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

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

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

The publication of the checklist comes after the discharge Sunday of a 300-page report by an independent investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for decades have received stories of sexual abuse committed by church staff, pastors and others. However these reviews were largely saved secret and, rather than appearing upon and investigating experiences of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

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

The crisis 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 show more concern about their own authorized legal responsibility than the victims and at instances didn't 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 were repeating the failures of the Catholic church in dealing with sex abuse.

Doyle was told, “Southern Baptist leaders actually haven't any authority over local church buildings,” a response that Doyle considered dismissive, in keeping with the investigative report. 

That same yr, 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, according to the report, and witnesses at the conference recalled little about it besides to express their opinion that it could “violate local church autonomy.”

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

Southern Baptist leaders mentioned publicizing the list of credibly accused abusers represented “an preliminary, however essential, step in direction of addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform in the Convention.”

“Every entry in this checklist reminds us of the devastation and destruction led to by sexual abuse,” stated a joint statement from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, each SBC government committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of those heinous acts find hope and therapeutic, and that churches will make the most of this checklist proactively to protect and care for probably the most susceptible among us.”

Legal professionals for the SBC government committee researched the list of accused abusers, taking steps to verify information 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 remaining disposition, in addition to information that would determine victims.

Missouri men function 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.