Lawsuit: Baptist leader ignored allegation

A new lawsuit accuses a topranking Southern Baptist official in Arkansas of failing to report sex abuse allegations against a pastor last year.

Filed earlier this month on behalf of a John Doe, the suit accuses Sonny Tucker, the executive director of Arkansas’ state baptist association, of mishandling complaints that were brought regarding Teddy Leon Hill Jr. in February 2018.

According to the suit, Hill continued to abuse Doe, for whom he was a legal guardian, in the months after.

Hill retired in July 2018 as the longtime pastor of Millcreek Baptist Church, in Hot Springs, Ark. Reached by phone on Thursday, Hill, 59, said he retired because he was “old,” and that he was unaware of the lawsuit or the claims made in it.

Tucker could not be reached for comment.

The suit is the second this year to accuse high-ranking Southern Baptist officials and groups of failing to prevent abuses, and comes as the nation’s second-largest faith group confronts a sex abuse crisis that has been detailed in an ongoing Houston Chronicle investigation.

The series, Abuse of Faith, found that more than 700 people had been victimized by SBC church leaders and volunteers in the last 20 years. Nearly all of them were children. The investigation also detailed years of failed attempts by activists and survivors to push for reforms in the SBC’s 47,000 autonomous and self-governing churches.

In June, thousands of delegates from SBC churches overwhelmingly approved two reforms that make it easier to remove churches for concealing sexual abuses or harboring predators.

Days before that vote, the SBC was added as a defendant in a Virginia lawsuit that accuses local and

state leaders of ignoring or mishandling complaints that Jeffrey Dale Clarke, a youth minister who was later convicted, had abused multiple young boys.

That suit challenges the SBC’s claims that its doctrine of “local church autonomy” prevents it from exerting control over any of its cooperating congregations.

While SBC churches are largely free to ordain and hire whomever they’d like, the SBC has previously ousted churches with gay or female pastors. SBC churches also contribute billions of dollars a year to a pool of money that funds seminaries, mission trips and other operations.

The Virginia suit notes both of those points in its argument that the SBC can be held liable for the actions of local congregations. SBC leaders have for years maintained otherwise, though the faith group’s longtime legal counsel told the Chronicle earlier this year that the argument has never actually been tested in an appellate court and thus does not have any legal standing.

Attorneys for the Virginia plaintiffs hope to challenge that.

“This idea that everyone’s completely autonomous is a facade, and it’s self-serving,” Kevin Biniazan, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the Virginia case, told the Chronicle earlier this year. “These organizations are working together in harmony. The success of one benefits the other. And vice versa.”

The new Arkansas suit similarly says that Millcreek Baptist Church, the Arkansas Baptist State Convention and the Diamond Lakes Baptist Association — all of which are defendants — had a duty to protect Doe from Hill.

The suit alleges that the alleged sexual abuse was “foreseeable,” and that the groups are “part of a hierarchical religious institution in which there exists a system of oversight and control.”

Doe is being represented by Ron Weil, a Florida-based attorney who previously won a multi-million dollar settlement against the SBC’s Florida association.

That suit revolved around abuses by Doug Myers, who was convicted for abusing boys he met while establishing churches on behalf of Florida Southern Baptists.

Myers had faced misconduct allegations in two other states before arriving in Florida. After his release from a Florida prison, he was convicted of earlier abuses in Maryland.

A jury eventually awarded one of Myers’ Florida victims $12.5 million, though the suit was later settled for an undisclosed amount.

Earlier this year, after the publication of Abuse of

Faith, Myers’ Florida victim reached out to the Chronicle and accused the SBC of using “local church autonomy” as an excuse for preventing sex abuses.

He also joined other survivors in requesting that the SBC create a third-party registry that tracks allegations against predators. The SBC declined to adopt such a mechanism in 2008, citing local church autonomy as a constraint.

In the wake of the Chronicle’s report, multiple prominent Southern Baptist leaders have expressed support for similar reforms, though it’s unclear whether a database will be considered when the faith group meets for its annual meeting in June.

As part of its reporting, the Chronicle built a database of hundreds of SBC church leaders and volunteers who have been convicted or took plea deals.