Eight Missouri ministers accused of sex abuse in Southern Baptist Convention report • Missouri Impartial

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

The 205-page listing is a compilation of ministers and other church workers who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The checklist is described as a “fluid, working doc” that was additionally incomplete however largely pulls details about abusers from revealed news experiences.

The publication of the checklist comes after the release Sunday of a 300-page report by an impartial investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for decades have received experiences of sexual abuse dedicated by church staff, pastors and others. However these reviews had been 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 must be seen for what it's,” wrote former Southern Baptist Conference govt committee member and general counsel D. August Boto in an inner electronic mail that was published within the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

The disaster 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 information about sexual misconduct, appeared to indicate extra concern about their very own legal legal responsibility than the victims and at times 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 own denomination’s clergy sex abuse disaster, wrote a letter to SBC management conveying his concern that Southern Baptist leaders had been repeating the failures of the Catholic church in dealing with sex abuse.

Doyle was advised, “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over native churches,” a response that Doyle considered dismissive, in line with the investigative report. 

That same year, at 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 “assist in stopping any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, in accordance with the report, and witnesses at the convention recalled little about it except to precise their opinion that it could “violate local church autonomy.”

In the end, a staffer for the SBC executive committee since 2007 had maintained a listing of accused ministers and church workers, however it was stored hidden from the general public and even SBC govt committee trustees, in response to the report.

Southern Baptist leaders mentioned publicizing the listing of credibly accused abusers represented “an preliminary, but vital, step towards addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform in the Conference.”

“Every entry on this listing reminds us of the devastation and destruction led to by sexual abuse,” said a joint statement from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, both SBC govt committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of these heinous acts discover hope and therapeutic, and that churches will utilize this list proactively to protect and look after probably the most susceptible amongst us.”

Legal professionals 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 possibly be confirmed, whereas redacting entries where someone was acquitted or did not have a last disposition, as well as info that would identify victims.

Missouri men function prominently on the listing. They include:

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 comply with us on Twitter.