Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of almost 300 pages embody surprising new particulars about particular abuse instances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may preserve a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when high leaders had been secretly preserving a private checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its kind in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense inner battles over how one can deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different non secular institutions 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 entire variety of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost 20 years, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and other accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Lots of the cases referred to within the report were thought of 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 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 once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been involved extra with defending the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

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

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors got here ahead, it also states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady 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 vp on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama City Beach, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the woman however acknowledged that he had interactions along 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've by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that before Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he referred to as the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

Southern Baptists have been immersed in their own sex abuse scandals. Now, they’re debating their response.

Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the info round most of the tales they've already shared, but many have been nonetheless shocked to see the sample of coverups by the very best ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid feminine executive on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “It is a denomination that's through and thru about power. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any method replicate the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three previous presidents of the conference, a former vice president 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 Government Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual finances that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings present, Southern Baptists have been advised the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it could go against the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders whereas conserving it a secret to keep away from the potential of getting sued. The report also consists of personal emails showing how longtime leaders resembling 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 conference’s attorney sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be carried out per SBC polity, saying “it would fit our polity and current ministries to help churches on this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he beneficial “instant motion to sign the Conference’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort on this area.” That same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to offer extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the nationwide institutional response to intercourse 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 chose to remain on the same path all these years,” mentioned 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 load.”

During Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against 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 convention attorneys and will 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 Govt 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 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 sex abuse claims

In keeping with the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 e mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then stated: “Our priority cannot be the most recent cultural disaster.” Floyd did not immediately return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who informed 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 during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked exhausting to attempt to make one thing occur, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith right into a complicit companion for their very own resolution to choose institutional protection over the protection of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual assembly, comes just weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected discuss subsequent steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embrace providing devoted survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be ready to take meaningful steps to change our tradition because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, stated in an announcement.

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church had been 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 stop the transfer of abusers to different church buildings. 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 Government Committee presidents, in line with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could be falling into a few of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should learn from Catholic mistakes and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Government Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly haven't any authority over native churches” but that they might try to make use of their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting 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 didn't instantly 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 pressure on the problem and mentioned that the report exhibits a need for establishments just like the SBC to hunt outside expertise on intercourse abuse.

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

The problem of sex abuse was a prominent theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place 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 an analogous 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 said. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will consider 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 two decades fighting for reform.