Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages embrace stunning new particulars about particular abuse cases and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could maintain a database of offenders to stop more abuse when high leaders were secretly keeping a non-public checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its sort in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over the way to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other spiritual institutions in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long 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 nearly twenty years, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and different accused abusers who had been within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Many of the circumstances referred to within the report had been considered exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a corporation referred to as Guidepost Options 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 were concerned more with defending the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

“While tales of abuse were minimized, and survivors had been ignored and even vilified, revelations got here to mild 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 came ahead, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady 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 lady throughout a Panama City Seashore, Fla., vacation 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 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 in the Guidepost report. I have by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before Could 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he known 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.

Sex abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would affirm the information round most of the stories they've already shared, but many had been nonetheless stunned to see the pattern of coverups by the very best ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid female executive on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “It is a denomination that is via and thru about energy. It's misappropriated energy. It does not in any manner replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

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

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been told the denomination could not put together a registry of sex offenders because it could go against the denomination’s polity — or the way it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders while keeping it a secret to keep away from the opportunity of getting sued. The report additionally consists of personal emails displaying how longtime leaders similar to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e mail, the conference’s legal professional despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be carried out consistent with SBC polity, saying “it would match our polity and present ministries to assist church buildings on this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “speedy action to sign the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more 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 present extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a few key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report but. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they really blindly chose to remain on the identical path all these years,” said 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 along. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the burden.”

During Govt Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to information of conversations on authorized issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went against the recommendation of convention attorneys and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to consider the Government 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 Govt Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also as soon as 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 convention’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

In response to the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then stated: “Our priority cannot be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who instructed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in different 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 Govt Committee “turned his back to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked hard to try to make something happen, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith into a complicit partner for their own resolution to decide on institutional protection over the protection of youngsters and congregants.”

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

“We should be able to take significant steps to vary our culture as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, stated in a press release.

Since decades of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of priests they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the transfer of abusers to other church buildings. Not like the Catholic Church, the SBC has a non-hierarchical structure.

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, according to the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders may very well be falling into a few of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should be taught from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was leading the Executive Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually haven't any authority over local churches” however that they might attempt to use their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting 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 remark.

Rachael Denhollander, a former USA gymnast who outed Larry Nassar’s serial sexual assaults, is an adviser on a Southern Baptist process drive on the problem and said that the report exhibits a need for establishments like the SBC to hunt exterior experience on sex abuse.

“It reveals a degree of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional degree that has led to many years of survivors being victimized and hurt,” Denhollander stated. “The query Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How could this occur?’”

The problem of intercourse abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an identical technique 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. “People will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will contemplate 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 previous two decades combating for reform.