A survivor's journey and how Southern Baptists are rethinking sexual abuse response

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Just hours after landing in Louisville on an early morning flight from Chicago on Oct. 10, 2002, Valerie Swope sat down with the former pastor of the Southern Baptist church where she attended youth group.

Swope, then 19, made the day trip from her college in Illinois to meet with Todd Robertson and tell him that she and the youth pastor at Bethany Baptist Church, Christian Watts, had been having sex starting when she was 16.

“I didn’t mention any of these things — the handholding, the groping, the kissing, all these things that had started since I was 13,” Swope said about that meeting. “Now, to the detriment of all of us, we didn’t call law enforcement of any kind.”

Two other Bethany Baptist leaders would join the meeting shortly after, as did Watts.

Watts, then 31, acknowledged Swope was telling the truth in that meeting. Though, according to all three Bethany Baptist leaders present that day, Watts emphasized Swope was 16 when intercourse began, the legal age of consent in Kentucky at the time.

“Knowing what I know now, then in that moment, I would have called the police,” Robertson said.

Within days, the church had Watts resign. Within months, he continued a career in ministry elsewhere, now as pastor of Life Change Church in Tullahoma.

Meanwhile, Swope has since identified her experiences with Watts as abusive and has sought to share her full story more publicly.

Along the way, she has received the assistance from Robertson and others whose understanding of clergy abuse has changed alongside many in the Southern Baptist Convention.

First and foremost, Swope’s journey is a story about her. But it’s also a story of the SBC and how it’s responding to a sexual abuse crisis.

Watts said in a statement he never denied having sex with Swope after she turned 16. However, he said, “this was not a situation of grooming or manipulation."

Swope started sharing her story after a 2019 Houston Chronicle series on clergy abuse in the SBC, which heightened many Southern Baptists’ sense of urgency to address the issue. An ensuing third-party investigation by Guidepost Solutions concluded this May and revealed a 20-year pattern of SBC leaders ignoring abuse reports and resisting calls for reform.

Then, Guidepost and an SBC sexual abuse task force recommended a series of abuse reform initiatives. Voting delegates approved the recommendations at this year's SBC annual meeting in Anaheim.

Most recently, the SBC announced the Department of Justice had launched an investigation into the denomination.

These past months were similarly momentous for Swope, who, seeing Guidepost’s investigation as another wake-up call for the SBC, emailed her story to churches where Watts worked, and to local and state Southern Baptist officials in Tennessee.

“This wouldn’t have been important otherwise,” Swope said. “It’s the only reason they care.”

The local and state officials in Tennessee emailed Swope back and, while coming off sympathetic, they also shared some unexpected news: Three days after the release of Guidepost’s report, Watts’ church left the SBC.

Facing consequences

Watts said the decision for his church to leave the SBC was unrelated to the release of Guidepost’s report.

“We have always functioned as a nondenominational church," Watts said in a statement. "We had stopped giving to the SBC months before we withdrew from it."

But Swope believes the decision sends a clear message and produces the same result.

“An accountable person doesn’t evade more accountability. What is the SBC trying to establish? More accountability,” she said.

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To Swope, it’s an echo of the past.

Bethany Baptist had Watts resign and notified Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville where he was a part-time student.

But Watts didn’t abide by a disciplinary agreement requiring him to stay at Bethany Baptist and undergo counseling while leaders supervised his behavior, according to the interim pastor and board of deacons chairman at the time.

“He did not stay in the (church) body, he did not seek accountability from us,” said John Matala, the board chair. “He did not follow through with it.”

Steve Wellum, the interim pastor back then and currently a Southern Seminary professor, echoed Matala's assessment.

Watts also was allowed to read a resignation letter to the congregation that described his actions as “an immoral relationship with a person of the opposite sex,” according to a copy The Tennessean obtained.

Swope said the reality was that, when she was 13, Watts held her hand for the first time while the two sat on a couch at Watts’ house and were watching a movie. Swope was over that night to babysit Watts’ young daughter while Watts’ wife was working late, Swope said.

“I can still remember the flood of emotions: ‘Wow, he really cares for me, I must be special, this is wrong, why is he doing this?'” Swope said in a personal essay she later wrote in 2019.

Babysitting for the Wattses, which Swope started shortly after meeting her youth pastor and continued for years, and car rides home after youth group were the most common spaces Watts would spend alone with Swope.

Over time, Swope said, handholding turned into petting and kissing and after she turned 16, sex.

Watts also wrote to Swope, often saying “I love you” and “I am proud of you,” according to copies of hand-written letters, emails and online chat messages obtained from Swope.

Watts didn’t comment on details about his behavior before Swope turned 16. However, he said in his statement, “I hope that you now see that these allegations are nothing more than another slanderous defamation attempt.”

New understandings

Swope didn’t share the full extent of her experiences in that 2002 meeting partly due a discomfort with disclosing graphic details with pastors and her mom, who was also present that day.

But she also saw herself at the time as equally responsible as Watts. That understanding changed over time through counseling and then with experiences as a missionary in India, where she participated in a young adult program for the SBC’s International Mission Board.

“I became more keenly aware of the types of abuses that can happen,” Swope said.

Still, she shared little, even people she grew closer with, such as Robertson and his wife.

But that changed in 2019 when the Houston Chronicle published its investigation. Like many in the SBC, it was a call to action for Robertson and others in Swope’s life.

“They have had to go on their own journey,” Swope said. “So, just as I have taken 17 years to fully understand the abuse, it’s like they also had to.”

By that point, Swope was living permanently in New Delhi, where she continues to live, and was largely removed from SBC life.

Robertson sent Swope the Houston Chronicle series and shortly after, connected her with other advocates and survivors of Southern Baptist clergy abuse, one of whom encouraged Swope to write out her story.

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“This was not an affair, these were not consensual sexual encounters, this was NOT just an inappropriate relationship, this was abuse,” Swope wrote in a personal essay in May 2019.

Reading Swope’s written account was the first time Robertson learned about Watts’ behavior before Swope turned 16, Robertson said. It also led Swope to realize she was unsure if Watts’ actions could be subject to criminal prosecution.

Robertson helped Swope file a report with Louisville police. The department launched an investigation that involved Louisville and Tullahoma police confronting Watts, who admitted to having sex with Swope after she turned 16, according to a copy of an email Swope received from a Louisville detective.

The Tullahoma Police Department said it doesn’t have records from a meeting between an officer and Watts. Louisville police haven’t fully responded to a request for records.

Though a felony in Kentucky today, prosecutors determined they couldn’t charge Watts because of laws at the time, according to Swope. The Louisville police detective who led the investigation did not respond to request for comment.

Watts didn’t comment on his conversations with police officers but said in his statement, “it is important to note that an illegal relationship never happened.”

A career in ministry

As Swope sought to raise awareness about Watts, Watts continued a career in ministry and with his history at times known.

Bethany Baptist leaders notified the first church he went to in Pennsylvania when he left Louisville.

But a few years later, Watts applied to a church in Owensboro, Kentucky that was initially unaware of Watts’ history until leaders followed up with Bethany Baptist, according to Chuck Fuller, Bethany Baptist’s head pastor from 2005-2010.

Fuller said he briefed leaders at the Owensboro church about Watts, causing the church to reject Watts’ job application. Shortly after, Watts personally called Fuller and said he would sue the Bethany Baptist pastor if the same thing happened again, according to Fuller.

“To attempt to do the labor to heal, to clean up the mess that someone else caused and then to have him confront you…that was perhaps one of the most offensive things I have ever experienced in pastoral ministry,” Fuller said.

Fuller said he spent most of his years at Bethany Baptist helping the congregation heal from “institutional trauma” following Watts’ ouster.

Watts subsequently stayed in Pennsylvania and later started his own church until moving to Tullahoma, where he worked at a church and then founded Life Change in 2017.

Leaders of a Murfreesboro church that sponsored Life Change’s founding, and the board and some congregants at Life Change know about Watts’ history, Watts said in his statement.

“I have welcomed accountability and am a better man for it,” Watts said. “I am a man of openness and authenticity.”

‘The first to stand up’

In the time Swope has been sharing her story more, standards for pastors in the SBC have changed.

Voting delegates at the 2021 SBC annual meeting passed a nonbinding resolution saying a pastor is no longer qualified if they are credibly accused of sexual abuse. Guidepost, when it finished its inquiry a year in May, recommended ways the SBC can strengthen enforcement mechanisms for polices about sexual abuse and pastoral qualifications.

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Wanting to remind Southern Baptists in Watts’ orbit of these developments, Swope emailed her story to the Southern Baptist officials in Tennessee and churches where Watts worked.

“I am sharing this story with you…to ensure Christian is not in a position of power and authority,” Swope wrote in her email.

She wasn’t the only one to say this. Robertson was among those who wroteletters corroborating Swope’s account, which she included in her emails.

“Hasn’t Christian forfeited his right to serve in vocational ministry? And should Life Change be allowed to continue affiliation with the SBC, TBC, or the local association if he continues to serve as their pastor?” wrote Robertson, who currently works for the Louisville Regional Baptist Association.

By the time of Swope's letters, Life Change already quietly withdrew from the SBC.

If Life Change had stayed in the SBC, a similar result might have followed a vote to oust the church from the SBC. That process is seen as more public, though. However, it highlights the challenges with the denomination's congregational structure.

New standards in the SBC were first a source of hope for Swope and then disappointment when she learned Watts was exempt.

But that disappointment is met with gratitude for Southern Baptists whose understandings have changed over time, including those who acknowledge they could have done more for her 20 years ago.

“It’s a full circle story. Strangely the people that have come out are the ones that have been there all along,” Swope said. “It’s what’s going to make them the first to stand up when this happens to the next girl in their own churches and their own lives.”

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams. 

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: A survivor's journey and how Southern Baptists are responding to abuse