Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages embody stunning new details about specific abuse circumstances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they might preserve a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when high leaders were secretly preserving a personal checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its variety in a large Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inside battles over how to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other spiritual institutions in the United States, has struggled with declining membership for the past 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 circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost 20 years, survivors of abuse and different concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and other accused abusers who have been within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Many of the instances referred to within the report had been considered outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company referred to as 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 extra with defending the institution from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“While stories of abuse had been minimized, and survivors have been ignored or even vilified, revelations came to light in recent years 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 points when survivors got here forward, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl just 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 vice chairman at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl throughout a Panama City Seaside, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the girl however acknowledged that he had interactions with her. After the report was launched, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted an announcement on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth in the Guidepost report. I have by no means abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, 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.

Intercourse abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the information round lots of the stories they have already shared, however many had been still stunned to see the pattern of coverups by the highest ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, however it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid female executive 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 way of and thru about energy. It is misappropriated energy. It does not in any manner replicate the Jesus I see within 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 convention, a former vice chairman and the former head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 targeted on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been informed the denomination could not put together a registry of intercourse offenders because it could go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders whereas holding it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report additionally contains non-public emails exhibiting how longtime leaders reminiscent of August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the conference’s legal professional despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be implemented according to SBC polity, saying “it will match our polity and current ministries to help church buildings in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “quick action to signal the Convention’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this area.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to give extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. 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 is going to validate so much about how they actually blindly chose to stay 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 weight.”

Throughout Govt Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to information of conversations on legal issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went in opposition to the advice of conference attorneys and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate 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 Executive 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 convention’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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

In line with the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 e 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 stated: “Our priority can't be the latest cultural disaster.” 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 other Southern Baptist churches in a number of 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 one other chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored laborious to try to make something happen, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith right into a complicit partner for their own decision to choose institutional safety over the safety of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual meeting, comes just weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated talk about next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody providing devoted survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

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

Since many years of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of monks they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the switch of abusers to other church buildings. 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 intercourse abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Government Committee presidents, in response to the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into a few of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to study from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms so as to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was leading the Govt Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly haven't any authority over local churches” but that they might attempt to make use of their “affect” to provide protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting 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.” Web 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 task drive on the problem and said that the report shows a necessity for establishments just like the SBC to seek outside expertise on intercourse abuse.

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

The issue of intercourse abuse was a distinguished 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 & Non secular Liberty Commission. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in the same method 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 isn't all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated he hopes the SBC will consider 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 fighting for reform.