Southern Baptist leaders coated up sex abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Conference on Sunday released a major third-party investigation that discovered that intercourse abuse survivors have been usually ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by high clergy within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages embrace shocking new details about specific abuse cases and shine a light-weight on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence within the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether or not they could keep a database of offenders to forestall more abuse when prime leaders were secretly holding a personal listing for years.

The report — the first investigation of its variety in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is expected to ship shock waves all through a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over how one can handle intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with different non secular establishments in the United States, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the entire number of abuse instances amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost 20 years, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Conference’s administrative arm to report alleged little one molesters and other accused abusers who have been in the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Most of the instances referred to in the report have been thought-about 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 company called Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails have been “solely to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been involved more with protecting the institution from liability than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

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

Whereas the report focuses totally on how leaders handled abuse points when survivors got here ahead, it also states that a major 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 convention. 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 throughout a Panama Metropolis Seaside, Fla., vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any bodily contact with the girl but acknowledged that he had interactions along 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 never abused anyone.”

Hunt resigned on Might 13 from the North American Mission Board, based on a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before Could 13, he was not conscious of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he known as the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the details round lots of the stories they've already shared, however many had been still shocked to see the pattern of coverups by the best levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” mentioned Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid feminine govt at 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 via and through about energy. It is misappropriated power. It doesn't in any method mirror the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report additionally names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past presidents of the conference, 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 financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches function independently from one another, the Nashville-based Govt Committee distributes greater 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 have been told the denomination couldn't put together a registry of sex offenders because it could go in opposition to the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders whereas maintaining it a secret to keep away from the opportunity of getting sued. The report also consists of private emails displaying how longtime leaders reminiscent of August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse issues, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the conference’s legal professional despatched Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be applied consistent with SBC polity, saying “it could match our polity and current ministries to help church buildings in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “speedy action to signal the Conference’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities start a more aggressive effort in this space.” That very same yr, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the concept.

For a denomination designed to offer more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed a number of key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the nationwide institutional response to sex abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, said he had not learn the report yet. Attempts to succeed in Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot 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 in the report. “It buoys what we’ve been saying all along. Now Southern Baptists have to carry the weight.”

During Executive Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which would give investigators entry to information of conversations on authorized matters among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went towards the advice of convention lawyers and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a large swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to believe 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 Executive Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally 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 throughout the report.

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In keeping with the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had obtained “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “growing concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse crisis.” He then stated: “Our priority can't be the most recent cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for comment.

Christa Brown, who informed 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 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 Govt Committee “turned his again to her throughout her speech and one other chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked exhausting to attempt to make something happen, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” mentioned Brown, who's a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith into a complicit associate for their very own choice to choose institutional safety over the safety of children and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual assembly, comes just weeks earlier than its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., the place members are expected talk about next steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embrace offering dedicated survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We should be ready to take meaningful steps to vary our culture because it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the current SBC president, stated in an announcement.

Since many years of sex 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 are saying have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the transfer 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 intercourse abuse crisis, wrote to the SBC and Govt Committee presidents, in line with the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders could be falling into a few of the similar patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should study from Catholic mistakes and take motion early on to implement structural reforms in order to make youngsters safer.

The report states that Frank Web page, who was main the Govt Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a brief letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over native church buildings” but that they might try to use their “affect” to offer protections. In an article, Page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of setting up the nation’s largest Protestant body for lawsuits. Page later resigned from his place in 2018 over having a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Web page didn't instantly 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 activity drive on the issue and mentioned that the report reveals a need for institutions just like the SBC to hunt outdoors expertise on sex abuse.

“It reveals a degree of coverup and harassment and resistance to reforms on an institutional degree that has led to a long time of survivors being victimized and harm,” Denhollander said. “The query Southern Baptists must ask is, ‘How might this occur?’”

The difficulty of intercourse 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 coverage arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore said he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in a similar 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 mentioned. “Folks will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, look at all the nice we do.’ The report demonstrates a sample of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore mentioned he hopes the SBC will take into account 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.