Southern Baptist leaders lined up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of almost 300 pages embody shocking new particulars about specific abuse instances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they could keep a database of offenders to stop more abuse when top leaders were secretly holding a private checklist for years.

The report — the first investigation of its kind in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense inside battles over how to deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other non secular institutions in america, 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 whole number of abuse circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and different concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged child 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 had been thought of exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a corporation called Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “only to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were involved more with defending the establishment from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from further 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 or even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

Whereas the report focuses totally on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors got here ahead, it also states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl 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 vice chairman at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

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

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, according to a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that earlier than May 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he called the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Sex abuse survivors, a lot of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the facts round many of the stories they have already shared, however many had been nonetheless surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the highest levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female government 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 via and thru about power. It is misappropriated energy. It does not in any way mirror the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three previous presidents of the conference, a former vp 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 Govt Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes greater 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 told the denomination couldn't put together a registry of sex offenders because it would go against the denomination’s polity — or the way it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders whereas holding it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report also includes private emails showing how longtime leaders corresponding to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e mail, the conference’s attorney sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be carried out according to SBC polity, saying “it might match our polity and present ministries to help churches in this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “immediate action to signal the Conference’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort on this space.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to present more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report yet. Makes an attempt to reach Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they actually blindly selected to stay on the same path all these years,” mentioned 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 load.”

During Government Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to information of conversations on legal matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went in opposition to the advice of conference attorneys and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to imagine 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 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 decision over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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Based on 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 disaster.” He then acknowledged: “Our precedence can't be the newest cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who told SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in other Southern Baptist churches 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 Govt Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked exhausting to attempt to make one thing occur, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith right into a complicit accomplice for their very own resolution to decide on institutional protection over the protection of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual assembly, comes simply weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated discuss subsequent steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embrace providing dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be ready to take meaningful steps to alter our culture because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in a press release.

Since many years 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 priests they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the transfer of abusers to different churches. 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 crisis, wrote to the SBC and Govt Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could be falling into among the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to learn from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly have no authority over native church buildings” but that they'd try to use their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Web 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 place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page didn't 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 issue and stated that the report exhibits a need for institutions like the SBC to seek exterior experience on intercourse abuse.

“It shows 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 harm,” Denhollander said. “The question Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How might this happen?’”

The problem of intercourse abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive 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 said. “Individuals will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said he hopes the SBC will consider 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 fighting for reform.