Decades Ago, a Preacher's Wife Brought One of First Sexual Abuse Lawsuits Against the Southern Baptist Convention

... and even then, it showed the SBC's abuse-ignoring patterns

Yesterday, this case from decades ago crossed my mind. It’s the first abuse case I know of in which someone sued the Southern Baptist Convention. So, I decided to re-read it, and I sat and wept. It’s an old story but feels like a fresh story, because the patterns are so familiar. Over the course of decades, very little has changed within the SBC.

Renee was fourteen years old when she told.

Her father, a Southern Baptist missionary named Tom Wade, had been sexually abusing her since she was eleven.

Renee told the housemother at the missionary school she was attending in Africa; the housemother told her husband; and her husband told the area SBC missions director, a guy named Bud Fray.

Can you guess what happened?

Bud Fray talked to Tom Wade, and Wade admitted to the abuse but minimized it, saying it was just “a little fondling.”

Fray did nothing and didn’t even tell Renee’s mom, Diana Wade, who also worked as a missionary for the Southern Baptist Convention. Instead, Fray simply took Tom “at his word” when Tom said he would get everyone into counseling.

But Fray shamed Renee, saying she was a “sexually deviant child.” And according to Renee, Fray also “told her to keep quiet,” saying that if she told, “she would ruin her father’s ministry and her parents’ marriage.” He told her she “needed to pray.”

This was in 1982, but doesn’t it sound familiar? The pattern was there even back then: SBC leaders who center the pastor, blame the victim, and do nothing to protect others.

After that, Tom Wade moved to Alaska where he became the pastor of a Southern Baptist church outside Fairbanks.

Again, there’s the pattern: the predatory pastor simply moved on without consequence.

He continued to abuse Renee until she was 16. Then he began sexually abusing the two younger daughters, Jennifer and Tanya.

So, he not only moved on to a new church but he also moved on to new prey.

Meanwhile, Tom’s wife missed all the signs of something amiss. Diana Wade came from a long line of Southern Baptists and was the daughter of a preacher. She had met Tom at church and was only 17 when she married him. He was 26.

How did Diana not see what was happening in her house? “There was an undercurrent of knowing something was wrong, but denying it,” she said. And as the preacher’s wife, she stayed busy with ministry work.

“I allowed myself to be sucked into a subservient, submissive wifely role,” she said.

On the day Renee graduated from high school, she moved out and went to live with her grandparents—Diana’s parents—in Anchorage.

Eventually, Renee told… again. And this time, she had the support of Diana’s younger sister. Years earlier, Tom had abused her, too.

The grandparents told Diana about what Tom was doing to the children.

And Diana did something contrary to the typical patterns. She consulted attorneys and contacted the police.

Tom was arrested at the church parsonage, and he was charged with six felony counts of sexual abuse. It was Father’s Day, 1985.

Then the letters began arriving, chastising Diana for her lack of forgiveness and damning her for turning on her husband.

“How could she call herself a Christian?” some asked.

Again… sound familiar? Faith and “forgiveness” become bludgeons for silencing.

Tom was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Hallelujah.

The impact on all of the children was dreadful, including the impact on a son, Trey, who wasn’t sexually abused but who said his father’s conduct was such a betrayal that “he wanted to reconstruct every atom of his body.”

There were destructive behaviors, suicidal ideations and a suicide attempt, abusive relationships, early pregnancies, and stays in mental hospitals and in programs for drug and alcohol addiction. “By age 17, Tanya had been in eight institutions, shelters and treatment programs,” and then she “disappeared into the streets of Anchorage.”

You can read more about the long-term devastation to the family here—this is the part that may leave you weeping.

As Diana summed it up, Tom got 12 years, “but she and her children had received a life sentence; they would live the rest of their lives without feeling whole. He had raped their souls.”

Meanwhile, the support that Diana had expected from church friends didn’t come. She felt that people blamed her for the abuse; “it was her fault for not keeping her husband happy.” And because she’d been hired as part of a husband/wife missionary team, she got fired from her job. She had no income.

With the family in tatters, and in desperate need of counseling for everyone, Diana sought help from the Southern Baptist Convention. She got nowhere.

Again… there’s the pattern: the SBC almost never gives any help to survivors.

Multiply Renee, Jennifer and Tanya times thousands and you’ll get some idea of the weight of suffering carried by children abused and betrayed within the SBC. Diana and Trey were also victims—indicative of how whole families are left on their own to fend the horror in this faith group that purports to be pro-family.

Diana then did something unexpected. She “committed the ultimate sin by suing the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Diana sued because leaders had known about the abuse of Renee and hadn’t told her. She argued that the abuse of Tanya and Jennifer could have been prevented, and the abuse of Renee could have been stopped sooner. The mission board had the opportunity to stop Tom Wade and didn’t.

Diana won a $1.56 million dollar judgment in 1990, but then the Supreme Court of Virginia overturned it on appeal, saying that the mission board’s failure to inform Diana did not make it liable for the abuse.

So, Diana got nothing from her lawsuit. Yet, her legal loss does not alter the truth of what happened; nor does it expunge the immorality of the SBC’s blind-eyed response. To the contrary, in the very act of bringing her lawsuit, Diana accomplished good because the lawsuit is what brought testimony and evidence into the public domain, revealing the terrible abuse-ignoring patterns of the SBC.

Nowadays, as we see more and more lawsuits unfold against the SBC, I hope people will remember this. The struggle for institutional accountability may be a long slog, and in the process, some lawsuits will likely be lost, depending on the jurisdiction, the judges, and the particulars.

But eventually, with scores of lawsuits, the truth of the patterns will be overwhelmingly apparent and the weight of legal precedents will shift.

And history will judge the SBC.

This is why I’m grateful whenever a survivor is able to file a lawsuit. This is the path toward bringing more truth to light.

Diana divorced Tom Wade—and was criticized for it—and she rid herself of the Wade name.

Though she came from a family with four or five generations of Southern Baptists on both sides, Diana left the faith.

And as for forgiveness… she wants no part of it.

My book, Baptistland, is now available!