Southern Baptist leaders covered up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages embody stunning new particulars about particular abuse cases and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may keep a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when top leaders have been secretly retaining a personal record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its sort in a large Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inner battles over the best way to deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other religious establishments in the USA, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total number of abuse cases 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 Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged little one molesters and other accused abusers who have been within the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Lots of the circumstances referred to in the report had been thought-about outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company known as Guidepost Solutions on 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 protecting the establishment from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors came forward, it also states that a main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady 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 lady throughout a Panama City Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the woman however acknowledged that he had interactions together with her. After the report was released, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted a statement on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth in the Guidepost report. I've by no means abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that earlier than Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he called the details 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, a lot of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would verify the information around most of the tales they have already shared, but many have been still stunned to see the sample of coverups by the best levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female executive on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “This is a denomination that is by and through about power. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any manner mirror the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past presidents of the convention, a former vice president and the previous head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 centered on actions by the SBC’s Govt Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been informed the denomination could not put together a registry of intercourse offenders because it will go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or the way it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while retaining it a secret to keep away from the opportunity of getting sued. The report also contains private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders reminiscent of August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the conference’s attorney despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be carried out per SBC polity, saying “it will match our polity and current ministries to assist churches on this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “speedy action to sign the Conference’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this space.” That same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to provide extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not read the report but. Makes an attempt to succeed in Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report goes 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 hold the weight.”

Throughout Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to data of conversations on authorized issues among the committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went against the recommendation of conference attorneys and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate over waiving privilege upset a large 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 additionally led to the resignation of the Govt Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally once served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The decision over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

In accordance with the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 e mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then stated: “Our precedence can't be the most recent cultural disaster.” Floyd did not 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 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 Government Committee “turned his again to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked hard to try to make one thing occur, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith into a complicit associate for their own decision to choose institutional safety over the safety of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual meeting, comes just weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated discuss subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody providing devoted survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be ready to take meaningful steps to alter our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in a statement.

Since many years of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of monks they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the switch of abusers to different church buildings. Not like 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 Executive Committee presidents, in response to the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders may very well be falling into a few of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to be taught from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Govt Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually don't have any authority over local church buildings” but that they might attempt to use their “affect” to offer protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web 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 process pressure on the difficulty and mentioned that the report exhibits a necessity for establishments like the SBC to seek exterior experience on intercourse abuse.

“It shows a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to many years of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander stated. “The query Southern Baptists have to ask is, ‘How might this occur?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a prominent theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Fee. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an identical solution 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. “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 think about changing 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 fighting for reform.