Eight Missouri ministers accused of intercourse abuse in Southern Baptist Convention report • Missouri Independent

The Southern Baptist Conference on Thursday released a once-secret and prolonged record of accused sex abusers — a number of of whom are in the Midwest — within the denomination.

The 205-page record is a compilation of ministers and other church employees who've been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The checklist is described as a “fluid, working doc” that was also incomplete however largely pulls information about abusers from printed news reports.

The publication of the listing comes after the release Sunday of a 300-page report by an independent investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for many years have obtained reports of sexual abuse committed by church workers, pastors and others. But these reports had been largely kept secret and, somewhat than acting upon and investigating experiences of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

“The whole thing needs to be seen for what it is,” wrote former Southern Baptist Convention executive committee member and general counsel D. August Boto in an inside e-mail that was revealed within the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

The disaster rocking the Southern Baptist denomination this week is similar in many ways to what the Catholic church continues to face. Leaders in each faiths systematically hid details about sexual misconduct, appeared to point out more concern about their own legal legal responsibility than the victims and at times didn't expel accused abusers from positions of authority.

In 2007, Father Thomas Doyle, a Catholic priest credited as one of many first to warn of his own denomination’s clergy sex abuse crisis, wrote a letter to SBC leadership conveying his concern that Southern Baptist leaders had been repeating the failures of the Catholic church in coping with sex abuse.

Doyle was informed, “Southern Baptist leaders truly don't have any authority over native churches,” a response that Doyle considered dismissive, in line with the investigative report. 

That same year, on the SBC convention in San Antonio, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson made a movement to create a database of Southern Baptist clergy who had been convicted or credibly accused of, or had confessed to sexual abuse. The proposal was meant to “help in stopping any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, in accordance with the report, and witnesses on the convention recalled little about it except to specific their opinion that it will “violate native church autonomy.”

In the end, a staffer for the SBC government committee since 2007 had maintained a listing of accused ministers and church employees, but it was stored hidden from the general public and even SBC government committee trustees, according to the report.

Southern Baptist leaders stated publicizing the list of credibly accused abusers represented “an preliminary, however necessary, step in direction of addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform in the Conference.”

“Every entry on this record reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by sexual abuse,” said a joint assertion from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, each SBC government committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of those heinous acts find hope and healing, and that churches will utilize this listing proactively to guard and look after essentially the most vulnerable amongst us.”

Attorneys for the SBC executive committee researched the list of accused abusers, taking steps to confirm info it contained. It left unredacted entries about alleged abusers that might be confirmed, while redacting entries where somebody was acquitted or didn't have a final disposition, in addition to information that could determine victims.

Missouri males characteristic prominently on the record. They embrace:

This story comes from the Midwest Newsroom, an investigative journalism collaboration together with IPR, KCUR 89.3, Nebraska Public Media News, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. For more in-depth information from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, we invite you to comply with us on Twitter.