Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of almost 300 pages include stunning new particulars about specific abuse instances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may maintain a database of offenders to forestall extra abuse when prime leaders have been secretly retaining a personal listing for years.

The report — the first investigation of its form in a massive Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over the best way to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other spiritual institutions in the United States, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the entire number of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly 20 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 other accused abusers who had been in the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Most of the cases referred to within the report have been thought-about exterior 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 corporation referred to as Guidepost Solutions on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “solely 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 defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“While tales of abuse had been minimized, and survivors had been ignored and even vilified, revelations came to light in recent times 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 issues when survivors came ahead, it also states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman only one month after he accomplished 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 at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman throughout a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the lady however acknowledged that he had interactions along with her. After the report was launched, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted a press release on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth within the Guidepost report. I've never abused anyone.”

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 Could 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he referred to 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.

Intercourse abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the information around many of the tales they have already shared, however many were still surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the highest ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine govt on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “It is a denomination that is through and through about energy. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any method reflect the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three previous presidents of the conference, a former vice president 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 churches function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes more 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 told the denomination couldn't put together a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it could go against the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while conserving it a secret to avoid the possibility of getting sued. The report additionally consists of private emails showing how longtime leaders corresponding to August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the convention’s legal professional despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be implemented in step with SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and current ministries to assist churches on this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “instant action to signal the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in 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 provide more democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the national institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not learn the report yet. Attempts to achieve Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot about how they actually blindly chose to stay on the same 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 along. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the burden.”

Throughout Executive Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to records of conversations on legal matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went towards the recommendation of convention attorneys and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to believe the Government 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 also as soon as served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The decision over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who are named throughout the report.

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

In accordance with the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then acknowledged: “Our precedence cannot be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who advised SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in different Southern Baptist churches in multiple 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 during her speech and another chortled.”

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

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual assembly, comes just weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected talk about next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody offering 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 statement.

Since many years of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of monks they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent 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 Government Committee presidents, in line with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders might be falling into among the same 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 action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over local church buildings” but that they would try to make use of their “influence” to supply protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of organising 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 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 task pressure on the difficulty and said that the report shows a necessity for institutions just like the SBC to hunt outdoors experience on sex abuse.

“It shows a level 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 need to ask is, ‘How may this happen?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a prominent theme in leaked private letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Fee. 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. “Individuals will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern 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 twenty years combating for reform.