Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages embrace shocking 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 in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could maintain a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when high leaders have been secretly holding a personal record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its form in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over how to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other non secular establishments in the United States, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total variety of abuse circumstances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly 20 years, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and different accused abusers who have been within the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Lots of the cases referred to within the report had been thought-about outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization referred to as Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “solely to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were involved more with defending the establishment from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“Whereas stories of abuse have been minimized, and survivors had been ignored and even vilified, revelations came to mild lately 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 ahead, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman just one month after he completed 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 chairman at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl throughout a Panama City Seaside, Fla., trip 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 with her. After the report was released, 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 have never abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he known as the small print of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Intercourse abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would affirm the information around lots of the tales they have already shared, however many have been nonetheless stunned to see the pattern of coverups by the very best levels of leadership.

“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 at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “This can be a denomination that's by means of and through about energy. It is misappropriated power. It does not in any way mirror 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, including three previous presidents of the conference, a former vice chairman 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 Government Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings present, Southern Baptists have been advised the denomination could not put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it will go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or the way it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders whereas maintaining it a secret to keep away from the possibility of getting sued. The report additionally contains private emails showing how longtime leaders similar to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e mail, the convention’s lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be applied consistent with SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and current ministries to help church buildings in this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “quick action to sign the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort in this space.” That same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to provide extra 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 few key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report yet. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they really blindly selected to remain on the same path all these years,” mentioned 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 load.”

Throughout Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators access to data of conversations on legal matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went towards the recommendation of conference lawyers and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk 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 also led to the resignation of the Govt Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also 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.

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

Christa Brown, who instructed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in different Southern Baptist church buildings in a number of 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 again to her during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored exhausting to try to make something happen, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” stated Brown, who's a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion right into a complicit associate for their own resolution to choose institutional protection over the safety of youngsters 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., the place members are anticipated focus on subsequent steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embody providing dedicated survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

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

Since many years of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of clergymen they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the transfer of abusers to other churches. In contrast to 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 keeping with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders might be falling into among the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to learn from Catholic errors and take motion 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 actually haven't any authority over local church buildings” however that they'd try to use their “influence” to provide protections. In an article, 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.” Page did not instantly 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 process drive on the difficulty and said that the report reveals a necessity for establishments like the SBC to hunt outside expertise on intercourse abuse.

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

The problem of sex abuse was a prominent theme in leaked private letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore stated 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 mentioned. “People will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will consider changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s dwelling state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past two decades fighting for reform.