Southern Baptist leaders coated up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Conference on Sunday launched a significant third-party investigation that discovered that sex abuse survivors were typically 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 particular abuse circumstances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they could maintain a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when high leaders were secretly protecting a non-public record for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its kind in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inner battles over handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different spiritual 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 whole variety of abuse instances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost twenty years, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and other accused abusers who have been within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Lots of the cases referred to within 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 corporation referred to as Guidepost Solutions at 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 have been concerned extra with protecting the institution from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“Whereas tales of abuse have been minimized, and survivors had been ignored and even vilified, revelations came to gentle in recent years that some senior SBC leaders had protected and even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

While the report focuses totally on how leaders dealt with abuse points when survivors got here ahead, it also states that a main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl 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 lady throughout a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the lady 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 within the Guidepost report. I have by no means abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in keeping with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that earlier than Might 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he referred to as the small print 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 affirm the facts round lots of the stories they've already shared, but many were nonetheless stunned to see the sample of coverups by the very best levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female government on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This can be a denomination that is by and through about energy. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any manner replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three previous presidents of the conference, a former vice president and the former head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

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

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists were told the denomination could not put together a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it would go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or the way it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders while maintaining it a secret to keep away from the opportunity of getting sued. The report additionally contains personal emails exhibiting how longtime leaders similar to August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the conference’s lawyer sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be implemented in step with SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and current ministries to assist church buildings on this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “quick action to sign the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort on this area.” That very same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to provide extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the nationwide institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report but. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate so much about how they really blindly chose to remain on the same path all these years,” mentioned 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.”

Throughout Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to records of conversations on legal issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went against the recommendation of conference lawyers 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 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 Government 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 convention’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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In response to the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then acknowledged: “Our priority can't be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd did not 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 other Southern Baptist churches 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 back to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked arduous to attempt to make something occur, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion right into a complicit accomplice for their very own choice to choose institutional safety over the safety of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual meeting, comes simply weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected discuss subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include offering dedicated survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be able to take significant steps to change our culture because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in an announcement.

Since many years 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 clergymen they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the transfer of abusers to other 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 Executive Committee presidents, in keeping with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders may very well be falling into a number of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should be taught from Catholic errors and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over native church buildings” but that they might try to use their “affect” to provide protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” 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 job force on the problem and mentioned that the report reveals a need for institutions just like the SBC to seek exterior experience on sex abuse.

“It reveals a stage of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level that has led to a long time of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander mentioned. “The question Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How could 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 said he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in the same technique 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 said. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, 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 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 past 20 years preventing for reform.