Eight Missouri ministers accused of sex abuse in Southern Baptist Conference report • Missouri Impartial

The Southern Baptist Convention on Thursday launched a once-secret and prolonged checklist of accused intercourse abusers — several of whom are in the Midwest — throughout the denomination.

The 205-page list is a compilation of ministers and other church employees who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The list is described as a “fluid, working doc” that was additionally incomplete however largely pulls details about abusers from published news reviews.

The publication of the listing comes after the release Sunday of a 300-page report by an unbiased investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for many years have received reviews of sexual abuse dedicated by church staff, pastors and others. However those stories were largely stored secret and, reasonably than acting upon and investigating experiences of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

“The entire thing should be seen for what it's,” wrote former Southern Baptist Convention executive committee member and normal counsel D. August Boto in an internal email that was published within the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

The disaster rocking the Southern Baptist denomination this week is similar in some ways to what the Catholic church continues to face. Leaders in both faiths systematically hid information about sexual misconduct, appeared to indicate more concern about their own legal legal responsibility than the victims and at occasions did not expel accused abusers from positions of authority.

In 2007, Father Thomas Doyle, a Catholic priest credited as one of the first to warn of his personal denomination’s clergy sex abuse disaster, wrote a letter to SBC leadership conveying his concern that Southern Baptist leaders had been repeating the failures of the Catholic church in coping with sex abuse.

Doyle was told, “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over native churches,” a response that Doyle thought to be dismissive, in accordance with the investigative report. 

That same year, on the SBC conference in San Antonio, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson made a movement to create a database of Southern Baptist clergy who had been convicted or credibly accused of, or had confessed to sexual abuse. The proposal was meant to “help in stopping any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, in accordance with the report, and witnesses on the convention recalled little about it besides to express their opinion that it would “violate native church autonomy.”

In the end, a staffer for the SBC executive committee since 2007 had maintained an inventory of accused ministers and church workers, nevertheless it was stored hidden from the public and even SBC executive committee trustees, in keeping with the report.

Southern Baptist leaders said publicizing the checklist of credibly accused abusers represented “an preliminary, but essential, step in the direction of addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform within the Conference.”

“Each entry in this checklist reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by sexual abuse,” stated a joint statement from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, each SBC government committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of these heinous acts find hope and healing, and that churches will make the most of this listing proactively to guard and look after essentially the most weak among us.”

Lawyers for the SBC government committee researched the listing of accused abusers, taking steps to verify data it contained. It left unredacted entries about alleged abusers that may very well be confirmed, whereas redacting entries where someone was acquitted or didn't have a last disposition, in addition to data that could determine victims.

Missouri males feature prominently on the listing. They embrace:

This story comes from the Midwest Newsroom, an investigative journalism collaboration including IPR, KCUR 89.3, Nebraska Public Media Information, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. For extra in-depth information from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, we invite you to observe us on Twitter.