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

The Southern Baptist Convention on Thursday released a once-secret and lengthy checklist of accused sex abusers — several of whom are within the Midwest — inside the denomination.

The 205-page list is a compilation of ministers and other church workers who've been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The record is described as a “fluid, working doc” that was also incomplete but largely pulls details about abusers from published news reviews.

The publication of the checklist comes after the release Sunday of a 300-page report by an unbiased investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for decades have received reviews of sexual abuse committed by church workers, pastors and others. However these studies have been largely stored secret and, quite than performing upon and investigating reports of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

“The whole thing needs to be seen for what it's,” wrote former Southern Baptist Conference government committee member and common counsel D. August Boto in an inner 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 comparable in many ways to what the Catholic church continues to face. Leaders in each faiths systematically hid information about sexual misconduct, appeared to indicate extra concern about their own authorized 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 the first to warn of his own denomination’s clergy sex abuse disaster, wrote a letter to SBC leadership conveying his concern that Southern Baptist leaders have been repeating the failures of the Catholic church in dealing with intercourse abuse.

Doyle was instructed, “Southern Baptist leaders truly have no authority over native churches,” a response that Doyle thought to be dismissive, in line with the investigative report. 

That very same yr, 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, according to the report, and witnesses at the conference recalled little about it except to specific their opinion that it might “violate native church autonomy.”

Finally, a staffer for the SBC government committee since 2007 had maintained an inventory of accused ministers and church staff, but it was stored hidden from the public and even SBC executive committee trustees, in response to the report.

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

“Every entry on this listing reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by sexual abuse,” stated 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 therapeutic, and that church buildings will make the most of this checklist proactively to guard and look after probably the most susceptible amongst us.”

Attorneys for the SBC executive committee researched the checklist of accused abusers, taking steps to verify data it contained. It left unredacted entries about alleged abusers that might be confirmed, while redacting entries where somebody was acquitted or did not have a final disposition, in addition to info that might determine victims.

Missouri men feature prominently on the listing. They embody:

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