Lawyers must pursue Baptist predators and enablers

This piece first appeared in Baptist News Global on April 28, 2023.

First, in 1985, came attorneys who began filing lawsuits on behalf of those who were sexually assaulted as children by Catholic clerics.

Much later came prosecutors who slowly started to pursue criminal prosecutions.

Then, even later, came grand juries and attorneys general who finally began launching deeper investigations into clergy sex crimes and cover-ups and who eventually began to publish reports on those probes.

As a result, far too belatedly, roughly 7,000 proven, admitted and credibly accused abusive clerics have been exposed, suspended, defrocked and kept away from children.

But it has taken decades. And in the meantime, more kids have been hurt and more victims have continued to suffer.

Surely, survivors of child sexual abuse by Baptist predators won’t have to wait so long to see these horrors exposed, stopped and prevented.

But maybe they will.

It has been 16 years since a major ABC “20/20” exposé documented the pervasive problem of “preacher predators” in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Tragically, it wasn’t enough to prod a robust response. Nor were the stories of hundreds of survivors. Nor was a subsequent major newspaper exposé, the “Abuse of Faith” series. Nor was the Guidepost investigatory report.

The SBC has done almost nothing but drag its feet, as the sad cycle has repeated itself again and again: Promises and platitudes followed by institutional inertia.

But nearly as frustrating has been the foot dragging by two other groups: attorneys in both the civil and criminal realms who could and should step up.

“Two dozen state attorneys general have now done or are doing wide-ranging investigations into Catholic abuses and cover-ups.”

Two dozen state attorneys general have now done or are doing wide-ranging investigations into Catholic abuses and cover-ups. But none have even discussed or proposed such a probe of the nation’s second-largest faith group, the Southern Baptist Convention, with 47,000 congregations across the United States.

As part of a statewide initiative called “Clergy and Faith Leader Abuse,” Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul recently made headlines when he announced criminal charges for sexual assault against the highest-ranking Catholic official in the United States to be defrocked for perpetrating and concealing the sexual abuse of children, Theodore McCarrick. Kaul also has filed charges against two other Catholic clerics.

He says his investigative effort includes all faith groups. But we see no evidence he’s even uttered the phrase “Southern Baptist.”

Last week, the Maryland attorney general issued a 450-page report on clergy sex crimes in his state, and the word “Baptist” wasn’t mentioned once.

But let’s be honest. Prosecutors often have a tough row to hoe when looking at even widespread, and widely publicized, clergy sex crimes and cover-ups. State attorneys general are elected officials and often reluctant to risk the ire of religious institutions. And the bar for criminal conviction is high, and the statute of limitations is restrictive.

“State attorneys general are elected officials and often reluctant to risk the ire of religious institutions.”

However, another group of lawyers could step up and go after Baptists. It’s the group that showed courage and tenacity and creativity decades ago suing another huge, powerful institution that had long evaded accountability. We’re talking about civil attorneys who took on Catholic bishops.

In many ways, it may be tougher to sue the less-obviously-top-down Baptist hierarchy than the Catholic hierarchy. And for a victim of a predator priest, it’s easier to blame the Catholic bishop who assigned the priest to your parish than it is for a victim of a child-molesting cleric to blame a group of local laypeople who brought a predatory Baptist preacher to your church.

But top Baptist officials can and should be held responsible in civil court for allowing abusers into leadership positions and for fostering an environment in which predatory pastors could act with impunity.

Almost a decade ago, an attorney successfully challenged the SBC’s longstanding “local church autonomy” defense and won a $12.5 million verdict against a statewide Baptist body that paid a preacher, who turned out to be a predator, to start new churches in “under-served areas.”

More recently, abuse and cover-up suits have been filed in Arkansas and Virginia, noting that “the SBC’s local-church-autonomy defense, while used successfully in the past to avoid ascending liability, has never been fully tested in court.”

So let’s remember the old adage: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Let’s recall that Al Capone was nailed for income tax violations. Let’s remember that almost a year ago, the SBC promised to create a database of clergy abusers, and yet not a single name has been added to any database.

And let’s not sentence the victims of abusive Baptist ministers to the decades of irresponsible, needless delays that have enabled crimes and cover-ups to go on so long in Catholic institutions.

Let’s learn from, and not repeat, the mistakes of the past.

Lawyers, get to work.

David Clohessy was the national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, for 30 years. Follow him on Twitter @davidgclohessy.