Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday launched a serious third-party investigation that found that intercourse abuse survivors had been typically ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by prime clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages embody surprising new details about particular abuse circumstances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they might keep a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when high leaders have been secretly holding a personal checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its kind in a large Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inner battles over how you can handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other spiritual establishments in america, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the full variety of abuse circumstances among Southern Baptists was small.

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

The report, compiled by a company called Guidepost Solutions on 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 had been involved extra with protecting the institution from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors got here forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman only one month after he completed 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 lady throughout a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the girl however 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 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 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 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 tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would verify the information around most of the stories they've already shared, however many have been still shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the very best ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female executive on 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 by means of and through about power. It's misappropriated power. It does not in any means mirror the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three previous presidents of the convention, a former vice president and the former head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 centered on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles monetary 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 finances that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been advised the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders because it will go against the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while holding it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report also includes non-public emails displaying how longtime leaders similar to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely 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 carried out in line with SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and present ministries to assist churches in this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “immediate motion to sign the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort on this space.” That very same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to present more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a few key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the national institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not read the report but. Makes an attempt 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,” said 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 burden.”

During Govt Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to information of conversations on authorized issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went against the advice of convention lawyers and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to imagine the Executive 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 also once served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The choice over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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

In keeping 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 “rising concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then said: “Our priority cannot be the newest cultural disaster.” Floyd did not instantly return a request for remark.

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

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked hard to try to make one thing occur, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith into a complicit partner for their very own determination to decide on institutional protection over the protection of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual assembly, comes just weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated focus on next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace providing devoted survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be able to take significant steps to change our culture because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in a statement.

Since decades of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of clergymen they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the transfer of abusers to other churches. Unlike the Catholic Church, the SBC has a non-hierarchical construction.

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 Govt Committee presidents, in line with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders might be falling into a few of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing 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 in order to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Executive Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually don't have any authority over native church buildings” however that they would attempt to make use of their “affect” to provide protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web 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 activity force on the problem and mentioned that the report shows a necessity for establishments just like the SBC to hunt outdoors experience on intercourse abuse.

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

The problem of sex abuse was a prominent theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an identical 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 stated. “Individuals will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern 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 two decades combating for reform.