Southern Baptist leaders lined up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of practically 300 pages include surprising new details about particular abuse instances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Proof in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could keep a database of offenders to stop more abuse when high leaders had been secretly conserving a private record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its variety in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is anticipated to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian group that has had intense internal battles over methods to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, together with different non secular institutions 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 entire number of abuse instances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for nearly two decades, survivors of abuse and different concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged youngster molesters and other accused abusers who have been within the pulpit or employed as church workers members. Lots of the cases referred to in the report were thought-about outdoors the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report intercourse abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers had been criminally charged.

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

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

Whereas the report focuses primarily on how leaders dealt with abuse points when survivors came ahead, it also states that a main Southern Baptist chief 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 on the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., vacation in 2010.

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

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on a press release by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell mentioned that before May 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he called the details 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, many of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the facts around most of the stories they've already shared, however many were still surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the very best ranges 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 executive on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed within the report. “This is a denomination that's by way of and through about energy. It is misappropriated energy. It doesn't in any way replicate the Jesus I see in 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 conference, a former vp 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 Govt Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Though Southern Baptist churches operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Government 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 couldn't put together a registry of sex offenders as a result of it would go against the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while maintaining it a secret to avoid the opportunity of getting sued. The report additionally contains personal emails exhibiting how longtime leaders resembling August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 electronic mail, the conference’s lawyer despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database may very well be applied consistent with SBC polity, saying “it could fit our polity and present ministries to help churches on this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “rapid motion to signal the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a extra aggressive effort on this space.” That very same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to give extra democratic energy to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to commission 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 many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report but. Makes an attempt to succeed in Boto on Sunday have been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they really 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 within the report. “It buoys what we’ve been saying all alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the weight.”

Throughout Executive Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators access to records of conversations on authorized matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They said doing so went against the recommendation of convention attorneys and will bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing some to believe the Govt 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 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 also led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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

In accordance with the report, Floyd instructed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic mail that he had acquired “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then stated: “Our priority cannot be the newest cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't immediately 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 churches 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 again to her throughout her speech and another chortled.”

“The Government Committee betrayed not only survivors who worked onerous to attempt to make something occur, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” stated Brown, who is a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their own religion into a complicit accomplice for their very own resolution to decide on institutional protection over the safety of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its final annual meeting, comes just weeks before its subsequent gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected focus on subsequent steps. Recommendations by Guidepost include offering dedicated survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We have to be able to take significant steps to change our tradition as it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in a statement.

Since a long time of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have revealed lists of monks they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to prevent the switch of abusers to other churches. Not like 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 response to the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders might be falling into among the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy intercourse 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 children safer.

The report states that Frank Page, who was leading the Executive Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really haven't any authority over local churches” however that they would try to use their “affect” to provide protections. In an article, Web 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.” 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 task force on the issue and said that the report reveals a need for institutions just like the SBC to seek outside expertise on intercourse abuse.

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

The difficulty of sex abuse was a prominent theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s coverage arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Commission. Moore mentioned he expects Southern Baptists to obtain Sunday’s report in an identical 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 said. “People will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, look at all the good we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will consider replacing 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 previous two decades preventing for reform.