Christian NewsToday

Southern Baptist leaders mistreated abuse survivors for many years, report says

(RNS) For many years, a handful of leaders within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination handled sexual abuse survivors as enemies of the church, denied duty for the actions of native church buildings and downplayed the variety of sexual abuse circumstances in these church buildings, all within the title of defending the establishment, based on a report released Sunday.

The report, performed by a third-party investigations agency, Guidepost Options, and made public by the Southern Baptist Conference’s intercourse abuse process power, reveals a callous disregard for abuse survivors and a relentless dedication to defending the denomination from legal responsibility.

Guidepost Options discovered that SBC leaders had been nicely conscious of abuse circumstances within the church and even compiled an inventory of offenders however took no steps to search out out if alleged abusers remained in ministry, as a substitute specializing in defending the SBC from legal responsibility.

“In service of this aim, survivors and others who reported abuse had been ignored, disbelieved, or met with the fixed chorus that the SBC might take no motion as a consequence of its polity concerning church autonomy — even when it meant that convicted molesters continued in ministry with no discover or warning to their present church or congregation,” investigators wrote.

The report additionally particulars graphic allegations of sexual assault by former SBC president and longtime megachurch pastor Johnny Hunt. The investigators decided these allegations had been credible regardless of Hunt’s denials. Hunt issued a separate denial of the allegations Sunday afternoon.

The report additionally accuses SBC leaders of taking concrete and intentional steps to cover details about sexual abuse from trustees within the SBC’s Govt Committee, which oversees the ministries of the denomination.

“Our investigation revealed that, for a few years, just a few senior EC leaders, together with outdoors counsel, largely managed the EC’s response to those experiences of abuse,” investigators from Guidepost Options wrote in an government abstract of their report. “They intently guarded details about abuse allegations and lawsuits, which weren’t shared with EC Trustees, and had been singularly targeted on avoiding legal responsibility for the SBC to the exclusion of different issues.”

In line with the practically 300-page report, former Govt Committee vice chairman and normal counsel D. August “Augie” Boto and James Guenther, who represented the SBC from 1966 to 2021, spent a long time defending the SBC in any respect prices.

The 2 attorneys criticized SBC leaders who tried to take steps to handle abuse and mishandled abuse allegations “in a way that concerned the mistreatment of survivors,” the report says. The report additionally discovered that Boto, particularly, had a sample of intimidating victims and abuse advocates.

“This entire factor ought to be seen for what it’s,” Boto wrote in an inside electronic mail quoted within the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism. It’s not the gospel. It’s not even part of the gospel. It’s a misdirection play.”

Tiffany Thigpen, an abuse survivor and advocate, stated the report revealed what many survivors already knew and had been warning Southern Baptists about for many years.

“We advised the reality,” she stated.

This week, Thigpen stated she has been occupied with Bible verses that urge believers to inform the reality and never cowl up misdeeds, one thing that she stated SBC leaders did not do. Particularly, she pointed to a verse within the Guide of Proverbs, warning that satisfaction will result in shame.

“This report is the shame,” she stated. “The abuse of victims is the shame.

“The Bible didn’t inform them to do that,” she added.

SBC leaders have lengthy excused their inaction by claiming that the SBC is just not a hierarchical denomination and has no energy to implement adjustments to forestall abuse.

“The Southern Baptist Conference construction leaves the duty for such issues within the palms of these most motivated and able to addressing it — the members of the native church buildings — lots of whom are dad and mom and grandparents,” the SBC lawyer Boto wrote in 2007, after abuse survivor Christa Brown and different advocates referred to as for the creation of a database and nationwide motion by the SBC.

Thigpen stated the report is proof {that a} handful of highly effective leaders are in truth in control of how abuse is dealt with.

The sexual abuse investigation was approved by native delegates — generally known as messengers — on the 2021 SBC annual assembly, prompted by allegations from abuse survivors in addition to these contained in a letter written by former Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore about mistreatment and intimidation by SBC leaders towards survivors.

Instantly, SBC leaders fought to restrict the scope of the investigation, rejecting the messengers’ instruction to the Govt Committee to waive attorney-client privilege as a part of the investigation. The messengers’ order would enable investigators to evaluate communications between SBC legal professionals and committee members.

Members of the Govt Committee, together with former Govt Committee President Ronnie Floyd — continued to withstand the concept of waiving privilege during a series of intense and troublesome conferences final fall. They claimed that waiving privilege would result in the smash of the SBC. The committee ultimately voted to waive privilege, main Floyd and different members to resign.

Thigpen stated that dispute exhibits that SBC leaders maintain extraordinary church members in contempt.

“They do not actually see you as in cost,” she stated. “They see you because the dumb sheep that they will simply inform what to do.”

Southern Baptist leaders had lengthy identified the denomination had an issue with sexual abuse in native church buildings. Within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, Darrell Gilyard, a protégé of former Southern Baptist Presidents Paige Patterson and Jerry Vines, was fired from a number of church buildings for sexual misconduct. He was ultimately convicted of intercourse crimes in opposition to minors however returned to the pulpit. In 2002, the SBC passed a decision calling on “civil authorities to punish to the fullest extent of the legislation sexual abuse amongst clergy and counselors.”

A 2007 investigation by the ABC Information present “20/20” documented abuse in Protestant church buildings, together with the SBC. That led to a resolution on defending youngsters from abuse and a name for the SBC’s Govt Committee, which oversees the enterprise of the SBC between annual conferences, to look into making a database of SBC abusers.

SBC President Frank Web page and Boto criticized the ABC report as “yellow journalism” and rejected claims that the SBC had an abuse drawback.

Boto launched an official assertion saying the ABC report misled viewers into pondering “the Southern Baptist Conference one way or the other condones, hides or denies sexual offenses dedicated by ministers in SBC-affiliated church buildings.”

“The conference does none of these issues,” Boto stated. “Fairly the opposite.”

Boto was later appointed to advise a committee trying into the opportunity of creating an abuser database, which was ultimately rejected. As an alternative, the Govt Committee urged that church buildings depend on nationwide registries of intercourse offenders and report allegations to police instantly.

“The place delay is attributable to a want to guard the repute of the church, we imagine such delay to be utterly unjustified,” the Govt Committee’s 2008 report back to the SBC annual assembly read.

After the Govt Committee rejected the database, Brown warned that the issue of abuse would proceed and lamented that there was no place within the denomination for abuse survivors to show.

“I imagine that until and till there’s a secure place to which the victims themselves can report abuse with some affordable expectation of being objectively heard … every little thing else can be window dressing,” she told Faith Information Service in 2008.

However whereas claiming that making a database can be troublesome or not possible, Govt Committee workers had been compiling an inventory of abusers.

“The latest record ready by the EC workers member contained the names of 703 abusers, with 409 believed to be SBC-affiliated sooner or later in time,” based on the Guidepost report.

Guidepost additionally detailed how Govt Committee staffers and legal professionals mistreated Jen Lyell, a former Lifeway official who came forward along with her story of abuse by the hands of an SBC seminary professor. An preliminary draft of a narrative by Baptist Press, the SBC’s official information publication, described Lyell as an abuse survivor, however simply earlier than publication, the story was modified to explain her as being concerned in an inappropriate relationship with the professor.

In line with the report, SBC officers refused to appropriate the story for months, inflicting important hurt to Lyell’s repute and well being. The story was ultimately withdrawn by Baptist Press, which apologized to Lyell as a part of a settlement.

One of the vital chilling elements of the Guidepost report, which got here with a set off warning, concerned sexual assault accusations in opposition to Hunt, who was elected on the similar 2008 assembly the place the database was rejected.

In line with what investigators referred to as credible allegations, Hunt was accused of sexually assaulting the spouse of one other SBC pastor in 2010. 

“Survivor stated she didn’t need him to smash his ministry, at which he responded he didn’t need to smash hers,” the report states. “However he then pressured himself on her once more by groping her, attempting to drag her shirt down, and violently kissing her. Survivor didn’t reciprocate, however relatively stood eyes open and really stiff, hoping he would simply cease and depart. He lastly stopped and left.”

Investigators discovered a number of witnesses who corroborated the allegations, saying that Hunt had admitted the assault and had gone on depart in 2010. In addition they spoke with a counselor who had endorsed Hunt and the survivor.

“We embody this sexual assault allegation within the report as a result of our investigators discovered the pastor and his spouse to be credible,” Guidepost wrote, saying, “their report was corroborated partially by a counseling minister and three different credible witnesses; and our investigators didn’t discover Dr. Hunt’s statements associated to the sexual assault allegation to be credible.”

Hunt denied the allegations throughout interviews with investigators. The previous pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia, he stated on social media that “my coronary heart breaks for all victims of abuse.”

He additionally acknowledged that he had resigned from the SBC’s North American Mission Board and denied the allegations in opposition to him. “To place it bluntly, I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth within the Guidepost report,” he said on Twitter. “I’ve by no means abused anybody.”

After the discharge of the report, the NAMB confirmed that Hunt had resigned as senior vice chairman of evangelism and management on Could 13.

Rachael Denhollander, an legal professional and outstanding advocate for abuse survivors who served as an adviser to the abuse process power, stated for many years that survivors resembling Brown and Thigpen had raised the alarm to SBC leaders, to no avail.

“There was a persistent refusal to hearken to the survivors actually standing outdoors the door, and to hunt outdoors assist, and to hearken to skilled counsel,” stated Denhollander. “And that resulted in a state of affairs the place two males had been capable of deceive and management and manipulate the denomination, actually for many years.”

She worries that Southern Baptists will place all of the blame on Boto and Guenther. However many Southern Baptist leaders did not be proactive and hearken to survivors, and so they by no means requested for second opinions, she stated, or disagreed with authorized counsel. Although many leaders had good intentions and wished to assist survivors, they did not act proactively to do this.

“Southern Baptists are going to have to start out asking some very troublesome questions, together with, and doubtless most significantly, how might this have gone on for thus lengthy?” stated Denhollander. “How might two males have managed and commandeered a complete denomination and an virtually 100-member trustee board for the final 30 years?”

Former SBC President J.D. Greear stated the report confirmed that the SBC ought to have taken motion years in the past to handle abuse. Greear started speaking about abuse in 2018, not lengthy after changing into president, and led the denomination’s annual assembly in a service of lament after a 2019 report from the Houston Chronicle revealed tons of of abuse circumstances.

“You look again to 2008 and you must ask, ‘Why had been we permitting bureaucratic mumbo jumbo and legalese to maintain us from doing the fitting factor?'” he stated.

Greear stated he hopes the SBC will undertake adjustments to assist forestall abuse sooner or later and to take care of survivors. He stated that for too lengthy, church leaders gave the advantage of the doubt to the establishment.

“It is extremely obvious that what the Bible would counsel us to do is to offer the advantage of the doubt to the survivors,” he stated.

The report features a collection of suggestions for the SBC, together with creating an “Offender Info System” to trace identified abusers, together with beginning an impartial fee to take care of abuse, proscribing the usage of nondisclosure agreements and creating requirements for church buildings to certify that they’re following finest practices.

“We should resist the temptation to attenuate, to look away, to search out the simple ‘scapegoats’ for what was uncovered on this report, and as a substitute ask ‘what might we’ve carried out higher?’ and ‘what ought to we do now?'” the duty power stated in an announcement. “As a Conference, we didn’t maintain our personal leaders accountable, and we didn’t hearken to the warnings. Leaders had entry to experience however selected to not search help, and in some circumstances, rejected any help that was provided.”

© Religion News Service

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button