Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

Leaders within the Southern Baptist Conference on Sunday launched a serious third-party investigation that discovered 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 almost 300 pages embody surprising new particulars about specific abuse cases and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may keep a database of offenders to forestall extra abuse when high leaders had been secretly preserving a personal checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its type in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inside battles over the best way to deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other non secular institutions in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total variety of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost 20 years, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and different accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Lots of the circumstances referred to within the report had been thought of exterior 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 a company known as Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “solely to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who have been involved more with defending the establishment from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“Whereas tales of abuse were minimized, and survivors have been ignored or even vilified, revelations got here to gentle in recent times that some senior SBC leaders had protected or even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors got here ahead, it also 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 on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama City Beach, Fla., trip 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 together 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 have by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, in response to a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that earlier than May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he referred to as the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Intercourse abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would affirm the facts around many of the stories they have already shared, but many were still surprised to see the sample of coverups by the highest ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid feminine 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 is by means of and thru about power. It is misappropriated energy. It does not 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 past presidents of the convention, a former vp 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 Government Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual price range that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings present, Southern Baptists have been told the denomination could not put together a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it would go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders whereas preserving it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report additionally consists of non-public emails displaying how longtime leaders similar to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the conference’s lawyer sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be applied according to SBC polity, saying “it will fit our polity and present ministries to help church buildings on this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “rapid action to sign the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort in this space.” That same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to give more democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report yet. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they actually blindly chose to stay on the identical path all these years,” mentioned Tiffany Thigpen, whose story of sexual abuse in a Southern Baptist church is detailed in the report. “It buoys what we’ve been saying all alongside. 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 entry to records of conversations on authorized issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went in opposition to the advice of convention legal professionals and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to consider 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 Executive Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally 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 conference’s attorneys, who are named throughout the report.

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In accordance with the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then acknowledged: “Our priority can't be the newest cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who advised 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 one other chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored onerous to try to make one thing happen, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith right into a complicit partner for their very own decision to choose institutional safety over the safety of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual assembly, comes simply weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated discuss subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include providing devoted survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

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

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of priests they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the transfer 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 Government Committee presidents, in keeping with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders might be falling into among the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to be taught from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was leading the Government Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over local church buildings” but that they might try to use 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 physique for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web page did not instantly return a request for remark.

Rachael Denhollander, a former USA gymnast who outed Larry Nassar’s serial sexual assaults, is an adviser on a Southern Baptist task pressure on the issue and stated that the report shows a need for establishments just like the SBC to hunt exterior expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It exhibits a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to a long time of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander stated. “The question Southern Baptists should ask is, ‘How might this happen?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in the same solution 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 mentioned. “Folks will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated he hopes the SBC will take into account replacing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s home state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past twenty years combating for reform.