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 found that sex abuse survivors had been typically ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by prime clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of practically 300 pages embody shocking new details about particular abuse instances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may maintain a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when high leaders have been secretly conserving a non-public list for years.

The report — the first investigation of its variety in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense inner battles over the best way to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different religious establishments in the US, 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 full variety of abuse circumstances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged little one molesters and different accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Lots of the instances referred to within the report were thought-about outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers had been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization called Guidepost Options at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were involved extra with defending the institution from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“Whereas stories 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 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 main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman 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 president at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady during a Panama City 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 with her. After the report was launched, 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've never abused anybody.”

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

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Intercourse abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the info round many of the tales they've already shared, but many have been still surprised to see the sample of coverups by the highest ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, however 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 in the report. “It is a denomination that is by means of and thru about power. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any approach mirror the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report also names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with 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 focused on actions by the SBC’s Govt Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual finances that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings present, Southern Baptists had been advised the denomination couldn't put together a registry of sex offenders because it might go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or the way it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while protecting it a secret to avoid the opportunity of getting sued. The report additionally contains personal emails displaying how longtime leaders akin to August Boto had been 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 lawyer sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be applied in step with SBC polity, saying “it might match our polity and present ministries to help churches in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “quick action to signal the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin 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 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 just a few key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the nationwide institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not read the report but. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot about how they actually blindly selected to stay on the same path all these years,” mentioned 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 carry the weight.”

During Government Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued towards 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 stated doing so went against the recommendation of conference attorneys and could 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 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 additionally led to the resignation of the Government Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally once served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The choice over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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In response to the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then acknowledged: “Our priority can't be the newest cultural disaster.” Floyd did not instantly return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who advised SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in other 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 Executive Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored laborious to try to make one thing occur, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith right into a complicit associate for their very own resolution to choose institutional safety over the safety of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual assembly, comes simply weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected discuss next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embrace providing devoted survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be ready to take meaningful steps to vary our culture because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, stated in a statement.

Since a long time of intercourse abuse and coverups within 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 forestall the transfer of abusers to different churches. Unlike 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 intercourse abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Govt Committee presidents, in line with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into a number of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing 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 kids safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was leading the Govt Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over local churches” but that they'd attempt to make use of their “affect” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing 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 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 issue and mentioned that the report reveals a necessity for establishments like the SBC to seek exterior experience on intercourse abuse.

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

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a outstanding 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 stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an analogous 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 mentioned. “Folks will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said he hopes the SBC will take into account 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 previous twenty years combating for reform.