Southern Baptist leaders lined up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Conference on Sunday released a serious third-party investigation that discovered that intercourse abuse survivors had been usually ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top clergy within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages embrace surprising new details about particular abuse circumstances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could keep a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when high leaders were secretly retaining a non-public listing for years.

The report — the first investigation of its sort in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense inside battles over find out how to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different religious institutions in the USA, 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 entire variety of abuse cases amongst 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 other accused abusers who have been within the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Lots of the instances referred to within the report had been thought-about exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a corporation referred to as Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “solely to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who have been concerned extra with protecting the establishment from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses totally on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors got here ahead, it additionally states that a major 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 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 during a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the woman however acknowledged that he had interactions together with her. After the report was released, 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 by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in accordance with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that earlier than May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, 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.

Intercourse abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would verify the information round lots of the tales they've already shared, however many were nonetheless surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the highest levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated 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 in the report. “It is a denomination that is through and through about energy. It's misappropriated energy. It does not in any way replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report also names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past 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 focused on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Executive 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 informed the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders because it could go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while maintaining it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report additionally contains non-public emails showing how longtime leaders such as August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the conference’s legal professional despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be implemented according to SBC polity, saying “it might fit our polity and current ministries to help church buildings on this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “speedy action to sign the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort on this space.” That very same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to present more 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 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 learn the report yet. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate so much about how they actually blindly selected to stay on the identical 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the load.”

During Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators access to data of conversations on legal issues among the committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went towards the recommendation of conference attorneys and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to imagine the Executive 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 Executive 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 additionally led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who're named throughout the report.

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

According to the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then said: “Our precedence cannot be the most recent cultural disaster.” Floyd did not 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 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 Govt Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored hard to try to make one thing occur, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion into a complicit associate for their own decision to decide on institutional protection over the safety of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual assembly, comes just weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected focus on next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embody providing dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be able to take meaningful steps to alter our culture as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, stated in a press release.

Since decades of sex abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of priests they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the switch of abusers to different churches. In contrast to 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 Executive Committee presidents, based on the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into some of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should learn from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly don't have any authority over native church buildings” however that they might try to make use of their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Web 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 drive on the difficulty and stated that the report exhibits a need for establishments just like the SBC to hunt outdoors experience on sex abuse.

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

The difficulty of sex abuse was a prominent theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in the same approach 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 isn't all Southern Baptists, look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated he hopes the SBC will contemplate 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 past 20 years preventing for reform.