Eight Missouri ministers accused of sex abuse in Southern Baptist Convention report • Missouri Unbiased

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

The 205-page checklist is a compilation of ministers and different church staff who've been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The record is described as a “fluid, working doc” that was also incomplete however largely pulls details about abusers from revealed news studies.

The publication of the checklist comes after the discharge Sunday of a 300-page report by an independent investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for decades have received reports of sexual abuse committed by church employees, pastors and others. But those reviews have been largely kept secret and, fairly than acting upon and investigating reviews of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

“The entire thing must be seen for what it is,” wrote former Southern Baptist Convention government committee member and common counsel D. August Boto in an internal electronic mail that was printed in the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to completely 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 point out more concern about their own authorized legal responsibility than the victims and at occasions didn't 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 intercourse 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 intercourse abuse.

Doyle was advised, “Southern Baptist leaders truly have no authority over native church buildings,” a response that Doyle considered dismissive, according to the investigative report. 

That same year, on the SBC convention 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 “assist in preventing any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, according to the report, and witnesses on the conference recalled little about it except to express their opinion that it could “violate local church autonomy.”

Ultimately, a staffer for the SBC executive committee since 2007 had maintained a list of accused ministers and church workers, but it surely was saved hidden from the general public and even SBC govt committee trustees, in accordance with the report.

Southern Baptist leaders mentioned publicizing the listing of credibly accused abusers represented “an preliminary, however necessary, step towards addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform within the Conference.”

“Each entry on this list reminds us of the devastation and destruction caused by sexual abuse,” stated a joint assertion from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, each SBC govt committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of these heinous acts discover hope and therapeutic, and that church buildings will make the most of this record proactively to guard and care for essentially the most susceptible among us.”

Legal professionals for the SBC executive committee researched the checklist of accused abusers, taking steps to confirm info it contained. It left unredacted entries about alleged abusers that may very well be confirmed, whereas redacting entries the place someone was acquitted or did not have a closing disposition, in addition to data that would determine victims.

Missouri men function prominently on the listing. They include:

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 more in-depth information from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, we invite you to follow us on Twitter.