Southern Baptist leaders lined 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 were usually ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by prime clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages include surprising new particulars about particular abuse cases and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may preserve a database of offenders to stop more abuse when prime leaders had been secretly holding a non-public listing for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its kind in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over easy methods to deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other non secular institutions in america, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the full variety of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and different accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Many of the instances referred to in the report had been considered outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a corporation 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 once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were involved extra with defending the institution from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“Whereas stories of abuse have been minimized, and survivors have been ignored or even vilified, revelations came to mild in recent years that some senior SBC leaders had protected or even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors came forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist chief 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 chairman on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama City Seaside, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily 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 a press release on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth in the Guidepost report. I have never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than May 13, he was not aware 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.

Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the facts round most of the tales they've already shared, however many had been still stunned to see the sample of coverups by the best ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid feminine executive on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “It is a denomination that's by means of and thru about power. It's misappropriated power. It does not in any method reflect the Jesus I see in 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 vp and the previous head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 targeted on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists have been informed the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders as a result of it might go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders whereas maintaining it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report additionally contains personal emails exhibiting how longtime leaders akin to August Boto had been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the conference’s legal professional despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be carried out consistent with SBC polity, saying “it might match our polity and current ministries to help church buildings in this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “immediate action to sign the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort on this space.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to provide more 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, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report but. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly selected to stay on the identical 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 along. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the weight.”

During Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued in opposition to 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 in opposition to the recommendation of conference lawyers and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate 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 additionally led to the resignation of the Executive 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 also led to the resignation of the convention’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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

In line with the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then said: “Our priority cannot be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for comment.

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 Govt Committee “turned his back to her throughout her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored arduous to attempt to make something happen, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” mentioned Brown, who's a retired appellate attorney in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion into a complicit partner for their own resolution to choose institutional protection over the safety of kids 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., the place members are expected talk about subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace providing dedicated survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be able to take meaningful steps to alter our tradition because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, said in an announcement.

Since a long time of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of monks they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to stop the transfer of abusers to different churches. Not like 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 crisis, wrote to the SBC and Government Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his concerns that SBC leaders could be falling into a few of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists ought to learn from Catholic errors and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was leading the Government Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly don't have any authority over local church buildings” however that they would attempt to use their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Page didn't instantly 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 job force on the issue and said that the report reveals a necessity for establishments like the SBC to hunt outdoors experience on intercourse abuse.

“It shows a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level that has led to a long time of survivors being victimized and damage,” Denhollander said. “The question Southern Baptists need to ask is, ‘How might this happen?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Commission. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an analogous method 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 in this report are breathtaking,” Moore stated. “Individuals will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will take into account changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s home state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past two decades combating for reform.