Southern Baptist leaders coated up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

Leaders within the Southern Baptist Conference on Sunday launched a major third-party investigation that discovered that sex abuse survivors were typically ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of practically 300 pages include stunning new particulars about specific abuse circumstances 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 might maintain a database of offenders to stop more abuse when top leaders have been secretly holding a private list for years.

The report — the first investigation of its variety in a large Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense inside battles over handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different non secular institutions in the United States, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the entire variety of abuse circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly twenty years, survivors of abuse and different concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and different accused abusers who had been within the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Lots of the circumstances referred to in the report had been considered outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization known as Guidepost Solutions on 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 were involved more with protecting the establishment from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“While stories of abuse had been minimized, and survivors had been ignored or even vilified, revelations got here to mild in recent years that some senior SBC leaders had protected or even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

While the report focuses totally on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors came forward, it also states that a main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman only one month after he accomplished 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 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 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 by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that earlier than May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he referred to as the details 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, lots of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would verify the info around many of the tales they've already shared, but many had been nonetheless shocked to see the sample of coverups by the highest levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated 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 within the report. “This can be a denomination that is via and through about energy. It's misappropriated energy. It does not in any approach reflect the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I am 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 chairman and the previous head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 centered on actions by the SBC’s Govt Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Executive 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 have been instructed the denomination couldn't put together a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it might go against the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders whereas protecting it a secret to avoid the possibility of getting sued. The report also includes non-public 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 e mail, the conference’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be implemented consistent with SBC polity, saying “it will fit our polity and present ministries to assist church buildings in this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “speedy motion to sign the Convention’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort on this area.” That same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to give extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a few key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not read the report yet. Makes an attempt to reach Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they really blindly chose to remain on the same 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the load.”

Throughout Executive Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to information of conversations on authorized matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went in opposition to the advice of convention attorneys and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a big 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 additionally 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 conference’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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

In keeping with the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then said: “Our precedence can't be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't instantly return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who told SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in different Southern Baptist churches 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 Govt Committee “turned his back to her during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored exhausting to attempt to make something happen, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” mentioned Brown, who's a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith right into a complicit companion for their very own decision to choose institutional protection over the protection of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual assembly, comes just weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected focus on subsequent steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embrace providing dedicated survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be ready to take meaningful steps to alter our culture as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in an announcement.

Since decades of sex abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of clergymen they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to different 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, according to the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into among the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to be taught from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually haven't any authority over native church buildings” however that they would attempt to make use of their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web 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 activity drive on the problem and stated that the report reveals a need for institutions just like the SBC to seek exterior experience on sex abuse.

“It reveals a degree of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional degree that has led to a long time of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander said. “The query Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How may this occur?’”

The problem of intercourse abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked private letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in the same 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 is not all Southern Baptists, look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said he hopes the SBC will think about changing 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 previous twenty years fighting for reform.