Southern Baptist Convention under DOJ investigation, but details are sparse
The Southern Baptist Convention last week confirmed that the U.S. Justice Department had launched an investigation into possible sex crimes committed by those in its affiliated institutions.
"The SBC Executive Committee recently became aware that the Department of Justice has initiated an investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention, and that the investigation will include multiple SBC entities," the statement noted. "Individually and collectively each SBC entity is resolved to fully and completely cooperate with the investigation."
It is not clear yet what those entities might include. The Department of Justice declined to comment to the USA Today network in Georgia. The Georgia Baptist Mission Board did not respond to a request for comment, and several churches throughout the state did not immediately reply to messages this week.
Under investigation: Department of Justice investigates Southern Baptist Convention following sex abuse inquiry
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Previously reported: Southern Baptist list of alleged sex abusers includes dozens with ties to Georgia
No information on the case appears to have been filed publicly in the federal court system.
Alleged abusers in Georgia
In May, a scathing 288-page report by Guidepost Solutions detailed how the Executive Committee of the SBC mishandled sex abuse allegations.
Among other revelations, the report included allegations that former Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt, who served as senior pastor at the First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Georgia, had sexually assaulted another pastor's wife — allegations he denied in a statement to the Associated Press.
Also in May, SBC leadership released the names of hundreds of pastors and church staff accused of sexual abuse, including 38 in Georgia.
The incidents covered roughly 50 years, from at least 1968 to 2019. The report, which was dated to February of this year, was apparently compiled between 2007 and 2022. It begins with a caution that the information is incomplete and not Southern Baptist specific.
Among those listed was Robert Smith Dorsett, who was a former youth minister at the First Baptist Church in Augusta and was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 1999 for molesting seven boys.
Mark Kit Lucas, a youth minister at Woodlawn Baptist Church in Garden City who also taught at Savannah High School, was charged with aggravated sexual battery "on a youth" in 2009.
Larry Michael Holmes, a former minister at the Bishop Baptist Church in Oconee County outside Athens, was convicted in 2001 of abusing a 14-year-old girl, one of at least two ministers in the Athens area on the list.
The Southern Baptist Convention was founded in Augusta at the First Baptist Church in 1845 and lists 92 churches in Georgia. The denomination had about 50,000 congregations and 13.7 million members as of 2021, a number that has declined steadily in recent years.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Southern Baptist Convention under Department of Justice scrutiny
