Sex Offenders Found Opportunities in Southern Baptist Churches. That’s When the Coverup Began. Now the Reckoning Begins.
HNewsWire:
In response to an explosive investigation, top Southern Baptists have released a previously secret list of hundreds of pastors and other church-affiliated personnel accused of sexual abuse.
The 205-page database was made public late Thursday. It includes more than 700 entries from cases that largely span from 2000 to 2019.
Its existence became widely known Sunday when the independent firm, Guidepost Solutions, included it in its bombshell report detailing how the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee mishandled allegations of sex abuse, stonewalled numerous survivors and prioritized protecting the SBC from liability.
Executive Committee leaders Rolland Slade and Willie McLaurin, in a joint statement, called publishing the list “an initial, but important, step towards addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform in the Convention."
“Each entry in this list reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by sexual abuse,” they said. “Our prayer is that the survivors of these heinous acts find hope and healing, and that churches will utilize this list proactively to protect and care for the most vulnerable among us.”
The Guidepost report, released after a seven-month investigation, contained several explosive revelations. Among them: D. August Boto, the committee's former vice president and general counsel, and former SBC spokesman Roger Oldham kept their own private list of abusive ministers. Both retired in 2019. The existence of the list was not widely known within the committee and 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 ministers were no longer in positions of power at SBC churches,” the report said.
The Executive Committee did not make additions to the published list, but their attorneys did redact several entries as well as the names and identifying information of survivors and others unrelated to the accused, Thursday's joint statement said.
They made public “entries that reference an admission, confession, guilty plea, conviction, judgment, sentencing, or inclusion on a sex offender registry,” and expect some of the redacted entries on the list to be made public once more research is done. The list also includes Baptist ministers that are not affiliated with the SBC.
Up to 3,200 Catholic priests have sexually abused children in France in recent history, the head of an independent inquiry has said, days before publishing a report on the scope of crimes against minors inside the church.
The independent commission led by former vice president of the Council of State Jean-Marc Sauve was set up by the French Catholic Church in 2018 to study sexual crimes against minors within its ranks.
After going through church archives across the country and conducting interviews, the commission, known by its acronym CIASE, will deliver a 2,500-page report on Tuesday.
Sauve told AFP his team had uncovered between 2,900 and 3,200 pedophile priests and other church members who operated since 1950. He added that it was “a minimum estimate.”
The most terrible thing for me was to see the most absolute of evils – an attack on the physical and mental integrity of children – which is to say a work of death perpetrated by people whose mission was to bring life and salvation.
“Between the 1950s and the 1970s, the church was completely indifferent to the victims. They didn’t exist, the suffering of children was ignored,” Sauve told Le Journal du Dimanche on Saturday, adding that clerics were greatly interested in protecting the church and retaining offenders in the priesthood.
Europe 1 radio cited sources saying that the estimated number of potential victims mentioned in the report will be well over 100,000. This is 10 times higher than the previous estimate put forward by the commission in March.
The Catholic Church across the world has been rocked by numerous high-profile cases involving the sexual abuse of minors by priests in recent decades.
The Vatican toughened its laws against sex offenders in the clergy this year in response to a 2020 independent report finding that senior church officials had failed to act on reports of crimes against children in the past.
UN: Vatican Allowed Rape and Molestation of Children.
Source: RT.com HNewsWire HNewsWire HNewsWire HNewsWire humansarefree
SRH: The first psalm warns us not to keep company with evil people. We are told not to listen to their counsel, stand in their way or sit in their seats. The word ‘blessed’ is translated ‘happy’ in some newer renderings. Blessing implies the goodness of God will be with such a person. Look for these beatitudes throughout Scripture. If the Word gives us instruction as to what to do to find God pouring out His goodness on us, we should give careful attention to that instruction. You will be blessed if you avoid bad company. Man has a natural tendency to gravitate toward mocking and complaint. Don’t!
Consider: “If I meditate on God’s Word and don’t walk in the counsel of the wicked, whatever I do will prosper.”
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