Eight Missouri ministers accused of intercourse abuse in Southern Baptist Convention report • Missouri Unbiased

The Southern Baptist Conference on Thursday launched a once-secret and prolonged record of accused sex abusers — several of whom are within the Midwest — throughout the denomination.

The 205-page listing is a compilation of ministers and different church workers who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The checklist is described as a “fluid, working document” that was additionally incomplete but largely pulls details about abusers from published news studies.

The publication of the record comes after the discharge Sunday of a 300-page report by an unbiased investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for decades have obtained studies of sexual abuse committed by church employees, pastors and others. However those reports were largely stored secret and, rather than performing upon and investigating reviews of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

“The entire thing should be seen for what it is,” wrote former Southern Baptist Conference government committee member and general counsel D. August Boto in an internal e-mail that was revealed in the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

The crisis rocking the Southern Baptist denomination this week is comparable in many ways to what the Catholic church continues to face. Leaders in each faiths systematically hid details about sexual misconduct, appeared to point out extra concern about their own legal legal responsibility than the victims and at occasions didn't expel accused abusers from positions of authority.

In 2007, Father Thomas Doyle, a Catholic priest credited as one of the first to warn of his personal denomination’s clergy intercourse abuse disaster, wrote a letter to SBC leadership conveying his concern that Southern Baptist leaders have been repeating the failures of the Catholic church in dealing with intercourse abuse.

Doyle was told, “Southern Baptist leaders actually don't have any authority over local church buildings,” a response that Doyle considered dismissive, based on the investigative report. 

That very same 12 months, on the SBC convention in San Antonio, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson made a movement to create a database of Southern Baptist clergy who had been convicted or credibly accused of, or had confessed to sexual abuse. The proposal was meant to “help in stopping any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, in line with the report, and witnesses on the convention recalled little about it except to express their opinion that it might “violate native church autonomy.”

Finally, a staffer for the SBC executive committee since 2007 had maintained a list of accused ministers and church staff, nevertheless it was kept hidden from the public and even SBC executive committee trustees, in response to the report.

Southern Baptist leaders stated publicizing the list of credibly accused abusers represented “an preliminary, but important, step in direction of addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform in the Convention.”

“Each entry on this list reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by sexual abuse,” stated a joint assertion from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, both SBC executive committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of those heinous acts discover hope and therapeutic, and that churches will make the most of this checklist proactively to protect and care for the most vulnerable among us.”

Attorneys for the SBC executive committee researched the record of accused abusers, taking steps to confirm information it contained. It left unredacted entries about alleged abusers that could possibly be confirmed, while redacting entries where somebody was acquitted or didn't have a ultimate disposition, in addition to info that would identify victims.

Missouri men function prominently on the record. They embody:

This story comes from the Midwest Newsroom, an investigative journalism collaboration including IPR, KCUR 89.3, Nebraska Public Media News, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. For extra in-depth information from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, we invite you to comply with us on Twitter.