Southern Baptist leaders lined up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages embrace stunning new details about particular abuse cases and shine a light 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 may maintain a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when top leaders had been secretly maintaining a personal checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its sort in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different non secular establishments in america, 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 total number of abuse circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and different accused abusers who have been in the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Lots of the cases referred to within the report have been thought-about exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company called Guidepost Options at 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 have been concerned more with protecting the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse points when survivors came forward, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady only 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 on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady 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 woman 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 within the Guidepost report. I have by no means abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, in keeping with a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that earlier than May 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he known as the details 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, a lot of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the details around many of the stories they've already shared, but many had been nonetheless surprised to see the sample of coverups by the highest ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said 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 in the report. “This can be a denomination that is via and thru about power. It's misappropriated power. It does not in any manner mirror the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report also names a number of 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 focused on actions by the SBC’s Government Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches function 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 present, Southern Baptists had been instructed the denomination couldn't put collectively 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 conserving it a secret to keep away from the opportunity of getting sued. The report also contains non-public emails showing how longtime leaders akin to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the conference’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be applied according to SBC polity, saying “it might fit our polity and present ministries to assist church buildings on this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “quick motion to sign the Conference’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this space.” That same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion 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 couple of key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not learn the report yet. Attempts to achieve Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot about how they actually blindly chose 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the load.”

During Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators access to data of conversations on authorized issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went against the recommendation of convention lawyers and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to imagine 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 additionally once 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 response to the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had obtained “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 crisis.” Floyd didn't instantly return a request for remark.

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 Executive Committee “turned his again to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked exhausting to attempt to make one thing happen, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” mentioned Brown, who's a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion into a complicit companion for their own resolution to decide on institutional protection over the protection of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual assembly, comes just weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated talk about next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include offering devoted survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be able to take meaningful steps to alter our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, mentioned in an announcement.

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church had 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 forestall the switch of abusers to other church buildings. 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, in response to 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 sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to be taught from Catholic errors and take motion early on to implement structural reforms so as to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Executive Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly have no authority over local church buildings” but that they might attempt to make use of their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page did not 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 activity force on the problem and stated that the report shows a necessity for institutions like the SBC to seek outdoors 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 hurt,” Denhollander mentioned. “The question Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How could this happen?’”

The issue of intercourse abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an analogous 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 in this report are breathtaking,” Moore said. “People will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, take 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 contemplate 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 twenty years fighting for reform.