The Southern Baptist Convention’s Sexual Abuse Task Force will receive a detailed report from the outside firm hired to investigate allegations against the SBC Executive Committee on Sunday, May 15.
If a previously agreed protocol is followed, that means the full report should be made public seven days later, on Sunday, May 22.
In a May 7 update posted online, the task force outlined the scheduled series of events that will lead to a full presentation of the facts at the SBC annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., June 14-15. Messengers to last year’s SBC annual meeting demanded the outside investigation, which then was stalled for several months by internal disagreement among members of the Executive Committee staff and trustees.
According to last year’s adopted motion, the outside firm, Guidepost Solutions, must submit its report to the task force no later than May 15. However, according to a later agreement, a copy of the “factual portion” of the report must be provided to a Committee on Cooperation for a factual review five days prior to submission to the task force, meaning today, May 10. That initial document will not include Guidepost’s observations or conclusions, the task force noted, “but strictly the factual portion so that any inadvertent errors (e.g., titles, dates) can be corrected.”
The security around today’s review is so tight that the five members of the Committee on Cooperation “will only be able to review the factual portion of the report in a designated room with either a task force member or a Guidepost representative present at all times. No photocopies or photographs of the factual portion of the report will be permitted. All copies of the factual portion of the report will be collected whenever the monitor is not present in the room or whenever a break is taken.”
Further, members of the Committee on Cooperation must agree in writing “not to disclose any portion of the report to anyone, in any form, including on social media.” Any notes taken during the review “must be hand-written and will be collected by the monitor at the end of each review date. The notes will be destroyed at the conclusion of the review.”
Meanwhile, Baptist News Global has confirmed reports of members of the Sexual Abuse Task Force scrubbing their own personal social media contacts out of fear of scrutiny by those opposed to the work of the task force.
In its final update, the Sexual Abuse Task Force reported that Guidepost has completed 313 interviews and that three additional interviews were scheduled. Some individuals were interviewed multiple times. Guidepost was unable to speak to 24 potential witnesses who are now deceased.
The task force published a list of 28 names of living witness who declined to speak with Guidepost or never responded to multiple requests for interviews.
Most notably, however, the task force published a list of 28 names of living witnesses who declined to speak with Guidepost or never responded to multiple requests for interviews.
The most recognizable names on that no-show list include Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson, co-architects of the SBC’s “conservative resurgence” in the late 20th century. Pressler currently is fending off a lawsuit claiming he abused a young male, and Patterson was fired as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in part, for mishandling allegations of sexual abuse. Patterson also is named in ongoing litigation about a sexual abuse case in which he was alleged not to have intervened appropriately.
According to the task force summary, Patterson declined to be interviewed because “he had no recollection of the subject of sexual abuse coming up during the last six months of his presidency that falls under the scope of the investigation.”
Also on the no-show list, however, is Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in suburban Dallas and a former SBC president. Graham’s church was involved in a high-profile case of clergy sexual abuse that mainly occurred before Graham’s tenure but has received repeated media attention.
However, the task force said Graham offered “full access to his presidential papers” as his form of participation. When Guidepost responded that they already had access to his presidential papers and still wanted to conduct an interview, Graham did not respond, the task force said.
The remaining 25 people on the no-show list are primarily pastors or laypersons who at some point were members of the SBC Executive Committee or held other elected positions within the denomination. Some are among those who resigned as trustees of the Executive Committee in protest of the decision to waive attorney-client privilege in the investigation.
When an anticipated 10,000 messengers convene for the annual meeting in Anaheim, a full hour has been scheduled to discuss the report of the Sexual Abuse Task Force.
The task force report made one final appeal to those who had declined to be interviewed, asking them to reconsider.
When an anticipated 10,000 messengers convene for the annual meeting in Anaheim, a full hour has been scheduled to discuss the report of the Sexual Abuse Task Force. That will occur on Tuesday, June 14, at 1:45 p.m. Pacific Time. While one hour may not seem to be much time to discuss such a vital report, few other items on the rapid-paced two-day agenda get that much time.
If that hour turns out to be insufficient to satisfy messenger concerns, it would be possible for messengers to vote to amend the schedule and add more time. Such an occurrence would not be unprecedented but is rare.
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