Southern Baptist leaders coated up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages embody stunning new details about specific abuse circumstances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could keep a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when high leaders have been secretly protecting a non-public checklist for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its variety in a large Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense inside battles over how you can deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different non secular institutions in the USA, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the whole variety of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly twenty years, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged little one molesters and other accused abusers who have been in the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Many 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 how many abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company referred to as Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “solely to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were involved extra with defending the institution from liability 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 gentle in recent times that some senior SBC leaders had protected or even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors came ahead, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl only one month after he accomplished 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 throughout a Panama Metropolis Beach, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the lady but 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 in the Guidepost report. I've by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, in keeping with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than Might 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he known 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 release would affirm the information round lots of the stories they've already shared, but many have been still surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the best ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female government at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “It is a denomination that is through and through about energy. It is misappropriated power. It does not in any way replicate the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I am 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 conference, 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 Govt Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual price range that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been advised the denomination could not put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders because it could go against the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while maintaining it a secret to keep away from the opportunity of getting sued. The report also contains non-public emails showing how longtime leaders equivalent to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the conference’s attorney despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be applied per SBC polity, saying “it will fit our polity and current ministries to help church buildings in this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “immediate action to sign the Convention’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort in this space.” 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 give extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not read the report but. Makes an attempt to succeed in Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they really blindly selected to remain on the same path all these years,” stated 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 hold the load.”

Throughout Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to information of conversations on authorized matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went in opposition to the advice of conference legal professionals and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to consider 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 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 choice over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who are named throughout the report.

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In keeping with the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then stated: “Our priority cannot be the most recent cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't immediately 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 a number of 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 Government Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked arduous to try to make one thing happen, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion into a complicit accomplice for their very own choice to decide on institutional protection over the protection of youngsters and congregants.”

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

“We must be able to take meaningful steps to alter our tradition as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, mentioned in a statement.

Since decades of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of priests they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to different 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 Government Committee presidents, in keeping with the report. He expressed his considerations 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 ought to be taught 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 Govt Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over local church buildings” however that they'd attempt to use their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page didn't instantly 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 issue and said that the report shows a need for establishments like the SBC to hunt outside experience on sex abuse.

“It shows a stage of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander said. “The query Southern Baptists should ask is, ‘How may this happen?’”

The problem of intercourse abuse was a distinguished 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 obtain Sunday’s report in the same 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 mentioned. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will consider 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 two decades preventing for reform.