Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday launched a major third-party investigation that discovered that intercourse abuse survivors were usually ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by high clergy within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of almost 300 pages include shocking new details about particular abuse cases and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they could preserve a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when prime leaders were secretly keeping a personal listing for years.

The report — the first investigation of its type in a massive Protestant denomination like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense inside battles over how one can handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with different non secular 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 entire number of abuse circumstances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost twenty years, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and other accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Most of the circumstances referred to in the report had been thought of exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company referred to as Guidepost Options at 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 institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors came ahead, it also states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman only one month after he accomplished 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 vice president on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl throughout a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the girl however acknowledged that he had interactions with her. After the report was launched, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted a statement on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth in the Guidepost report. I have by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than Could 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he referred to as the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Intercourse abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the information round most of the stories they've already shared, but many were nonetheless surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the very best levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid female government on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “This can be a denomination that's through and through about energy. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any means reflect the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am 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 convention, a former vp and the former head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 focused on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been told the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of sex offenders because it will go against the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while conserving it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report additionally includes non-public emails showing how longtime leaders such as August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the convention’s lawyer sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be implemented in keeping with SBC polity, saying “it will fit our polity and current ministries to assist churches in this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “rapid action to signal the Convention’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort on this space.” That very same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to offer 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, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not learn the report but. Makes an attempt to succeed in Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot about how they actually blindly chose to remain on the identical 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 along. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the burden.”

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

The debate over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to believe 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 Executive Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally as soon as served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The choice over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who're named throughout the report.

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

In keeping with the report, Floyd instructed 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 disaster.” He then acknowledged: “Our precedence cannot be the most recent cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who advised SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in different 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 worked laborious to try to make something occur, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion into a complicit partner for their very own determination to choose institutional safety over the protection of kids and congregants.”

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

“We should be ready to take meaningful steps to alter our tradition as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in an announcement.

Since a long time of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of monks they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the switch 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 intercourse abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in keeping with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into among the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to be taught from Catholic mistakes and take action early on to implement structural reforms so as 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 have no authority over native churches” but that they might try to use their “affect” to offer protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his position 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 job force on the issue and said that the report shows a need for establishments just like the SBC to seek exterior experience on sex abuse.

“It exhibits a stage of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional degree that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander said. “The query Southern Baptists have to ask is, ‘How might this occur?’”

The difficulty of sex abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Fee. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an analogous 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 said. “Individuals will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated he hopes the SBC will think about changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s residence state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the previous twenty years combating for reform.