Southern Baptist leaders coated up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Conference on Sunday released a significant third-party investigation that found that intercourse abuse survivors were often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by prime clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of practically 300 pages embrace stunning new details about particular abuse circumstances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may keep a database of offenders to prevent extra abuse when prime leaders were secretly preserving a non-public record for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its sort in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to ship shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inside battles over the best way to deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other spiritual establishments in america, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total 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 baby molesters and different accused abusers who were within the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Lots of the instances referred to in the report have been considered outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization called Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “only to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been involved extra with protecting the establishment from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse issues when survivors got here ahead, it additionally states that a major Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman 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 girl during a Panama Metropolis Beach, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the girl 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 statement on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth within the Guidepost report. I've never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, in keeping with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before Might 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he known as the small print of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

Southern Baptists have been immersed in their own intercourse abuse scandals. Now, they’re debating their response.

Sex abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the details around lots of the tales they have already shared, however many were still stunned to see the sample of coverups by the best ranges of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, but it surely’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine executive at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “This can be a denomination that is by means of and through about energy. It is misappropriated energy. It does not in any approach replicate the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three previous presidents of the convention, a former vp and the former head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 targeted on actions by the SBC’s Govt Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist church buildings function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government 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 have been instructed the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders because it could go towards the denomination’s polity — or the way it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while conserving it a secret to keep away from the potential for getting sued. The report additionally consists of personal emails displaying how longtime leaders comparable to August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the convention’s attorney despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be carried out in line with SBC polity, saying “it would match our polity and present ministries to help church buildings in this space of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “instant motion to sign the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort on this space.” That same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to give more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, stated he had not read the report but. Makes an attempt to reach Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they really blindly selected to stay on the same path all these years,” stated Tiffany Thigpen, whose story of sexual abuse in a Southern Baptist church is detailed in the report. “It buoys what we’ve been saying all along. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the burden.”

During Govt Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators access to records of conversations on authorized issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went in opposition to the advice of convention attorneys 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 imagine 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 Govt Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also as soon as 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 throughout the report.

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

Based on the report, Floyd told SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then stated: “Our precedence cannot be the most recent cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't 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 another chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored arduous to try to make something happen, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” stated Brown, who's a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion right into a complicit accomplice for their own decision to decide on institutional protection over the safety of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual assembly, comes just weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated discuss next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost include offering devoted survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be ready to take meaningful steps to alter our culture as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in an announcement.

Since a long time of intercourse abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of priests they are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the switch 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 disaster, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could possibly 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 should learn from Catholic mistakes and take action early on to implement structural reforms so as to make children safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was main the Govt Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really haven't any authority over native church buildings” however that they would try to use their “affect” to supply 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.” Page did not 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 activity drive on the problem and mentioned that the report exhibits a necessity for establishments like the SBC to seek outdoors experience on intercourse abuse.

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

The issue of sex abuse was a distinguished 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 Commission. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an analogous solution 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. “People will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, have a 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 contemplate changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s dwelling state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past two decades fighting for reform.