Group opposes Baptist's appeal of sex case award

Daily Commercial
February 16, 2014

http://www.dailycommercial.com/news/article_0da19465-3d28-5783-989f-d5be962cda1a.html

An organization that advocates on behalf of clergy sex abuse victims has asked the Florida Baptist Convention to reconsider plans to appeal a $12.5 million award to a man sexually abused in Lake County by a minister convicted of molestation in 2007, the ABPnews/Herald is reporting.

“By appealing, at best you’ll be postponing, at a great moral and financial cost, an eventual day of real reckoning,” David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said in a letter to Florida Baptist Convention Executive Director John Sullivan. “At worst, you’ll be hurting not just the victim in this case, but all other victims who have been violated and betrayed by Southern Baptist clergy.”

ABPnews/Herald , created after a merger of the Associated Baptist Press and the The Religious Herald , is the only independent news service created by and for Baptists. It is reporting that Clohessy, an abuse survivor who testified before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2002, warned Sullivan that even if successful, “your appeal will only delay the inevitable.”

“Over 25 years of SNAP’s history, we have found that those responsible for injustices are eventually held accountable, not only through the justice system but also through the court of public opinion,” Clohessy said in his letter.

In January, a Lake County jury awarded $12.5 million in damages to a young man who was sexually abused by a Baptist minister when he was a child.

An attorney for the Florida Baptist Convention immediately announced an appeal. Attorney Gary Yeldell says the convention is confidant an appellate court will over turn the ruling because it contends the minister — Douglas Myers — was an independent pastor not supervised by the convention.

Myers was sent to prison in 2007 for molesting the then-13-year-old boy. Given a seven-year term, Myers was released in December 2012 after serving five years. A registered sexual offender, he currently lives in Prince Frederick, Md., according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

An attorney for the victim, who is remaining anonymous, says the jury understood the “devastating” impact of the abuse. The young man is now in his 20s and attending college.

In May 2012, a Lake County jury determined the convention did not do enough to investigate the background of Myers, who helped start two now-defunct churches in Lake County — the Triangle Community Church in Eustis and the Harbor Baptist Fellowship in Howey-in-the-Hills — after receiving funds and training from the organization.

Myers admitted molesting the boy repeatedly over a six-month period ending in 2005.

Both the victim and his mother claimed the convention failed to uncover past allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior at other churches where Myers served.