A team of clergy sexual abuse survivors and their supporters announced the launch of a new website to help track predators and the churches that cover up for them.
ProtestantAccountability.org already boasts a list of more than 2,700 accused perpetrators ranging from clergy and lay staff members to teachers and camp counselors from across 100 denominations, organizers said during an Aug. 19 virtual press conference.
Chellee Taylor
“This is an effort to spread awareness, inform the public, protect potential victims and help heal those who’ve already been wounded,” said Protestant Accountability President Chellee Taylor, who won a settlement in 2022 from Journey Church, a Southern Baptist Convention church in Orlando where she was sexually abused as an adult by a satellite campus pastor.
“This database has the potential to save others from the suffering I endured not just at the hands of my pastor, but by the institution who chose to protect him over honoring God with accountability, transparency and truth,” Taylor said.
Protestant Accountability is not a content creator, she added. “We collect already public information and put it all in one place for easy searchability. The people posted on the site have been accused of committing or mishandling cases of sexual abuse while holding some sort of spiritual authority. We do not claim the guilt of any person, only provide the information so others can form their own opinions.”
The new site is the latest in a series of online databases designed to keep tabs on, and provide warnings about, clergy and church sexual abuse, including StopBaptistPredators.org, BishopAccountability.org and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.
David Clohessy
“I’m very confident that the innocent and the vulnerable inside and outside of churches are already safer because of the hard, careful courageous work that these folks have done, and I think even more people will be safer when this website is expanded and when more and more people learn about it,” said David Clohessy, former executive director of SNAP.
The website will be a vital tool for church parents and staff, police and prosecutors trying to learn more about accused, suspended or convicted clergy and other religious workers, he said.
Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountabillity.org, said the new database will provide a much-needed widening of clergy and congregational accountability and provide further witness to the pervasiveness of sexual abuse in churches.
Law enforcement officers frequently use Bishop Accountability in investigations, and the Protestant site will be the same, McKiernan said.
“This impact will be enhanced greatly by Protestant Accountability because lawmakers will see that this is not just a Catholic thing at all, this is something that affects all religious communities. I feel we will get significant legislative reform out of the effort that Chellee and Dom have started today.”
Protestant Accountability board member Dominique “Dom” Benninger explained that the site relies on public documents, published media reports and court records for its content.
“We don’t do investigations,” said Benninger, a religious abuse survivor in Pennsylvania and co-founder of now-closed BaptistAccountability.org.
“The primary focus now is sexual abuse but also includes abuse enablers and abuse coverups. If an abuser or alleged abuser is given a sendoff without identifying potential abuse, you may wind up in our database.”
The work is painstaking and performed by a small group of volunteers, Benninger said. “Every day there are more and more reports. This is heavy work. In every single record there is at least one individual who suffered harm. We have to pace ourselves and take care of survivors and ourselves.”
Mental health counselor and adult clergy sex abuse survivor Elisabeth Ingram said the site will help prevent abusers moving from church to church as her abuser did.
“We need ProtestAntaccountability.org because bad actors use the social capital they gain as pastors to entrap, exploit and abuse. Too often, harm doers have been quietly removed or sometimes given a sendoff only to move to other churches and begin anew, giving them fresh access to unsuspecting potential victims,” she said. “We need Protestant Accountability because faith institutions often sweep evidence of a crime under the rug and use nondisclosure agreements and other forms of social pressure to silence victims.”
This kind of database is what abuse survivors demanded of the Southern Baptist Convention and were promised would be created, but it never was.