When a Catholic priest is accused of sexual abuse, it makes headlines.
The accusations against the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) barely made a blip on the radar. I planned on covering it but got overloaded. No excuse, though, for the MSM, which has more people.
Anyway, the SBC admitted the DOJ is investigating it but did not provide details. The emails hinted the investigation is aimed at the sexual abuse accusations:
The SBC Executive Committee recently became aware that the Department of Justice has initiated an investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention, and that the investigation will include multiple SBC entities.Individually and collectively each SBC entity is resolved to fully and completely cooperate with the investigation. While we continue to griece and lament past mistakes related to sexual abuse, current leaders across the SBC have demonstrated a firm conviction to address those issues of the past and are implementing measures to ensure they are never repeated in the future. The fact that the SBC Executive Committee recently completed a fully transparent investigation is evidence of this committment.
The allegations first surfaced in 2019 after a six-month investigation:
A bombshell investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News found that over the last 20 years, about 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced credible accusations of sexual misconduct. Of those, roughly 220 were convicted of sex crimes or received plea deals, in cases involving more than 700 victims in all, the report found. Many accusers were young men and women, who allegedly experienced everything from exposure to pornography to rape and impregnation at the hands of church members.The newspapers reported that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) largely treated the accusations as isolated issues, and took on an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality, even amid growing pressures to create a registry so the accusations wouldn’t disappear as alleged perpetrators moved from city to city. The Chronicle and Express-News created a database of convicted sexual abusers with documented connections to the SBC.The investigation took over six months and involved the cross-examination of hundreds of allegations corroborated by court documents and prison records. The results were startling and reiterated how allegations of sexual misconduct aren’t limited to just the Catholic church.
In May, Guidepost Solutions revealed in its report that the SBC kept a list of the accusers but ignored the survivors:
The seven-month investigation was conducted by Guidepost Solutions, an independent firm contracted by the Executive Committee after delegates to last year’s national meeting pressed for a probe by outsiders.”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 said.”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.The report asserts that an Executive Committee staffer maintained a list of Baptist ministers accused of abuse, but there is no indication anyone “took any action to ensure that the accused ministers were no longer in positions of power at SBC churches.”
The SBC released the list five days after Guidepost Solutions published its report.
The 205-page list has 700 entries from about 2000-2019
In June, thousands voted “to create a way to track pastors and other church workers credibly accused of sex abuse, and launch a new task force to oversee further reforms” during the annual SBC convention:
The vote fell short of what some survivors of abuse in Southern Baptist churches sought, such as a compensation fund for victims and a more robust and independent commission to monitor its churches’ handling — and mishandling— of abuse. And it also met opposition from some who contended the crisis was overhyped and that it interfered with Baptist churches’ independence.But Bruce Frank, who led the task force that recommended the reforms, made an emotional plea for church representatives to accept them as they gathered here at the start of their two-day annual meeting. He called the steps the “bare minimum.””It will take a few years to change the culture and direction,” he said. “But without action to act differently, there is no repentance.”He challenged those who would say these steps interfere with Baptists’ focus on missions, saying that “protecting the sheep from the wolves” is essential to mission.
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