Eight Missouri ministers accused of intercourse abuse in Southern Baptist Conference report • Missouri Impartial

The Southern Baptist Convention on Thursday released a once-secret and prolonged list of accused sex abusers — a number of of whom are within the Midwest — within the denomination.

The 205-page record is a compilation of ministers and other church employees who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The checklist is described as a “fluid, working document” that was also incomplete but largely pulls information about abusers from revealed news experiences.

The publication of the checklist comes after the discharge Sunday of a 300-page report by an independent investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for many years have obtained stories of sexual abuse dedicated by church employees, pastors and others. However these studies were largely kept secret and, fairly than performing upon and investigating studies of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

“The whole thing should be seen for what it's,” wrote former Southern Baptist Conference executive committee member and common counsel D. August Boto in an internal email that was printed within the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

The crisis rocking the Southern Baptist denomination this week is similar in many ways to what the Catholic church continues to face. Leaders in each faiths systematically hid details about sexual misconduct, appeared to show more concern about their own authorized legal responsibility than the victims and at instances failed to expel accused abusers from positions of authority.

In 2007, Father Thomas Doyle, a Catholic priest credited as one of the first to warn of his personal denomination’s clergy sex abuse disaster, wrote a letter to SBC leadership conveying his concern that Southern Baptist leaders had been repeating the failures of the Catholic church in coping with intercourse abuse.

Doyle was informed, “Southern Baptist leaders actually don't have any authority over local church buildings,” a response that Doyle thought to be dismissive, in keeping with the investigative report. 

That very same 12 months, on the SBC conference in San Antonio, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson made a motion to create a database of Southern Baptist clergy who had been convicted or credibly accused of, or had confessed to sexual abuse. The proposal was meant to “help in preventing any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, in response to the report, and witnesses on the convention recalled little about it besides to express their opinion that it could “violate native church autonomy.”

Finally, a staffer for the SBC govt committee since 2007 had maintained an inventory of accused ministers and church workers, nevertheless it was saved hidden from the general public and even SBC govt committee trustees, in keeping with the report.

Southern Baptist leaders said publicizing the list of credibly accused abusers represented “an preliminary, however necessary, step in the direction of addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform within the Convention.”

“Every entry on this list reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by sexual abuse,” said a joint statement from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, each SBC government committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of those heinous acts discover hope and healing, and that churches will utilize this record proactively to guard and look after essentially the most susceptible among us.”

Legal professionals for the SBC government committee researched the listing of accused abusers, taking steps to verify info it contained. It left unredacted entries about alleged abusers that could possibly be confirmed, whereas redacting entries the place somebody was acquitted or did not have a final disposition, as well as info that could identify victims.

Missouri men feature prominently on the checklist. They embody:

This story comes from the Midwest Newsroom, an investigative journalism collaboration including IPR, KCUR 89.3, Nebraska Public Media News, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. For extra in-depth information from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, we invite you to follow us on Twitter.