The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest Protestant denomination in the US, has been under investigation for an alleged cover-up of child molestation and other forms of sexual abuse by employees of the church and clergy.
The investigative report was released yesterday.
The investigation was initiated after an annual meeting of the SBC, where members voted to approve a task force to look into multiple complaints of a cover-up over many years.
Guidepost Solutions, the agency researching the allegations, released a 288-page report. They reported that among other offenses, victims of sexual abuse were “stonewalled” by clergymen and leaders of the SBC, in their attempts to protect themselves and others from prosecution. Victims were intimidated, as church leaders took no action to weed out the accused perpetrators.
Included in the report is the story of Christa Brown, who claims that when she was a teenager, she was sexually abused by a minister at her SBC church. She says she has also suffered through 15 years of verbal abuse and threats in phone calls, mail and on social media due to her allegations against the church.
“I view this investigative report as a beginning, not an end. The work will continue,” Brown said. “But no one should ever forget the human cost of what it has taken to even get the SBC to approach this starting line of beginning to deal with clergy sex abuse.”
The SBC has more than 47,000 Baptist churches across the country, with about 14 million members.
SBC President Ed Litton responded on Sunday that he is “grieved to my core” at the findings of the investigation.
“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 [for the next SBC national meeting],” Litton said.