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 within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages include shocking new details about specific abuse cases and shine a light on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may maintain a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when top leaders have been secretly preserving a private record for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its type in a large Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense internal battles over easy methods to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other non secular establishments in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 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 cases amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost 20 years, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and different accused abusers who had been in the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Most of the instances referred to within the report have 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 corporation known as Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “solely to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been involved more with protecting the institution from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

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

While the report focuses totally on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors got here forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman just one month after he accomplished 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 vice president on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the lady but 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 within the Guidepost report. I've by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in response to an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that before Might 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, 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.

Sex abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would verify the info around many of the stories they have already shared, however many had been nonetheless shocked to see the sample of coverups by the best levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid female government 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 via and through about energy. It's misappropriated power. It does not in any method reflect the Jesus I see within 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 previous 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 targeted on actions by the SBC’s Government Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Executive 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 advised the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of sex offenders as a result of it would go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders whereas keeping it a secret to keep away from the potential for getting sued. The report additionally contains private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders akin to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the conference’s lawyer sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be implemented consistent with SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and current ministries to help churches on this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “speedy motion to signal the Conference’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities start 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 idea.

For a denomination designed to provide 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 couple of key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report yet. Attempts to succeed in Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot about how they actually blindly selected to stay on the same path all these years,” stated Tiffany Thigpen, whose story of sexual abuse in a Southern Baptist church is detailed in the report. “It buoys what we’ve been saying all along. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the load.”

During Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to information of conversations on legal matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went against the recommendation of conference lawyers and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a big 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 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 choice over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who're named throughout the report.

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

In keeping with the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then said: “Our priority cannot be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't immediately 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 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 Govt Committee “turned his back to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked exhausting to attempt to make one thing happen, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith right into a complicit associate for their very own decision to decide on institutional safety over the safety of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual assembly, comes just weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected talk about subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace providing devoted survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be ready to take meaningful steps to alter our culture because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, stated in a press release.

Since many years of sex abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of priests they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to different 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 disaster, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, based on the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders might be falling into a few of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to study from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Government Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually have no authority over native churches” but that they would attempt to use their “influence” to provide protections. In an article, Web 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 place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page did not 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 issue and stated that the report reveals a necessity for institutions just like the SBC to seek outdoors expertise on sex abuse.

“It exhibits a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and hurt,” Denhollander mentioned. “The query Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How might this occur?’”

The issue of intercourse abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an analogous 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 mentioned. “People will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, have a 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 think about 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 previous 20 years preventing for reform.