Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages embody stunning new details about particular abuse circumstances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could maintain a database of offenders to stop more abuse when top leaders had been secretly keeping a personal list for years.

The report — the first investigation of its sort in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over the way to deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along 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 crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the overall number of abuse instances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and other accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Lots of the cases referred to in the report were considered 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 an organization called Guidepost Options at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “only 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 legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“Whereas tales of abuse had 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 dealt with abuse issues when survivors came forward, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady just 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 vice chairman at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the woman but acknowledged that he had interactions 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 have never abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in keeping with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before May 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he known as the details of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would verify the details round most of the stories they've already shared, but many were nonetheless surprised to see the sample of coverups by the best ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine executive at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “It is a denomination that's by and through about energy. It's misappropriated power. It doesn't in any way replicate 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 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 Government Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual finances that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been advised the denomination couldn't put together a registry of sex offenders because it could go against the denomination’s polity — or the way it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders whereas conserving it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report also consists of non-public emails showing how longtime leaders resembling August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e mail, the conference’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be carried out in step with SBC polity, saying “it will fit our polity and current ministries to help church buildings in this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “rapid motion to signal the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more 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 present more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’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 read the report yet. Makes an attempt to reach Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot about how they actually blindly chose to stay on the identical path all these years,” said 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 burden.”

During Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued towards 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 in opposition to the advice of convention attorneys and could 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 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 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 are named all through the report.

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According to the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then said: “Our priority cannot be the newest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't instantly return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who advised SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in different Southern Baptist church buildings in multiple 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 Govt Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked hard to attempt to make something happen, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith right into a complicit partner for their very own determination to decide on institutional safety over the protection of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual assembly, comes just weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated discuss subsequent steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embrace providing dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be ready to take significant steps to vary our culture as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in a press release.

Since a long time of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of monks they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the switch of abusers to different church buildings. Not like 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 disaster, wrote to the SBC and Govt Committee presidents, in keeping with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders may very well be falling into a number of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should be taught from Catholic mistakes and take action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Government Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly have no authority over local churches” however that they would try to use their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web page did not immediately 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 activity pressure on the problem and mentioned that the report reveals a necessity for institutions just like the SBC to seek outside expertise on sex abuse.

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

The problem of intercourse abuse was a prominent 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 & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in the same strategy 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 said. “People will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated he hopes the SBC will think about changing 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 two decades fighting for reform.