Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, explosive report says

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

The findings of nearly 300 pages include surprising new particulars about specific abuse instances and shine a light on how denominational leaders for many years actively resisted requires abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders additionally lied to Southern Baptists over whether they might preserve a database of offenders to stop extra abuse when high leaders were secretly holding a non-public record for years.

The report — the primary investigation of its kind in a massive Protestant denomination just like the SBC — is predicted to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense inside battles over learn how to deal with intercourse abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other spiritual institutions in the United States, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have lengthy resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse disaster and that of the Catholic Church, saying the whole variety of abuse instances among Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost twenty years, survivors of abuse and different concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged baby molesters and other accused abusers who had been within the pulpit or employed as church employees members. Many of the instances referred to in the report have been thought of exterior 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 a company known as Guidepost Options on the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails had been “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were concerned more with defending the establishment from legal responsibility than from defending Southern Baptists from further abuse.

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

While the report focuses totally on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors came ahead, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist chief 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 vice president at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a lady during a Panama Metropolis Seashore, Fla., trip 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 along with her. After the report was launched, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted a press release 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, according to a statement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell said that before May 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Typically, he called the details 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 affirm the details round many of the stories they have already shared, but many were still surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the best levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, nevertheless it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid female government on the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This is a denomination that's by means of and thru about energy. It's misappropriated power. It does not in any way reflect the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report also names a number of senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past presidents of the convention, 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 Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from each other, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes greater than $190 million cooperative program in its annual funds that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings present, Southern Baptists were informed the denomination could not put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders because it would go against the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained an inventory of offenders while protecting it a secret to avoid the potential of getting sued. The report additionally consists of private emails exhibiting how longtime leaders similar to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse considerations, calling them “a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the convention’s legal professional sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be carried out in line with SBC polity, saying “it could fit our polity and present ministries to help churches in this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really useful “instant motion to sign the Convention’s want that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort on this space.” That same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a movement for a database, Boto rejected the idea.

For a denomination designed to give extra democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report reveals how lay Southern Baptists allowed just a few key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for decades. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report but. Makes an attempt to succeed in Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.

“The report goes to validate a lot about how they really blindly chose to stay 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 alongside. Now Southern Baptists have to hold the weight.”

Throughout Govt Committee meetings in 2021, some members argued against waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators access to records of conversations on legal matters among the committee’s members and staffers. They mentioned doing so went against the advice of convention attorneys and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The controversy over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, causing 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 additionally led to the resignation of the Govt Committee’s head, Ronnie Floyd, who additionally once served as SBC president and was on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council. The choice over attorney-client privilege additionally led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who are named all through the report.

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In line with the report, Floyd advised SBC leaders in a 2019 e-mail that he had received “some calls” from “key SBC pastors and leaders” expressing “rising concern about all of the emphasis on the sexual abuse disaster.” He then said: “Our precedence can't be the most recent cultural crisis.” Floyd didn't immediately return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who told SBC leaders that she was abused by a youth pastor who went on to serve in other 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 Govt Committee “turned his again to her during her speech and another chortled.”

“The Govt Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked onerous to try to make something occur, however betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Convention,” mentioned Brown, who's a retired appellate lawyer in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith into a complicit associate for their very own resolution to decide on institutional safety over the protection of kids and congregants.”

The report, which was requested by Southern Baptists throughout its last annual assembly, comes just weeks before its next gathering in Anaheim, Calif., where members are anticipated discuss subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost include offering dedicated survivor advocacy assist and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be ready to take meaningful steps to change our tradition as it relates to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, said in an announcement.

Since many years of sex abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church had been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have printed lists of clergymen they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall 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 Executive Committee presidents, according to the report. He expressed his considerations that SBC leaders may very well be falling into a few of the same patterns as Catholic leaders in not coping with clergy intercourse abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should learn 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 Executive Committee at the time, responded to Doyle in a short letter that “Southern Baptist leaders really have no authority over local church buildings” but that they'd attempt to use their “influence” to provide protections. In an article, Web page accused a survivor group of having a hidden agenda of establishing the nation’s largest Protestant physique 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 process pressure on the problem and mentioned that the report reveals a necessity for institutions like the SBC to seek outdoors experience on intercourse abuse.

“It exhibits 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 damage,” Denhollander stated. “The question Southern Baptists should ask is, ‘How may this happen?’”

The issue of sex abuse was a distinguished theme in leaked non-public letters written by Russell Moore, who left his place in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Fee. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in the same approach 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 in this report are breathtaking,” Moore said. “Individuals will say, ‘This isn't all Southern Baptists, take a look at all the great we do.’ The report demonstrates a pattern of stonewalling, coverup, intimidation and retaliation.”

Moore stated he hopes the SBC will consider changing a statue of evangelist Billy Graham, which was moved from Nashville to Graham’s house state in 2016, with a statue of Christa Brown, the abuse survivor who spent the past two decades combating for reform.