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

The Southern Baptist Conference on Thursday released a once-secret and lengthy list of accused sex abusers — several of whom are in the Midwest — throughout the denomination.

The 205-page checklist is a compilation of ministers and other church employees who've been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The record is described as a “fluid, working doc” that was additionally incomplete but largely pulls information about abusers from printed news reviews.

The publication of the listing comes after the discharge Sunday of a 300-page report by an impartial investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for decades have acquired reviews of sexual abuse committed by church employees, pastors and others. However those reviews have been largely kept secret and, reasonably than acting upon and investigating stories of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

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

The crisis rocking the Southern Baptist denomination this week is analogous in some ways to what the Catholic church continues to face. Leaders in both faiths systematically hid details about sexual misconduct, appeared to point out more concern about their own legal liability than the victims and at occasions didn't 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 own denomination’s clergy intercourse abuse crisis, 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 instructed, “Southern Baptist leaders really haven't any authority over native churches,” a response that Doyle thought to be dismissive, according to the investigative report. 

That same 12 months, at the SBC convention 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 stopping any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, according to the report, and witnesses at the convention recalled little about it besides to precise their opinion that it would “violate native church autonomy.”

In the end, a staffer for the SBC executive committee since 2007 had maintained an inventory of accused ministers and church workers, however it was kept hidden from the general public and even SBC government committee trustees, according to the report.

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

“Every entry on this checklist reminds us of the devastation and destruction caused by sexual abuse,” said a joint assertion from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, each SBC govt committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of those heinous acts discover hope and healing, and that church buildings will utilize this list proactively to protect and take care of essentially the most vulnerable among us.”

Lawyers for the SBC executive committee researched the listing of accused abusers, taking steps to confirm info it contained. It left unredacted entries about alleged abusers that could be confirmed, whereas redacting entries where someone was acquitted or did not have a ultimate disposition, in addition to data that would identify victims.

Missouri males feature prominently on the checklist. They embrace:

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