Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages embrace stunning new particulars about specific abuse cases and shine a light-weight 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 might keep a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when high leaders have been secretly protecting a non-public record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its form in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense internal battles over easy methods to handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different religious institutions in the United States, 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 total number of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly two decades, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and other accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Many of the cases referred to within the report have 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 a company referred to as Guidepost Solutions on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were concerned extra with defending the establishment from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors came forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman just one month after he accomplished 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 vp at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama City Beach, Fla., vacation in 2010.

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

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, in response to an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that earlier than May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he referred to as the main points 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, a lot of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the info around most of the tales they've already shared, however many had been still surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the highest ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid female executive on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “This can be a denomination that's through and thru about energy. It's misappropriated power. It does not in any method mirror the Jesus I see within 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 convention, a former vice chairman 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 Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Government Committee distributes more than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings present, Southern Baptists were advised the denomination couldn't put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders because it will go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while keeping it a secret to keep away from the opportunity of getting sued. The report also consists of non-public emails showing how longtime leaders equivalent to August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e mail, the convention’s lawyer sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could possibly be implemented according to SBC polity, saying “it will fit our polity and present ministries to help church buildings in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “immediate motion to signal the Conference’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort on this area.” That very same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to present extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a few key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report yet. Attempts to achieve Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot about how they really 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the weight.”

During Government Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to information of conversations on authorized matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went in opposition to the recommendation of convention attorneys and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk 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 also led to the resignation of the Government 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 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 accordance with the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then acknowledged: “Our precedence cannot be the most recent cultural disaster.” 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 different Southern Baptist church buildings 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 another chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked onerous to attempt to make one thing happen, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith right into a complicit accomplice for their very own resolution to decide on institutional protection over the safety of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual meeting, comes just weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are expected talk about next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace offering devoted survivor advocacy help and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be ready to take significant steps to alter our tradition because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, stated in an announcement.

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 prevent the switch of abusers to other 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 sex abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Govt Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into among the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should be taught from Catholic errors and take motion early on to implement structural reforms so as to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was leading the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over native church buildings” but that they would try to make use of their “influence” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web page didn't immediately 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 force on the issue and said that the report exhibits a need for establishments just like the SBC to seek outdoors expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It exhibits a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level that has led to many years of survivors being victimized and hurt,” Denhollander mentioned. “The query Southern Baptists need to ask is, ‘How may this occur?’”

The difficulty of intercourse abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy 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. “Folks 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 said he hopes the SBC will consider changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s residence state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past 20 years combating for reform.