Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Conference on Sunday launched a major third-party investigation that discovered that sex abuse survivors were typically ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by prime clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of almost 300 pages embrace stunning new particulars about particular abuse circumstances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may maintain a database of offenders to stop more abuse when prime leaders have been secretly preserving a personal checklist for years.

The report — the first investigation of its kind in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense inside battles over how you can handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with different religious establishments in the USA, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the whole number of abuse cases among 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 child molesters and other accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Most of the instances referred to in the report had been thought-about exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company referred to as 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 extra with defending the institution from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“While tales of abuse have been minimized, and survivors have been ignored and even vilified, revelations got here 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 points when survivors got here ahead, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl only one month after he completed 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 girl however acknowledged that he had interactions along with her. After the report was launched, 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 by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, in accordance with a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he called the small print 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.

Sex abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the details round most of the tales they've already shared, but many have been still surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the best levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine government on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “It is a denomination that is through and thru about power. It's misappropriated power. It does not in any manner mirror the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I'm 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 former head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 focused on actions by the SBC’s Government Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings present, Southern Baptists were advised the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of sex offenders as a result of it might go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or the way it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders whereas retaining it a secret to keep away from the potential for getting sued. The report additionally consists of private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders resembling August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the convention’s attorney despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be applied according to SBC polity, saying “it will match our polity and present ministries to assist church buildings in this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “rapid motion to signal the Conference’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort in this space.” 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 just a few key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report yet. Makes an attempt to reach Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate so much about how they actually blindly selected to remain 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the burden.”

During Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to data of conversations on legal matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went against the recommendation of convention attorneys and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to imagine the Executive 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 Govt Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally as soon as 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 conference’s attorneys, who're named throughout the report.

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

In keeping with the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 e mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then acknowledged: “Our priority can't be the newest 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 different Southern Baptist churches in multiple 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 Govt Committee “turned his back to her throughout her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored laborious to try to make one thing occur, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith into a complicit partner for their own choice to choose institutional safety over the safety of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual meeting, comes just weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated discuss subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace offering dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be ready to take meaningful steps to vary our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in an announcement.

Since many years of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of clergymen they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to other 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 crisis, wrote to the SBC and Government Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders may very well be falling into among the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to learn 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 leading the Government Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over local church buildings” however that they would try to use their “affect” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. 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 issue and stated that the report reveals a need for establishments 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 stage that has led to a long time of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander said. “The query Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How might this occur?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a prominent 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 & Spiritual Liberty Fee. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an analogous approach 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. “Individuals will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated he hopes the SBC will think about 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 20 years fighting for reform.