Southern Baptist leaders lined up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of almost 300 pages include surprising new details about particular abuse instances and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they might preserve a database of offenders to forestall extra abuse when high leaders have been secretly preserving a private record for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its variety in an enormous Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inner battles over easy methods to deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with different religious establishments in america, 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 full variety of abuse circumstances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost twenty years, survivors of abuse and different involved Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and other accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Many of the instances referred to within the report have been thought of exterior the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by a corporation referred to as Guidepost Solutions at 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 involved more with protecting the establishment from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors came forward, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman just 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 vp at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl throughout a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., trip in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the woman however acknowledged that he had interactions 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 anybody.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, in response to a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that earlier than Might 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he referred to 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.

Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would affirm the details round many of the stories they have already shared, but many had been nonetheless stunned to see the sample of coverups by the best levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, however it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female govt 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's by way of and through about energy. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any way replicate the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I'm 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 previous head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 focused on actions by the SBC’s Govt Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from each other, 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 many years, the findings present, Southern Baptists were informed the denomination could not put together a registry of sex offenders as a result of it would go towards the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while conserving it a secret to avoid the potential for getting sued. The report additionally contains personal emails displaying how longtime leaders reminiscent of August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the convention’s legal professional despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be implemented consistent with SBC polity, saying “it will match our polity and present ministries to assist church buildings on this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “rapid action to signal the Convention’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort in this area.” That very same 12 months, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to provide extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission the third-party investigation, the report exhibits how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, together with Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to regulate the national institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report yet. Makes an attempt to reach Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they actually blindly chose to remain on the same path all these years,” said 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 hold the weight.”

During Executive Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued in opposition to 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 mentioned doing so went against the recommendation of conference attorneys and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a big 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 Government Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally once served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The choice over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

In response to the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then acknowledged: “Our precedence cannot be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't instantly return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who instructed SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in different 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 Government Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not only survivors who labored onerous to attempt to make something 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 religion right into a complicit companion for their very own choice to decide on institutional safety over the protection of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists during its final annual assembly, comes just weeks earlier than its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected talk about next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include providing dedicated survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be ready to take significant steps to vary our culture because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, mentioned in a press release.

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church were reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of priests they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the switch of abusers to different 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 Executive Committee presidents, in accordance with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could possibly be falling into a few of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should learn 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 leading the Executive Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders truly don't have any authority over local church buildings” however that they might attempt to use their “influence” to supply protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his position in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web 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 force on the problem and said that the report shows a need for establishments like the SBC to hunt exterior expertise on intercourse abuse.

“It shows 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 have to 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 place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in a similar 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 stated. “Individuals will say, ‘This is not all Southern Baptists, have a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will think about 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.