Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday launched a serious third-party investigation that found that sex abuse survivors were often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by high clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of almost 300 pages include stunning new details about particular abuse circumstances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could preserve a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when top leaders had been secretly maintaining a private checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its type in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inside battles over handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other non secular institutions in the US, 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 overall variety of abuse circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly 20 years, survivors of abuse and different 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 instances referred to within the report have been thought-about outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization called Guidepost Options at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “solely to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been involved more with defending the establishment from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

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

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors got here forward, it also states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady only 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 vice chairman at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., vacation in 2010.

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

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than Might 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he called 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.

Intercourse abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the info round many of the tales they've already shared, but many were still stunned to see the pattern of coverups by the very best levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid feminine government at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “It is a denomination that's by way of and thru about power. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any manner reflect the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report also 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 president 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 financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists were instructed the denomination could not put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders because it might go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders while retaining it a secret to keep away from the opportunity of getting sued. The report also consists of private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders such as 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 could possibly be applied consistent with SBC polity, saying “it might match our polity and current ministries to assist churches on this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he beneficial “fast motion to signal the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort on this space.” That same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to provide extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not learn the report yet. Makes an attempt to reach Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they really blindly chose to stay on the identical path all these years,” said 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 weight.”

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

The talk over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to believe 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 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 additionally led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

In accordance with the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then said: “Our precedence can't be the newest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who told 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 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 Executive Committee “turned his again to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked arduous to attempt to make something occur, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” stated Brown, who's a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith right into a complicit partner for their very own choice to choose institutional protection over the safety of children and congregants.”

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

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

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church have been 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 forestall the transfer of abusers to different 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 Govt Committee presidents, in keeping with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders might be falling into a few of the same 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 children safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Government Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really haven't any authority over native church buildings” but that they'd attempt to use their “influence” to provide protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web 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 job pressure on the problem and stated that the report shows a necessity for institutions just like the SBC to seek exterior expertise on intercourse abuse.

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

The difficulty of intercourse 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 & Non secular Liberty Commission. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an identical 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 mentioned. “Individuals will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample 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 residence state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the previous two decades combating for reform.