Southern Baptist leaders lined up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages include stunning new details about specific abuse instances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for 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 top leaders had been secretly preserving a non-public record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its type in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over the best way to deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other religious 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 whole variety of abuse instances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and different concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and other accused abusers who had been in the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Most of the circumstances referred to within the report had been thought of outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization known as Guidepost Options 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 have been concerned extra with protecting the establishment from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses totally on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors got here forward, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl 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 at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama City Seashore, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the lady but 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 anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in response to an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that earlier than Could 13, he was not aware 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, a lot of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the details around lots of the tales they have already shared, however many have been still surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the very best ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female government at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “It is a denomination that is by means of and thru about power. It is misappropriated energy. It does not in any manner mirror the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report also names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with 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 targeted on actions by the SBC’s Govt Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government 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 had been told the denomination could not put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders because it would go against the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders whereas maintaining it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report also contains private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders equivalent to August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the convention’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be carried out in step with SBC polity, saying “it might fit our polity and present ministries to assist churches in this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “immediate motion to signal the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort in this space.” That very same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to give more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the nationwide institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not read the report yet. Attempts 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,” said 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 carry the burden.”

During Govt Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to data of conversations on authorized matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went towards the recommendation of conference attorneys and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting 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 also 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 convention’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

In line with the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then acknowledged: “Our priority cannot be the latest cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't instantly 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 church buildings 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 Executive Committee “turned his again to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked onerous to attempt to make one thing occur, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” mentioned Brown, who is a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion into a complicit companion for their own determination to decide on institutional safety over the safety of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual assembly, comes simply weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected focus on next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace providing dedicated survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be able to take meaningful steps to vary our culture as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, stated in a statement.

Since decades of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of monks they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the switch of abusers to different churches. Not like 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 sex abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, according to the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders might be falling into a number of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should study from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really haven't any authority over local church buildings” but that they might attempt to make use of their “affect” to provide protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” 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 process pressure on the problem and stated that the report exhibits a necessity for institutions just like the SBC to seek outdoors expertise on sex abuse.

“It exhibits a stage 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 could this happen?’”

The difficulty of intercourse 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 policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an identical 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 on this report are breathtaking,” Moore mentioned. “Folks will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will contemplate replacing 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 fighting for reform.