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	Leadership, Honesty Needed to Confront Abuse Problem By John Railey Winston-Salem Journal [United States] March 4, 2007 http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149193508653&path=/opinion&s= The outrageous words must have hurt a lot of Southern Baptists. �gI believe kids are not safe in Southern Baptist churches,�h Christa Brown told The Associated Press the other day. Brown, a Texan who says she was sexually abused as a child by a Southern Baptist minister, runs a Web site called the Voice to Stop Baptist Predators. She�fs also a member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, which has for years been battling the Catholic Church over sexual abuse by its clergy. For the record, the vast majority of Southern Baptists and Catholics are good people who obviously don�ft want molesters in their churches. The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation�fs largest Protestant denomination, doesn�ft have anywhere near as big a problem with molestation as the Catholic Church has had. But SBC leaders do acknowledge that there have been incidents of abuse in their congregations - just as there have been in other mainstream churches. Brown told the AP that, in the last six months, SNAP has gotten about 40 reports of sexual abuse by Southern Baptist clergy, and some of those incidents date back many years. Exact figures are hard to come by. There hasn�ft been news of any sexual abuse at any of the hundreds of SBC churches in this area. But any reports, even from outside the area, are too many. So how does the SBC tackle this problem? SNAP wants the denomination to do more faster, including by setting up an independent review board to investigate molestation reports. SBC leaders say they�fve provided information to their churches about how to conduct background checks and taken other steps as well. But without a hierarchical structure, they suggest that there�fs only so much they can do. SBC churches are autonomous, they say. That argument doesn�ft fly. Although there�fs no official hierarchical structure in the 16.3-million-member SBC, and churches hire and fire their own pastors and are in theory independent, there�fs definitely top-down leadership. SBC leaders call many of the shots, and churches pretty much follow the leaders, whether that means taking a firm stance against homosexuality or making sure the head pastor is a man. Most of the churches that really believe in the treasured tradition of Baptist autonomy have long since stopped dealing with the convention. A denomination that has become so cohesive should surely be able to circle its churches and root out child molesters. Top-down leadership isn�ft the answer by itself. It can help foster an unresponsive, secretive bureaucracy in dealing with - or not dealing with - sexual abuse by clergy, as happened with the Catholic Church. But that type of leadership paired with brutal honesty might do wonders. The SBC has the former. And often, it�fs shown the latter. Whether you agree or disagree with SBC leaders, some are among the straightest shooters you�fll ever meet. Several years ago, SBC leaders freely talked to me about an area pastor who�fd neglected to tell his new congregation about his felony convictions for understating his income on federal tax returns. One of the leaders told me that if they want their denomination to be a moral authority, they�fd better come clean when there�fs trouble in their own ranks. Amen. I hope plenty of SBC leaders feel that way now. The denomination doesn�ft have the authority to set up an independent review board. It has taken several steps to guard against molesters, but it can do more. It must ensure that when it learns of pastors who are molesters, it will do its best to get them prosecuted. It can make sure its churches know about those pastors, so they can�ft slip from one congregation to another. And it can be open with the press and the rest of the public in talking about this problem. Christa Brown, the Texas advocate, was wrong about one thing. The real truth is that children are safe in the vast majority of Southern Baptist churches. But SBC leaders need to make sure all their children are safe. • John Railey writes local editorials for the Journal. He can be reached at jrailey@wsjournal.com.
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