Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday launched a major third-party investigation that discovered that intercourse abuse survivors were typically ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by prime clergy within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages embrace shocking new details about specific 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 or not they might keep a database of offenders to stop more abuse when prime leaders had been secretly maintaining a personal record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its kind in an enormous Protestant denomination like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian group that has had intense inner battles over methods to deal with sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other religious establishments in the US, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total variety of abuse circumstances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost twenty years, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and other accused abusers who had been within the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Most of the cases referred to within the report had been considered outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers have been criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a company known as Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “only to be met, time and time once more, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been concerned extra with protecting the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses totally on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors got here ahead, it also states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman only 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 vice president at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl throughout a Panama City Seashore, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the lady but 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 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 May 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that earlier than Could 13, he was not aware 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 very own intercourse abuse scandals. Now, they’re debating their response.

Intercourse abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would verify the details round most of the tales they have already shared, however many had been still shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the highest levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine 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 by and thru about energy. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any means reflect the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report additionally names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including 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 centered on actions by the SBC’s Government Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists had been informed the denomination couldn't put together a registry of sex offenders because it will go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it features. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders whereas conserving it a secret to avoid the opportunity of getting sued. The report additionally consists of personal emails displaying how longtime leaders akin to August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e mail, the convention’s lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database might be implemented in step with SBC polity, saying “it would match our polity and current ministries to help church buildings in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “speedy motion to sign the Convention’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort in this area.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to present more democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number 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, said he had not learn the report yet. Makes an attempt to reach Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly selected to remain 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 load.”

During Executive Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to data of conversations on legal matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went in opposition to the advice of convention legal professionals and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The debate 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 Govt Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who also once 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 conference’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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

According to the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then stated: “Our priority can't be the most recent cultural disaster.” Floyd did not instantly return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who informed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in other Southern Baptist church buildings in multiple states, has lengthy 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 Executive Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored hard to attempt to make something happen, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who's a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their very own faith right into a complicit associate for their very own determination to choose institutional protection over the protection of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual assembly, comes simply weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated talk about subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace offering dedicated survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

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

Since many years of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of clergymen they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the switch of abusers to other churches. 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, based on the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders might be falling into a number of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should study from Catholic errors and take action early on to implement structural reforms in order to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was leading the Executive Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over local churches” however that they would try to make use of their “affect” to supply protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of setting up 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 remark.

Rachael Denhollander, a former USA gymnast who outed Larry Nassar’s serial sexual assaults, is an adviser on a Southern Baptist job pressure on the issue and said that the report exhibits a necessity for establishments like the SBC to seek outside expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It exhibits a level of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional level that has led to decades of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander stated. “The question Southern Baptists need to ask is, ‘How may this happen?’”

The difficulty of sex abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked private letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an analogous approach 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 said. “Individuals will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, 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 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 previous 20 years preventing for reform.