The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Kentucky State Supreme Court arguing an expanded child abuse law should not allow claims to be brought against “non-perpetrators” such as religious organizations, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported Tuesday.
The filing comes in the case of a woman adopted at age 2 by a Louisville police officer — now serving a 15-year prison sentence for sexually abusing her throughout her childhood, the report states.
The woman is suing police officers she says knew of the abuse and failed to report it as required by law and the department that employed them, the report continues.
The suit was dismissed but later brought back after Kentucky lawmakers expanded the law and its statute of limitations.
The report continued:
“The Southern Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary … in their brief they say they ‘of course do not dispute the laudable policy reasons for providing relief for victims of childhood sexual abuse.’
“But ‘not even the most sacrosanct policy can trump the due process concerns presented in this and similar cases involving the attempted retroactive application of expired claims,’ they say.”
The report was the first time several women who are survivors of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Church, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, were aware of the filing, which was made in April, according to posts they made on social media.
Abuse survivors Megan Lively, Tiffany Thigpen, and Jules Woodson issued a statement in response to the filing, saying they “sickened and saddened to be burned yet again by the actions of the SBC against survivors.”
“The SBC proactively chose to side against a survivor and with an abuser and the institution that enabled his abuse,” their statement read. “If denying survivors mere access to the justice system is still the heart and tenor of certain leadership, what does that indicate regarding reform?”
Efforts by AL.com to reach spokespeople for the SBC executive committee were not immediately successful Thursday afternoon.
In May 2022, a scathing 288-page investigative report by Guidepost Solutions, an independent firm contracted by the Executive Committee, found the SBC had for decades stonewalled and denigrated survivors of clergy sex abuse over almost two decades while seeking to protect their own reputations, The Associated Press reported.
A month later, the SBC voted overwhelmingly to create a way to track pastors and other church workers credibly accused of sex abuse and launch a new task force to oversee further reforms in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
Leaders involved with abuse response and reform in the SBC, including the former chairs and members of the task force, issued a statement denouncing the brief, The Tennessean’s Liam Adams posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
“There are no mincing of words here. No holding back. This is disgusting,” the statement read. “We are also dismayed that some leaders financed this work and chose in secret to take this stand.”
“This brief and the policy arguments made in it, were made without our knowledge and without our approval. Moreover, they do not represent our values and positions.”
A lawyer for the SBC Executive Committee signed on the brief, though multiple executive committee trustees have said that they had no knowledge of the legal action and oppose its stance, Kate Shelnutt of Christianity Today posted on X.
