Southern Baptist leaders coated up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages embody surprising new details about specific abuse circumstances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they might preserve a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when high leaders were secretly preserving a private checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its variety in a massive Protestant denomination like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian community that has had intense inside battles over how to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with different religious establishments in america, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the full number of abuse instances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly 20 years, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and other accused abusers who had been within the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Many of the circumstances referred to in the report were thought-about exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company referred to as Guidepost Solutions on 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 have been involved more with defending the establishment from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors got here forward, it additionally 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 vp on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama City Seaside, Fla., vacation 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 together with her. After the report was launched, 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 in the Guidepost report. I have never abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in accordance with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that earlier than Might 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he called the small print of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

Southern Baptists have been immersed in their own sex 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 information around lots of the tales they have already shared, but many were nonetheless shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the very best ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, however it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine 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's through and through about energy. It's misappropriated power. It does not in any manner replicate 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, including three previous presidents of the conference, a former vice chairman 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 financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual price range that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists were informed the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of sex offenders because 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 maintaining it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report additionally includes private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders such as August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the convention’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be implemented in line with SBC polity, saying “it would match our polity and current ministries to help churches on this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “quick action to signal the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this space.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to give more democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not read the report but. Attempts to achieve 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,” 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the weight.”

Throughout Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to information of conversations on legal issues among the committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went towards the recommendation of conference legal professionals and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting 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 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 choice over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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

In keeping with the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 e-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 acknowledged: “Our precedence can't be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd did not immediately return a request for remark.

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

“The Executive Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked exhausting to try to make one thing happen, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion into a complicit associate for their own choice to decide on institutional protection over the protection of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual assembly, comes simply weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected focus on next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include offering devoted survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be able to take meaningful steps to alter our culture as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, stated in a statement.

Since many years 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 forestall the switch of abusers to other church buildings. In contrast to 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 response to the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders might be falling into a few of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should be taught from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms so as to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Executive Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly don't have any authority over local church buildings” but that they'd try to make use of their “influence” to supply protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page didn't immediately 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 process drive on the issue and mentioned that the report exhibits a need for institutions just like the SBC to hunt exterior experience on sex abuse.

“It reveals a stage 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 stated. “The query Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How might this occur?’”

The issue of sex abuse was a distinguished 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 & Religious Liberty Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in the same 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 on this report are breathtaking,” Moore stated. “Folks will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said 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.