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

The Southern Baptist Conference on Thursday launched 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 record is a compilation of ministers and other church workers who've been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The record is described as a “fluid, working document” that was also incomplete but largely pulls information about abusers from published news reviews.

The publication of the list comes after the release Sunday of a 300-page report by an independent investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for decades have acquired stories of sexual abuse committed by church workers, pastors and others. However these experiences had been largely stored secret and, rather than acting upon and investigating reviews of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

“The entire thing ought to be seen for what it is,” wrote former Southern Baptist Convention government committee member and common counsel D. August Boto in an inside e mail that was revealed in the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to utterly 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 each faiths systematically hid details about sexual misconduct, appeared to show extra concern about their own authorized liability than the victims and at times did not 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 intercourse abuse disaster, wrote a letter to SBC management conveying his concern that Southern Baptist leaders were repeating the failures of the Catholic church in dealing with intercourse abuse.

Doyle was advised, “Southern Baptist leaders truly have no authority over local churches,” a response that Doyle regarded as dismissive, in accordance with the investigative report. 

That 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 “assist in stopping any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, in line with the report, and witnesses on the conference recalled little about it except to specific their opinion that it will “violate native church autonomy.”

In the end, a staffer for the SBC government committee since 2007 had maintained a list of accused ministers and church staff, but it was stored hidden from the public and even SBC govt committee trustees, in keeping with the report.

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

“Each entry on this list reminds us of the devastation and destruction led to by sexual abuse,” said a joint statement from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, each SBC executive committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of these heinous acts discover hope and healing, and that church buildings will utilize this list proactively to guard and care for essentially the most weak among us.”

Attorneys for the SBC executive committee researched the checklist of accused abusers, taking steps to confirm data it contained. It left unredacted entries about alleged abusers that could be confirmed, while redacting entries the place somebody was acquitted or did not have a remaining disposition, as well as info that would determine victims.

Missouri men feature prominently on the listing. They embrace:

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 more in-depth information from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, we invite you to comply with us on Twitter.