Southern Baptist leaders coated up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages embrace surprising new particulars about specific abuse cases and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof in 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 have been secretly protecting a private list for years.

The report — the first investigation of its sort in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inner battles over how to deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other religious establishments in america, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the whole number of abuse circumstances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost twenty years, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and different accused abusers who had been in the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Lots of the instances referred to within the report have been considered outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a corporation known as Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “solely to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were concerned more with protecting the establishment from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“While tales of abuse had been minimized, and survivors have 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.

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors came forward, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist chief 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 vp at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl throughout a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the lady but acknowledged that he had interactions along with her. After the report was launched, 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 anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in response to a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that before Might 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he referred to as the details of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Intercourse abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the details around most of the stories they have already shared, however many had been still surprised to see the sample of coverups by the very best ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, however it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid feminine executive at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “This is a denomination that's by way of and through about power. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any means replicate the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three previous 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 targeted on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been advised the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it will go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders whereas keeping it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report additionally consists of non-public emails displaying how longtime leaders resembling August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the conference’s lawyer sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be implemented in line with SBC polity, saying “it might fit our polity and current ministries to help church buildings in this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “speedy action to sign the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort on this area.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to provide extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a few key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not read the report yet. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they really blindly selected to remain 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 hold the load.”

Throughout Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to information of conversations on authorized matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went in opposition to the recommendation of conference lawyers and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to imagine the Govt 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 Govt 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 additionally led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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In line with the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then stated: “Our priority cannot be the latest cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't instantly return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who advised 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 Executive Committee “turned his back to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked arduous to try to make one thing occur, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion into a complicit companion for their own choice to choose institutional protection over the protection of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual assembly, comes simply weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated talk about next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include offering dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

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

Since a long time 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 clergymen they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the transfer of abusers to other church buildings. 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 Govt Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders may very well be falling into among the identical 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 so as to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over native church buildings” however that they would try to use their “influence” to supply 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 position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” 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 mentioned that the report reveals a need for institutions just like the SBC to seek outside expertise on sex abuse.

“It reveals a stage of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional degree that has led to a long time of survivors being victimized and hurt,” Denhollander mentioned. “The question Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How may this happen?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in a similar 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 on this report are breathtaking,” Moore mentioned. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, 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 take into account changing 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.