If You Were Assaulted by Someone in the Baptist Church Get Your Power Back.
We Are Here to Help You File a Lawsuit.
We Are Here to Help You File a Lawsuit.
“I was a girl who would have done anything for God… I remember how, each time when you were finished with me, you would always say ‘God loves you, Christa.’ I can still hear your voice. I can’t even hear about God’s love without wanting to vomit and run..” – survivor/advocate Christa Brown1
For 20 years, sex assault survivors in the Southern Baptist Convention (the largest Protestant denomination in America) tried in vain to get someone to care about their brutal stories of manipulation and rape at the hands of top leadership, pastors, youth ministers, staff members. Nobody listened. Instead, survivors were shamed and shunned. Yet, year after year they kept calling for transparency and reform, to their peril. And it finally paid off — or so it would seem.
The SBC Executive Committee of 86 men, under pressure from 15,000 church delegates at last year’s annual conference, hired a third-party investigative firm, Guidepost Solutions, to plumb two decades of alleged hidden sexual abuse by administrative leaders, pastors and support staff.
After Guidepost spent seven months gathering information from thousands of internal documents and 330 interviews, the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News on May 22, 2022, released a 400-page investigative report shocking even those who sensed a storm was coming.
The wound to survivors’ psyches, when tangled within a faith culture espousing God’s unconditional love, is bitter. The predator relies on the believer’s faith and eagerness to be “good,” confusing their instincts by twisting biblical scripture, encouraging blind trust, then threatening damnation to ensure secrecy.3
Female survivors recounted to Guidepost that being raped was less traumatizing than disavowal from an all-male church leaders they had assumed would be horrified and act hastily to protect them from future harm.4
In response to the Guidepost report, and with more sexual abuse survivors coming forward, SBC leadership held a virtual meeting to discuss damage control and next steps. Executive Committee Chair Wally Slade began the meeting by acknowledging the survivors: “Our commitment is to be different and do different,” he said. “We can’t come up with half-baked solutions.”5
The goals are to prevent sexual abuse, better care for survivors when such abuse does occur and assure that abusers are not allowed to continue in ministry, according to California minister Bruce Frank who leads the SBC Sexual Abuse Task Force.6
If you or a loved one was sexually assaulted by someone in a position of power at a Baptist church, you are not alone! This is where you turn the tables on those who hurt you and wounded your faith in love, in others and, worst of all, yourself.
You may qualify to file a Baptist assault lawsuit that could bring compensation to you and help change the broken system. Please contact us for a free consultation regarding civil legal action that is handled on a contingency-fee basis, meaning you pay nothing unless you win a financial settlement.
We’ve worked with hundreds of survivors of sexual assault, ranging from women assaulted in an Uber or Lyft to those assaulted by Catholic priests. Assault is never okay.
Don’t be afraid of the process. We’ve got this. We’ve got you.
Call us today to speak with a real human.
“Fighting for truth, justice and reform is the work of a community. Caring well for those who have been deeply wounded requires the participation of everyone. Messengers had to listen, pay attention, care, and take a stand. And they overwhelmingly did.”
– Survivor/Advocate Rachael Denhollander, Twitter Thread, June 16, 2021