Southern Baptist leaders lined up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

Leaders within 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 top clergy within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages include shocking 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. Evidence in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they might maintain a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when high leaders have been secretly retaining a private checklist for years.

The report — the first investigation of its variety in a large Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense internal battles over the right way to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other spiritual establishments in america, 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 overall number of abuse circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and other accused abusers who had been within the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Many of the circumstances referred to within the report had been considered outside 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 referred to as Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “only to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been involved more with defending the establishment from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“While stories of abuse had been minimized, and survivors have been ignored or even vilified, revelations got here to gentle 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 handled abuse issues when survivors came ahead, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl only 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 vice president on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama City Beach, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the girl however acknowledged that he had interactions along 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 within the Guidepost report. I have never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, in keeping with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he called 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.

Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would affirm the details around many of the tales they have already shared, but many had been nonetheless shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the best levels of management.

“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 in the report. “This is a denomination that's by and thru about energy. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any means reflect the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three previous presidents of the convention, a former vp 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 Executive Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government 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 couldn't put together a registry of intercourse offenders because it would go towards the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while preserving it a secret to avoid the opportunity of getting sued. The report additionally includes non-public emails exhibiting how longtime leaders comparable to August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the conference’s legal professional despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be applied in keeping with SBC polity, saying “it would match our polity and current ministries to assist churches on this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “instant motion to signal the Convention’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort in this area.” That same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement 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 reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not learn the report yet. Attempts to achieve Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly chose to remain on the identical path all these years,” said Tiffany Thigpen, whose story of sexual abuse in a Southern Baptist church is detailed in the report. “It buoys what we’ve been saying all along. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the weight.”

During Govt Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators access to information of conversations on legal matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went towards the advice of convention legal professionals and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to believe 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 also 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 convention’s attorneys, who're 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 e mail that he had obtained “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 precedence cannot be the most recent 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 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 Government Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored hard to try to make something occur, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion into a complicit accomplice for their very own decision to choose institutional safety over the safety of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual meeting, comes simply weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated talk about next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody offering dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be ready to take meaningful steps to change our culture as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in an announcement.

Since many years of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of priests they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the switch of abusers to other churches. 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 crisis, wrote to the SBC and Government Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could be falling into a number of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to be taught from Catholic errors 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 Executive Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over local churches” however that they might attempt to use their “influence” to supply protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page did not 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 job force on the difficulty and mentioned that the report reveals a need for establishments just like the SBC to seek outside expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It shows a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to a long time of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander said. “The query Southern Baptists should ask is, ‘How might this happen?’”

The difficulty of sex abuse was a outstanding 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 & Non secular Liberty Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in a similar method 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 mentioned. “Individuals will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned 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 20 years preventing for reform.