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Baptists Blaming their Sex Crimes against Children on everything except Hypocrisy

Sunday, April 22 2007 @ 11:52 PM CDT

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Baptists confront sex-abuse charges

Five years after the clergy sexual-abuse scandal erupted within the Catholic Church, Southern Baptists are confronting their own allegations of abuse and calls for greater steps to protect minors from predatory pastors.

Although the Baptists seem to confront the issue on a smaller scale, media reports, activists’ pleas and recent actions by some within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination indicate what Catholic officials have long insisted: that sexual abuse is not a problem confined to their church.

Consider:

❑ Two young pastors who have used their blogs to influence other Southern Baptists have written proposals that they hope will be considered at their annual meeting in June. One calls for a study on developing a database of Southern Baptist ministers convicted of sex abuse, and the other urges churches to “pursue every possible avenue” in vetting a pastor’s moral and ethical credentials.

❑ Bellevue Baptist Church, a prominent congregation in the Memphis area, issued a long report in January admitting that it was “ill-prepared on several fronts” to handle the case of a minister on staff who had engaged in “inappropriate sexual behavior” with his son 17 years ago.

❑ The activist group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and a Catholic whistleblower priest have called on Southern Baptists to adopt review panels and registries of offending clergy for greater oversight.

Southern Baptist officials, meanwhile, say that their denomination’s decentralized structure and autonomous congregations prevent them from complying with some of the proposed reforms. They say they have addressed the issue in the past and urge churches to conduct background checks on employees and volunteers.

“There is no Southern Baptist Convention office which collects and provides any qualifying information, including information about sex-abuse convictions or accusations, with regard to any local church employees, including ministers,” said D. August Boto, the general counsel of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, in an e-mail response to questions.

“The Southern Baptist Convention was formed on the belief that the selection of its ministers is a sacred right held and exercised by the local church alone under the leadership of God.”

In recent weeks, media reports have highlighted men who have been convicted of sex crimes and who have worked or studied in Southern Baptist circles. As recently as Wednesday, names matching those of several convicted sex offenders — and in some cases, men who are currently imprisoned — could be found in an online search for ministers on the denomination’s Web site, www.sbc.net. The names have since been removed.

That same day, two male students at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., were listed on the Kentucky State Police’s sex offender registry.

Boto said that the “MinisterSearch” list on the denomination’s site is “absolutely not a list of approved or vetted ministers” but simply a list based on reports from churches of their employees.

As for the seminary students, a seminary spokesman confirmed that the students are at the school, but could not confirm their sex-offender status.

“Our current policy is that no student on the sex-offender registry can be admitted as a student at Southern Seminary,” said Lawrence Smith. Asked if students, once admitted, can remain on campus even if they are on such a registry, Smith said, “You could draw that conclusion.”

Christa Brown, who coordinates SNAP’s activism in Baptist churches and runs a “Stop Baptist Predators” Web site, said she has compiled information on “dozens” of cases of Southern Baptist ministers who have confessed, been convicted or “credibly accused” of sex abuse of children.

But her research, based on media reports, is not conclusive.

“There are no firm numbers out there,” said Brown, of Austin, Texas. “I think part of the lack of data should be attributed to Southern Baptists themselves because they don’t keep records.”

The Southern Baptist Convention’s president, Frank Page, and other denominational officials say they are considering some kind of list of ministers convicted of sexual abuse but have not made a decision.

“We’re looking at all options,” Page said in a recent interview. “Any molestation is too much. We have a zero tolerance policy. We believe the Bible teaches that.”

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