Southern Baptist leaders coated up sex abuse, explosive report says

Leaders within the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday launched a significant third-party investigation that discovered that sex abuse survivors were usually ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top clergy within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages include stunning new details about particular abuse circumstances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may preserve a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when prime leaders had been secretly holding a non-public checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its variety in a large Protestant denomination like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over tips on how to deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with different non secular institutions in the United States, 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 overall number of abuse cases 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 Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and different accused abusers who have been within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Most of the cases referred to within the report had been considered outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization known as Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were concerned more with defending the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“Whereas stories of abuse had been minimized, and survivors were ignored or even vilified, revelations came to gentle lately that some senior SBC leaders had protected and even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors came forward, it also states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman 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 on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady during a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the woman however acknowledged that he had interactions along with her. After the report was launched, 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 in the Guidepost report. I have never abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, according to an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he called the small print of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

Southern Baptists have been immersed in their 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 launch would confirm the information around most of the stories they have already shared, however many have been nonetheless stunned to see the sample of coverups by the highest levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid feminine government on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “It is a denomination that's via and through about power. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any way mirror the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report additionally names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past 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 Government Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been told the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders because it might go against the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders while keeping it a secret to keep away from the possibility of getting sued. The report also consists of private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders corresponding to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the conference’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be carried out according to SBC polity, saying “it might match our polity and current ministries to assist churches on this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “speedy action to sign the Conference’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort on this area.” That very same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to present extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the national institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not learn the report but. Attempts to succeed in Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate so much about how they actually blindly chose to remain on the identical path all these years,” stated 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 load.”

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

The talk 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 also led to the resignation of the Government Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally as soon as 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 are named all through the report.

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

In response to the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then said: “Our priority can't be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who instructed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in other Southern Baptist church buildings 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 one other chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked arduous to attempt to make one thing happen, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith right into a complicit companion for their own decision to choose institutional protection over the safety of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual assembly, comes simply weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated discuss next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embody offering devoted survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be able to take significant steps to change our culture as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, mentioned in a statement.

Since a long time of sex abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of priests they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the switch of abusers to other church buildings. 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 intercourse abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Govt Committee presidents, according to the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could be falling into some of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex 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 kids safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Government Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly have no authority over native church buildings” however that they'd try to use their “affect” to offer protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his position 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 task power on the problem and stated that the report reveals a need for institutions like the SBC to seek 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 decades of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander said. “The question Southern Baptists should ask is, ‘How might this occur?’”

The issue of sex abuse was a distinguished 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 & Spiritual Liberty Commission. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an analogous option 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. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said he hopes the SBC will think about changing 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 previous twenty years combating for reform.