Victims of priest sex abuse shift focus to Baptist churches
Posted February 22, 2007
Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests Targets Southern Baptist abusers
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- The victims' advocates who dogged the Roman Catholic Church over sex abuse by its clergy have now turned their attention to the Southern Baptists, accusing America's largest Protestant denomination of also failing to root out molesters.
The Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests has started a campaign to call attention to alleged sex abuse committed by Southern Baptist ministers and concealed by churches.
SNAP presented a letter Monday to Southern Baptist Convention executive committee members in Nashville, asking the group to adopt a zero-tolerance policy on sex abuse and to create an independent review board to investigate molestation reports.
Church leaders concede there have been some incidents of abuse in Southern Baptist congregations, but say their hands are tied when it comes to investigating complaints across the denomination.
40 cases of alleged abuse
H/T to Elder John and to Joseph
Unlike the Catholic Church, with its rigid hierarchy, Baptist churches are independent. They make their own decisions about hiring ministers and conducting investigations, Baptist leaders say.
"They don't want to see this problem," said Christa Brown, a SNAP member from Austin, Texas, who says she was sexually abused as a child by a Southern Baptist minister. "That's tragic because they're imitating the same mistakes made by Catholic bishops."
In the past six months SNAP has received reports of about 40 cases of sexual abuse by Southern Baptist ministers -- with some of the incidents dating back many years, Brown said.
SNAP leaders hold that abuse is typically underreported because being molested is such a painful experience that victims often wait years before stepping forward.
Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page said the denomination plans to teach its churches how to conduct background checks, and to require letters of recommendation for job candidates.
But he said the Southern Baptist Convention does not have the legal authority to create an independent board to investigate abuse complaints.
"As much as possible within our structure, we're going to assist churches," Page said. "We're deeply concerned about this. We believe children are the most precious gifts from God."
Southern Baptists passed a resolution in 2002 urging its churches to discipline ministers guilty of sexual abuse and to cooperate with authorities in their prosecution.
Pregnant with her minister's baby
But Brown said that's not enough.
She says the Southern Baptists need an independent review board precisely because there's no clear chain of command among Baptist churches. The SBC also does not keep a list of ministers who have been accused of abuse. Advocates say this means molesters could move from church to church.
"I believe kids are not safe in Southern Baptist churches," said Brown, who runs a Web site called the Voice to Stop Baptist Predators.
One SNAP member, Debbie Vasquez, said she was raped by a Southern Baptist minister in Texas when she was 15 years old.
Now 48, Vasquez filed a lawsuit last year against the pastor, the Rev. Dale "Dickie" Amyx and his current church, Bolivar Baptist in Sanger, Texas, about 45 miles north of Dallas. She claims the church knew, or should have known, about Amyx's past.
Vasquez says she was raped when Amyx was a minister at the now-defunct Calvary Baptist Church in Lewisville, another town north of Dallas.
When she became pregnant with Amyx's child at age 18, church leaders forced her to go before the congregation and ask forgiveness as an unwed mother. But the congregation was never told it was Amyx's baby.
The lawsuit claims Calvary Baptist helped Amyx get another job at a church in Arizona.
Amyx acknowledged in court documents that he had a sexual relationship with Vasquez and was the father of her child. Texas court records also show that Amyx was convicted in 1967 for giving beer to a minor.
When reached at home Wednesday, Amyx said he couldn't comment on the case and referred all questions to his lawyer, James A. Harrison. The attorney did not return multiple phone calls.
Vasquez said she filed the suit because she fears Amyx could be abusing other girls and she wants to see him removed from his position.
"In any denomination where you have these men with this power that's not questioned and you have these people who are vulnerable ... you're going to have a problem," Vasquez said.
Cover-up accusations
Philip Jenkins, a professor of religious studies and history at Pennsylvania State University and author of the book "Pedophiles and Priests," said it's harder to track child sexual abuse in Protestant denominations.
"Southern Baptists are massively decentralized compared to the Catholic Church," he said. "They're independent. It's very difficult to gauge how many abuses might be occurring within the Southern Baptist Convention."
Several child sex abuse cases in Southern Baptist churches have surfaced recently.
Bellevue Baptist, a megachurch near Memphis, fired a longtime minister, the Rev. Paul Williams, last month after he acknowledged sexually abusing his son 17 years ago.
The church's internal investigation found that church leaders, including current pastor, the Rev. Steve Gaines, knew about the abuse last year, but did not act immediately.
The investigation began in December only after the prodding of Williams' son, who asked Gaines why his father was allowed to continue as a minister even after leaders had found out about the abuse.
"I accept full responsibility and could have handled this in a more appropriate way," Gaines told the congregation last month.
In another case, Shawn Davies, a former music and youth minister at the First Baptist Church of Greenwood, Missouri, pleaded guilty last month to molesting boys ages 12 to 16.
Vasquez says she's seeking damages for medical costs and mental and physical injury as well as punitive damages.
"They're allowing these men to go from church to church," she said. "They're not protecting the victims. They're protecting themselves."
On the Net:
Southern Baptist Convention: http://www.sbc.net/
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests:
http://www.snapnetwork.org/
Voice to Stop Baptist Predators: http://www.stopbaptistpredators.org/
Comments
Clearly the people organizing this do not understand Baptist polity. We have no clear chain of command..and THAT'S THE POINT...., there is no Baptist Pope or hierarchy beyond the autonomous local church.
To ask a pertinant question to anyone following the Bellvue story, has anyone in the media asked if the church's former pastor, Dr. Adrian Rogers, knew about this guy molesting his son?
Editor's clarification: The above sentence uses a pronoun which could be confusing for people who haven't heard about the abuse scandal at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis. Just to clarify for newcomers -- A church staffer was molesting his own son -- not Dr. Rogers' son.
The Baptists don't have one BIG pope, although there are plenty of "little popes," as Alexander Campbell and Raccoon John Smith called them, in just about every locale where there are enough Baptists. (Raccoon John and Campbell didn't have little popes; they had newspaper editors instead, but they amounted to just about the same thing, and the SBC is still rather more of an oligarchy than a monarchy.) Stonewalling on sordid matters like these can still occur among Baptists and in other so-called congregational churches, though, and perhaps one of the worst aspects of this kind of stonewalling is a tendency to hide behind a so-called lack of hierarchical organization as a smokescreen and an excuse not to do anything about a problem. Concerns about interference with the internal affairs of churches sort of come and go among Baptists depending on the nature of individual problems that turn up, and I have seen churches "strain at a gnat and swallow a camel (Matthew 23)" more times than I can count. As Jack says, such a dynamic is probably unheard of in the RCC, but that doesn't mean that congregational and associational forms of government don't carry dangers of abuse and injustice that are just as real as any found in the RCC.
That could be considered confusing.....the guy molested his own son, not Dr. Roger's son....I was just curious if Rogers new anything about it or if it didn't come out till Gaines was pastor.
Elder John makes a good point. It is just as easy to hide behind the lack of an organization as it is to hide behind an organization, and maybe easier.
The Roman church was, after all, quite literally hoist on its own petard, because the best evidence of the abuse of children by its priests is contained in its own "secret archive" files, most of which have now been opened as part of the litigation against the Dioceses.
Presumably the Baptists have no secret archives, and in fact no archives at all on the subject of molestation.
I agree with Jack that most Baptist congregations would not condone sexual abuse, and would fire and prosecute the molestor, but there are always exceptions, and where there are no records, proof could be difficult indeed.
Let me share with you my experience with the clergy and the pedophile. When I was a young altar boy the new priest came to town and rearranged the area the alter boys put on their vestments, there was cheap talk of peeking, but altar boys always wore their vestments over their clothes. Later in life when a very prominent man became involved in a pedophilia scandal, he blamed his action on being molested by this certain priest. The news of this circulated around the community and finally made its way back to this priest who had since retired and was enjoying his green thumbs. Shortly after the news reached Father he committed suicide. Later I had the opportunity to question the prominent civic leader in person, face to face and then he told me he had lied. It was a time when the church scandal was peaking and he just tried to get some pity for it. Not only did he molest young men, in my eyes he committed murder. He has since written and asked for recommendations to the parole board from me, I declined and will continue to, but he has never addressed his statements concerning Father. So strange it seems like a bad dream. Not all that you here about being catholic is bad. If it had not been for my beliefs as a child and the stories I read about a young Jesus, I feel sure my path would have been much different. The only real place I felt secure was on that altar as an altar boy. How strange to evaluate my life in front of you guys.
It is pretty common--frighteningly so--for clergy of all denominations to have problems with sexual misconduct.
The denominations that are more heirarchical get more exposure but it happens everywhere.
I was raised in a congregational type evangelical church and now I attend a hierarchical one, and I like that the chains of authority and command are clearer and there is the potential for more transparency about who is in charge and what roles are. I think it is safer when leadership is based on formal role and not personality or charisma, although we know it isn't that simple.
It is common for people to use their role in the church to gain access and trust and in my experience that church leaders of all denominations minimize their role in responding to child abuse, domestic violence, and elder abuse.
I'm not a Baptist, but I know there is a big difference between the Baptists and the RCC here: the Southern Baptist denomination has no control over who gets ordained or stays ordained to be a Baptist minister. That's part of Baptist church government -- the local church, alone, on its own, ordains or unordains preachers.
I can imagine that there are denominational positions from which guilty people could be fired. From what I've seen locally, Baptist churches fire the guy if there seem to be true allegations of something, and then they turn the evidence over to the police. But usually what I've heard about are youth pastors committing sexual immorality with a high school girl. I suppose that could be statutory rape, depending on age of consent in various states.
As I said, the guy usually gets fired and then word spreads so that no one will hire him. I don't think you have the same secretive, nurtured, homosexuality-culture in Baptist life that many conservative Catholic critics were warning about their own church, especially since Baptist ministers are allowed to marry.
Baptist life is also very much democratic power from the grass roots up, not monarchical power from the top down like the RCC. That also radically changes how things are dealt with. Stuff tends to get exposed by Baptists in public congregational meetings that would be unheard-of in the RCC.