Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages include shocking new details about particular abuse cases and shine a lightweight 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 may maintain a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when top leaders have been secretly preserving a personal list for years.

The report — the first investigation of its type in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over how one can deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together 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 number of abuse cases amongst 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 baby molesters and other accused abusers who had been in the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Many of the circumstances referred to within the report have been thought-about outdoors 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 referred to as Guidepost Solutions on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “solely to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been concerned more with protecting the institution from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“Whereas stories of abuse were minimized, and survivors had 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.

Whereas the report focuses totally on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors came ahead, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman 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 vp at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady during a Panama City Seaside, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the lady but acknowledged that he had interactions together with her. After the report was launched, 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've never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that earlier than Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he referred to as the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

Southern Baptists have been immersed in their own intercourse abuse scandals. Now, they’re debating their response.

Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would verify the details around many of the stories they have already shared, however many have been still shocked to see the sample of coverups by the best levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female govt on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This is a denomination that's by means of and through about power. It is misappropriated energy. It does not in any approach 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 past 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 centered on actions by the SBC’s Government Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual finances that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been advised the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders as a result of it would go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders whereas holding it a secret to avoid the possibility of getting sued. The report additionally contains non-public emails showing how longtime leaders equivalent to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the conference’s lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be carried out per SBC polity, saying “it will match our polity and current ministries to help church buildings on this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “quick action to sign the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this space.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

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 reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a few key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the national institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not learn the report but. Attempts to succeed in Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

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

Throughout Government Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to data of conversations on authorized matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went against the advice of convention lawyers and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to imagine 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 also led to the resignation of the Executive Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also once served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The choice over attorney-client privilege additionally 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 sex abuse claims

In response to the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 e mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then stated: “Our priority cannot be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd did not instantly 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 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 Executive Committee “turned his again to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked arduous to attempt to make one thing occur, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith into a complicit companion for their very own choice to choose institutional protection over the protection of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual meeting, comes simply weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated talk about next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost include providing devoted survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be able to take significant steps to alter our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, mentioned in a press release.

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 printed lists of priests they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the transfer 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 intercourse abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders could be falling into a few of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex 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 youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly haven't any authority over local churches” but that they might try to make use of their “affect” to provide protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant physique 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 process drive on the problem and said that the report shows a need for establishments just like the SBC to hunt exterior experience on intercourse abuse.

“It exhibits a stage of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and hurt,” Denhollander stated. “The query Southern Baptists have to ask is, ‘How could this occur?’”

The difficulty of sex 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 & Spiritual Liberty Commission. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in a similar solution 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 is not all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample 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 residence state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past two decades preventing for reform.