The question of who knew what when about Paul Pressler’s alleged molestation of boys and young men surfaced anew over the weekend in a series of tweets between the reporter who broke the story of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention and the current attorney for the SBC and its Executive Committee.
All this is in response to news in late December that the SBC and other parties had settled out of court with Duane Rollins, one of Pressler’s alleged victims who had been suing him and the SBC and others for several years.
Paul Pressler speaking during the height of the battle for leadership of the SBC.
Pressler, a retired appeals court judge in Houston, was co-architect of the so-called “conservative resurgence” that gained control of denominational mechanisms beginning in 1979 through a battle said to be over biblical inerrancy. Pressler held himself out as a staunch theological conservative and moralist while — according to multiple accusers — allegedly engaging in illegal and immoral sexual activities that were known to his church leaders and colleagues.
The current question is what leaders of the SBC Executive Committee knew and when they knew it. The same question was at the heart of the Guidepost Solutions independent report that created a bombshell in the convention two years ago by documenting that Executive Committee leaders were keeping a secret list of sexual predators in SBC churches while claiming they could not keep or publish such a list.
Robert Downen is a former reporter for the Houston Chronicle, now writing for the Texas Tribune, who organized the “Abuse of Faith” series that sparked the SBC’s internal investigation. Allegations against Pressler were part of that news series.
Jim Guenther
On Jan. 19, Downen posted on X an excerpt from a letter written in 2021 by Jim Guenther, then legal counsel for the SBC. Soon after, Guenther quit representing the SBC — something he had done for decades — in protest of the Executive Committee’s decision to waive privilege and allow Guidepost full access to its records.
In the 2021 letter — which Downen says he acquired from publicly available court files in the Pressler case — Guenther addresses the Rollins case against Pressler and the SBC. At that point, a key question was whether the statute of limitations would prevent Rollins from continuing his case and whether he could claim repressed memories as a means of gaining an extension, a matter that ended up creating new case law in Texas.
Guenther writes:
Our counsel in Texas think we have the better position in this case on the statute of limitations issue which is the issue in the Supreme Court. There are not many cases in Texas on repressed memory. That has been a defense I have always been skeptical of and the conduct of the plaintiff in our case seemed to the defendants’ attorneys to have blown it. However, there was a reluctance on all the defendants’ part to engage in discovery because we believed it would have produced a lot of evidence of the truthfulness of the fundamental allegation by the plaintiff that Pressler had sexually abused him for many years. So our evidence regarding the plaintiff’s mental capacity was not as extensive as it might have been. And, as you well know, getting out of any case on a motion for summary judgment is tough.
Downen commented in his tweet: “In 2021, longtime Southern Baptist Convention attorney Jim Guenther wrote that he and others feared discovery in the Paul Pressler lawsuit would produce ‘a lot of evidence’ that Pressler had sexually abused Duane Rollins ‘for many years.’”
To this, Marshall Blalock — pastor of First Baptist Church of Charleston, S.C., and chairman of the SBC’s second abuse reform task force — tweeted: “This is the problem. SBC lawyers knew the abuse was happening, knew one of their ‘leaders’ was grossly corrupt, but chose to ignore truth and defend evil. Then they cravenly hid their complicity from the Task Force in spite of being clearly ordered to disclose everything.”
That elicited a public response from Gene Besen, a Dallas attorney now representing the SBC, who tweeted:
Gene Besen
SBC lawyer here. In the time I’ve represented the Executive Committee since November 2021 I’ve never tweeted about SBC matters. This warrants a response because this narrative is patently inaccurate. Nothing was withheld from Guidepost. In fact, both Marshal and Rachel, among many others know that Guidepost looked extensively for evidence that the Executive Committee had prior knowledge of Pressler’s alleged abuse before Rollin’s lawsuit and the Houston Chronicle reporting. What they found is contained in their report. Nothing was withheld from Guidepost.
Everyone was publicly aware of allegations of abuse against Pressler after the Houston Chronicle began publishing stories about the Rollins lawsuit and its Abuse of Faith series. Accordingly, the Executive Committee’s lawyers crafting the Executive Committee’s legal defense with extensive public allegations in mind is not remarkable. Again, nothing was hidden.
“If want you want to hear is that Pressler was is dangerous predator who exploited boys based on his power and his false piety – I whole heartedly agree. The man’s actions are of the devil. That is clear.”
Indeed, Rollins testified in discovery that he never attended an SBC church, an SBC meeting, an EC meeting, or any other SBC function. That doesn’t change the fact that Pressler is a monster, but it does impact why and how the SBC might defend the litigation and craft a legal strategy.
If want you want to hear is that Pressler was is dangerous predator who exploited boys based on his power and his false piety — I whole heartedly agree. The man’s actions are of the devil. That is clear.
This is believed to be the first time ever a legal representative of the SBC has publicly acknowledged and affirmed the accusations against Pressler. For Besen to call Pressler a “predator,” a “monster” and “of the devil” is a more damning assessment than any ever made publicly by any SBC elected leader.
Many responses piled on to every part of this thread on X, and Besen himself engaged several of those commenting.
Downen’s original tweet has been viewed more than 367,000 times.
Related articles:
Confidential settlement reached in Pressler sexual abuse case
SBC’s former law firm sharply disagrees with Sexual Abuse Task Force report
New court documents show First Baptist Houston leaders knew of allegations against Pressler in 2004
Abuse case against Pressler may proceed, Texas Supreme Court rules
Pressler accuser still wants day in court
Paul Pressler’s accuser appeals abuse claim dismissed due to statute of limitations