Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages embrace shocking new details about specific abuse cases and shine a light on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may keep a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when high leaders had been secretly conserving a personal list for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its form in a large Protestant denomination like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over tips on how to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other non secular establishments in the United States, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the overall variety of abuse circumstances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost 20 years, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged little one molesters and different accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Most of the instances referred to within the report had been thought-about outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers had been criminally charged.

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

“While tales of abuse were minimized, and survivors had been ignored or even vilified, revelations came to light lately 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 got here forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady only one month after he completed 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 chairman on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman throughout a Panama City Beach, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the woman but 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 statement on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth in the Guidepost report. I have never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that before Might 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he known 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 launch would affirm the facts round many of the tales they have already shared, but many had been still shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the best ranges 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 feminine govt on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “This is a denomination that is through and through about energy. It's misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any manner mirror 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, together with three past 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 centered on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been advised the denomination could not put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders because it would go towards the denomination’s polity — or the way it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while holding it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report additionally includes non-public emails showing how longtime leaders resembling August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the convention’s attorney despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be carried out in line with SBC polity, saying “it could fit our polity and current ministries to help churches on this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “immediate motion to signal the Convention’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort in this area.” That 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 reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not read the report but. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much 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 in the report. “It buoys what we’ve been saying all along. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the burden.”

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

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to believe 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 Government 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 also led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who're named throughout the report.

Newly leaked letter details allegations that Southern Baptist leaders mishandled sex abuse claims

In keeping with the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then said: “Our priority cannot be the most recent cultural disaster.” Floyd did not 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 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 back to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored laborious to try to make something happen, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” mentioned Brown, who is a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith right into a complicit companion for their very own resolution to choose institutional safety over the safety of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual assembly, comes just weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected talk about subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody offering devoted survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be ready to take meaningful steps to alter our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, mentioned in a press release.

Since many years of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of clergymen they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to other church buildings. 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 disaster, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could possibly 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 ought to be taught from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms so as to make children 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 would attempt to make use of 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. 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 force on the problem and mentioned that the report reveals a need for institutions just like the SBC to hunt exterior experience on sex abuse.

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

The problem of intercourse abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an identical 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 isn't all Southern Baptists, look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated he hopes the SBC will take into account changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s dwelling state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the previous two decades combating for reform.