On the Death of Duane Rollins

He carried more truth than all the SBC's pontificating pooh-bahs

Photo by Veit Hammer on Unsplash

Duane Rollins has died. It’s heartbreaking news. His death arrives far too soon. I’m devastated.

Duane was the courageous survivor who brought truth to light about the many crimes and abuses of the infamous Paul Pressler. He did it at enormous personal cost and despite decades of unfathomable suffering.

We all owe Duane a debt of gratitude. Truth matters. And Duane brought more truth to light than all the many pontificating pooh-bahs of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Remember that when you see some of Pressler’s complicit enablers in their suits or skinny jeans on Sunday morning. They knew. And they did nothing … other than to inflict untold additional misery onto Duane Rollins so as to try to silence him.

Journalist Robert Downen first reported the news of Duane’s death on X.

Duane died from cardiac arrest which, as Rob points out, likely stemmed from health issues “related to the trauma of his abuse.”

This is a reality that many would prefer not to see. Clergy sex abuse can kill. The human cost of abuse and its cruel aftermath is incalculable.

And still, the Southern Baptist Convention does diddly-squat. Such is its entrenched culture of impunity.

Below is a re-run of a column I wrote sixteen months ago about Paul Pressler’s many complicit enablers. Thanks for reading. Thanks for hearing my grief.

They Knew

It’s not just Paul Pressler; it’s all the complicit enablers

In the last days of 2023, the Southern Baptist Convention and its Executive Committee settled a civil lawsuit involving allegations that they had enabled and covered up decades of sexual abuse by Paul Pressler, a man widely revered—and idolized—as a primary architect of the SBC’s “conservative resurgence”—a movement that some dubbed the “fundamentalist takeover.”

Southern Baptists even put Pressler into a stained glass window at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. (The window has since been removed and is “safely stored.”)

So this wasn’t just yet another of the many hundreds of awful sexual abuse cases in evangelical spaces. This was Paul Pressler, a man who helped make Southern Baptists into who they are today—a faith group centered on male power and authority, a faith group that has “enshrined hierarchy and patriarchy.”

Thus, as one reporter noted, the Pressler case raised “existential questions” about leaders who shaped the very identity of Southern Baptists.  

News of the lawsuit’s settlement resurrected some forgotten bits about the man, such as this video clip of Pressler joking about how their takeover of the SBC was “like Gettysburg, but this time the right side won.”

In that clip, you can hear a roomful of people laughing along with Pressler. The video was filmed on the campus of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2004, the very year when evidence shows that leaders at the SBC’s prominent First Baptist Church of Houston were made aware of sexual misconduct allegations involving Pressler, who was a church deacon.

Even though the church’s own letter described Pressler’s “naked” behavior as “morally and spiritually inappropriate,” church leaders did not strip Pressler of his position of authority as a deacon. Nor did they warn others, including the church Pressler eventually moved to. Instead, they expressed sympathy for the “pressures” of his life and recommended that Pressler “abstain from similar activities with others.”

In other words, they did near-nothing.

And those 2004 allegations weren’t the first. As far back as 1977, there had been allegations about Pressler molesting a teen in a prior church.

All of this was brought to light thanks to Duane Rollins and no thanks to anyone at all in the SBC. Rollins’ lawsuit alleged that Pressler had started abusing him when he was fourteen years old, and the suit “uncovered a 40-year pattern of alleged abuses by Pressler.”

So many people in Southern Baptist life knew about Pressler. Yet, they turned a blind eye, choosing instead to benefit from proximity to Pressler’s power, influence, and connections.

The reports of Pressler’s misconduct were so widely known that it was essentially an open secret. Indeed, it was once described as “the worst kept secret in Houston.”

And really… it was probably the worst kept secret in the whole of the SBC.

One of the witnesses in the case would have testified that “it was common knowledge Pressler acted inappropriately with young men.”

“Common knowledge.”

That witness was a Texas district judge in the same courtroom where Pressler himself once presided. She had Pressler’s portrait removed from the courtroom. (As a retired attorney who has spent too much time staring at courtroom portraits, this was a detail I found delightful.)

Thanks to countless complicit enablers who covered for him, Pressler got to live nearly his whole life as a highly influential leader in the country’s largest Protestant faith group and as a respected member of society. (He died a year ago at age 94.) Meanwhile, Rollins, had a life derailed with alcohol and drug addictions—something not uncommon for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

Yet it was Rollins, a deeply-wounded survivor, who brought truth to light. It wasn’t any of the pontificating pooh-bahs of the SBC.

Even while knowing about the patterns of Pressler’s proclivities, and even while knowing about other reports against Pressler, other SBC leaders not only did absolutely nothing to help Duane Rollins, they disparaged him. And they inflicted as much additional misery on him as they possibly could.

Internal correspondence revealed that some SBC leaders knew there was “a lot of evidence” that Pressler had sexually abused Rollins “for many years.”

Yet, documents produced by the SBC Executive Committee “spelled out the SBC defense philosophy of delay, filing a multitude of motions, & blaming the victim.”

These kind of scorched earth tactics are sometimes called Rambo tactics within the legal profession. It’s not a compliment. These were the SBC’s tactics over the nearly seven years that Rollins’ lawsuit lasted.

Justice? No. Accountability for Pressler and his enablers? No. Care for the survivor? No.

None of that mattered to them. The SBC’s strategy was to wear Rollins down and wear him out.

Rollins’ attorneys, Baker & Botts, accrued $6 million in billable hours, in part because of the SBC’s scorched earth tactics.

It’s simply stunning for a lawsuit to cost the plaintiff’s lawyers $6 million in hours before the case even gets to trial. But the SBC is massively funded with seemingly endless offering plate dollars, and it uses those dollars to engage all manner of stonewalling, delays, and inflicting misery on victims. (If you’re still part of a church that’s affiliated with the SBC, you might wanna think about this.)

Will there ever be any accountability for the many SBC officials and pastors who knew about Pressler? Almost certainly not. Their callous immoral quietude will cost them nothing.

When I was asked about how SBC people would likely handle news of the settlement, I immediately said that they would be hoping the news would disappear. “They want it to quiet down as fast as possible,” I said, “put it in the rear-view mirror and move on without saying anything about it.”

My prediction was right.

On the Sunday immediately after Texas Tribune broke the news of the settlement, First Baptist Houston preached a message from the pulpit about authority: “We are to have high regard for leaders…who labor for us in the faith.”

No mention was made of the lawsuit’s settlement.

Top SBC officials also stayed largely silent. Pastor Ben Marsh actually took time to double-check; he did searches to find any commentary on the Pressler settlement from SBC leaders, including Al Mohler and J.D. Greear, or from SBC ethics professors.

He found nothing.

Finally, two-and-a-half weeks later, the president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Danny Akin, made a tepid statement in which he praised the conservative resurgence but said “recent revelations of sexual abuse by a key leader” were inexcusable and heartbreaking.

Akin didn’t even say Pressler’s name, and of course, the abuse revelations were far from “recent.”

And therein lies the problem.

So many people knew. And they knew for so long.

For more on the SBC’s entrenched culture of unaccountability, check out my book, Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation. It’s currently on sale!