Southern Baptist leaders covered up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

Leaders within the Southern Baptist Conference on Sunday launched a major 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 include stunning new particulars about particular abuse cases and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they might preserve a database of offenders to stop more abuse when top leaders have been secretly maintaining a private record for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its form in a massive Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense inside battles over handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with different spiritual establishments in america, 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 variety of abuse circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly two decades, survivors of abuse and other involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and other accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Most of the instances referred to in the report were thought-about exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers were criminally charged.

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

“While tales of abuse had been minimized, and survivors had been ignored and even vilified, revelations came to light in recent times that some senior SBC leaders had protected and even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

Whereas the report focuses totally on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors got here forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady 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 vice chairman 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 physical contact with the woman however acknowledged that he had interactions together with her. After the report was launched, 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 anyone.”

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

Southern Baptists have been immersed in their very own sex abuse scandals. Now, they’re debating their response.

Intercourse abuse survivors, a lot of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would verify the info around lots of the stories they've already shared, however many have been nonetheless stunned to see the sample of coverups by the very best levels 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 government 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 by means of and thru about power. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any means replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three previous presidents of the convention, a former vice president and the former 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 financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been told the denomination could not put together a registry of intercourse offenders because it will go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while preserving it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report also consists of non-public emails displaying how longtime leaders comparable 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 e mail, the conference’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be applied in step with SBC polity, saying “it might match our polity and current ministries to help church buildings on this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “instant action to sign the Convention’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort in this area.” That very same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to offer more 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 couple of key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the nationwide 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 a lot about how they actually blindly selected to remain on the same 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the load.”

Throughout Government Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to data of conversations on authorized matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went against the recommendation 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, inflicting 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 additionally once 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 conference’s attorneys, who're named throughout the report.

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

In response to the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then stated: “Our priority cannot be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd did not instantly 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 different Southern Baptist churches 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 back to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored arduous to attempt to make one thing occur, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” mentioned Brown, who's a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion into a complicit accomplice for their very own decision to decide on institutional safety over the protection of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual assembly, comes just weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated focus on next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embrace providing devoted survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be ready to take meaningful steps to alter our culture as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, mentioned in an announcement.

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 clergymen they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall 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 intercourse abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Government Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders could be falling into a few of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should learn from Catholic errors and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Government Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really haven't any authority over native church buildings” however that they would try to use their “influence” to offer 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. Web page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” 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 problem and mentioned that the report shows a necessity for institutions like the SBC to seek exterior experience on sex abuse.

“It reveals a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional stage that has led to many years of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander stated. “The question Southern Baptists have to ask is, ‘How may this occur?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Fee. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an analogous strategy 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 stated. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated he hopes the SBC will think about changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s dwelling state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past 20 years combating for reform.