Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages include surprising new details about particular abuse instances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they could keep a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when top leaders were secretly maintaining a non-public checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its sort in a large Protestant denomination like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inner battles over learn how to deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with different non secular institutions in the USA, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the full number of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost twenty years, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and other accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Most of the instances referred to in the report had been thought-about outside 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 called Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “only to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been concerned more with defending the establishment from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors got here forward, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl 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 woman throughout a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the girl but 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 in the Guidepost report. I have never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, according to a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that before Might 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he called 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.

Sex abuse survivors, a lot of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the details round most of the tales they've already shared, but many have been nonetheless shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the very best ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid female govt at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “It is a denomination that is by way of and thru about power. It is misappropriated energy. It does not in any approach reflect the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three previous presidents of the convention, a former vice president and the former head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 focused on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual finances that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been told the denomination could not put together a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it might go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while retaining it a secret to keep away from the potential of getting sued. The report also contains private emails showing how longtime leaders such as August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the convention’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be applied in line with SBC polity, saying “it would match our polity and present ministries to help church buildings in this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “instant action to sign the Conference’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort on this area.” That same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to give more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned 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 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 weight.”

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

The debate 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 Government Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally as soon as served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The choice 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

Based on the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then acknowledged: “Our precedence cannot be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't instantly return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who informed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in other Southern Baptist church buildings 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 Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked exhausting to try to make one thing occur, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith right into a complicit companion for their own choice to decide on institutional safety over the safety of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual assembly, comes simply weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected talk about subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include offering dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be ready to take significant steps to alter our culture as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in a statement.

Since a long time of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of monks they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the switch of abusers to different churches. 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 intercourse abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Government Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could possibly 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 study from Catholic errors and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Executive 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'd attempt to make use of their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant body 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 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 difficulty and said that the report exhibits a need for institutions like the SBC to seek outdoors expertise on sex abuse.

“It exhibits a degree of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to many years of survivors being victimized and hurt,” Denhollander mentioned. “The question Southern Baptists should ask is, ‘How may this happen?’”

The difficulty of sex abuse was a prominent theme in leaked personal 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 obtain Sunday’s report in an analogous 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 said. “Individuals will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said he hopes the SBC will consider replacing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s home state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the previous twenty years preventing for reform.