Southern Baptist leaders lined up intercourse abuse, explosive report says

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Conference on Sunday released 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 almost 300 pages include stunning new particulars about particular abuse circumstances and shine a lightweight on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Proof within the report suggests leaders also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they may maintain a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when high leaders have been secretly maintaining a personal record for years.

The report — the first investigation of its kind in a large Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves all through a conservative Christian neighborhood that has had intense internal battles over methods to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other religious institutions in america, has struggled with declining membership for the previous 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total variety of abuse cases amongst Southern Baptists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and other accused abusers who have been in the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Many of the cases referred to within the report have been thought-about outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear what number of abusers were criminally charged.

The report, compiled by an organization called Guidepost Options at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “solely to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who had been concerned extra 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 mild in recent times that some senior SBC leaders had protected or even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors came ahead, it additionally states that a main Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a girl 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 at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a girl throughout 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 but acknowledged that he had interactions along with her. After the report was released, 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 anybody.”

Hunt resigned on May 13 from the North American Mission Board, according to an announcement by NAMB President Kevin Ezell. Ezell stated that before May 13, he was not aware of alleged misconduct by Hunt. Usually, he referred to as the main points of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”

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Intercourse abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their tales for years, anticipated Sunday’s launch would confirm the facts around most of the stories they have already shared, however many were nonetheless shocked to see the sample of coverups by the best levels of management.

“I knew it was rotten, however it’s astonishing and infuriating,” stated Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was as soon as the highest-paid feminine executive at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This is a denomination that is via and through about power. It's misappropriated energy. It does not in any method reflect the Jesus I see within the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, together with three past presidents of the conference, a former vp 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 Government 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 budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For many years, the findings present, Southern Baptists had been advised the denomination could not put collectively a registry of intercourse offenders as a result of it would go towards the denomination’s polity — or the way it capabilities. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a listing of offenders whereas preserving it a secret to keep away from the opportunity of getting sued. The report also includes non-public emails displaying how longtime leaders comparable to August Boto have been dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to fully distract us from evangelism.”

In an April 2007 e-mail, the convention’s attorney sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be carried out in keeping with SBC polity, saying “it might match our polity and present ministries to assist church buildings on this area of kid abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he really helpful “rapid motion to signal the Conference’s need that the [executive committee] and the entities begin 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 thought.

For a denomination designed to give more democratic power to its lay leaders or “messengers” who voted to fee the third-party investigation, the report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a couple of key leaders, including Boto and the conference’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to manage the national institutional response to intercourse abuse for many years. Guenther, the longtime lawyer for the SBC, mentioned he had not read the report but. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday had been unsuccessful.

“The report is going to validate so much about how they actually blindly chose to remain on the identical path all these years,” said 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 load.”

Throughout Executive Committee conferences in 2021, some members argued in opposition to waiving attorney-client privilege, which might give investigators entry to data of conversations on authorized issues among the many committee’s members and staffers. They stated doing so went towards the recommendation of convention attorneys and could bankrupt the SBC by exposing it to lawsuits.

The talk over waiving privilege upset a big swath of Southern Baptists, inflicting some to imagine the Government 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 Govt 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 choice over attorney-client privilege also led to the resignation of the conference’s attorneys, who're named all through the report.

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In response to the report, Floyd informed SBC leaders in a 2019 electronic 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 acknowledged: “Our precedence can't be the latest cultural disaster.” Floyd didn't instantly return a request for remark.

Christa Brown, who advised 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 one other chortled.”

“The Executive Committee betrayed not solely survivors who worked exhausting to attempt to make one thing occur, but betrayed the whole Southern Baptist Conference,” said Brown, who is a retired appellate legal professional in Colorado. “They’ve made their own faith right into a complicit partner for their very own choice to decide on institutional safety over the safety of youngsters 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 expected focus on subsequent steps. Suggestions by Guidepost embody offering devoted survivor advocacy support and a survivor compensation fund.

“We must be able to take meaningful steps to change our culture because it pertains to sexual abuse,” Ed Litton, the present SBC president, mentioned in a press release.

Since many years of intercourse abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church have been reported by the Boston Globe in 2002, some U.S. dioceses have published lists of clergymen they say have been credibly accused of sexual abuse to forestall the transfer of abusers to different church buildings. In contrast to 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 disaster, wrote to the SBC and Executive Committee presidents, based on the report. He expressed his issues that SBC leaders might be falling into a few of the identical patterns as Catholic leaders in not dealing with clergy sex abuse, and he urged that Southern Baptists should be taught from Catholic errors and take action 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 truly haven't any authority over local churches” but that they would try to use their “affect” to offer 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.” Page did not immediately return a request for remark.

Rachael Denhollander, a former USA gymnast who outed Larry Nassar’s serial sexual assaults, is an adviser on a Southern Baptist job power on the problem and said that the report reveals a necessity for institutions like the SBC to seek exterior experience on sex abuse.

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

The difficulty of sex abuse was a outstanding theme in leaked personal letters written by Russell Moore, who left his position in 2021 as head of the SBC’s policy arm, the Ethics & Spiritual Liberty Fee. Moore stated he expects Southern Baptists to receive Sunday’s report in an identical way 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 stated. “Folks 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 contemplate 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 20 years combating for reform.