Southern Baptist list of alleged sex abusers includes dozens with ties to Georgia
Southern Baptist leaders Thursday night released the names of hundreds of pastors and church-affiliated staff members accused of sexual abuse.
The list includes 38 people in Georgia, as well as others who had worked in the state. They had been convicted or accused of crimes ranging from child molestation and child pornography to domestic abuse. The incidents cover roughly 50 years, from at least 1968 to 2019.
The report, which is 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. Many of the incidents were previously reported in local media, and some were listed in the Houston Chronicle "Abuse of Faith" directory, but the 205-page report includes hundreds of incidents in one centralized location.
Included on the list is a former youth pastor, Robert Smith Dorsett, at an Augusta church who received a 30-year prison sentence for sex crimes involving seven boys. In 1999, Dorsett was found guilty in an Aiken County court of crimes committed between 1970 to 1998. At least two other people named in the list worked at churches in Augusta.
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.
"This list is being made public for the first time as an initial, but important, step towards addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform in the Convention," wrote Willie McLaurin, interim president, and Rolland Slade, chairman of the SBC Executive Committee in a statement accompanying the release. "Each entry in this list reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by sexual abuse. Our prayer is that the survivors of these heinous acts find hope and healing, and that churches will utilize this list proactively to protect and care for the most vulnerable among us."
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.
The list followed a scathing 288-page report by Guidepost Solutions that detailed how the committee mishandled sex abuse allegations and stonewalled numerous survivors. That report was released Sunday after a seven-month investigation.
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. Hunt's name does not appear in the list of names released Thursday.
Among those were details of how D. August Boto, the Executive Committee's former vice president and general counsel, and former SBC spokesman Roger Oldham kept their own private list of abusive pastors. Both retired in 2019. The existence of the list was not widely known within the committee and its staff.
Guidepost agreed to create a hotline to collect allegations of abuse, and hold them confidentially until the SBS Sexual Abuse Task Force can create a process to look into them. Those looking to report abuse can call a hotline at (202) 864-5578 or SBChotline@guidepostsolutions.com.
This story includes reporting from Associated Press reporter Deepa Bharath and Gannett Georgia Go editor Donnie Fetter.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: List of alleged sex abusers in Southern Baptist churches made public