Southern Baptist leaders coated up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 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 maintain a database of offenders to stop more abuse when top leaders had been secretly conserving a personal record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its variety in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over methods to deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other non secular institutions in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total number of abuse circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly two decades, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and different accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Lots of the cases referred to in the report had been considered outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization referred to as Guidepost Solutions on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “solely to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been concerned extra with protecting the establishment from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“Whereas stories of abuse were minimized, and survivors were ignored and even vilified, revelations came to mild in recent years 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 came ahead, it also states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl 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 vp at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady during a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the girl 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 Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in accordance with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before Might 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he referred to as the details 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 tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would affirm the info around many of the stories they've already shared, however many were nonetheless shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the highest levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid feminine executive at 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 by means of and thru about energy. It's misappropriated power. It does not in any method mirror the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report also names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three past 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 focused on actions by the SBC’s Govt Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual finances that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been advised the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders because it would go towards the denomination’s polity — or the way it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while retaining it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report additionally includes personal emails displaying how longtime leaders such as August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the conference’s attorney despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be implemented in step with SBC polity, saying “it might match our polity and current ministries to assist churches on this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “fast motion to sign the Conference’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort on this area.” That same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to give extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’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 read the report but. Makes an attempt to reach Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they really blindly selected to stay on the same path all these years,” said 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 hold the weight.”

During Government Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to data of conversations on authorized issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went towards the recommendation of conference legal professionals and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing 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 additionally once served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The choice over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

In accordance with the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then said: “Our precedence can't be the latest cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who informed 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 long 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 Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked onerous to try to make something occur, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion right into a complicit companion for their very own resolution to choose institutional safety over the safety of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual assembly, comes just weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated focus on subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include offering dedicated survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

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

Since many years of intercourse abuse and coverups within 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 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 crisis, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, according to the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders may very well be falling into some of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should learn from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was leading the Govt Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly don't have any authority over local church buildings” but that they'd try to make use of their “affect” to provide protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page didn't immediately return a request for remark.

Rachael Denhollander, a former USA gymnast who outed Larry Nassar’s serial sexual assaults, is an adviser on a Southern Baptist task power on the problem and stated that the report exhibits a necessity for institutions like the SBC to seek outside experience on sex abuse.

“It exhibits a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level that has led to many years of survivors being victimized and hurt,” Denhollander stated. “The question Southern Baptists need to ask is, ‘How could this happen?’”

The issue of intercourse abuse was a distinguished 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 & Spiritual Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an analogous solution 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. “Individuals will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated he hopes the SBC will take into account replacing 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 past 20 years combating for reform.