Southern Baptist leaders coated up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages embrace surprising new details about specific abuse instances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may keep a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when high leaders have been secretly keeping a private list for years.

The report — the first investigation of its kind in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over how you can handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other religious establishments 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 whole variety of abuse circumstances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly twenty years, survivors of abuse and other 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 in the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Most of the cases referred to within the report have been thought of outdoors 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 an organization known as Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “solely to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were involved extra with protecting the institution from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

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

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse points when survivors got here ahead, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady just one month after he completed 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., trip 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 launched, 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 May 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that earlier than May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he referred to as the details of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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

Intercourse abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would verify the information round lots of the stories they have already shared, but many have been nonetheless shocked to see the sample of coverups by the very best ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said 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. “It is a denomination that is by way of and through about energy. It is misappropriated power. It does not in any approach replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three past presidents of the convention, a former vice chairman 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 monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings present, Southern Baptists have been told the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders as a result of it would go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or the way it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders whereas protecting it a secret to avoid the possibility of getting sued. The report also includes non-public emails exhibiting how longtime leaders similar to August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the conference’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be carried out according to SBC polity, saying “it will fit our polity and current ministries to help churches on this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “immediate motion to sign the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort in this area.” That same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to give extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the national institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not learn the report yet. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly selected to remain 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.”

Throughout Government Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to data of conversations on legal issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went towards the recommendation of convention attorneys and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to imagine 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 Government Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also 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 conference’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

In response to the report, Floyd informed 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 acknowledged: “Our precedence cannot be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd did not immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who instructed 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 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 Government Committee “turned his back to her during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored onerous to try to make one thing occur, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion into a complicit partner for their very own resolution to choose institutional safety over the safety of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual assembly, comes just weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected talk about subsequent steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embody offering dedicated survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be ready to take meaningful steps to change our culture as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in a press release.

Since a long time 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 priests they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the transfer of abusers to other church buildings. 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 Executive Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into among the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping 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 in order to make youngsters 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 actually haven't any authority over native churches” but that they might try to make use of their “affect” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page didn't 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 activity force on the problem and said that the report exhibits a necessity for establishments just like the SBC to hunt outdoors experience on intercourse abuse.

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

The problem of sex abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in the same method 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 in this report are breathtaking,” Moore mentioned. “Folks will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will consider 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 past twenty years preventing for reform.