Southern Baptist leaders lined up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages include stunning new particulars about particular abuse circumstances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they could maintain a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when top leaders had been secretly conserving a private listing for years.

The report — the first investigation of its sort in a large Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense internal battles over how to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other non secular establishments in the USA, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total variety of abuse circumstances amongst 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 Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and different accused abusers who had been within the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Most of the instances referred to within the report had been thought-about outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization referred to as Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who have been involved more with protecting the establishment from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“While stories of abuse had been minimized, and survivors have been ignored or even vilified, revelations came to light lately that some senior SBC leaders had protected and even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors came forward, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist chief was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman only one month after he completed his two-year tenure as president of the conference. The report finds that Johnny Hunt, a beloved Georgia-based Southern Baptist pastor who has been a senior vice president on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the woman but acknowledged that he had interactions together with her. After the report was released, 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 within the Guidepost report. I have never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Could 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before Might 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, 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.

Intercourse abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would affirm the information round most of the tales they have already shared, but many had been nonetheless shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the very best levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female government on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This can be a denomination that is via and thru about power. It is misappropriated power. It does not in any approach mirror the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm so gutted.”

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three past presidents of the conference, a former vice president and the previous head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 centered on actions by the SBC’s Govt Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist church buildings operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual price range that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings present, Southern Baptists were instructed the denomination couldn't put together a registry of sex offenders because it could go against the denomination’s polity — or how it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while preserving it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report also includes non-public emails showing how longtime leaders such as August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the convention’s legal professional despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be applied according to SBC polity, saying “it would match our polity and current ministries to help church buildings on this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “quick action to sign the Conference’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities start a extra aggressive effort on this area.” That same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to give extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not read the report yet. Attempts to achieve Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot about how they really blindly chose to stay on the identical 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 weight.”

Throughout Government Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to data of conversations on legal matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went towards the advice of convention lawyers and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to imagine the Executive 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 also led to the resignation of the Executive 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 decision over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who're named all through 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 e mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then said: “Our precedence can't be the latest cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for remark.

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 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 one other chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored arduous to try to make one thing happen, but betrayed the entire Southern Baptist Convention,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own religion into a complicit partner for their own resolution to decide on institutional safety over the protection of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its last annual meeting, comes just weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected discuss next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embody providing devoted survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be able to take meaningful steps to alter our culture because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, said in a press release.

Since a long time of sex abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church have 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 church buildings. In contrast to the Catholic Church, the SBC has a non-hierarchical structure.

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 Government Committee presidents, in line with the report. He expressed his issues 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 be taught from Catholic mistakes and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Govt Committee on the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over native church buildings” however that they would try to make use of their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place 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 job drive on the issue and said that the report exhibits a need for institutions just like the SBC to hunt outdoors experience on sex abuse.

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

The issue of sex abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked private letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an identical 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 said. “People will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore said he hopes the SBC will think about changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s house state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past two decades fighting for reform.