Commentary: Twenty years since writing SBC leaders about abuse

CAUTION: This opinion article addresses sexual abuse.

(RNS)—Think back 20 years ago to August 2006.

George W. Bush was president, iPhones didn’t exist yet, and Twitter was just a month old.

That was when I wrote a letter to then-Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page, describing how the Southern Baptist pastor who sexually abused me as a kid—repeatedly and severely—had been allowed to continue in ministry even though other church leaders knew at the time, even though his name was on a secret list of “known offenders” kept by the Baptist General Convention of Texas, and even though I had notified 18 Southern Baptist leaders in four states about my corroborated report.

David Clohessy—the guy who has seen it all in the clergy abuse arena—dropped me a line the other day, pointing out this month was the 20-year anniversary of that letter. And it gave me pause to reflect.

Plea for action

Together with David and other leaders from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, I pleaded in that 2006 letter for the SBC president to take action.

The need was obvious, as we told Page.

“When 18 church and denominational leaders can be informed of a substantiated report involving a minister’s sexual abuse of a minor … and the man remains in ministry,” we wrote, “then this, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, has a serious problem.”

We asked that Page use the egregious denominational mishandling of my sexual abuse report as a launchpad for institutional change, and more specifically, we asked for the implementation of:

• A centralized location for reviewing and recording reports of clergy abuse.
• An independent denominational review board for assessing reports of clergy abuse.
• A nationwide ‘zero tolerance’ policy.
• A procedure for notifying people in the pews when a report of abuse was made about a minister who worked in their congregation.

Did you catch that? We were asking that the SBC develop a system for centralized record-keeping on clergy sex abuse reports—i.e., a database.

Twenty years ago.

“Whether or not the SBC is capable of removing an abusive minister from ministry, it is at least capable of informing and warning,” we told Page.

That August 2006 letter to Page wasn’t my first attempt to get Southern Baptist church and denominational leaders to take action.

Further efforts

I had already spent over two years trying to deal with my childhood church, which initially responded by threatening to sue me even while the music minister acknowledged he had known about the abuse when I was a kid. He claimed it was “consensual,” even though that’s impossible for a child.

I had futilely sought help from numerous other Southern Baptist leaders—local, state, and national.

No one in Baptist life helped me.

Page’s response was tepid, with the familiar language about the autonomy of local churches. But interestingly, Page also said he knew abuse was a problem.

“Your letter was a very disturbing and frightening example of what happens when those in spiritual places of authority misuse that authority and power in a most egregious fashion,” he wrote. “It is personally disturbing as I know that this has happened on multiple occasions.” Yet, he still did nothing.

That perfunctory response is what set in motion the beginning of more ramped-up efforts to bring media attention to the SBC’s systemic abuse and cover-up problems, and to prod denominational action.

Six weeks later, in September 2006, we wrote to Page again—and to additional SBC officials—enumerating in more detail our requests for action. This time, I went to Nashville in person to hand-deliver a couple of the letters and to conduct a sidewalk press conference outside SBC headquarters.

The mustering of media attention made them angry, and in multiple ways, they attempted to denigrate and smear me. But as painful as it all was, by then, I was past the point of caring what any Southern Baptist leader might think of me.

So, at StopBaptistPredators.org, I began keeping my own online database of Southern Baptist pastors who were publicly documented as having been convicted or credibly accused of sexual abuse.

‘Not much has changed’

Institutionally, not much has changed since 2006, except SBC leaders have gotten better at optics. Of course, they’ve paid heaps of money to a corporate crisis management law firm, and that’s what such firms do—they use all manner of tactics to help an institution move past negative press, restore its image, and keep the money flowing.

If anything, some SBC leaders now seem more emboldened. Having weathered a few media storms, some are denying there was ever any clergy sex abuse “crisis” at all. They’re saying it was a “hoax” and a “snipe hunt.” But … if there were no “crisis,” why did they hire a crisis management law firm?

Hollow public words, impotent task forces, phony dog-and-pony shows, and performative platitudes—this is the norm in Southern Baptists’ handling of clergy sex abuse. As Karen Swallow Prior recently wrote: The SBC system “was built on injustice and abuse, and the system still stands.”

Just because the SBC hasn’t reformed institutionally doesn’t mean change hasn’t happened. Outside the SBC, things are very different now than they were in 2006.

Back then, it was a lot harder to get attention for Baptist clergy sex abuse stories.

People would almost invariably tell me Baptist abuse cases were “isolated incidents,” and not something systemic like what was happening in the Catholic church.

Those two words—“isolated incidents”—grated across my consciousness so often I wanted to cry, and I heard them from all kinds of people—from reporters, attorneys, experts, and even from other survivors.

But now? I never hear those words. Within the SBC, people may blind themselves to it, but outside the SBC, people know: The SBC has a widespread abuse and cover-up problem.

So, nowadays, when people hear a Baptist clergy abuse story, they don’t say “isolated incidents.” Instead, they say, “No surprise.”

And that’s different from how things were in 2006.

New efforts

Over the course of two decades, survivors’ stories have shifted the conversation and wrecked the SBC’s ability to totally control the narrative. We’ve put forward a counter-narrative to the world, and that’s no small thing, particularly when you consider what we’ve been up against—a tentacular, multibillion-dollar institution that claims God on its side.

Then, there’s this simple fact: Over the past 20 years, the Southern Baptist Convention has lost 3.6 million members. That’s a fourth of its prior membership.

There are a lot of reasons for the SBC’s decline, but according to data from the Public Religion Research Institute, clergy sex abuse scandals are one of the reasons people leave their faith group. So, 20 years’ worth of survivors’ stories had something to do with it.

On Aug. 19, a new organization called ProtestantAccountability.org announced its posting of over 2,700 names of Protestant pastors who are documented as having been convicted or publicly accused of sexual abuse. Bravo!

I’m proud to have been a pioneer in the effort to document Protestant clergy sex abuse. Many of the names on ProtestantAccountability were on my original StopBaptistPredators list.

But here’s the thing: Yet again, it’s wounded survivors who are doing the work of documenting clergy sex abuse and trying to warn people. This is work the church should be doing but, by and large, is not.

Much has changed, but that part hasn’t.

And as for former SBC President Frank Page? He became the SBC’s top CEO for a time but was ousted when it came to light he’d had what was initially described as a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Later, it was reported the relationship involved “a female congregant under his care,” which to my ear sounds like an abusive pastor. But he was still able to find a new church to pastor.

No surprise, eh?

Christa Brown is an abuse prevention activist and author of This Little Light and Baptistland, which detail her struggles to address abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention. This essay first appeared in her Substack. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.