Eight Missouri ministers accused of intercourse abuse in Southern Baptist Conference report • Missouri Unbiased

The Southern Baptist Convention on Thursday released a once-secret and lengthy list of accused intercourse abusers — a number of of whom are within the Midwest — within the denomination.

The 205-page list is a compilation of ministers and other church employees who've been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The listing is described as a “fluid, working doc” that was also incomplete however largely pulls information about abusers from printed information experiences.

The publication of the listing comes after the release Sunday of a 300-page report by an independent investigator that described how leaders of the Southern Baptist denomination for decades have obtained reports of sexual abuse committed by church staff, pastors and others. But these reports were largely kept secret and, rather than appearing upon and investigating studies of sexual abuse, denomination leaders sought to intimidate and vilify victims and their advocates.

“The whole thing needs to be seen for what it's,” wrote former Southern Baptist Conference executive committee member and common counsel D. August Boto in an inner email that was revealed in the report. “It’s a satanic scheme to utterly distract us from evangelism.”

The disaster rocking the Southern Baptist denomination this week is comparable in some ways to what the Catholic church continues to face. Leaders in both faiths systematically hid details about sexual misconduct, appeared to indicate extra concern about their own legal liability than the victims and at occasions didn't expel accused abusers from positions of authority.

In 2007, Father Thomas Doyle, a Catholic priest credited as one of the first to warn of his personal denomination’s clergy sex abuse disaster, wrote a letter to SBC leadership conveying his concern that Southern Baptist leaders have been repeating the failures of the Catholic church in coping with intercourse abuse.

Doyle was told, “Southern Baptist leaders really don't have any authority over native churches,” a response that Doyle considered dismissive, in keeping with the investigative report. 

That very same yr, at the SBC convention in San Antonio, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson made a motion to create a database of Southern Baptist clergy who had been convicted or credibly accused of, or had confessed to sexual abuse. The proposal was meant to “help in preventing any future sexual abuse or harassment.”

The database proposal appeared to go nowhere, in line with the report, and witnesses on the convention recalled little about it except to specific their opinion that it would “violate local church autonomy.”

Ultimately, a staffer for the SBC govt committee since 2007 had maintained an inventory of accused ministers and church staff, but it was kept hidden from the general public and even SBC govt committee trustees, in keeping with the report.

Southern Baptist leaders mentioned publicizing the checklist of credibly accused abusers represented “an initial, however vital, step in the direction of addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform within the Convention.”

“Each entry in this listing reminds us of the devastation and destruction caused by sexual abuse,” said a joint assertion from Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, each SBC govt committee members. “Our prayer is that the survivors of those heinous acts find hope and healing, and that church buildings will utilize this checklist proactively to guard and care for the most vulnerable amongst us.”

Legal professionals for the SBC executive committee researched the checklist of accused abusers, taking steps to confirm data it contained. It left unredacted entries about alleged abusers that may very well be confirmed, whereas redacting entries where somebody was acquitted or did not have a final disposition, in addition to data that might identify victims.

Missouri males feature prominently on the record. They embody:

This story comes from the Midwest Newsroom, an investigative journalism collaboration including IPR, KCUR 89.3, Nebraska Public Media Information, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. For extra in-depth news from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, we invite you to follow us on Twitter.