Southern Baptist leaders covered up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages include stunning new particulars about specific abuse instances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they might maintain a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when high leaders had been secretly protecting a personal list for years.

The report — the first investigation of its kind in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense inside battles over methods to deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different spiritual establishments in the United States, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the whole variety of abuse circumstances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost 20 years, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and different accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Most of the cases referred to within the report had been considered 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 company called Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “solely to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were involved extra with protecting the establishment from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse points when survivors came ahead, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman just 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 girl throughout a Panama City Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the girl however acknowledged that he had interactions with her. After the report was launched, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted a statement 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 May 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that before Might 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he called the small print 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, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the info around many of the stories they've already shared, but many had been nonetheless surprised to see the sample of coverups by the highest levels of leadership.

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

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

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 targeted on actions by the SBC’s Government Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been advised the denomination could not put together a registry of intercourse offenders because it would go towards the denomination’s polity — or the way it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders whereas retaining it a secret to keep away from the opportunity of getting sued. The report also consists of private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders reminiscent of August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the conference’s lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be carried out per SBC polity, saying “it will fit our polity and current ministries to help church buildings in this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “speedy action to sign the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this area.” That same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to provide more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not learn the report but. Attempts to achieve Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they really blindly selected to remain 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 hold the load.”

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

The debate over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to consider 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 Government Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also once served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The choice over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who're named throughout the report.

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

In accordance with the report, Floyd informed 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 crisis.” He then acknowledged: “Our priority can't be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd did not immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who informed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in other 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 Government Committee “turned his again to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored onerous to try to make something occur, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who's a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion into a complicit associate for their own choice 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 anticipated discuss next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody offering devoted survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be able to take meaningful steps to change our tradition because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in an announcement.

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of priests they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the transfer of abusers to other churches. Not like the Catholic Church, the SBC has a non-hierarchical construction.

In March 2007, the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a priest and canon lawyer who first warned of the looming Catholic sex abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in line with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders may very well be falling into a few of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should be taught from Catholic errors 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 Government Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly haven't any authority over local churches” however that they would attempt to make use of their “influence” to provide protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page didn't instantly 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 pressure on the problem and mentioned that the report exhibits a necessity for institutions like the SBC to seek exterior experience on intercourse abuse.

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

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a distinguished 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 & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in a similar way 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 said. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

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