Top Southern Baptists Stonewalled Abuse Victims

"Our investigation revealed that, for many years, a few senior EC leaders, along with outside counsel, largely controlled the EC's response to these reports of abuse ... and were singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC," the report said.

"In service of this goal, survivors and others who reported abuse were ignored, disbelieved, or met with the constant refrain that the SBC could take no action due to its polity regarding church autonomy - even if it meant that convicted molesters continued in ministry with no notice or warning to their current church or congregation," the report added.

The report asserts that an Executive Committee staffer maintained a list of Baptist ministers accused of abuse, but there is no indication anyone "took any action to ensure that the accused ministers were no longer in positions of power at SBC churches."

Catholics, Morons, now Southern Baptists, sheesh... Makes you wonder if organized religion isn't the source of the problem in the first plus, doesn't it?

#1 is supposed to be Mormons, not Morons ... but those count too.

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors came forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist leader was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman just one month after he completed his two-year tenure as president of the convention. The report finds that Johnny Hunt, a beloved Georgia-based Southern Baptist pastor who has been a senior vice president at the SBC's missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama City Beach, Fla., vacation in 2010.

Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday's release would confirm the facts around many of the stories they have already shared, but many were still surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the highest levels of leadership.

"I knew it was rotten, but it's astonishing and infuriating," said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female executive at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. "This is a denomination that is through and through about power. It is misappropriated power. It does not in any way reflect the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted."

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past presidents of the convention, a former vice president and the former head of the SBC's administrative arm.

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Just to be clear for the faithful, I'm not implying that religion somehow empowers sexual predators. What I am saying is that the very concept of faith - belief without physical proof or evidence - leads to potential targets being deferential to their predators in ways secular life may not, but for others viewed as cultural authority figures by victims as well. The lure of God is powerful and intoxicating, but it too often seems more the devil's work when it comes to predation, sexual abuse and exploitation.

Organizations must hold their members - and especially leadership and officials - responsible for their actions, and narratives like these show just how derelict many of them are in this regard.