Southern Baptist leaders coated up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages include surprising new particulars about specific abuse cases and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they might maintain a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when top leaders have been secretly keeping a private list for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its form in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different spiritual establishments in the USA, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the full variety of abuse circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly two decades, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and other accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Lots of the circumstances referred to within the report have been thought-about outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company known as Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “only to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who have been concerned more with protecting the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“Whereas stories of abuse have been minimized, and survivors were 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 primarily on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors came forward, it additionally states that a major 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 convention. The report finds that Johnny Hunt, a beloved Georgia-based Southern Baptist pastor who has been a senior vice president on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl during a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the lady 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've never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, according to an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that earlier than Could 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he known as the main points 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, a lot of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the information round many of the stories they've already shared, but many have been still stunned to see the sample of coverups by the very best levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female executive 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's through and through about power. It is misappropriated energy. It does not in any approach mirror the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report also names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three previous presidents of the convention, 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 Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings present, Southern Baptists had been informed the denomination could not put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it might go against the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while preserving it a secret to avoid the opportunity of getting sued. The report additionally consists of private emails showing how longtime leaders resembling August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the conference’s attorney despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be carried out consistent with SBC polity, saying “it would fit our polity and present ministries to help church buildings in this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “fast motion to sign the Conference’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort in this area.” That same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to provide more democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to sex 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 a lot about how they really 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 in the report. “It buoys what we’ve been saying all along. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the burden.”

Throughout Govt Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to records of conversations on legal issues among the committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went against the advice of conference attorneys and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to consider 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 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 throughout the report.

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

In keeping with the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then said: “Our precedence cannot be the most recent cultural disaster.” 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 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 Government Committee “turned his back to her during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked exhausting to attempt to make one thing happen, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion right into a complicit accomplice for their very own decision to decide on institutional protection over the safety of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual meeting, comes just weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected focus on subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody providing devoted survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be able to take significant steps to change our culture as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, mentioned in a statement.

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of priests they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to other church buildings. 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 Govt Committee presidents, based on the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into a few of the identical 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 children safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Executive Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually haven't any authority over local churches” but that they'd try to make use of their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page did not 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 power on the problem and said that the report reveals a need for institutions just like the SBC to hunt outside expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It shows a stage of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to many years of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander said. “The query Southern Baptists have to ask is, ‘How may this happen?’”

The problem of sex abuse was a prominent theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Commission. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an analogous 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 on this report are breathtaking,” Moore stated. “People will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the great 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 house state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the previous two decades preventing for reform.