© Reuters.
By Wealthy McKay
ATLANTA (Reuters) – For many years, complaints of intercourse abuse by pastors and workers within the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Conference, had been both ignored or coated up by high clergy, in keeping with an inner report launched on Sunday.
The practically 300-page report particulars how complaints had been saved as “carefully guarded secrets and techniques” inside the church to keep away from legal responsibility, “to exclusion of all different issues,” it mentioned.
“In service to this purpose, survivors and others who reported abuse had been ignored, disbelieved,” the report mentioned, with church leaders overlaying up accusations and permitting accused clergy members to stay pastors or in different positions of authority.
Lawsuits in opposition to the church had been denigrated as “opportunistic” and never having advantage, it added.
The year-long investigation was initiated by the Southern Baptist Conference in June 2021, when a stream of complaints had been raised at its annual assembly. The complaints targeted on sexual abuse by pastors and volunteers and the dearth of response by the non secular physique’s govt committee.
A consultant of the Southern Baptist Church Conference, which claims greater than 13 million members in the USA and greater than 40 million worldwide, was not instantly accessible for remark.
The scandal echoes the one confronted 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 coated up sexual misconduct by its clergy for many years.
The U.S. Catholic Church has paid out an estimated $3.2 billion to settle clergy abuse circumstances, in keeping with BishopAccountability.org, which tracks the problem.
In 2019, the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Specific-Information reported that greater than 700 victims had been abused by pastors, leaders and volunteers in Southern Baptist congregations.
The Southern Baptist investigation was carried out by Guidepost Options LLC.