Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of almost 300 pages embrace surprising 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 within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may preserve a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when top leaders were secretly maintaining a personal checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its type in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inside battles over tips on how to deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other non secular establishments 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 entire number of abuse instances 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 were within the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Lots of the circumstances referred to in 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 a company called Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who have been concerned more with defending the establishment from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors came ahead, it also states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl 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 on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman throughout a Panama Metropolis Beach, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the girl but 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 within the Guidepost report. I have never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in accordance with a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before May 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he referred to as 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.

Sex abuse survivors, a lot of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the information round most of the tales they've already shared, but many have been nonetheless surprised to see the sample of coverups by the highest levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female 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 is through and thru about power. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any method reflect the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past presidents of the convention, a former vp 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 Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings present, Southern Baptists were instructed the denomination could not put together a registry of sex offenders because it could go against the denomination’s polity — or the way it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders while keeping it a secret to avoid the possibility of getting sued. The report also contains non-public emails showing how longtime leaders comparable to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the conference’s attorney sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be implemented according to SBC polity, saying “it would match our polity and current ministries to help churches in this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “quick action to sign the Convention’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra 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 offer extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not learn the report yet. Attempts to achieve Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they really blindly chose to remain 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the burden.”

Throughout Government Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to records of conversations on authorized matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went in opposition to the advice of convention legal professionals and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to consider 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 Govt 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 convention’s attorneys, who're named throughout the report.

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

In response to the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 e mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then stated: “Our precedence cannot be the newest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't instantly return a request for remark.

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

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

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual meeting, comes simply weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated talk about next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include providing dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be ready to take meaningful steps to vary our culture as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, mentioned in an announcement.

Since a long time of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of clergymen they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the transfer of abusers to other 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 sex abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into some 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 mistakes and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was leading the Executive Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over local churches” but that they'd try to make use of their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant body 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 activity power on the issue and said that the report exhibits a need for institutions just like the SBC to seek outside expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It exhibits a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander said. “The query Southern Baptists should ask is, ‘How could this occur?’”

The problem of sex abuse was a prominent theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned 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 said. “Folks will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, take a 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 take into account replacing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s house state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the previous two decades combating for reform.