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An Overview of The Southern Baptist Sexual Abuse Scandal
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)—the largest Protestant denomination in the United States and the nation’s second-largest faith group—has been rocked by an alarming wave of sexual abuse allegations. Hundreds of survivors have come forward, revealing decades of abuse at the hands of pastors, youth leaders, and church staff. These claims have triggered nationwide investigations, lawsuits, settlements and calls for systemic reform within the SBC.
If you or someone you love was sexually abused by a pastor, church leader, or volunteer at a Southern Baptist Convention church, you are not alone—and you may have legal options. SurvivorsRights.com is here to help you understand your rights, and we may help connect you with experienced, empathetic attorneys who specialize in sexual abuse cases, and take the first step toward justice. Your voice matters, and it’s never too late to be heard.
A six-part investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News uncovered over 700 victims of sexual abuse tied to SBC churches over 20 years. The investigation revealed that more than 380 pastors, deacons, and volunteers had faced allegations of misconduct—many of whom were allowed to quietly move from church to church.
Because the SBC is a loosely affiliated network of autonomous churches, there’s no central authority that screens clergy or tracks allegations. This decentralized structure created an environment where abusers could operate unchecked.
February 24, 2026
A former worship pastor in Owensboro, Kentucky, died by suicide days after being arrested on multiple charges involving alleged sexual offenses connected to a minor. Authorities said the investigation began following a complaint received in early 2026, with allegations dating back more than a decade. Court records indicated the accused had been released on bond prior to his death. Church leadership stated the individual was immediately terminated upon learning of the charges and acknowledged the impact such news may have on survivors.
February 11, 2026
A lawsuit filed in Arkansas alleges Southern Baptist entities and church leaders failed to prevent sexual abuse committed by former youth minister Keenan Hord at First Baptist Church in Bentonville. Hord pleaded guilty in 2023 and is serving a 60-year prison sentence. [SOURCE: Baptist News]
February 3, 2026
Truett McConnell University in Cleveland, GA, has unanimously selected Larry Lyon as its next president following the firing of former president Emir Caner over allegations involving the handling of sexual abuse reports. Lyon’s appointment comes amid heightened scrutiny of Southern Baptist institutions and ongoing calls for accountability and transparency in how abuse allegations are addressed within faith-based organizations.
December 11, 2025
Bradley Reynolds, the former vice president of academic affairs at Truett McConnell University in Georgia, has been indicted on three felony counts for allegedly lying to investigators about sexually assaulting a former student who later worked for the school. Grand jurors say Reynolds falsely denied having a sexual relationship with the woman, operating an email account that sent hundreds of explicit and theologically framed messages, and telling her that his wife would die and he intended to make her his second wife. The case has shaken the Southern Baptist affiliated university, contributed to the removal of its president, and resurfaced long standing concerns about how Baptist institutions handle reports of abuse. The former student publicly detailed her allegations on a May podcast, prompting renewed scrutiny and leading the district attorney to reopen the case after investigators initially declined to bring charges. [SOURCE: KLAS NewsChannel 8]
November 26, 2025
Christa Brown is pushing back against comments made by podcaster Megyn Kelly about Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. Brown argues that Kelly’s suggestion that Epstein preferred “the barely legal type” minimizes the rape of adolescents and reinforces harmful cultural myths that predators rely on to escape accountability. Brown says such framing creates a false hierarchy of victimization and obscures the reality that all minors, regardless of age, are incapable of giving meaningful consent to authority figures who exploit them.
Brown grounds her response in her own experience as a teenage survivor whose Southern Baptist youth pastor groomed and raped her while using religious authority to manipulate and silence her. She says the same cultural patterns that excused her pastor’s behavior for decades are echoed in Kelly’s comments and continue to harm survivors today. Brown argues that minimizing the sexual abuse of older children has long been part of what allowed SBC leaders to ignore reports, conceal accusations, and protect predators within the denomination. [SOURCE: The Roys Report]
October 28, 2025
In Oklahoma, former Gateway Church founding pastor Robert Morris is challenging a civil lawsuit filed by Cindy Clemishire, the woman he sexually abused as a child. Despite pleading guilty to multiple felony charges and receiving a 10 year sentence with jail time and lifetime sex offender registration, Morris and his wife argue that Clemishire’s case should be dismissed due to the statute of limitations and other legal defenses. The lawsuit claims Morris and Southern Baptist Church leadership concealed the abuse for decades and later defamed the survivor when she spoke out publicly. The case continues as survivors nationwide pursue accountability through civil litigation against Southern Baptist institutions.
October 20, 2025
Morris Chapman, who led the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee from 1992 to 2010, passed away at age 84 after decades as one of the denomination’s most influential figures. Once praised for bringing stability during the SBC’s “conservative resurgence,” Chapman’s legacy has come under renewed scrutiny for his proximity to early stages of the denomination’s sexual abuse crisis. During his tenure, one of his top deputies, Augie Boto, publicly denied that widespread abuse existed in SBC churches while secretly maintaining a list of known offenders. Survivors and advocates have since argued that Chapman could have acted to expose and stop abuse sooner, potentially changing the trajectory of the crisis that would later engulf the denomination.
Even after retiring, Chapman remained vocal about denominational unity and funding but avoided directly addressing the SBC’s growing accountability failures. His death has reignited debate over leadership responsibility within the Convention, particularly during an era when transparency and reform could have protected countless victims. For many survivors, Chapman’s passing is a reminder of how institutional silence and loyalty to image over accountability helped perpetuate abuse for generations.
October 19, 2025
Matthew Queen, a former seminary provost convicted of lying to federal investigators in a Department of Justice probe into Southern Baptist sexual abuse, has quietly resumed preaching at a Texas church. Queen served six months of home confinement after admitting to falsifying records related to the investigation. His rapid return to ministry has reignited debate over accountability in the SBC, where survivors and advocates say systemic failures and the rehiring of disgraced leaders continue to undermine promised reforms.
October 18, 2025
Dee Parsons, a Christian blogger behind The Wartburg Watch, was profiled by CBS News for reporting that helped expose decades-old sexual abuse by Gateway Church founder Robert Preston Morris. Morris pleaded guilty to five counts of lewd acts with a child and received a 10-year suspended sentence, including six months in jail.
Parsons’ blog post featured survivor Cindy Clemishire, whose courage in sharing her story led to national attention, Morris’ resignation, and ultimately his prosecution. In the CBS segment, Parsons compared the growing reckoning within evangelical churches to the Catholic Church’s long-running abuse crisis, calling it “centuries of shame finally being uncovered.”
September 30, 2025
On September 22-23, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee met in Nashville to review updates on abuse-related lawsuits. Leaders noted that many cases filed in the past three years have been dismissed, reducing the denomination’s legal exposure. However, these courtroom victories came at a steep price—over $13 million in legal costs since 2021, with requests for more funding ongoing. Survivor advocates warn that despite legal successes, promised reforms like Vision 2025 have stalled, leaving questions about whether the SBC is prioritizing institutional protection over accountability.
September 1, 2025
A Lubbock County grand jury has reindicted former youth pastor Luke Cunningham on 16 counts of sexual assault of a child, adding to charges first filed more than a year ago. Prosecutors said the charges stem from incidents between 2017 and 2019, involving two children. Cunningham, who worked at churches in Fort Worth, Granbury, and Lubbock, has faced allegations dating back as far as 2013. He remains in the Lubbock County Detention Center on nearly $500,000 bond, with prosecutors describing him as a “violent offender” while opposing a bail reduction.
August 21, 2025
The Southern Baptist Convention will replace its 2022 Guidepost abuse hotline at the end of the year with a new helpline operated by its Office for Abuse Prevention and Response, in partnership with the Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. The revamped service allows survivors to report abuse and access counseling while providing resources for churches responding to allegations. SBC leaders say the helpline reflects a long-term commitment to confronting abuse, but critics question whether it signals real accountability after years of mishandling cases.
July 1, 2025
At the Southern Baptist Convention’s June 2025 annual meeting in Dallas, delegates heard updates on sex abuse reforms—but one of the most critical safeguards remains missing: a public database of credibly accused or convicted abusers. Despite being approved by messengers in 2022, the database has not been launched, drawing criticism from former task force member Rev. Mike Keahbone of Lawton, OK, who recently stepped down from leadership roles in protest.
While SBC leaders introduced new reforms—including abuse prevention training, a care response team, and a request for $3 million to cover mounting legal costs—advocates argue these efforts fall short without a tool to prevent predators from moving between churches. The database was a key recommendation from the 2022 Guidepost Solutions report, commissioned after the Abuse of Faith investigation exposed decades of institutional cover-ups.
June 1, 2025
Gareld Duane Rollins, the man whose lawsuit against Southern Baptist leader Paul Pressler helped expose decades of sexual abuse and coverups within the Southern Baptist Convention, died May 23. Rollins’ legal battle revealed a history of abuse allegations against Pressler and inspired the Houston Chronicle’s “Abuse of Faith” investigation, which found widespread misconduct in the SBC. His case ultimately led to major reforms within the denomination and public apologies to survivors. Despite his own health struggles and legal setbacks, Rollins’ bravery helped spark a nationwide reckoning around institutional abuse in the church.
May 20, 2025
A former youth pastor at Houston’s Champion Forest Baptist Church, Timothy Jeltema, has admitted to sexually abusing around 25 girls. According to a now-settled lawsuit, a church leader allegedly tipped him off about a police investigation, giving him time to destroy evidence. The church and the Southern Baptist Convention were both named in the lawsuit, which accused them of negligence in hiring, supervision, and failure to report abuse.
If you are a survivor of SBC-related sexual abuse, we encourage you to explore your legal rights. Survivors Rights may help connect you with an attorney who specializes in these types of cases. Take the first step by filling out our confidential brief form below.
April 17, 2025
Two sisters from Virginia have filed $300 million in lawsuits against Bethany Place Church and Coastal Church, alleging the churches failed to act after one sister disclosed sexual abuse to church staff in 2009. The alleged perpetrator, a youth group assistant, was not removed despite assurances to the family, and no report was made to authorities. According to the lawsuits, the abuse only came under investigation after one sister later disclosed it to a school counselor. The legal complaints accuse the churches of gross negligence, reckless retention, and breach of duty of care. Coastal Church, which later acquired Bethany Place, is also named for assuming existing liabilities.
March 14, 2025
After more than two years, the U.S. Department of Justice has closed its investigation into sexual abuse allegations involving the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and its executive committee. The investigation, launched after the explosive 2022 Guidepost Solutions report (see below) exposed systemic cover-ups and abuse, resulted in just one conviction—Matthew Queen, a former seminary professor, who pled guilty to falsifying evidence in a related probe.
While federal prosecutors brought no additional charges, survivor advocate Christa Brown emphasized that the closure was procedural—not a declaration that abuse never occurred. “The absence of federal prosecutions does not in any way indicate the absence of criminal conduct,” Brown wrote.
If you are a survivor of SBC-related sexual abuse, we encourage you to explore your legal rights. We may help connect you with attorneys who specialize in these types of cases.
The SBC has faced mounting legal pressure since 2019, when the investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News was published. Titled “Abuse of Faith”, the series detailed how hundreds of pastors, deacons, and volunteers were criminally charged with sex crimes since 2000, and how denominational leaders repeatedly ignored or concealed abuse allegations.
The investigation prompted survivors to come forward in large numbers, and lawsuits began to follow. One of the most prominent cases involved former SBC leader Paul Pressler, who was accused of decades-long sexual abuse. The lawsuit against him, originally filed in 2017, named the SBC and other affiliated parties for enabling the abuse. That case was settled confidentially in 2023.
Additional civil suits have since been filed against local SBC churches and leadership by survivors who were abused as minors and allege negligence in oversight, hiring practices, and reporting. Some of these lawsuits have highlighted the fact that known offenders were allowed to move from church to church, often continuing to work in youth ministries or other vulnerable settings.
While no certified class action lawsuits have been confirmed as of 2025, the cumulative impact of these individual cases—and the coordinated call for accountability—has brought national attention to the SBC’s handling of sexual abuse.
A major turning point came in 2022, when the SBC Executive Committee released a report from independent firm Guidepost Solutions. That report confirmed what survivors had said for years: top SBC leaders maintained a secret list of abusers dating back to 2007. As mentioned, more than 700 names were compiled, and some individuals were still working in churches at the time the list became public.
As National Public Radio’s Terry Gross asked Houston Chronicle reporter Robert Downen, who headed the investigation, why would the SBC’s own general counsel compile a list of abusers within its own ranks?
The answer, Downen said, was, in part, due to concerns over legal exposure. While the list may have had practical value in preventing abuse, it was also shaped by fears about “what it would or would not do to the SBC’s liability in lawsuits,” Downen explained to Gross during a segment of “Fresh Air.” For decades, minimizing legal risk was a central focus of a small group of leaders, whose legal advice, Downen said, was often “treated as gospel truth and went unchallenged,” even as survivors repeatedly called for accountability measures.
Even more damaging, the report found that SBC lawyers and executive committee members prioritized avoiding legal liability over protecting children. As Gross pointed out during her interview with Downen, “Survivors were told to just forgive or that they were doing the devil’s work. They were disparaged.”
Moreover, leaders rejected proposed reforms, citing “local church autonomy”—the idea that each church operates independently—but the investigation uncovered internal communications admitting those reforms were in fact feasible and could help remove predators.
The lawsuits and investigations continue to evolve, and survivors, including longtime advocates like Christa Brown—known as the “public face” of Baptist clergy sex abuse survivors, and author of This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang.
Another prominent advocate for SBC reform is Debbie Vasquez, who was impregnated by a SBC minister who molested her beginning when she was 14 years old. Brown, Vasquez, and other advocates are at the forefront of efforts to hold the SBC accountable for decades of not just institutional failure, but willful negligence, moral betrayal, and systemic concealment of abuse.
Despite reports of abuse, many predators were never reported to police. Instead, church leaders quietly dismissed them or allowed them to resign—only for those individuals to be hired at other SBC-affiliated churches.
The Southern Baptist Convention is a loose network of roughly 47,000 independent churches that pool resources for missions and seminaries but lack centralized oversight. There are no universal ordination standards, no official recordkeeping, and no way to track where ministers have served. As the Houston Chronicle’s Downen explained on NPR, one longtime Christian scholar described the SBC’s structure as “kind of the wild, wild west system.” This lack of accountability is exactly why survivors have long demanded reforms—reforms that SBC leaders publicly resisted but privately admitted could help remove predators from ministry.
As the aforementioned SBC sexual abuse survivor Brown described it:
“Being a preacher in the [SBC] church was a perfect profession for a con artist. All he has to do is talk a good talk and convince people he’d been called by God and he gets to become a Southern Baptist minister.”
Brown further explained, “Then [the minister] can infiltrate the entirety of [the] Southern Baptist Convention, [move] from church to church, from state to state, go to bigger churches and more prominent churches where he has more influence and power.”
Ultimately, the SBC’s decentralized structure, lack of a national database of accused abusers, and resistance to oversight played a central role in enabling this cycle. Some churches knowingly rehired known abusers, under the guise of offering ‘second chances’ or due to lax background checks.
Until the 2019 investigation was published, SBC churches were ousted from the organization if they had a female pastor or a pastor that was affirming of homosexuality. Incomprehensibly, having a convicted sex offender on staff was not one of the reasons the Southern Baptist Convention would oust a church from its ranks, according to the Houston Chronicle report.
Survivors who file civil lawsuits against the SBC or its affiliated churches may be eligible for:
Each case is different. A legal consultation can help survivors understand their rights based on the details of their abuse, the state where it occurred, and whether any statute of limitations applies.
If you or someone you love was sexually abused by someone in an SBC church, you may have legal options. Here’s how the process generally works:
Contact an Attorney Specializing in Clergy Abuse
Look for an attorney or legal team with experience in institutional abuse cases.
Gather Documentation
This may include church records, witness statements, or any evidence of the abuse.
File a Civil Claim
Your attorney will file a complaint in the appropriate court.
Litigation or Settlement
The case may proceed to trial or reach a settlement. Many survivors opt for settlements to avoid retraumatization.
At SurvivorsRights.com, we may help connect survivors with highly-experienced sexual abuse attorneys who work on contingency (you don’t pay until your case is settled or results in a plaintiff verdict), and understand the complexity of cases involving large religious institutions.
While the full scope of abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention spans hundreds of churches and victims, certain cases stand out for their visibility, impact, and the disturbing patterns they reveal. These high-profile incidents don’t just represent isolated acts of misconduct—they illustrate how easily abusers were able to gain and retain positions of trust, often with little to no accountability. The following examples underscore the human cost of the SBC’s systemic failures and the urgent need for reform.
These are just a few among hundreds of documented cases.
Yes. Lawsuits are continuing to be filed, especially in states that have opened “lookback windows” or extended their statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse.
Survivors now have more legal avenues than ever before. Some states, such as California and New York, allow previously time-barred cases to be refiled. (While the SBC is deeply rooted in the South, it maintains a nationwide footprint, including urban, suburban, and rural communities in California, New York, and other less traditionally evangelical regions. In California, the SBC has a significant presence, with over 2,300 affiliated churches. Many are part of the California Southern Baptist Convention, one of the largest state conventions outside the South.)
Legal experts expect more SBC-related lawsuits to emerge as additional survivors come forward.
No. While evidence can strengthen your case, many survivors rely on testimony, witness accounts, and corroborating documents.
Yes. Many survivors file lawsuits using pseudonyms like “Jane Doe” or “John Doe” to protect their identity.
It depends on your state. Some states have eliminated or extended deadlines for child sexual abuse cases. Contact an attorney to learn your options.
Not necessarily. Many cases are resolved through confidential settlements, and your attorney can advocate for your safety throughout the process.
You are not alone—and you have options.
SurvivorsRights.com may connect you with attorneys who work on a contingency fee basis, which means:
This structure ensures that survivors don’t face financial barriers to pursuing justice.
Yes. Survivors can file lawsuits against Catholic dioceses, religious orders, parishes, or Church-run institutions. You don’t have to sue the Vatican or go through Rome—most dioceses operate independently and can be held accountable under U.S. law.
You can still have a case. Trauma often affects memory, especially for abuse that happened in childhood. Many survivors don’t recall exact dates or details, and that’s okay. Experienced legal teams know how to work with partial memories and can often find supporting evidence through Church records, personnel files, or other survivor accounts.
Start by listening and believing them. Let them know the abuse wasn’t their fault. Don’t pressure them to take legal action, but gently encourage them to get support—from a therapist, advocate, or resource center. You can also help them research their options if and when they’re ready.
Some trusted resources include:
SurvivorsRights.com also offers resources and may connect you with attorneys experienced in clergy abuse litigation.
Maybe not. Many states have passed “lookback window” laws that give survivors a chance to file claims even if the original statute of limitations has expired. These windows are time-sensitive, so it’s a good idea to find out whether your window is still open—even if you’re unsure whether you want to proceed.
If you or someone you love was abused by a Southern Baptist Convention pastor, youth leader, or church volunteer, SurvivorsRights.com is here to help. We may help connect survivors with highly experienced, compassionate attorneys who specialize in SBC sexual abuse cases and fight for justice on a contingency basis—meaning you pay nothing unless they win your case.
Your voice matters. Your story deserves to be heard.
Take the first step toward healing and accountability today.
Learn more and explore your legal options now.