In response to an explosive investigation, officials from Southern Baptist churches in the United States released a hitherto secret list of hundreds of pastors and others affiliated with the institution accused of sexual abuse.
The 205-page database, released Thursday night, includes more than 700 entries for cases that occurred mostly between 2000 and 2019.
Its existence became known on Sunday when the independent firm Guidepost Solutions included it in a devastating report detailing how the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention mishandled allegations of sexual abuse, stymied many survivors and prioritized protecting CBS from potential liability.
In a joint statement, the leaders of the Executive Committee, Rolland Slade and Willie McLaurin, pointed out that the publication of the list was “an initial, but important step to address the scourge of sexual abuse and apply reforms in the Convention”.
“Each entry on this list reminds us of the devastation and destruction caused by sexual abuse,” they added. “Our prayer is that survivors of these heinous acts find hope and healing, and that churches proactively use this list to protect and care for the most vulnerable among us.”
The report Guidepost, published after a seven-month investigation, contained several explosive revelations, including that August Boto, the Committee’s former Vice President and General Counsel, and former spokesperson Roger Oldham kept their own list of abusive priests. Both were withdrawn in 2019. The document’s existence was not widely known within the institution and among 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 priests did not remain in positions of power in the churches of the city. CBS”, the report stated.
The Executive Committee did not add names to the published list, but its lawyers redacted several of the entries as well as the names and identifying information of the survivors and others not related to the defendants, the Thursday statement explained.
“Entries referring to an admission, confession, guilty plea, conviction, trial, sentencing, or listing on a sex offender registry” have been made public and they hope to publish more once more research is done. In the list there are Baptist priests not affiliated with the CBS.
Survivors and their supporters had long called for a public offender database. The creation of a “criminal reporting system” was one of the key recommendations in the Guidepost report, which was hired by the Executive Committee after delegates pushed for an outside inquiry at last year’s national assembly.
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