Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages embody stunning new particulars about particular abuse cases and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may maintain a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when prime leaders were secretly preserving a personal list for years.

The report — the first investigation of its kind in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inside battles over methods to deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other religious establishments in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy 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 nearly two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and different accused abusers who had been within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Many of the instances referred to in the report had been thought-about outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers were 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 “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been involved more with defending the establishment from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

While the report focuses totally on how leaders dealt with abuse points when survivors came forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman 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 on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama City Beach, Fla., vacation 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 together with her. After the report was released, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted a press release on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth within the Guidepost report. I've never abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that before Might 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he called the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Sex abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the info round most of the stories they've already shared, however many have been nonetheless surprised to see the pattern 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 is by and through about power. It is misappropriated energy. It does not in any means mirror 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 convention, a former vice chairman and the previous head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 targeted on actions by the SBC’s Government Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt 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 were advised the denomination couldn't put together a registry of sex offenders as a result of it will go against the denomination’s polity — or the way it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while maintaining it a secret to avoid the possibility of getting sued. The report additionally consists of non-public emails exhibiting how longtime leaders reminiscent of August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e mail, the convention’s lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be applied in line with SBC polity, saying “it could fit our polity and current ministries to assist churches in this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “immediate motion to signal the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort in this area.” That same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to present more democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report shows 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 intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report yet. Makes an attempt to succeed in Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot about how they really blindly chose to remain 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the weight.”

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

The debate over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to believe 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 once served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The choice over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named throughout the report.

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

In keeping with the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 e mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then acknowledged: “Our priority can't be the latest cultural crisis.” Floyd did not immediately 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 different Southern Baptist churches 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 Govt Committee “turned his again to her throughout her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored laborious to attempt to make one thing happen, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” mentioned Brown, who's a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion right into a complicit companion for their own determination to choose institutional safety over the safety of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual assembly, comes simply weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected talk about next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include providing dedicated survivor advocacy help 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 current SBC president, mentioned in an announcement.

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of priests they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the switch 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 Executive Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders may very well be falling into among the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should study from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms so as to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Executive Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually haven't any authority over native churches” however that they'd attempt to use their “influence” to provide protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having 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 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 drive on the problem and said that the report reveals a necessity for establishments like the SBC to seek exterior experience on sex abuse.

“It exhibits a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional degree that has led to a long time of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander mentioned. “The query Southern Baptists have to ask is, ‘How could this occur?’”

The problem of intercourse abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Commission. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in the same 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 on this report are breathtaking,” Moore stated. “Folks will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern 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 home state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the previous 20 years combating for reform.