Eight Missouri ministers accused of sex abuse in Southern Baptist Conference report • Missouri Unbiased

The Southern Baptist Convention on Thursday released a once-secret and lengthy record of accused intercourse abusers — a number of of whom are within the Midwest — within the denomination.

The 205-page checklist is a compilation of ministers and other church employees who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The list is described as a “fluid, working doc” that was also incomplete but largely pulls information about abusers from published news studies.

The publication of the list comes after the discharge Sunday of a 300-page report by an independent investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for decades have acquired reports of sexual abuse dedicated by church employees, pastors and others. However those stories were largely stored secret and, fairly than performing upon and investigating studies of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

“The entire thing must be seen for what it's,” wrote former Southern Baptist Convention govt committee member and basic counsel D. August Boto in an inside electronic mail that was published in the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

The crisis rocking the Southern Baptist denomination this week is similar in many ways to what the Catholic church continues to face. Leaders in each faiths systematically hid information about sexual misconduct, appeared to indicate extra concern about their own legal legal responsibility than the victims and at times didn't expel accused abusers from positions of authority.

In 2007, Father Thomas Doyle, a Catholic priest credited as one of the first to warn of his personal denomination’s clergy sex abuse disaster, wrote a letter to SBC management conveying his concern that Southern Baptist leaders had been repeating the failures of the Catholic church in coping with sex abuse.

Doyle was told, “Southern Baptist leaders truly don't have any authority over native churches,” a response that Doyle considered dismissive, in line with the investigative report. 

That very same year, at the SBC convention in San Antonio, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson made a movement to create a database of Southern Baptist clergy who had been convicted or credibly accused of, or had confessed to sexual abuse. The proposal was meant to “help in preventing any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, in line with the report, and witnesses at the conference recalled little about it besides to express their opinion that it will “violate local church autonomy.”

Ultimately, a staffer for the SBC govt committee since 2007 had maintained an inventory of accused ministers and church workers, but it was stored hidden from the public and even SBC government committee trustees, in keeping with the report.

Southern Baptist leaders mentioned publicizing the record of credibly accused abusers represented “an preliminary, however essential, step in the direction of addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform in the Convention.”

“Every entry in this record reminds us of the devastation and destruction led to by sexual abuse,” stated a joint statement from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, both SBC govt committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of those heinous acts find hope and healing, and that churches will make the most of this checklist proactively to protect and look after probably the most weak among us.”

Attorneys for the SBC executive committee researched the list of accused abusers, taking steps to confirm info it contained. It left unredacted entries about alleged abusers that might be confirmed, while redacting entries where somebody was acquitted or didn't have a remaining disposition, as well as info that could determine victims.

Missouri males function prominently on the listing. They include:

This story comes from the Midwest Newsroom, an investigative journalism collaboration together with IPR, KCUR 89.3, Nebraska Public Media News, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. For extra in-depth news from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, we invite you to follow us on Twitter.