NASHVILLE (TN)
Baptist News Global [Jacksonville FL]
March 17, 2025
By Christa Brown
The United States Department of Justice has shut down its investigation into sexual abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention.
Attorneys for the SBC Executive Committee said they were notified last Wednesday of the investigation’s closure, and since then prominent Southern Baptists have been publicly crowing.
The two-and-a-half year investigation resulted in a single criminal conviction — that of a Southern Baptist seminary professor, Matt Queen, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI about a sexual abuse report.
Because no additional criminal charges were prosecuted, many Southern Baptist leaders have interpreted the investigation’s closure as a form of exoneration, celebrating it as though it were proof there’s no sexual abuse crisis in the SBC.
For example, pastor Jack Graham said: “The outcry and false reporting of a systemic sexual abuse problem in the SBC has been a hoax.”
“The lie continues to unravel,” wrote former SBC Executive Committee member Rod Martin. “There was never any truth in it. … Everything the advocates told you … was bunk.”
And Boyce College professor Denny Burk wrote: “So here’s the bottom line on the SBC abuse ‘crisis.’ There wasn’t one.”
In addition to those who decried the SBC abuse crisis as a “lie,” a “hoax” and “bunk,” there were also those who went on the attack against those of us who have pushed for reforms, describing us, for example, as “radical activists” and “false prophets.”
As I watched the parade of Southern Baptist chest-pounding, I felt dismay and revulsion. If promoting reforms to safeguard kids and congregants against clergy sex abuse is something that makes me a “radical activist,” then so be it. I plead guilty with pride.
But more importantly, there is simply no merit in the contention that closure of the DOJ investigation constituted a determination of no sexual abuse crisis in the SBC. That is what is “bunk.”
Alternatively, it’s either ill-informed or disingenuous or both.
Absence of federal prosecutions does not mean absence of crimes
The shutdown of a federal investigation is not a substantive determination on the absence of crimes. It’s a procedural event.
Furthermore, crimes involving sexual abuse and assault are more typically crimes that fall under state law.
“The absence of federal prosecutions does not in any way indicate the absence of criminal conduct.”
So, the absence of federal prosecutions does not in any way indicate the absence of criminal conduct, the absence of immoral conduct or the absence of harmful conduct.
This is why, together with David Clohessy and Dave Pittman, I previously called for state attorney general investigations of abuse in the SBC, similar to the nearly two dozen state investigations that have been conducted on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
The documented facts remain
Nothing about the closure of the DOJ investigation changes a thing about the fact of 700 known victims documented by the Abuse of Faith exposé on sexual abuse in the SBC. (And those were almost all child victims in cases with criminal convictions, which experts recognize as the tip of the iceberg.)
Nothing about the closure of the DOJ investigation changes anything about the Guidepost investigatory report’s documentation of how terribly top SBC officials treated clergy sex abuse survivors and how they did nothing to help survivors — or to protect others — when confronted with clergy sex abuse reports.
Nothing about the closure of the DOJ investigation changes anything about the fact of hundreds of Southern Baptist pastors who were listed on the SBC Executive Committee’s own long-secret list of convicted and credibly accused clergy sex abusers, or about the fact that the Executive Committee kept that list secret for so many years.
“Closure of the DOJ investigation changed none of it, and it’s cruel of some Southern Baptists to pretend that it did.”
All this documentation remains. Closure of the DOJ investigation changed none of it, and it’s cruel of some Southern Baptists to pretend that it did.
Likewise, the SBC’s chronic failure to reckon with abuse remains. Anyone who follows the headlines can readily see the ongoing stream of news reports about sexual abuse and coverups in the SBC.
For many years, clergy sex abuse survivors like me have fought hard to bring these incessant SBC horrors into the light. It’s a hard gut-punch now to see so many Southern Baptists trying to shove things back into the darkness by calling the sexual abuse crisis a “lie” and a “hoax.”
No surprise in shut-down of the DOJ probe
Finally, there is almost certainly a political component to the shutdown of the DOJ investigation. So again, it’s not a substantive determination of no SBC sex crimes; it’s a political shift.
Shortly after the presidential election, I predicted the Trump administration would shut down the DOJ investigation into sexual abuse in the SBC. For multiple reasons, this wasn’t a difficult prediction to make.
Trump made no secret of his desire to seek retribution against perceived enemies, and of his plan to use the Department of Justice for his own ends. Similarly, it appears Trump likes to reward loyalist friends. And no group has been more loyal to Trump — and to Trumpism — than the Southern Baptist Convention. (As pastor Ben Marsh once said, without Southern Baptists, “Trump is gone a long time ago.”)
Just last week, in the ceremonial Great Hall of the Department of Justice, Trump gave a speech which has been described as a manifestation of his “unparalleled takeover” of the department, effectively confirming what he told us even before the election.
So, under the Trump regime, the Department of Justice has changed its enforcement priorities to align more closely with Trump’s own ends.
In addition, given that Trump himself is a civilly adjudicated sexual abuser (and has had dozens of women accuse him), it never seemed likely he was going to be the sort to take sexual abuse seriously.
So, the shutdown of the DOJ investigation comes as no surprise. It was to be expected.
But it wasn’t a substantive negation of the SBC’s well-documented sexual abuse crisis. And it sure doesn’t give any cause for Southern Baptists to brag.