(Opinion) Think back 20 years ago to August 2006.<\/p>\n
George W. Bush was president, iPhones didn\u2019t exist yet and Twitter was just a month old.<\/p>\n
That was when I wrote\u00a0a letter<\/a> to then-Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page, describing how the Southern Baptist pastor who sexually abused me as a kid \u2014 repeatedly and severely \u2014 had been allowed to continue in ministry even though other church leaders knew at the time, even though his name was on a secret list of \u201cknown offenders<\/a>\u201d kept by the Baptist General Convention of Texas and even though I had notified 18 Southern Baptist leaders in four states about my corroborated report.<\/p>\n David Clohessy \u2014 the guy who has seen it all in the clergy abuse arena \u2014 dropped me a line the other day, pointing out that this month was the 20-year anniversary of that letter. And it gave me pause to reflect.<\/p>\n Together with David and other leaders from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), I pleaded in that\u00a02006 letter<\/a>\u00a0for the SBC president to take action.<\/p>\n Your tax-deductible gift supports our mission of reporting the truth and restoring the church. Donate $50 or more to The Roys Report, and you can elect to receive our featured offer, \u201cLiving Unoffended: The Joy of Simple Peace in An Angry, Anxious World\u201d by Brant Hansen. \u2013 click here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The need was obvious, as we told Page.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen 18 church and denominational leaders can be informed of a substantiated report involving a minister\u2019s sexual abuse of a minor \u2026 and the man remains in ministry,\u201d we wrote, \u201cthen this, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, has a serious problem.\u201d<\/p>\n We asked that Page use the egregious denominational mishandling of my sexual abuse report as a launchpad for institutional change, and more specifically, we asked for the implementation of:<\/p>\n Did you catch that? We were asking that the SBC develop a system for centralized record-keeping on clergy sex abuse reports \u2014 i.e., a database.<\/p>\n Twenty years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether or not the SBC is capable of removing an abusive minister from ministry, it is at least capable of informing and warning,\u201d we told Page.<\/p>\n That August 2006 letter to Page wasn\u2019t my first attempt to get Southern Baptist church and denominational leaders to take action.<\/p>\n I had already spent over two years trying to deal with my childhood church, which initially responded by threatening to sue me even while the music minister acknowledged that he had known about the abuse when I was a kid \u2014 he claimed it was \u201cconsensual\u201d even though that\u2019s impossible for a child.<\/p>\n I had futilely sought help from numerous other Southern Baptist leaders \u2014 local, state and national.<\/p>\n No one in Baptist life helped me.<\/p>\n Page\u2019s response was tepid, with the familiar language about the autonomy of local churches. But interestingly,\u00a0Page also said he knew abuse was a problem.<\/p>\n \u201cYour letter was a very disturbing and frightening example of what happens when those in spiritual places of authority misuse that authority and power in a most egregious fashion,\u201d he wrote<\/a>. \u201cIt is personally disturbing as I know that this has happened on multiple occasions.\u201d Yet, he still did nothing.<\/p>\n That perfunctory response is what set in motion\u00a0the beginning of more ramped-up efforts<\/a>\u00a0to bring media attention to the SBC\u2019s systemic abuse and cover-up problems, and to prod denominational action.<\/p>\n Six weeks later, in September 2006, we\u00a0wrote to Page again<\/a> \u2014 and to additional SBC officials \u2014 enumerating in more detail our requests for action. This time, I went to Nashville in person to hand-deliver a couple of the letters and to conduct a sidewalk press conference<\/a>\u00a0outside SBC headquarters.<\/p>\n The mustering of media attention made them angry, and in multiple ways,\u00a0they attempted to denigrate and smear me.<\/a>\u00a0But as painful as it all was, by then, I was past the point of caring what any Southern Baptist leader might think of me. So, at StopBaptistPredators.org, I began keeping\u00a0my own online database<\/a>\u00a0of Southern Baptist pastors who were publicly documented as having been convicted or credibly accused of sexual abuse.<\/p>\n Institutionally, not much has changed since 2006, except SBC leaders have gotten better at optics. Of course, they\u2019ve paid heaps of money to a corporate crisis management law firm, and that\u2019s what such firms do \u2014 they use all manner of tactics to help an institution move past negative press, restore its image and keep the money flowing.<\/p>\n If anything, some SBC leaders now seem more emboldened. Having weathered a few media storms, some are denying there was ever any clergy sex abuse \u201ccrisis\u201d at all. They\u2019re\u00a0saying<\/a>\u00a0it was a \u201choax\u201d and a \u201csnipe hunt.\u201d (But\u2026 if there were no \u201ccrisis,\u201d why did they hire a crisis management law firm?)<\/p>\n Hollow public words, impotent task forces, phony dog-and-pony shows and performative platitudes \u2014 this is the norm in Southern Baptists\u2019 handling of clergy sex abuse. As Karen Swallow Prior recently wrote<\/a>: The SBC system \u201cwas built on injustice and abuse, and the system still stands.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Just because the SBC hasn\u2019t reformed institutionally doesn\u2019t mean change hasn\u2019t happened. Outside the SBC, things are very different now than they were in 2006.<\/p>\n Back then, it was a lot harder to get attention for Baptist clergy sex abuse stories.<\/p>\n People would almost invariably tell me that Baptist abuse cases were \u201cisolated incidents,\u201d and not something systemic like what was happening in the Catholic church.<\/p>\n Those two words \u2014 \u201cisolated incidents\u201d \u2014 grated across my consciousness so often I wanted to cry, and I heard them from all kinds of people \u2014 from reporters, attorneys, experts and even from other survivors.<\/p>\n But now? I never hear those words. Within the SBC, people may blind themselves to it, but outside the SBC, people know: The SBC has a widespread abuse and cover-up problem.<\/p>\n So nowadays, when people hear a Baptist clergy abuse story, they don\u2019t say \u201cisolated incidents.\u201d Instead, they say, \u201cNo surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n And that\u2019s different from how things were in 2006.<\/p>\n Over the course of two decades, survivors\u2019 stories have shifted the conversation and wrecked the SBC\u2019s ability to totally control the narrative. We\u2019ve put forward a counter-narrative to the world, and that\u2019s no small thing, particularly when you consider what we\u2019ve been up against \u2014 a tentacular, multibillion-dollar institution that claims God on its side.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s this simple fact: Over the past 20 years, the Southern Baptist Convention has lost 3.6 million members<\/a>. That\u2019s a fourth of its prior membership.<\/p>\n There are a lot of reasons for the SBC\u2019s decline, but according to\u00a0data from the Public Religion Research Institute<\/a>, clergy sex abuse scandals are one of the reasons that people leave their faith group. So, 20 years\u2019 worth of survivors\u2019 stories had something to do with it.<\/p>\n On Wednesday (Aug. 19) a new organization called ProtestantAccountability.org<\/a> announced its posting of over 2,700 names of Protestant pastors who are documented as having been convicted or publicly accused of sexual abuse. Bravo! I\u2019m proud to have been a pioneer in the effort to document Protestant clergy sex abuse. Many of the names on ProtestantAccountability were on my original StopBaptistPredators list.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the thing: Yet again, it\u2019s wounded survivors who are doing the work of documenting clergy sex abuse and trying to warn people. This is work that the Church\u00a0should<\/em>\u00a0be doing but, by and large, is not.<\/p>\n Much has changed, but that part hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n And as for former SBC President Frank Page? He became the SBC\u2019s top CEO for a time but was ousted when it came to light that he\u2019d had what was initially described as a \u201cmorally inappropriate relationship<\/a>.\u201d Later, it was reported that the relationship involved \u201ca female congregant under his care<\/a>,\u201d which to my ear sounds like an abusive pastor. But he was still able to find\u00a0a new church<\/a>\u00a0to pastor.<\/p>\n No surprise, eh?<\/p>\n This commentary, which was originally published at Religion News Service<\/a> and reprinted with permission, does not necessarily reflect the views of The Roys Report.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/roysreport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-SBC-Orlando27-061026-1024x683.jpg\")
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Christa Brown is the author of<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang<\/strong>. Christa, who is a retired appellate attorney, a mom, and a grandma, lives with her husband in Colorado.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n