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 intercourse abuse survivors were typically ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of practically 300 pages embody surprising new details about particular abuse instances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they could maintain a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when high leaders had been secretly preserving a private record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its type in a massive Protestant denomination like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inside battles over how to deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different spiritual establishments in america, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the full variety 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 Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and other accused abusers who have been within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Most of the cases referred to within the report were thought of outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company referred to as Guidepost Solutions on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “only to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been concerned extra with protecting the institution from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“Whereas tales of abuse have been minimized, and survivors had been ignored or even vilified, revelations came to light 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 dealt with abuse points when survivors got here forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl only 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 vp on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama City Seaside, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the woman 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 an announcement on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth within the Guidepost report. I've by no means abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, according to a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that earlier than Could 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he referred to as the details of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

Southern Baptists have been immersed in their 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 release would verify the info round many of the stories they have already shared, but many have been nonetheless stunned to see the pattern of coverups by the best ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once 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 means of and through about energy. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any way reflect the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm 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 vp 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 Executive Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual finances that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists were advised the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders because it might go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while preserving it a secret to keep away from the possibility of getting sued. The report also contains non-public emails displaying how longtime leaders akin to August Boto were 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 lawyer sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be carried out in keeping with SBC polity, saying “it will fit our polity and present ministries to assist churches on this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “quick action to sign the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort on this area.” That very same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to present extra democratic energy 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, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report yet. Makes an attempt to reach Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly chose to remain on the identical 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the load.”

Throughout Executive Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to records of conversations on legal matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went against the advice of conference legal professionals and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to believe 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 Government Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally 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 convention’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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

In line with the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 email 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 can't be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't instantly 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 different Southern Baptist churches in multiple 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 Government Committee “turned his back to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked exhausting to try to make something happen, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” mentioned Brown, who's a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith right into a complicit associate for their own determination to choose institutional safety over the protection of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual meeting, comes just weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected discuss subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include providing devoted survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be ready to take significant steps to vary our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in an announcement.

Since decades of sex abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of clergymen they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the switch of abusers to other church buildings. Not like 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 response to the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could be falling into a few of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should study 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 Govt Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually have no authority over local churches” however that they would attempt to use their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, 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 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 job power on the difficulty and said that the report reveals a need for establishments just like the SBC to hunt outside expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It exhibits 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 hurt,” Denhollander stated. “The question Southern Baptists have to ask is, ‘How might 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 policy arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Fee. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an analogous 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 stated. “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 mentioned he hopes the SBC will take into account replacing 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 two decades combating for reform.