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

The Southern Baptist Conference on Thursday launched a once-secret and lengthy record of accused sex abusers — several of whom are within the Midwest — within the denomination.

The 205-page checklist is a compilation of ministers and other church staff who've been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The listing is described as a “fluid, working document” that was also incomplete but largely pulls details about abusers from printed information studies.

The publication of the listing comes after the release Sunday of a 300-page report by an impartial investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for many years have received experiences of sexual abuse dedicated by church workers, pastors and others. However those experiences were largely stored secret and, relatively than performing upon and investigating reviews 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 executive committee member and common counsel D. August Boto in an internal e-mail that was printed in the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

The crisis rocking the Southern Baptist denomination this week is similar in many ways to what the Catholic church continues to face. Leaders in each faiths systematically hid information about sexual misconduct, appeared to indicate extra concern about their own authorized legal responsibility than the victims and at times did not 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 sex 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 dealing with sex abuse.

Doyle was informed, “Southern Baptist leaders truly have no authority over native church buildings,” a response that Doyle thought to be dismissive, based on the investigative report. 

That same 12 months, at the SBC convention in San Antonio, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson made a movement 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 conference recalled little about it except to precise their opinion that it might “violate local church autonomy.”

Ultimately, a staffer for the SBC govt committee since 2007 had maintained a listing of accused ministers and church workers, but it was kept hidden from the public and even SBC government committee trustees, based on the report.

Southern Baptist leaders stated publicizing the record of credibly accused abusers represented “an preliminary, but essential, step towards addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform in the Conference.”

“Every entry on this record reminds us of the devastation and destruction caused by sexual abuse,” said a joint statement from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, both SBC government committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of those heinous acts discover hope and therapeutic, and that church buildings will make the most of this list proactively to guard and care for probably the most vulnerable among us.”

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

Missouri males feature prominently on the record. They embody:

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