Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination, stonewalled and denigrated survivors of clergy sex abuse over virtually twenty years whereas looking for to guard their very own reputations, in response to a scathing 288-page investigative report issued Sunday.
These survivors, and different involved Southern Baptists, repeatedly shared allegations with the SBC’s Executive Committee, “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility from some within the EC,” stated the report.
The seven-month investigation was carried out by Guidepost Solutions, an unbiased agency contracted by the Executive Committee after delegates to final 12 months’s nationwide assembly pressed for an unbiased probe.
“Our investigation revealed that, for many years, a few senior EC leaders, along with outside counsel, largely controlled the EC’s response to these reports of abuse … and were singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC,” the report stated.
“In service of this goal, survivors and others who reported abuse were ignored, disbelieved, or met with the constant refrain that the SBC could take no action due to its polity regarding church autonomy — even if it meant that convicted molesters continued in ministry with no notice or warning to their current church or congregation,” the report added.
SBC President Ed Litton, in a press release Sunday, stated he’s “grieved to my core” for the victims and thanked God for his or her work propelling the SBC to this second. He referred to as on Southern Baptists to lament and put together to vary the denomination’s tradition and implement reforms.
“I pray Southern Baptists will begin preparing today to take deliberate action to address these failures and chart a new course when we meet together in Anaheim,” Litton stated
Among the important thing suggestions within the report:
- Form an unbiased fee and later set up a everlasting administrative entity to supervise complete long-term reforms regarding sexual abuse and associated misconduct throughout the SBC.
- Create and preserve an Offender Information System to alert the group to recognized offenders.
- Provide a complete Resource Toolbox together with protocols, coaching, schooling, and sensible information.
- Restrict the usage of nondisclosure agreements and civil settlements, which bind survivors to confidentiality in sexual abuse issues, except requested by the survivor.
The sex abuse scandal was thrust into the highlight in 2019 by a landmark report from the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News documenting lots of of instances in Southern Baptist church buildings, together with a number of through which alleged perpetrators remained in ministry.
Last 12 months, hundreds of delegates on the nationwide SBC gathering despatched the message that they didn’t need the Executive Committee to supervise an investigation of its personal actions. Instead they voted overwhelmingly to create the duty pressure charged with offering oversight of the third-party evaluation. Litton, pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama, appointed the panel.
Executive Committee members have had every week to evaluation the report earlier than it was publicly launched Sunday afternoon. The process pressure’s suggestions based mostly on Guidepost’s findings will probably be offered on the SBC’s annual assembly in Anaheim, California, on June 14-15.
In February, the Executive Committee supplied a public apology and a confidential financial settlement to sexual abuse survivor Jennifer Lyell, who was mischaracterized by the denomination’s in-house news service when she determined to go public together with her story in March 2019.
Lyell publicly disclosed that she was a sexual abuse survivor after studying the person she accused of abuse, a former Southern Baptist seminary professor, had lately returned to ministry. She stated she got here ahead together with her story to stop the person from partaking in additional abusive acts.