Southern Baptist leaders covered up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages embrace shocking new particulars about particular abuse cases and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could keep a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when prime leaders have been secretly conserving a private checklist for years.

The report — the first investigation of its sort in a large Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over tips on how to deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other religious establishments in the United States, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the whole variety of abuse cases amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly twenty years, survivors of abuse and different concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged little one 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 thought-about outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company called Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “solely to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were concerned more with defending the establishment from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“While stories of abuse have been minimized, and survivors have been ignored and even vilified, revelations got here to light in recent years 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 main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman just 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 vice president on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman throughout a Panama Metropolis 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 together 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 within the Guidepost report. I have never abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, according to a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned 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.”

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 affirm the details around many of the stories they have already shared, but many have been still shocked to see the sample of coverups by the very best ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine govt 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 means of and thru about power. It's misappropriated energy. It does not in any way reflect the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three previous presidents of the conference, a former vice chairman 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 Government Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual price range that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings present, Southern Baptists have been advised the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders because it might go against the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders whereas keeping it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report additionally consists of private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders such as August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

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

For a denomination designed to provide extra 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, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not learn the report yet. Makes an attempt to achieve Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they really blindly selected to remain on the same path all these years,” stated 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 burden.”

Throughout Govt Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to records of conversations on legal issues among the committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went towards the recommendation of convention lawyers and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to imagine 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 Government Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally once 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 conference’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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

In response to 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 acknowledged: “Our priority cannot be the newest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who instructed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in different Southern Baptist churches in multiple 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 during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked hard to attempt to make one thing happen, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion right into a complicit partner for their own choice to decide on institutional protection over the safety of youngsters and congregants.”

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

“We should be ready to take significant steps to change our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in an announcement.

Since a long time 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 priests they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the switch of abusers to other churches. Unlike 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 Govt Committee presidents, in keeping with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders may very well be falling into a number of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should 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 at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly don't have any authority over local church buildings” but that they would try to use their “affect” to provide protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web 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 force on the problem and said that the report reveals a need for institutions just like the SBC to hunt outside expertise on intercourse abuse.

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

The problem 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 coverage arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Commission. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an analogous technique 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 stated. “People will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the nice 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 home state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past twenty years fighting for reform.