Associated Baptist Press
December 17, 2008
by Bob Allen | ABP senior writer
NEW YORK (ABP) -- Time Magazine ranked the Southern Baptist Convention's refusal to establish a database of clergy sex offenders one of the most under-reported news stories in 2008.
A ranking of under-reported stories in Time's "Top 10 Everything of 2008" special feature placed the story at No. 6, behind a mix-up that accidentally sent U.S. nuclear-warhead fuses to Taiwan, the Congolese civil war, violence in Sri Lanka, and new guidelines for insurance coverage for mental health and regulation of food from animals that are genetically altered.
"Facing calls to curb child sex abuse within its churches, in June the Southern Baptist Convention -- the largest U.S. religious body after the Catholic Church -- urged local hiring committees to conduct federal background checks but rejected a proposal to create a central database of staff and clergy who have been either convicted of or indicted on charges of molesting minors," the magazine noted.
"The SBC decided against such a database in part because its principle of local autonomy means it cannot compel individual churches to report any information. And while the headlines regarding churches and pedophilia remain largely focused on Catholic parishes, the lack of hierarchical structure and systematized record-keeping in most Protestant churches makes it harder not only for church leaders to impose standards, but for interested parties to track allegations of abuse."
Christa Brown, Baptist outreach leader for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, agreed the story was under-reported.
"It's such an extremely important story," she said. "The largest Protestant denomination in the land -- a denomination that claims 16.2 million members -- refused to even attempt to implement the sorts of proactive measures for routing out predators that other major faith groups have."
Brown, a survivor of clergy sex abuse, worked two years to draw attention to the problem of unreported sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches before seeing denominational leaders recommend against her suggestion of a national database.
Last month Brown and SNAP National Director David Clohessy wrote SBC President Johnny Hunt asking for a meeting about establishing a system to report abusive clergy.
"As president of the Southern Baptist Convention, you now have the opportunity to show genuine leadership on the issue of clergy sex abuse and cover-ups," the letter said. "This may be one of the greatest leadership challenges in the history of Southern Baptists."
The SNAP leaders said Southern Baptists' local-church autonomy makes it all-the-more imperative that congregations have enough information to make responsible decisions about whom they call as ministers.
"The only way people in the pews will find out about clergy child molesters is if victims feel safe in reporting them," they said. "And victims are never going to feel safe if they have to report abuse by going to the church of the accused minister."
"Telling clergy victims to 'go to the church' is like telling them to go to the den of the wolf who savaged them," the letter said. "It is cruel to the victim and unproductive toward the end of protecting others."
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SBC abuse reform task force ends its work with no names on database and no long-term plan
ReplyDeleteTheir report marks the second time a proposed database for abusive pastors has been derailed.
By Bob Smietana, Religion News Service June 4, 2024
A volunteer Southern Baptist task force charged with implementing abuse reforms in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination will end its work next week without a single name published on a database of abusers.
The task force’s report marks the second time a proposed database for abusive pastors has been derailed by denominational apathy, legal worries and a desire to protect donations to the Southern Baptist Convention’s mission programs.
Leaders of the SBC’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force say a lack of funding, concerns about insurance and other unnamed difficulties hindered the group’s work.
“The process has been more difficult than we could have imagined,” the task force said in a report published Tuesday (June 4). “And in truth, we made less progress than we desired due to the myriad obstacles and challenges we encountered in the course of our work.”
To date, no names appear on the “Ministry Check” website designed to track abusive pastors, despite a mandate from Southern Baptists to create the database. The committee has also found no permanent home or funding for abuse reforms, meaning that two of the task force’s chief tasks remain unfinished.
Because of liability concerns about the database, the task force set up a separate nonprofit to oversee the Ministry Check website. That new nonprofit, known as the Abuse Response Committee, has been unable to publish any names because of objections raised by SBC leaders.
“At present, ARC has secured multiple affordable insurance bids and successfully completed the vetting and legal review of nearly 100 names for inclusion on Ministry Check at our own expense with additional names to be vetted pending the successful launch of the website,” the task force said in its report.
Josh Wester, the North Carolina pastor who chairs the ARITF, said the Abuse Response Committee — whose leaders include four task force members — could independently publish names to Ministry Check in the future but wants to make a good-faith effort to address the Executive Committee’s concerns.
Task force leaders say they raised $75,000 outside of the SBC to vet the initial names of abusers. That list includes names of sexual offenders who were either convicted of abuse in a criminal court or who have had a civil judgment against them.
“To date, the SBC has contributed zero funding toward the vetting of names for Ministry Check,” according to a footnote in the task force report.
Earlier this year, the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission designated $250,000 toward abuse reform to be used by the ARITF. Wester hopes those funds will be made available to ARC for the Ministry Check site. The SBC’s two mission boards pledged nearly $4 million to assist churches in responding to abuse but have said none of that money can be given to ARC.
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The lack of progress on reforms has abuse survivor and activist Christa Brown shaking her head.
ReplyDelete“Why can’t a billion-dollar organization come up with the resources to do this?” asked Brown, who for years ran a list of convicted Baptist abusers at a website, StopBaptistPredators.org, which aggregated stories about cases of abuse.
Brown sees the lack of progress on reforms as part of a larger pattern in the SBC. While church messengers and volunteers like those on the ARITF want reform and work hard to address the issue of reforms, there’s no help from SBC leaders or institutions. Instead, she said, SBC leaders do just enough to make it look like they care, without any real progress.
“The institution does not care,” she said. “If it did care it would put money and resources behind this. And it did not do that. And it hasn’t for years.”
SBC leaders have long sought to shield the denomination and especially the hundreds of millions of dollars given to Southern Baptist mission boards and other entities from liability for sexual abuse. The 12.9 million-member denomination has no direct oversight of its churches or entities, which are governed by trustees, making it a billion-dollar institution that, for all intents and purposes, does not exist outside of a few days in June when the SBC annual meeting is in session.
As a result, abuse reform has been left in the hands of volunteers such as those on the task force, who lacked the authority or the resources to complete their task.
As part of its report, the ARITF recommends asking local church representatives, known as messengers, at the SBC annual meeting if they still support abuse reforms such as the Ministry Check database. The task force also recommends that the SBC Executive Committee be assigned the job of figuring out how to implement those reforms — and that messengers authorize funding to get the job done.
Church messengers will have a chance to vote on those recommendations during the SBC annual meeting, scheduled for June 11-12 in Indianapolis.
The task force’s report does include at least one success. During the annual meeting next week, messengers will receive copies of new training materials, known as “The Essentials,” designed to help them prevent and respond to abuse.
This is the second time in the past 16 years that attempts to create a database of abusive Southern Baptist pastors failed. In 2007, angered at news reports of abusive pastors in their midst and worried their leaders were doing nothing about it, Southern Baptists asked their leaders to look into creating a database of abusive pastors to make sure no abuser could strike twice.
A year later, during an annual meeting in Indianapolis, SBC leaders said no. Such a list was deemed “impossible.” Instead, while denouncing abuse and saying churches should not tolerate it, they said Baptists should rely on national sex offender registries.
Because there is no denominational list of abusive pastors, local church members have to fend for themselves when responding to abuse, said Dominique and Megan Benninger, former Southern Baptists who run Baptistaccountability.org, a website that links to news stories about Baptist abusers.
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The couple started the website after the former pastor at their SBC church in Pennsylvania was ousted when the congregation learned of his prior sexual abuse conviction. Before long, he was preaching at another church.
ReplyDelete“We were just, like, how does this happen?” Megan Benninger said.
When the couple posted on Facebook about their former pastor, leaders of their home church reprimanded them, telling them in an email that they should not have made their concerns public. Not long afterward, the couple decided to set up a website that would collect publicly available information about abusive pastors.
“Our goal is to share information so people can decide whether a church is safe or not,” said Dominique Benninger.
To set up their site, the Benningers modified an e-commerce website design so that instead of sharing information about products, it shares information about abusive pastors. The website became a database of third-party information, which is protected by the same federal laws that protect other interactive computer services, like Facebook.
The Benningers don’t do any investigations but instead aggregate publicly available information to make it easier for church members to find out about abusers. That kind of information is needed, they say, so church members can make informed decisions.
The Benningers have recently placed a hold on adding new names to their database while Megan Benninger is being treated for cancer. They wonder who will pick up the slack if the SBC’s proposed database fails. They also are skeptical about claims that having a database would undermine local church autonomy — which is a key SBC belief.
“You are just warning them that there’s a storm coming,” said Megan Benninger. “How is that interfering with anyone’s autonomy?”
Members of the abuse task force say the denomination has made progress on abuse reforms in recent years but more remains to be done.
“We believe the SBC is ready to see the work of abuse reform result in lasting change,” the task force said in its report. “With the task force’s work coming to an end, we believe our churches need help urgently.”
Brown, author of “Baptistland,” an account of the abuse she experienced growing up in a Baptist church and her years of activism for reform, is skeptical that any real change will happen. Instead of making promises and not keeping them, she said, SBC leaders should just admit abuse reform is not a priority.
“They might as well say, this is not worth a dime — and we are not going to do anything,” she said. “That would be kinder.”
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The SBC will sell its Nashville headquarters to defray abuse-related legal costs
ReplyDeleteSBC leaders also set up a new department to deal with the issue of abuse, though the fate of a long-delayed database of abusers remains unknown.
by Bob Smietana, Religion News Service September 18, 2024
An investigation into how leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have dealt with sexual abuse by clergy has cost more than $12 million over the past three years, causing the nation’s largest Protestant denomination to put its Nashville, Tennessee, headquarters up for sale, the SBC’s Executive Committee announced on Tuesday (Sept. 17).
The expenditures, which include $3 million spent fending off a lawsuit filed by a former SBC president, have led the committee to spend down its reserves in what its auditors have called an unsustainable manner. The group, which met in Nashville this week, also approved a loan to cover budget shortfalls.
Lawyers for the SBC will meet Thursday with attorneys for the former SBC president, Johnny Hunt, in a court-order mediation session, where the two sides will discuss settling their dispute. Hunt has claimed the SBC leadership ruined his reputation by reporting on his past sexual misconduct and for including him in a report on allegedly abusive leaders.
The Executive Committee’s fiscal woes come as the denomination is struggling to implement reforms ordered by the SBC’s governing body two years ago, designed to help churches better prevent and respond to abuse.
On Tuesday, members of the Executive Committee also voted to set up a new department to deal with the issue of abuse reforms, which will take over the reform effort from volunteers.
“Southern Baptists, we have had two task forces that have done difficult and important work, but it’s time now to stop talking about what we’re going to do and take an initial strategic step of action that puts into place an administrative response to this issue,” Jeff Iorg, president of the Nashville-based Executive Committee, told trustees. Iorg described the new department as a “beginning point of a workable solution” on the issue of abuse reform.
However, the fate of the “Ministry Check” website, a long-sought element of the sexual abuse reforms that was approved by the Southern Baptist annual meeting more than two years ago, remains uncertain.
A website, approved in June 2022, was supposed to include the names of Southern Baptist pastors and leaders convicted of abuse, those who confessed to abuse or have a court judgment for abuse against them, as well as those who have credible allegations of abuse made against them.
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To date, no names have been added to the site, and SBC leaders have no current plans to update it and have taken no responsibility for it.
ReplyDeleteInstead, the Ministry Check site remains in the hands of a volunteer-led nonprofit called the Abuse Response Commission, which has no official ties to the SBC.
Josh Wester, a North Carolina pastor who helped start the commission, said names can’t be added to the site without a go-ahead from the SBC’s Executive Committee.
“When and if the EC notifies us they have cleared the hurdles on their end, we will make it live,” Wester told RNS in a text. Wester is the former chair of a task force, dissolved earlier this year after making limited progress, that had been charged with implementing abuse reform.
At the Executive Committee’s meeting on Tuesday, Iorg said that the committee had no ties to the Abuse Response Commission or any control over its work. Instead, he said, the committee would focus on hiring staff for the new department before taking up issues such as the Ministry Check site.
“Our first step will be to hire a full-time executive director,” Iorg said in an email. “Once that new leadership is in place, we will begin to take next steps, including enhancing resources available through that website.”
The Executive Committee’s new abuse reform department will be funded initially with $1.8 million provided by Send Relief, a humanitarian project led by the SBC’s two mission boards. A spokesman for the North American Mission Board said the funds will be given directly to the Executive Committee. In the past, the heads of the mission boards barred funds from going directly to the Abuse Response Commission.
Executive Committee trustees also discussed the ongoing costs of the SBC’s abuse crisis, including the Hunt lawsuit.
Court documents filed in the lawsuit show the lawyers for Hunt first reached out to the SBC’s attorneys in February to discuss a possible resolution. After a court order in early September, the two sides scheduled a mediation hearing for Sept. 19 and will update the court by Sept. 26.
The Executive Committee’s building, at 901 Commerce St. in downtown Nashville, was originally built for $8 million in the 1980s, on land donated by Lifeway, the SBC’s publishing arm, according to Baptist Press, an official SBC publication. The property also houses the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and a library and historical archive. The building was appraised for $31.7 million in 2021, according to The Tennessean newspaper.
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