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 were often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages embody stunning new particulars about specific abuse circumstances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may maintain a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when top leaders had been secretly retaining a personal record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its type in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense inner battles over methods to deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different spiritual institutions in the USA, 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 total variety of abuse instances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly twenty years, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and different accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Lots of the instances referred to in the report were thought of exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a corporation referred to as Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were involved more with protecting the establishment from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

While the report focuses totally on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors came ahead, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman 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 president at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama Metropolis Beach, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the lady but acknowledged that he had interactions 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 by no means abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, in keeping with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that before Might 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he referred to as the small print 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 release would affirm the details around most of the tales they've already shared, however many had been still shocked to see the sample of coverups by the highest levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid female government at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This is a denomination that's via and through about power. It's misappropriated power. It doesn't in any way replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report additionally names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three previous presidents of the conference, 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 financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings present, Southern Baptists had been informed the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders because it would go against the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders while keeping it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report additionally contains private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders equivalent to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the convention’s lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be implemented per SBC polity, saying “it will fit our polity and current ministries to help church buildings in this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “instant motion to sign the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this space.” That very same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to give more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not learn the report but. Makes an attempt to succeed in Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they actually blindly chose to remain on the same path all these years,” stated 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 carry the burden.”

During Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to data of conversations on legal matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went against the advice of convention attorneys and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to imagine 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 Executive 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 additionally led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who're named throughout 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 e mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then stated: “Our priority can't be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd did not immediately 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 different 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 Govt Committee “turned his back to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored onerous to attempt to make something occur, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion right into a complicit partner for their own choice to choose institutional safety over the safety of children and congregants.”

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

“We should be ready to take significant steps to change our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in a statement.

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church had been 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 stop the transfer of abusers to different churches. Not like the Catholic Church, the SBC has a non-hierarchical construction.

In March 2007, the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a priest and canon lawyer who first warned of the looming Catholic sex abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Government Committee presidents, in keeping with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders may very well be falling into some of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to study from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was leading the Executive Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly have no authority over local churches” but that they would try to use their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body 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 pressure on the difficulty and stated that the report shows a necessity for establishments like the SBC to hunt exterior experience 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 mentioned. “The question Southern Baptists have to ask is, ‘How could this occur?’”

The difficulty of intercourse 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 policy arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in the same way 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 stated. “Folks will say, ‘This is not 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 think about 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 past twenty years combating for reform.