Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages embody shocking new details about particular abuse circumstances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they may keep a database of offenders to stop more abuse when top leaders had been secretly protecting a personal record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its type in a large Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense inner battles over how you can handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with other religious establishments in the USA, 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 overall variety of abuse cases amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and different involved 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 have been thought-about 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 an organization called Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “solely to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who have been concerned more with protecting the establishment from legal responsibility than from protecting Southern Baptists from additional abuse.

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

While the report focuses totally on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors came forward, it also states that a main Southern Baptist leader 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 chairman at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady throughout a Panama City Beach, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical 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 an announcement on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth within the Guidepost report. I have by no means abused anybody.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, in line with a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that earlier than May 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he known as the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Sex abuse survivors, lots of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would affirm the information around many of the stories they've already shared, but many were nonetheless shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the highest ranges of management.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid feminine executive on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This is a denomination that is via and through about power. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any way 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 conference, a former vice president 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 Government Committee, which handles monetary and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches function independently from each other, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, the findings present, Southern Baptists had been instructed the denomination could not put collectively a registry of sex offenders as a result of it will go against the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders whereas retaining it a secret to avoid the opportunity of getting sued. The report additionally includes private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders akin to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 email, the conference’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be implemented according to SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and present ministries to assist churches on this space of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he advisable “quick motion to signal the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort in this space.” That same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the thought.

For a denomination designed to give more democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, together with Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the nationwide institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report yet. Attempts to succeed in Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate a lot about how they actually blindly selected to remain on the same path all these years,” mentioned 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 burden.”

Throughout Executive Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued towards waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to information of conversations on legal issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went against the recommendation 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 additionally 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 choice over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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In keeping with the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 email that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then stated: “Our precedence cannot be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't instantly return a request for comment.

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

“The Government Committee betrayed not solely survivors who labored laborious to attempt to make one thing occur, 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 into a complicit partner for their very own decision to choose institutional safety over the safety of youngsters and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual meeting, comes just weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are anticipated discuss next steps. Recommendations by Guidepost embrace offering dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be able to take significant steps to alter our tradition as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, mentioned in an announcement.

Since decades of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church have been 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 stop the switch of abusers to other churches. Not like the Catholic Church, the SBC has a non-hierarchical construction.

In March 2007, the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a priest and canon lawyer who first warned of the looming Catholic sex abuse disaster, wrote to the SBC and Government Committee presidents, according to the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders could be falling into a number of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should be taught from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms so as to make kids safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders actually have no authority over native church buildings” however that they'd try to make use of their “influence” to supply protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of getting a hidden agenda of organising the nation’s largest Protestant physique for lawsuits. Web page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web page didn't immediately 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 task pressure on the issue and said that the report reveals a necessity for establishments just like the SBC to seek exterior expertise on sex abuse.

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

The issue of sex abuse was a prominent theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Non secular Liberty Fee. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in the same option 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, look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated he hopes the SBC will contemplate changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s dwelling state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past 20 years preventing for reform.