Arkansas Case Shows SBC Abuse Cover-up Patterns

When longtime journalist Frank Lockwood broke a child sex abuse cover-up story at one of Little Rock’s largest churches, he exposed the ugly underbelly of abuse cover-up patterns in the Southern Baptist Convention.

At Immanuel Baptist Church, Patrick Miller was accused of sexually abusing an elementary school-aged child in a dark closet. Miller was the church’s assistant director of children’s ministry and was responsible for teaching the children while the adults worshipped.

As reported in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, senior pastor Steven Smith “did not inform the congregation at the time Miller was arrested, charged with a crime, convicted, or sentenced.”

Smith withheld the information even though the first victim’s family had specifically asked him to tell the parents of other potentially affected children who had been under Miller’s care.

The pattern: Church officials commonly keep congregants in the dark about child sex abuse allegations even though parents in the pews are the very people who most need to know so that they can talk with their kids.

[Steven Smith, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette photo]

According to Joseph Gates, attorney for the victims, Smith’s lack of disclosure “prevented the families of other victims from learning the truth and coming forward” while the case was being prosecuted. So, Miller was able to plea-bargain down from a felony sexual assault charge to a misdemeanor harassment charge, for which he received a suspended jail sentence and wasn’t required to register as a sex offender.

Mere months after Miller’s conviction, with stories about sexual abuse in the SBC circulating in the news, Smith “portrayed Immanuel as a place where children have been successfully shielded from abuse,” telling the congregation that Immanuel would “stand with the abused” and that the church had protocols in place that had “proven effective in the prevention of abuse.” As Gates observed, this portrayal was “untrue.”

The pattern: In dealing with clergy sex abuse, Southern Baptist leaders’ words seldom match with their deeds. Their righteous-sounding words are oriented toward institutional image management and controlling the narrative; their deeds are oriented toward institutional protection.

Miller moved on to another Southern Baptist congregation, First Moore Baptist Church in Moore, Oklahoma, where he worked as a children’s pastor for another two and a half years.

The pattern: Within the SBC, clergy sex abusers are able to easily church-hop, even after their abuse has been reported.

Now, Miller has gone back to court to request that the judge seal his court record. Apparently, after years in Baptistland, Miller grew so accustomed to expecting sexual abuse to be swept under the rug that he had the confidence to ask that his record be even more secret than it already was.

This is where journalist Frank Lockwood got involved, reporting on Miller’s motion to seal his record, which was filed in a public courthouse. In the process, Lockwood uncovered a heckuva lot more. Thank God for journalists.

The pattern: Unlike some other faith groups, the Southern Baptist Convention still does not out its own sexually abusive pastors. What we know about clergy sex abusers in the SBC comes to us via the work of journalists and via public records from the secular justice system; institutional accountability is nil.

When a second child accused Miller of abusing her, and when she informed Immanuel’s senior pastor Steven Smith and executive pastor Doug Pigg, she “was met with disbelief despite both having knowledge of what Patrick Miller did” to the first victim.

The pattern: Within the SBC, church officials almost never “stand with the abused” even when they tell people that’s what they do. Telling people they “stand with the abused” doesn’t cost anything; actually doing it would.

After Lockwood’s article ran last Sunday in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, pastor Steven Smith finally decided to inform the congregation and claimed that he was doing so in a “spirit of transparency.”

Smith’s altered “spirit” comes after he’d known about child sex abuse reports in his church for five whole years and only after the news was already public, thanks to Lockwood.

The pattern: Southern Baptist church officials come clean about clergy sex abuse only after the news is already public or after a reporter has informed them that an article is about to run.

In refusing to disclose allegations of child sex abuse to the congregation, Smith did not follow published guidelines from the Southern Baptist Convention, which urge church leaders to “communicate with the congregation verbally and in writing, informing them of the name of the abusive leader and the basic allegation.”

The pattern: The SBC’s published guidelines have very little impact. Like so many of the SBC’s public statements on abuse, they’re more for institutional image-management and showmanship.

Steven Smith got his undergraduate degree from Liberty University; he previously taught at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; and he served on the preaching team at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas. All of these institutions have been in the news with sordid sagas involving abuse and coverups. Smith now teaches at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The pattern: Within the Southern Baptist Convention, and all of white evangelicalism, there are tangled good-old-boy networks by which it appears men learn from one another about how to hush up abuse and cover for cronies. As Tiffany Thigpen stated: “They all stick together in this unholy war of power and control.”

This Arkansas story triggered responses from several high-profile clergy sex abuse survivors. Though she had previously been silent on Twitter for a year and a half, Anne Marie Miller posted that Immanuel Baptist Church was where her abuser Mark Aderholt had moved to, and that senior pastor Steven Smith had invited Aderholt on mission trips. Hannah-Kate Williams posted that her abuser was a student where Smith taught at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary—apparently credible public allegations of child abuse being no impediment to the pursuit of theological studies at a Southern Baptist seminary. And Tiffany Thigpen posted that Immanuel’s executive pastor Doug Pigg was “running cover for/with Jerry Vines during the coverup” of her own abuse by Darrell Gilyard.

The pattern: Baptistland abuse stories often trigger back-stories. Survivors remember those who platformed, praised, and promoted their abusers, and when we see those names, the memories spill forth. If three survivors on social media voiced connections to this case, you can be sure that countless more survivors are pulling forth memories in the shadows.

Within the SBC, it is highly unlikely that Immanuel’s pastor Steven Smith will face any meaningful accountability for his years of keep-it-quiet conduct. Heck… he could even get elected SBC president like Steve Gaines did after the child sex abuse cover-up at his church came to light.

The pattern: The Southern Baptist clergy sex abuse crisis is as much about the countless complicit enablers like Steven Smith as it is about the clergy sex abusers like Patrick Miller. So long as there are no consequences for the enablers, the predators will persist.

Kids are not safe in the Southern Baptist Convention. An institution in which such egregious patterns persist does not deserve to have children in the pews.

UPDATE 10/16/24: Far from learning any lesson about the need for transparency, it seems the church has doubled-down on the pursuit of secrecy by proposing new bylaws that would restrict the ability of church members to speak to reporters and nonmembers. #ThisistheSBC