Southern Baptist leaders covered up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of almost 300 pages include surprising new particulars about specific 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 also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could maintain a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when top leaders have been secretly keeping a personal checklist for years.

The report — the first investigation of its form in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense internal battles over how you can deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other non secular institutions in america, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the entire number of abuse cases amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly 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 different accused abusers who had been in the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Lots of the circumstances referred to in the report had been thought of outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company called Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “solely 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 liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“While stories of abuse have been minimized, and survivors had been ignored and 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.

While the report focuses totally on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors came ahead, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist leader 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 vp at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady during a Panama Metropolis Seashore, 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 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've never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in keeping with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he called the details of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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

Intercourse abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would verify the info round lots of the stories they have already shared, however many were still stunned to see the sample of coverups by the highest levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female executive at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “This is a denomination that's by means of and through about power. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any approach replicate the Jesus I see within 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 conference, a former vice chairman 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. Though Southern Baptist churches function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual price range that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been told the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders because it would go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders while retaining it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report also contains non-public emails showing how longtime leaders corresponding to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the conference’s legal professional despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be carried out consistent with SBC polity, saying “it might fit our polity and current ministries to help church buildings on this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “instant action to signal the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort on this area.” That same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

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 exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report yet. Makes an attempt to achieve Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they really blindly selected to stay 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 against waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to data of conversations on legal issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went in opposition to the advice of conference attorneys and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to consider 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 choice over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

In response to the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 email 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 acknowledged: “Our priority can't be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who told SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in other Southern Baptist church buildings in a number of states, has long 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 Executive Committee “turned his back to her during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored hard to try to make one thing occur, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” mentioned Brown, who's a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith into a complicit partner for their very own decision to decide on institutional safety over the safety of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual assembly, comes just weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated focus on subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include providing dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be able to take meaningful steps to change our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, mentioned in an announcement.

Since a long time of intercourse abuse and coverups in 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 forestall the switch of abusers to different churches. In contrast to 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 sex abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in response to the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders might be falling into a number of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should learn from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Executive Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually haven't any authority over local churches” but that they'd attempt to make use of their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web page didn't instantly return a request for comment.

Rachael Denhollander, a former USA gymnast who outed Larry Nassar’s serial sexual assaults, is an adviser on a Southern Baptist task power on the difficulty and mentioned that the report exhibits a need for institutions just like the SBC to seek outside experience on intercourse abuse.

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

The problem of intercourse abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Commission. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in the same option 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. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said he hopes the SBC will consider replacing 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 20 years preventing for reform.