40 in 15

Exactly two years ago, Southern Baptist spokesperson Will Hall publicly suggested that there had been only 40 "incidents" of Baptist clergy sex abuse in the past 15 years.

It was such a grotesque understatement that it took my breath away. I wondered exactly which kids were so unimportant that Will Hall didn’t think their molestations and rapes mattered enough to even be counted. It was obviously a whole heckuva lot of them because there had obviously been a whole heckuva lot more Baptist clergy sex abuse incidents than 40.

Southern Baptist leaders must have known there were a lot more, and if they didn’t, they certainly should have. Heck… one Southern Baptist pastor alone confessed to molesting 40 boys, and no telling how many “incidents” there were. That was just one perp.

And even if you considered only published reports of Baptist clergy sex abuse -- the bare tip of the iceberg -- any fool could see that the scale of the problem was much, much bigger than “40 incidents in 15 years.”

EthicsDaily called on Hall to issue a correction, but of course, that never happened.

When I heard Will Hall’s “40 in 15” remark, I vowed then and there that I would keep posting published Baptist clergy abuse stories on the StopBaptistPredators website for as long as I could bear it… if for no other reason than so that Southern Baptist leaders could never again get away with such an immoral minimization of the problem.

After all, Will Hall wasn’t just some ordinary Joe, talking off the top of his head. Will Hall is a professional media person. He gets paid to know what he’s talking about and to say it well. Some might call him a spin-doctor. And what he “spins” is news about the Southern Baptist Convention.

So… this paid professional spokesperson (paid with offering plate dollars, mind you) decided to spin the Baptist clergy sex abuse problem into something small.

Only “40 incidents in the past 15 years.”

Then Hall decided to spin his own spin and turned it into a Southern Baptist brag.

He said the low number showed that “the way Baptists deal with the problem is working.”

That’s what he said: “working.” It shows you just how arrogant Southern Baptist leaders were.

“Working for whom?” I wondered. The Southern Baptist system sure as heck wasn’t “working” for the hundreds of kids molested and raped by Southern Baptist clergy. And it sure as heck wasn’t “working” for the hundreds of wounded adults who were further betrayed by the blind-eyed do-nothingness of Baptist leaders.

Yet, as recently as two years ago, Southern Baptist leaders thought they could get away with bragging about only “40 incidents in 15 years”… and that people would automatically believe them.

Never again.

Sometimes I wonder whether any of this work will ever make any difference. But then I think about Will Hall and the outrageous hubris of his “40 in 15” remark, and I realize that it already has.

Never again.