Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of almost 300 pages include shocking new details about particular abuse circumstances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they could keep a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when high leaders have been secretly conserving a personal listing for years.

The report — the first investigation of its type in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense inner battles over how to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with different non secular establishments in america, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total variety of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly twenty years, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and other accused abusers who have been in the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Lots of the instances referred to within the report have been thought-about outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers were criminally charged.

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

“While tales of abuse were minimized, and survivors were 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 points when survivors got here ahead, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady just one month after he completed 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 on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman throughout a Panama City Seaside, 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 together with her. After the report was released, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted an announcement on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth in the Guidepost report. I have never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, in accordance with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than Might 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he called the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Intercourse abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would affirm the details round many of the tales they have already shared, however many had been nonetheless surprised to see the sample of coverups by the best ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid feminine govt on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “This can be a denomination that's by means of and through about power. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any way reflect the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three previous presidents of the convention, a former vp 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 Govt Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual price range that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been advised the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of sex offenders as a result of it will go towards the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders whereas keeping it a secret to keep away from the opportunity of getting sued. The report additionally consists of personal emails exhibiting how longtime leaders similar to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e mail, the convention’s legal professional despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be carried out according to SBC polity, saying “it will fit our polity and present ministries to help churches on this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “rapid motion to sign the Conference’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort in this area.” That same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to present 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 number of key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the national institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report but. Makes an attempt to succeed in 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the load.”

Throughout Government Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to information of conversations on legal issues among the committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went against the recommendation of conference lawyers and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to consider the Govt 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 additionally led to the resignation of the Executive Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also as soon as 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're named throughout the report.

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Based on the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then said: “Our priority can't be the newest cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't 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 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 Govt Committee “turned his back to her throughout her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored hard to attempt to make one thing happen, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith right into a complicit companion for their own choice to choose institutional safety over the safety of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual assembly, comes just weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected discuss subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody offering devoted survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be able to take meaningful steps to alter our culture as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in an announcement.

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of clergymen they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the switch of abusers to different church buildings. In contrast to 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 Govt Committee presidents, in keeping with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders may very well be falling into some of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to study from Catholic errors and take motion early on to implement structural reforms so as to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really haven't any authority over native churches” but that they would try to use their “affect” to provide protections. In an article, Web 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.” 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 activity force on the issue and said that the report exhibits a need for institutions like the SBC to hunt exterior experience on sex abuse.

“It exhibits a degree of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional degree that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander mentioned. “The query Southern Baptists should ask is, ‘How may this occur?’”

The problem of intercourse abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Fee. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in a similar method 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. “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 take into account replacing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s house state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the previous twenty years combating for reform.