Southern Baptist leaders coated up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages include surprising new details about specific abuse circumstances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could keep a database of offenders to prevent extra abuse when prime leaders have been secretly maintaining a non-public record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its form in a massive Protestant denomination like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian community that has had intense inner battles over easy methods to deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different religious establishments in the United States, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total variety of abuse instances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly 20 years, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged little one molesters and different accused abusers who have been within the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Lots of the cases referred to in the report were thought of exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company called Guidepost Solutions on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “solely to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were involved extra with defending the institution from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses totally on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors got here ahead, it also states that a major 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 conference. The report finds that Johnny Hunt, a beloved Georgia-based Southern Baptist pastor who has been a senior vp on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman throughout a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the woman however acknowledged that he had interactions with her. After the report was released, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted a press release on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth in the Guidepost report. I have never abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in accordance with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that before Could 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he known as the main points 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, many of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would affirm the facts around many of the tales they've already shared, however many had been nonetheless stunned to see the pattern of coverups by the very best ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine government 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 means of and thru about power. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any method 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, including three previous 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 targeted on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings function 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 many years, the findings present, Southern Baptists had been instructed the denomination could not put together a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it might go against the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while preserving it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report also includes private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders comparable to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the convention’s attorney sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be implemented according to SBC polity, saying “it would match our polity and current ministries to assist churches in this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “instant motion to sign the Conference’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort in this area.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to offer extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a few key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the national institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not learn the report yet. Attempts to succeed in Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly selected to remain 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the weight.”

During Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators access to information of conversations on legal issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went towards the advice of conference lawyers and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to consider the Executive 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 Government Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also once 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 details allegations that Southern Baptist leaders mishandled sex abuse claims

In accordance with the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then said: “Our precedence cannot be the newest cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't instantly 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 church buildings 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 again to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored laborious to try to make something 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 right into a complicit companion for their own choice to decide on institutional safety over the protection of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual meeting, comes simply weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected focus on next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace providing dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be ready to take significant steps to alter our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in a statement.

Since a long time of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of monks they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the switch of abusers to other church buildings. 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 intercourse abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Govt Committee presidents, based on the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders might be falling into among the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should study 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 on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over local churches” however that they would attempt to make use of their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web 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 process drive on the issue and mentioned that the report shows a necessity for institutions just like the SBC to hunt outdoors expertise on sex abuse.

“It reveals a degree 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 have to ask is, ‘How could this occur?’”

The issue of intercourse abuse was a prominent theme in leaked private letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in a similar strategy 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. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated he hopes the SBC will consider replacing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s dwelling state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past twenty years fighting for reform.