually blindly selected to stay 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 along. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the weight.”

Throughout Government Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to records of conversations on legal issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went in opposition to the recommendation of convention legal professionals and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to consider 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 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 convention’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

Based on the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then acknowledged: “Our precedence cannot be the newest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't instantly return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who instructed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in different Southern Baptist church buildings in multiple 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 Govt Committee “turned his again to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored onerous to try to make one thing occur, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith into a complicit partner for their own decision to decide on institutional protection over the protection of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual meeting, comes simply weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated talk about subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody providing devoted survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be ready to take significant steps to change our culture as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, mentioned in a statement.

Since many years of sex abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of monks they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the transfer of abusers to different churches. Not like the Catholic Church, the SBC has a non-hierarchical construction.

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 Executive Committee presidents, in line with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into a few of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to be taught from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Govt Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly don't have any authority over local church buildings” however that they would try to make use of their “affect” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page did not instantly 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 force on the difficulty and stated that the report exhibits a necessity for institutions just like the SBC to hunt exterior experience on intercourse abuse.

“It shows a degree of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional degree that has led to many years of survivors being victimized and hurt,” Denhollander said. “The question Southern Baptists need to ask is, ‘How could this happen?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a prominent theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an identical technique 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. “Individuals will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, 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 take into account 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 20 years combating for reform.