Eight Missouri ministers accused of intercourse abuse in Southern Baptist Convention report • Missouri Unbiased

The Southern Baptist Convention on Thursday released a once-secret and prolonged listing of accused sex abusers — a number of of whom are in the Midwest — inside the denomination.

The 205-page checklist is a compilation of ministers and other church workers who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The record is described as a “fluid, working doc” that was additionally incomplete but largely pulls information about abusers from published news stories.

The publication of the list comes after the discharge Sunday of a 300-page report by an unbiased investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for decades have obtained reviews of sexual abuse committed by church employees, pastors and others. However those reviews had been largely stored secret and, slightly than performing upon and investigating stories of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

“The whole thing must be seen for what it is,” wrote former Southern Baptist Conference government committee member and normal counsel D. August Boto in an inner e-mail that was revealed within the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

The disaster rocking the Southern Baptist denomination this week is analogous in many ways to what the Catholic church continues to face. Leaders in each faiths systematically hid information about sexual misconduct, appeared to indicate more concern about their very own legal liability than the victims and at instances failed to expel accused abusers from positions of authority.

In 2007, Father Thomas Doyle, a Catholic priest credited as one of the first to warn of his own denomination’s clergy intercourse abuse crisis, wrote a letter to SBC management conveying his concern that Southern Baptist leaders have been repeating the failures of the Catholic church in coping with intercourse abuse.

Doyle was instructed, “Southern Baptist leaders really haven't any authority over local churches,” a response that Doyle considered dismissive, according to the investigative report. 

That very same 12 months, at the SBC convention in San Antonio, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson made a motion to create a database of Southern Baptist clergy who had been convicted or credibly accused of, or had confessed to sexual abuse. The proposal was meant to “help in stopping any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, based on the report, and witnesses at the convention recalled little about it besides to express their opinion that it could “violate native church autonomy.”

Ultimately, a staffer for the SBC government committee since 2007 had maintained a list of accused ministers and church staff, nevertheless it was saved hidden from the public and even SBC govt committee trustees, in line with the report.

Southern Baptist leaders mentioned publicizing the listing of credibly accused abusers represented “an initial, but necessary, step towards addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform within the Conference.”

“Each entry on this record reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by sexual abuse,” stated a joint assertion from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, each SBC executive committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of those heinous acts discover hope and healing, and that church buildings will utilize this record proactively to guard and look after the most weak among us.”

Attorneys for the SBC executive committee researched the listing of accused abusers, taking steps to verify data it contained. It left unredacted entries about alleged abusers that could possibly be confirmed, while redacting entries the place someone was acquitted or didn't have a closing disposition, as well as information that would identify victims.

Missouri men feature prominently on the list. They include:

This story comes from the Midwest Newsroom, an investigative journalism collaboration including IPR, KCUR 89.3, Nebraska Public Media Information, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. For more in-depth information from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, we invite you to observe us on Twitter.