An abuse report raises serious allegations against the largest Protestant church in the United States. Accordingly, the management level is said to have covered up abuse for decades.
For years, leaders at the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination, have suppressed complaints of sexual abuse by priests and church workers. An investigation released earlier this week found that survivors and advocates who raised the alarm about sexual misconduct faced “resistance, subterfuge and even outright hostility” at the highest levels of church leadership.
The independent investigation was commissioned by the church after it was rocked by an abuse scandal in 2019. Newspapers had uncovered hundreds of cover-ups since the late 1990s. The report, released on Sunday, notes that some church leaders had no interest in investigating or making the cases public.
More than 15 million members
Several senior executives “possessed information about allegations of abuse and court proceedings” that they did not share with other members of the executive committee. Instead, “they focused solely on avoiding liability” to the church “without considering other considerations”.
Victims were ignored, discredited and told that no action would be taken because it would violate the autonomy of individual churches – “even if it meant that convicted abusers continued their ministry without notification or warning to their current church or community”.
The report recommended a “sincere apology” to those affected and a comprehensive overhaul of the church’s policy on sexual misconduct. The Southern Baptist Convention has thousands of member congregations and 15 million members, mostly in the southern United States.
