Southern Baptist leaders covered up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of almost 300 pages embody shocking new particulars about specific abuse instances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may keep a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when top leaders have been secretly protecting a non-public checklist for years.

The report — the first investigation of its variety in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian community that has had intense inside battles over how one can deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other religious establishments in the US, 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 instances 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 Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged little one molesters and other accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Many of the instances referred to in the report had been thought of outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization known as Guidepost Options at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “only 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 additional abuse.

“While tales of abuse had been minimized, and survivors were ignored or 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 primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors got here ahead, it also states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady 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 woman throughout a Panama City Beach, Fla., vacation in 2010.

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

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, according to a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he referred to as 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.

Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the info round many of the tales they've already shared, however many were still surprised to see the sample of coverups by the very best ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once 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's by means of and thru about power. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any way reflect the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report additionally 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 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 financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches 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 were told the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it will go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while keeping it a secret to keep away from the potential of getting sued. The report additionally consists of personal emails displaying how longtime leaders such as August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e mail, the conference’s attorney despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be carried out in step with SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and present ministries to help church buildings on this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he beneficial “fast motion to sign the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this area.” That same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to present extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not learn the report but. Attempts to succeed in Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they really blindly selected to remain on the identical path all these years,” mentioned 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 burden.”

During Government Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to data of conversations on authorized issues among the committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went towards the recommendation of convention attorneys and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy 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 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're named throughout the report.

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

In accordance with the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then acknowledged: “Our precedence can't be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd did not immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who advised SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in different Southern Baptist churches 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 back to her during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored exhausting to attempt to make something occur, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” mentioned Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion right into a complicit partner for their own decision to choose institutional protection over the protection of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual meeting, comes just weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated discuss next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace offering devoted survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

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

Since many years of sex abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of monks they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the transfer of abusers to different churches. Unlike 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 sex abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in line with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could be falling into some of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse 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 children safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Government Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over native church buildings” however that they might try to make use of their “affect” to offer protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of setting up 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 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 process pressure on the difficulty and mentioned that the report reveals a need for establishments just like the SBC to hunt outdoors experience on sex abuse.

“It reveals a degree of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional degree that has led to a long time of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander said. “The query Southern Baptists need to ask is, ‘How could this occur?’”

The issue of sex abuse was a outstanding 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 & Religious Liberty Commission. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an identical solution 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. “Individuals will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said he hopes the SBC will contemplate replacing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s house state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past 20 years preventing for reform.