Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages embrace surprising new particulars about particular abuse instances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they could preserve a database of offenders to forestall extra abuse when top leaders had been secretly maintaining a private record for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its type in a massive Protestant denomination like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense inside battles over learn how to deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different spiritual institutions in the United States, 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 full number 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 Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and other accused abusers who have been within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Most of the circumstances referred to in the report were thought-about outside 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 Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were concerned extra with protecting the establishment from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“Whereas stories of abuse were minimized, and survivors had been ignored or even vilified, revelations came to mild 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 handled abuse points when survivors came ahead, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl just 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 vp on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman throughout a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the girl however acknowledged that he had interactions 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 within the Guidepost report. I have by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in keeping with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that before May 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he known as the small print 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, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the information round most of the tales they've already shared, however many were nonetheless 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,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid female executive on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This can be a denomination that is by means of and thru about energy. It's misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any method mirror 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 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 Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual finances that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been advised the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of sex offenders as a result of it would go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders whereas conserving it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report also includes private emails displaying how longtime leaders such as August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the convention’s lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be applied according to SBC polity, saying “it would match our polity and present ministries to help church buildings on this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “rapid action to signal the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort on this area.” That very same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

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 exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report but. Attempts to succeed in Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much 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 within the report. “It buoys what we’ve been saying all along. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the burden.”

During Executive Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators access to information of conversations on authorized issues among the committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went in opposition to the advice of convention lawyers and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to consider 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 also 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 conference’s attorneys, who are named throughout the report.

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

In accordance with the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had obtained “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 precedence cannot be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't instantly return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who instructed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in other Southern Baptist church buildings in multiple 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 again to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored onerous to try to make one thing occur, however 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 partner for their own choice to choose institutional safety over the safety of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual meeting, comes simply weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected focus on next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embody providing devoted survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be able to take significant steps to alter our tradition as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, said in a press release.

Since decades 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 clergymen they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the transfer of abusers to other churches. Unlike 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, based on the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could be falling into among the similar 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 action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Executive Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over native church buildings” however that they would attempt to use their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of organising 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 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 process force on the problem and stated that the report reveals a need for establishments like the SBC to hunt outdoors experience on sex abuse.

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

The issue of intercourse abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked private 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 said he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in a similar 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 in this report are breathtaking,” Moore said. “Individuals will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will take into account replacing 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 twenty years fighting for reform.