Southern Baptist leaders covered up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages embrace stunning new particulars about particular abuse cases and shine a light on how denominational leaders for decades 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 prevent more abuse when top leaders had been secretly keeping a personal checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its type in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over how one can handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other non secular 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 variety of abuse instances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly two decades, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and different accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Many of the cases referred to within the report have been thought-about outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear what number of 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 “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been concerned more with protecting the institution from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses totally 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 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 at 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 physical contact with the woman 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 a press release on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth within the Guidepost report. I have never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in accordance with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that before May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he known as the details of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

Southern Baptists have been immersed in their very own intercourse abuse scandals. Now, they’re debating their response.

Intercourse abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would affirm the details around lots of the tales they've already shared, however many have been nonetheless surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the highest ranges of management.

“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 govt 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 via and through about power. It's misappropriated energy. It does not in any approach mirror the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report additionally names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three past presidents of the conference, a former vice chairman and the previous head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 focused on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual finances that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings present, Southern Baptists have been told the denomination couldn't put together a registry of intercourse offenders because it might go towards the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders whereas holding it a secret to keep away from the opportunity of getting sued. The report also consists of private emails showing how longtime leaders corresponding to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the conference’s lawyer sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be implemented according to SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and present ministries to help churches on this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “speedy action to signal the Convention’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort on this area.” That very same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to give more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a few key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report but. Attempts to achieve Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot about how they actually blindly chose to stay on the identical 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 hold the load.”

During Government Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators access to records of conversations on legal matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went towards the advice of convention attorneys and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to consider 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 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 throughout the report.

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

According to the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic 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 newest 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 different Southern Baptist church buildings 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 Govt Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored arduous to attempt to make one thing occur, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” stated Brown, who's a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion into a complicit partner for their own decision to decide on institutional safety over the safety of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual assembly, comes just weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected discuss subsequent steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embrace offering devoted survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

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

Since many years of sex abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of monks they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the switch of abusers to other churches. Unlike 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 Government Committee presidents, in keeping with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could be falling into among the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should be taught from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make kids 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 haven't any authority over native church buildings” but that they'd try to make use of their “affect” to offer 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 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 job drive on the difficulty and said that the report shows a need for establishments like the SBC to hunt outside expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It reveals a degree of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to many years of survivors being victimized and hurt,” Denhollander stated. “The question Southern Baptists have to ask is, ‘How might this happen?’”

The difficulty 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 Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an analogous option 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. “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 said he hopes the SBC will take into account 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 twenty years preventing for reform.