The Southern Baptist Convention said on Friday that it is currently being investigated by the Department of Justice (DOJ) over a report that claims its leaders were involved in a history of sexual abuse for more than two decades.
The report, which was 288 pages long, found that the denomination's top leaders ignored sexual abuse allegations and disparaged survivors. A statement from the organization's leaders read, "Individually and collectively each SBC entity is resolved to fully and completely cooperate with the investigation."
DOJ Investigation
The letter continued to say that while the organization continues to grieve and lament past mistakes related to sexual abuse, it noted that current leaders across the SBC demonstrated a firm conviction to address those issues of the past. They are allegedly implementing measures to ensure that those crimes are now repeated in the future.
The report was released in May and was conducted by Guidepost Solutions, which is an independent firm contracted by the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee. It discovered that survivors and concerned Southern Baptists continuously shared allegations with the executive committee, as per ABC News.
Furthermore, the report found that those who came forward were "met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility from some within the EC." It added that SBC leaders were concerned about church liability and its reputation and ignored concerns "even if it meant that convicted molesters continued in ministry with no notice or warning to their current church or congregation."
During an interview in May, then-president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ed Litton said that the damning independent investigative report on sex abuse allegations was "overdue." He added that the rumors were always spread in public, revealing the truth about the organization's dark history.
According to CNN, the SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, having an estimated 14 million members across more than 47,000 churches. On Friday, the SBC Executive Committee released a statement acknowledging that it was made aware of the DOJ investigation.
SBC's History of Sexual Abuse
The organization added that reform efforts within their group have not yet been completed and are continuing when the recently announced Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force begins its work.
However, the Middle District of Tennessee U.S. Attorney's Office said in an email that it could not either confirm or deny the existence of such an investigation on the SBC. In June, the group approved two reform measures to address how it deals with sexual abuse allegations within its churches.
One created what is called a "Ministry Check" website that would maintain a record of SBC "pastors, denominational workers, ministry employees, and volunteers who have at any time been credibly accused of sexual abuse."
The SBC sexual abuse report had many damning discoveries about the organization, but one of the most notable was the existence of an internal list of 703 people suspected of abuse that had been compiled by an employee of the denomination's executive committee.
Furthermore, the church later published a 205-page list of hundreds of ministers and other church workers whom it described as being "credibly accused" of sexual abuse in the past, the New York Times reported.
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