Risk of Injuries Related

to Sexual Abuse include:

Studies have linked sexual assault with several possible physical, mental, and emotional outcomes. The emotional effects of sexual abuse can last a lifetime, particularly in cases where the offender is a trusted adult, such as would be the case with a minister or church authority.

According to The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), sexual abuse can generate long-term emotional responses, including depression, anxiety, and anger.

Sexual abuse victims can experience the following injuries and side effects:

  • Self-isolation
  • Fear
  • Secrecy
  • Impulsiveness
  • Aggression
  • Delinquency
  • Hyperactivity
  • Substance abuse
  • Anger    
  • Shame
  • Despair
  • Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
  • Depression
  • Brain damage from stress hormones
  • Suicidal tendencies
  • Suicide
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Aaronson & Rash, PLLC is investigating allegations of sexual misconduct within the Southern Baptist Convention churches. It has been alleged that national leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) mishandled reports of sexual abuse.

 In May 2022, reports came to light of a decades-long cover-up by the Southern Baptist Convention of the sexual abuse of child and adult congregants by members of its clergy. A new 288-page independent report highlights shocking details about specific abuse cases, the vilification and ignoring of victims, a secret predator database, and reveals how denominational leaders strived for decades to actively resist calls for abuse prevention and reform. 

The SBC has admitted to instructional cover up of sexual abuse. Despite owning and operating the national press for the organization, the SBC failed to warn members of the harm for over 20 years.

 Thousands may be eligible to file lawsuits against the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) for its failure to report and protect victims of sexual abuse. The SBC’s motivation for its lack of response: avoid liability.

 You may be able to file a claim against the SBC if you experienced sexual abuse from any of the following:

•             Pastors

•             Ministers

•             Youth Pastors

•             Sunday School Teachers

•             Deacons

•             Church Volunteers


If you were sexually abused while in an SBC church, contact a sexual abuse lawyer to get your claim started.


Other Sexual Abuse Coverup Lawsuits

The Southern Baptist Convention is not the first case of a large organization facing potential civil lawsuits for sexual abuse.

In 2022, the University of California agreed to a $700 million settlement to resolve hundreds of lawsuits brought by alleged victims of a UCLA gynecologist Dr. James Heaps. Similar to allegations in the Southern Baptist Convention lawsuits, UCLA also reportedly ignored reports of Dr. Heaps’ sexual abuse.

The Boy Scouts of America have faced similar lawsuits from 84,000 people alleging they were sexually abused as children by scout leaders and volunteers. In 2021, NBC News reported the organization reached an $850 million settlement to resolve these cases.

Perhaps the strongest parallels can be drawn between the SBC case and that faced by Catholic dioceses. More than 8,600 victims of sexual assault by members of the Catholic clergy resulted in lawsuits from survivors—and a $3.8 billion settlement.

The Southern Baptist Convention 

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) represents a Christian and Protestant denomination within the United States. The SBC represents the largest Baptist denomination in the world, and nearly the largest Christian denomination in the U.S. — second only to Catholicism.

The SBC has more than 47,000 Baptist churches. The organization maintains a central administrative organization in Tennessee and has an executive committee. 

While the SBC showed more than 14.5 million members in the US Census in 2020, it has lost 14% of its congregants from 2006 to 2022, or about 2.3 million members.

The Guidepost Solutions Report

On Sunday, May 22, 2022, Guidepost Solutions released a report exposing sexual misconduct and sex abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

The 288-page report by the independent investigations firm, Guidepost Solutions, LLC, details how members of church leadership knew about the abuse allegations against pastors for almost two decades.  This seven-month investigation by Guidepost, during which time the firm conducted 330 interviews and analyzed thousands of internal SBC files, brought to light the innumerable reports of abuse made by church members across the nation to church leadership members (known as the Executive Committee or EC).

These reports were kept hidden since long before the investigation was made.  Unfortunately, most reports were handled with hostility or resistance.  Instead of handling the cases, the EC either ignored them, covered them up, or allowed the accused to simply move away. This action was undertaken with the goal of helping to avoid a ‘culture of sexual misconduct.’

Such sexual abuse reports were kept secret and not reported to authorities.   

According to the Guidepost report, the SBC had collected the names of 703 abusers. 

Guidepost was hired to investigate multiple allegations against SBC’s Executive Committee (EC) staff and member churches with regard to:

·        Sexual abuse

·        Mishandling sex abuse

·        Mistreating sexual abuse victims

·        Intimidating sexual abuse victims or advocates

·        Resisting sexual abuse reform initiatives

According to the report, for many years, sex abuse survivors have been reaching out to the SBC EC, and members of the committee responded with “resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility.”

The report further states, “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 further describes how the survivors of sexual abuse were characterized as opportunistic individuals looking for lawsuits.

These victims were broken down and publicly vilified, while their accounts of abuse were trivialized. They were shunned, threatened, and treated as though they were lying or worthless.  

The management of all sexual abuse or assault reports by the Southern Baptist Convention seemed to have a common goal: avoiding liability.

Other Reports and Newspaper Articles

Houston Chronicle’s 2019 investigative series

In 2019, the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News published an editorial series uncovering the fact that 700 hundred individuals had been victims of sex crimes at the hands of SBC church leaders and volunteers.

Since 2000, hundreds of these church representatives had been criminally charged with sex crimes. Reporters also exposed SBC leaders’ mishandling, concealing, or ignoring of warnings that such abuses were occurring.

Decades of Sexual Misconduct and Cover-Ups

According to the Houston Chronicle’s 2019 investigative series:

·        Since 1998, around 380 SBC church leaders and volunteers have been accused of sexual misconduct.

·        At least 35 of those who had displayed “predatory behavior” continued to find employment at SBC churches.

·        SBC past presidents and leaders were among those accused of hiding or mishandling complaints of abuse in their churches/seminaries.

·        Registered sex offenders still preach.

On May 22, 2022, The Washington Post reported in part:

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday released a major third-party investigation that found that sex abuse survivors were often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages include shocking new details about specific abuse cases and shine a light on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform.

On May 24, 2022, The Washington Post reported in part:

Two days after an explosive report concluded that its leaders mishandled and covered up sex abuse claims, leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention said at a public meeting Tuesday that they would release names from a list of alleged abusers they kept secretly for years. They also said that they owe abuse survivors an apology and that the huge denomination must fundamentally change its culture.

Read the full Report published by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission :  Report 

The Report concludes in part:

For far too long boys, girls, men and women have lined our SBC pews silently bearing the scars of sexual abuse. Most church leaders were unaware of the suffering of their most vulnerable, some knew and turned a blind eye, and a few leaders perpetrated the evil themselves.

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