Tuesday 24 May 2022 09:52 PM Southern Baptist leaders say they will release secret list of alleged sex ... trends now Top administrative leaders for the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America, said Tuesday that they will release a secret list of hundreds of pastors and other church-affiliated personnel accused of sexual abuse. During a public virtual meeting, an attorney for the SBC's Executive Committee announced the decision in response to a scathing investigative report detailing how the committee mishandled allegations of sex abuse and stonewalled numerous survivors. 'The reality is we'll never know the extent of the pain and the hurt that was caused to survivors,' said Willie McLaurin, SBC executive committee interim president, in prepared remarks. 'Today on behalf of all Southern Baptists I want to issue a formal apology and say that we are sorry to the survivors for all that we've done to cause hurt, pain and frustration,' he added. During the meeting, top leaders and several committee members vowed to work toward changing the culture of the denomination and to listen more attentively to survivors' voices and stories. The 288-page report by Guidepost Solutions, which was released Sunday after a seven-month investigation, contained several explosive revelations. Top administrative leaders for the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America, said Tuesday that they will release a secret list of sex abusers Among those were details of how D. August Boto, the Executive Committee's former vice president and general counsel, and former SBC spokesman Roger Oldham kept their own private list of abusive pastors. Both retired in 2019. The existence of the list was not widely known within the committee and its staff. 'Despite collecting these reports for more than 10 years, there is no indication that (Oldham and Boto) or anyone else, took any action to ensure that the accused ministers were no longer in positions of power at SBC churches,' the report said. Boto joined the Executive Committee in 1995 and became executive vice president and general counsel in 2007. On Tuesday, the committee released a statement singling out and denouncing Boto's words written in a communication to survivors and their advocates on Sept. 29, 2006 that 'continued discourse between us (the Executive Committee and survivors' advocates) will not be positive or fruitful.' The committee, in its new statement, said it 'rejects the sentiment (of Boto's words) in its entirety and seeks to publicly repent for its failure to rectify this position and wholeheartedly listen to survivors.' Gene Besen, the committee's interim counsel, said during Tuesday's virtual meeting that releasing the list is an important step toward transparency. The names of survivors, confidential witnesses and any uncorroborated allegations of sexual abuse will be redacted from the list that will be made public, he said. Southern Baptist Convention President Ed Litton promised to carry out reforms and drag the denomination out of the damaging report's findings, calling them 'failures' in his response The report also claimed leaders of the church hid a secret database of abusers from victims and the public. Pictured: People take part in a worship service during the annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting Tuesday, June 15, 2021, in Nashville, Tennessee Besen said the committee's leaders will also look into revoking retirement benefits for Boto and others who were involved in the cover-up. He urged committee members to set aside past divisions and stay united in a collective commitment to end sexual abuse in the SBC. Willie McLaurin, the Executive Committee's interim president and CEO, issued a formal public apology to all those who suffered sexual abuse within the SBC, which has a membership of over 47,000 churches. 'We are sorry to the survivors for all we have done to cause pain and frustration,' he said. 'Now is the time to change the culture. We have to be proactive in our openness and transparency from now.' Executive Committee Chair Wally Slade began the virtual meeting by acknowledging the survivors. 'Our commitment is to be different and do different,' he said. 'We can't come up with half-baked solutions.' After the report's release, more sexual abuse survivors have been contacting the Executive Committee to tell their stories, Besen said. He said he has asked Guidepost to open up a hotline so survivors who reach out 'are directed to the proper place and receive the proper care.' The Sexual Abuse Task Force, appointed at the demand of SBC delegates during last year's meeting in Nashville, expects to make its formal motions based on the Guidepost report public next week. Those recommendations will then be presented to the delegates for a vote during this year's national meeting scheduled for June 14-15 in Anaheim, California, according to Pastor Bruce Frank who led the task force. Frank, lead pastor of Biltmore Baptist Church in Arden, North Carolina, said the crux of the task force´s recommendations based on Guidepost´s report would be to prevent sexual abuse, to better care for survivors when such abuse does occur and to make sure abusers are not allowed to continue in ministry. Survivors and advocates have long called for a public database of abusers. Former Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page resigned over sexual abuse claims made during his tenure after accusing survivors of fabricating stories and filing unfound lawsuits Ronnie Floyd, president and CEO of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2014-2016 resigned after being accused of preserving the base of the denomination and not allowing sexual abuse survivors to vocalize their experiences The creation of an 'Offender Information System' was one of the key recommendations in the report by Guidepost Solutions, an independent firm contracted by the SBC´s Executive Committee after delegates to last year's national meeting pressed for an investigation by outsiders. The proposed database is expected to be one of several recommendations that resulted from Guidepost's seven-month investigation presented to thousands of delegates attending this year´s national meeting. The sex abuse scandal was first thrust into the spotlight in 2019 by a landmark report from the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News documenting 700 cases in Southern Baptist churches, including several in which alleged perpetrators remained in ministry. Last year, thousands of delegates at the national SBC gathering made clear they did not want the Executive Committee to oversee an investigation of its own actions. Instead they voted overwhelmingly to create the task force charged with overseeing the third-party review. Litton, pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama, appointed the panel. The task force had a week to review the report before it was publicly released. The task force's recommendations based on Guidepost's findings will be presented at the SBC's meeting in Anaheim. The report offers shocking details on how Johnny Hunt, a Georgia-based pastor and past SBC president, sexually assaulted another pastor's wife during a beach vacation in 2010. In an interview with investigators, Hunt denied any physical contact with the woman, but did admit he had interactions with her. On May 13, Hunt, who was the senior vice president of evangelism and leadership at the North American Mission Board, the SBC's domestic missions agency, resigned from that post, said Kevin Ezell, the organization's president and CEO. Ezell said, before May 13, he was 'not aware of any alleged misconduct' on Hunt's part. The report details a meeting Hunt arranged a few days after the alleged assault between the woman, her husband, Hunt and a counseling pastor. Hunt admitted to touching the victim inappropriately, but said 'thank God I didn't consummate the relationship.' Pastor Johnny Hunt, based in Georgia, has allegedly sexually assaulted another pastor's wife during a beach vacation in 2010, the report also found Hunt denied claims of inappropriately touching the woman, but confessed to interactions with her in the past. Pictured: Hunt with his wife Among those reacting strongly to the Guidepost report was Russell Moore, who formerly headed the SBC's public policy wing but left the denomination after accusing top Executive Committee leaders of stalling efforts to address the sex abuse crisis. 'Crisis is too small a word. It is an apocalypse,' Moore wrote for Christianity Today after reading the report. 'As dark a view as I had of the SBC Executive Committee, the investigation uncovers a reality far more evil and systemic than I imagined it could be.' According to the report, Guidepost's investigators, who spoke with survivors of varying ages including children, said the survivors were equally traumatized by the way in which churches responded to their reports of sexual abuse. Survivors 'spoke of trauma from the initial abuse, but also told us of the debilitating effects that come from the response of the churches and institutions like the SBC that did not believe them, ignored them, mistreated them, and failed to help them,' the report said. It cited the case of Dave Pittman, who from 2006 to 2011 made phone calls and sent letters and emails to the SBC and Georgia Baptist Convention Board reporting that he had been abused by Frankie Wiley, a youth pastor at Rehoboth Baptist Church when he was 12 to 15 years old. Pittman and several others have come forward publicly to report that Wiley molested and raped them and Wiley has admitted to abusing 'numerous victims' at several Georgia Southern Baptist churches. According to the report, a Georgia Baptist Convention official told Pittman that the churches were autonomous and there was nothing he could do but pray. Christa Brown, a survivor of the SBC's abuse, speaks during a rally in Birmingham, Alabama, outside the SBC's annual meeting. Brown, an author and retired attorney, says she was abused by a Southern Baptist minister as a child. After Sunday's report, Brown said it 'fundamentally confirms what Southern Baptist clergy sex abuse survivors have been saying for decades. ... I view this investigative report as a beginning, not an end. The work will continue.' The report also tells the story of Christa Brown, who says she was sexually abused as a teen by the youth and education minister at her SBC church. When she disclosed the abuse to the music minister after months of abuse, she was told not to talk about it, according to the report, which said her abuser also went on to serve in Southern Baptist churches in multiple states. Brown, who has been one of the most outspoken survivors, told investigators that during the past 15 years she has received 'volumes of hate mail, awful blog comments, and vitriolic phone calls.' After reading through the report, Brown told The Associated Press that it 'fundamentally confirms what Southern Baptist clergy sex abuse survivors have been saying for decades.' '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 Southern Baptist Church Convention claims more than 13 million members in the United States and more than 40 million worldwide. The scandal echoes the one faced by the Roman Catholic Church, which has been rocked by allegations of sexual abuse, when the Boston Globe newspaper revealed in 2002 that church hierarchy covered up sexual misconduct by its clergy for decades. The U.S. Catholic Church has paid out an estimated $3.2 billion to settle clergy abuse cases, according to BishopAccountability.org, which tracks the issue. All rights reserved for this news site (dailymail) and under his responsibility