Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages include shocking new particulars about particular abuse circumstances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could preserve a database of offenders to forestall extra abuse when top leaders were secretly preserving a private record for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its variety in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense inside battles over how you can deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other non secular institutions in the USA, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the entire number of abuse circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost two decades, 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 employees members. Lots of the circumstances referred to within the report were thought of exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers had been criminally charged.

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

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

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors came forward, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a lady only 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 girl throughout a Panama Metropolis Seashore, 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 a press release on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth within the Guidepost report. I have never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in accordance with a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that before May 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Generally, he called the main points 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 tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would verify the facts round many of the tales they have already shared, however many had been nonetheless stunned to see the pattern of coverups by the very best ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, however it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid female government on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This can be a denomination that is via and through about energy. It's misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any method replicate the Jesus I see within 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 past presidents of the conference, a former vice president 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 financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual price range that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been instructed the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders because it could go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or the way it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders whereas retaining it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report also consists of non-public emails exhibiting how longtime leaders akin to August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e mail, the convention’s attorney sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be carried out in step with SBC polity, saying “it might match our polity and present ministries to help church buildings on this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “speedy action to sign the Convention’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort in this space.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

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 shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a few key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not read the report yet. Attempts to succeed in Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly chose to stay on the same path all these years,” said 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the load.”

During Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to data of conversations on authorized matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went towards the advice of conference lawyers and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting 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 Govt Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also 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 convention’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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

In keeping with the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 e 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 acknowledged: “Our priority can't be the most recent cultural disaster.” Floyd did not immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who informed 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 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 Govt Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored laborious to try to make one thing happen, however betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who's a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith right into a complicit partner for their very own determination to choose institutional safety over the protection of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual assembly, comes just weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected discuss subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody offering dedicated survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be ready to take meaningful steps to alter our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, said in a press release.

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of clergymen they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to other churches. 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 Executive Committee presidents, according to the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders might be falling into a number of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to learn from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms so as to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Government Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly haven't any authority over native church buildings” however that they'd try to make use of their “influence” to supply protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web 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 force on the difficulty and mentioned that the report reveals a necessity for institutions just like the SBC to seek outdoors expertise on intercourse abuse.

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

The issue of sex abuse was a prominent theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Fee. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to receive 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 on this report are breathtaking,” Moore stated. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, 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 residence state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past 20 years combating for reform.