A report, posted online Sunday, reveals the extent of sexual assaults passed over in silence within the Southern Baptist Convention. Enough to weaken this American religious group, with 13 million members, whose support the Republican Party has been actively seeking since the 2000s.
This is a list that will make a big splash in the United States . It is believed to contain around 700 names of members of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) - the largest and most influential Christian evangelical group in the country - who have been suspected for years by their superiors of sexual assault.
The existence of such a list, long denied by the pundits of the SBC, is one of the main revelations of an explosive report, published on Sunday May 22. A document which, over its 300 pages, details the serial sexual assaults within this group and the way in which the hierarchy has ignored, even stifled, the testimonies and complaints since the beginning of the 2000s.
"It's no longer a crisis, it's the apocalypse"
The decision to release the list, likely Thursday, May 26, represents the first sign that Southern Baptist Convention officials are taking not only the report's findings seriously, but also the reality of the scale of the scandal.
It must be said that the report, commissioned in 2021 from independent investigators, goes into the smallest details without sparing anyone. It even implicates a former president of the SBC, accused of sexual assault.
“It's so much worse than I expected,” acknowledged Ed Litton, current president of the Southern Baptist Convention. “It's no longer a crisis, it's the apocalypse. The whole system is in question,” wrote Russell Moore , a preacher who left the SBC last year.
Indeed, the report does not content itself with listing the tragic tally of cases of sexual assault, both against minors and against women. On this point, the investigators essentially confirm the revelations made in 2019 by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News.
“What is equally alarming is the description of the efforts undertaken for more than twenty years by senior officials to minimize the voice of victims and protect the institution at all costs against any risk of prosecution”, sums up Andrew Lewis, political scientist at the University of Cincinnati and specialist in the political engagement of religious groups.
August Boto, an influential former SBC executive who is often quoted in the report, in an email likened the victims' efforts to draw attention to their plight to "a satanic plot to distract us from our mission of evangelization”.
“This report is terrifying to read. Maybe it's time to turn the page on the SBC for good”, reacted Boz Tchividjian, a lawyer who represents victims of sexual assault, interviewed by the New York Times.
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