SOUTHERN BAPTIST LEADERS COVERED UP SEX ABUSE SCANDAL, FINDINGS ALLEGE
Report: Survivors were often ignored and ‘even vilified’
Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday released a third-party investigation that found that sex abuse survivors were often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
The findings of nearly 300 pages include shocking new details about specific abuse cases and shine a light on how leaders for decades resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. Evidence in the report suggests leaders lied to Southern Baptists over whether they could maintain a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when top leaders were secretly keeping a private list for years.
The report is expected to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over how to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other religious institutions in the U.S., has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total number of abuse cases among Southern Baptists was small.
The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Bap
tists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and other accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff members. Many of the cases referred to in the report were considered outside the statute of limitations, the time survivors can report sex abuse, so it’s unclear how many abusers were criminally charged.
The report, compiled by an organization called Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were concerned more with protecting the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.
“While stories of abuse were minimized, and survivors were 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.
While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors came forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman just one month after he completed his two-year tenure as president of the convention. The report finds that Johnny Hunt, a Georgia-based Southern Baptist pastor who has been a senior vice president at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama City Beach, 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 with her. After the report was released, Hunt, who has not been charged over the alleged incident, posted a statement on Twitter, saying, “I vigorously deny the circumstances and characterizations set forth in the Guidepost report. I have never abused anybody.”
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. Generally, he called the details of the report “egregious and deeply disturbing.”
Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the facts around many of the stories they have already shared, but many were still surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the highest levels of leadership.
“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female 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 through and through about power. It is misappropriated power. It does not in any way reflect the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”
The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past presidents of the convention, a former vice president and the former 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.
For decades, the findings show, Southern Baptists were told the denomination could not put together a registry of sex offenders because it would go against the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while keeping it a secret to avoid the possibility of getting sued. The report also includes private emails showing how longtime leaders such as August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”
In an April 2007 email, the convention’s attorney sent Boto a memo explaining how a SBC database could be implemented consistent with SBC polity, saying “it would fit our polity and present ministries to help churches in this area of child abuse and sexual misconduct.” The report states that he recommended “immediate action to signal the Convention’s desire that the [executive committee] and the entities begin a more aggressive effort in this area.” That same year, after a Southern Baptist pastor made a motion for a database, Boto rejected the idea.
The report shows how lay Southern Baptists allowed a few key leaders, including Boto and the convention’s longtime lawyer, James Guenther, to control the national institutional response to sex abuse for decades. Guenther said he had not read the report yet. Attempts to reach Boto on Sunday were unsuccessful.