A comprehensive report released this week by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) reveals that the religious governing body has been purposely mishandling sexual abuse accusations against church leaders for more than 20 years. Guidepost Solutions, an outside investigative firm, created the report after analyzing the organization’s response to alleged abuse by church leaders, pastors, church employees, and officials. The report found that survivors who reported abuse were ignored, disbelieved, or met with inaction. The Guidepost report found that many allegations were not only disregarded but some survivors were even intimidated by leaders while their abusers remained protected.
In addition to protecting those credibly accused, the report reveals that abusers were often allowed to move from church to church – just like priests in the Catholic Church – and police were never notified. This allowed accused individuals to continue their pattern of abuse without consequence and destroyed the lives of untold numbers of devout worshippers.
The report shows that even though SBC knew there was a problem, the organization woefully failed to take adequate steps toward preventing further abuse. In 2007, a proposal was made to create a database to track accused molesters. However, the proposal was later rejected in 2008, as church leaders claimed it interfered with church autonomy. Again and again, the SBC claimed its structure prevented the organization from taking action against individual churches and leaders.
Significantly, the report uncovered that SBC created and maintained a detailed list of ministers and church leaders reported for sexual misconduct, much like the Boy Scouts’ notorious perversion files. The list contains more than 703 abusers (409 SBC affiliated) reported over a ten-year span. Guidepost found that many of these listed individuals still maintained active positions within the SBC. For example, the list includes a former SBC president who was accused of sexually assaulting another minister’s wife. Despite these allegations, the alleged abuser was allowed to serve as pastor of First Baptist Church in Woodstock, GA for more than 30 years.
The SBC is the largest protestant denomination in the United States with more than 14 million members and 47,000 congregations. Here in Georgia, there are 3,000+ Southern Baptist churches with congregations ranging from a handful of individuals to some with over 10,000 members. The wide dissemination of this report will hopefully pave the path for more survivors to come forward with their stories of abuse.
The attorneys at Penn Law have extensive experience in representing survivors of childhood sexual abuse in civil lawsuits against their abusers and the organizations that failed to protect them, including the Catholic Church, Boy Scouts of America, and high-profile boarding schools. In doing so, we seek to provide survivors with justice, healing, and closure by holding abusers and entities accountable.
If you or someone you know has been the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a representative of the SBC or its churches, please contact us.