New investigation says Southern Baptist sexual assault victims were stonewalled and suspects remained in power.

The findings of the study have left SBC President Ed Litton feeling “grieved to my core,” as he put it in a statement.

A study that was compiled after an investigation found that the Southern Baptist Convention, the biggest Protestant denomination in the United States, treated victims of sexual assault with “outright disdain.” [citation needed] People who had been accused of abusing their power were allowed to remain in leadership positions.

According to the findings of the report, victims of sexual assault were met with “opposition, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” from some church pastors, and the SBC Executive Committee gave its approval to a 288-page report that was compiled by Guidepost Solutions. This report revealed that victims of sexual assault were met with “opposition, stonewalling, and even outright hostility.”

This image from our archive was taken on December 7, 2011, and it shows the headquarters of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. In order to safeguard their own reputations, the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, allegedly engaged in a nearly two decade-long campaign of stonewalling and denigration of survivors of clerical sexual abuse. The damning findings of the investigation were published in a 288-page report that was made public on May 22, 2022.

During the national convention held by the SBC the previous year, third parties made contact with the European Commission (EC), which led to the initiation of an investigation.

By the findings of the research, “Our investigation demonstrated that, for many years, a small number of top EC executives, paired with outside counsel, substantially controlled the EC’s attitude to these charges of abuse and were fully focused on avoiding SBC culpability.”