TEXAS
Baptist News
BOB ALLEN | JUNE 1, 2016
Days after being demoted as president of Baylor University over the university’s mishandling of sexual assault among its students, former Whitewater special prosecutor Ken Starr told ESPN June 1 he is resigning as chancellor.
Starr, elected president of the world’s largest Baptist educational institution in 2010, told ESPN’s Joe Schad in an interview with “Outside the Lines” that he didn’t know about failures to address reports of sexual assault in the school’s athletics department detailed in an independent investigation but he “willingly accepted responsibility.”
“The captain goes down with the ship,” he said.
Baylor’s board of regents announced May 26 that Starr would no longer serve in the role of president effective May 31. David Garland, former dean and professor at Baylor’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary, was named interim president. Starr continues to teach in Baylor’s law school. …
“Baylor chose to support and protect itself and image over the precious lives of students,” said Amy Smith, a Texas representative of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “While this is certainly newsworthy, sadly, this skewed priority is an all-too-familiar guiding, operational structure among Baptist churches as well.”
Smith, herself a Baylor graduate, said too often churches try to handle allegations of sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults in-house and not report them to police. The result, she said, is “revictimization.”
“Victims are blamed, perpetrators enabled, and more lives placed at risk. Sexual assault must be rightly viewed as a crime and reported to law enforcement, not just as sin or ‘inappropriate behavior’ to be handled as a spiritual and behavioral matter by the church or managed by a football coach or university administration.”
Dee Miller, an author and activist, says the pattern is nothing new. It’s been nearly 25 years since her 1993 memoir How Little We Knew described how her and her husband’s missionary careers were derailed because of their persistence in trying to get a fellow missionary who was preying on women and children off the mission field.
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