Twenty Years Ago: The Beginning of Activist Efforts to Prod SBC Abuse Reform

What’s changed since then and what hasn’t

Think back twenty years to August 2006.

George W. Bush was president, iPhones didn’t exist yet, and Twitter was just a month old.

That was when I wrote a letter to then Southern Baptist Convention president Frank Page, describing how the Southern Baptist pastor who sexually abused me as a kid – repeatedly and severely – had been allowed to continue in ministry even though other church leaders knew at the time, even though his name was on a secret list of “known offenders” kept by the Baptist General Convention of Texas, and even though I had notified eighteen Southern Baptist leaders in four states about my corroborated report.

David Clohessy – the guy who has seen it all in the clergy abuse arena – dropped me a line the other day, pointing out that this month was the twenty-year anniversary of that letter. And it gave me pause to reflect.

The 2006 Letter to SBC president Frank Page

Together with David and other leaders from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), I pleaded in that 2006 letter for the SBC president to take action.

The need was obvious. As we told Page:

“When 18 church and denominational leaders can be informed of a substantiated report involving a minister’s sexual abuse of a minor…and the man remains in ministry…then this, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, has a serious problem.”

We asked that Page use the egregious denominational mishandling of my sexual abuse report as a launchpad for institutional change, and more specifically, we asked for the implementation of:

• A centralized location for reviewing and recording reports of clergy abuse

• An independent denominational review board for assessing reports of clergy abuse

• A nationwide ‘zero tolerance’ policy

• A procedure for notifying people in the pews when a report of abuse was made about a minister who worked in their congregation

Did you catch that? We were asking that the SBC develop a system for centralized record-keeping on clergy sex abuse reports – i.e., a database.

Twenty years ago.

As we explained to Page:

“Whether or not the SBC is capable of removing an abusive minister from ministry, it is at least capable of informing and warning.”

Attempts prior to the 2006 letter

Of course, that August 2006 letter to Page wasn’t my first attempt at getting Southern Baptist church and denominational leaders to take action. By the time of that letter, I had already spent over two years trying to deal with my childhood church, which initially responded by threatening to sue me even while the music minister acknowledged that he had known about the abuse when I was a kid – he claimed it was “consensual” even though that’s impossible for a child – and I had futilely sought help from numerous other Southern Baptist leaders – local, state and national.

No one in Baptist life helped me.

Many of you with similar clergy abuse stories can readily imagine how all that played out, because the patterns are so repetitive they seem as a playbook. But if you’d like a blow-by-blow account of those early years, check out my 2009 book, This Little Light.

(Also, earlier in 2006, I had penned an op-ed for the Dallas Morning News, and that brought scores of other Baptist clergy sex abuse survivors to my inbox. So, by the time I wrote to Page, I knew for sure that the problem was way bigger than just me.)

The SBC president’s response: He knew

Page’s response was tepid, with the familiar language about the autonomy of local churches. But interestingly, he also wrote this:

“Your letter was a very disturbing and frightening example of what happens when those in spiritual places of authority misuse that authority and power in a most egregious fashion. It is personally disturbing as I know that this has happened on multiple occasions…”

So… he knew. He knew that the horror of what I was describing had “happened on multiple occasions.” Yet, he still did nothing.

Former Southern Baptist Convention president Frank Page (Baptist Press photo)

The beginning of activist efforts

That perfunctory response is what set in motion the beginning of more ramped-up efforts to bring media attention to the SBC’s systemic abuse and cover-up problems, and to prod denominational action.

Six weeks later, in September 2006, we wrote to Page again – and to additional SBC officials – enumerating in more detail our requests for action. This time, I went to Nashville in person to hand-deliver a couple of the letters and to conduct a sidewalk press conference outside SBC headquarters.

Talking to a reporter in 2006 at my first sidewalk press conference outside SBC headquarters in Nashville

The mustering of media attention made them angry, and in multiple ways, they attempted to denigrate and smear me. But as painful as it all was, by then, I was past the point of caring what any Southern Baptist leader might think of me. So, at StopBaptistPredators.org, I began keeping my own online database of Southern Baptist pastors who were publicly documented as having been convicted or credibly accused of sexual abuse.

The SBC system of impunity still stands

Institutionally, not much has changed since 2006, except SBC leaders have gotten better at optics. Of course, they’ve paid heaps of money to a corporate crisis management law firm, and that’s what such firms do – they use all manner of tactics to help an institution move past negative press, restore its image, and keep the money flowing.

If anything, some SBC leaders now seem more emboldened. Having weathered a few media storms, some are denying there was ever any clergy sex abuse “crisis” at all. They’re saying it was a “hoax” and a “snipe hunt.” (But… if there were no “crisis,” why did they hire a crisis management law firm?)

A vast chasm exists between what SBC leaders say publicly and what they do behind the scenes. Even “while SBC leaders were publicly apologizing and launching task forces, they were privately disparaging victims, managing liability, and ensuring their own survival.”

Hollow public words, impotent task forces, phony dog-and-pony shows, and performative platitudes. This is the norm in Southern Baptists’ handling of clergy sex abuse.

Southern Baptists' Cesspool of Duplicity

As Karen Swallow Prior recently wrote:

The SBC system “was built on injustice and abuse, and the system still stands.”

(Karen’s piece also provides a recap of some of the significant events in the SBC’s handling of abuse in recent years. And if you want to peruse a longer timeline, check out this Religion News Service piece.)

But change comes in different ways

Just because the SBC hasn’t reformed institutionally doesn’t mean change hasn’t happened. Outside the SBC, things are very different now than they were in 2006.

Back then, it was a lot harder to get attention for Baptist clergy sex abuse stories.

People would almost invariably tell me that Baptist abuse cases were “isolated incidents,” and not something systemic like what was happening in the Catholic church.

Those two words – “isolated incidents” – grated across my consciousness so often I wanted to cry, and I heard them from all kinds of people – from reporters, attorneys, experts, and even from other survivors.

But now? I never hear those words. Within the SBC, people may blind themselves to it, but outside the SBC, people know: The SBC has a widespread abuse and cover-up problem.

So nowadays, when people hear a Baptist clergy abuse story, they don’t say “isolated incidents.” Instead, they say, “No surprise.”

And that’s different from how things were in 2006.

Over the course of two decades, survivors’ stories have shifted the conversation and wrecked the SBC’s ability to totally control the narrative. We’ve put forward a counter-narrative to the world, and that’s no small thing, particularly when you consider what we’ve been up against – a tentacular, multi-billion-dollar institution that claims God on its side.

Then there’s this simple fact: Over the past twenty years, the Southern Baptist Convention has lost 3.6 million members. That’s a fourth of its prior membership.

There are a lot of reasons for the SBC’s decline, but according to data from the Public Religion Research Institute, clergy sex abuse scandals are one of the reasons that people leave their faith group. So, twenty years’ worth of survivors’ stories had something to do with it.

Survivors' Truth-Telling Contributes to Southern Baptist Convention's Decline

And yeah, it makes me smile to realize that the SBC’s decline began in 2006 – the year I wrote that letter to the SBC president, the year I did my first sidewalk press conference outside SBC headquarters, the year I wrote my first op-ed about SBC clergy sex abuse, the year I began logging Baptist abuse cases in a database, the year earnest activist efforts began. The SBC’s membership has gone downhill ever since.

The fight for accountability continues

At a press conference tomorrow, a new organization – ProtestantAccountability.org – will announce its posting of over 2700 names of Protestant pastors who are documented as having been convicted or publicly accused of sexual abuse. Bravo!

I’m proud to have been a pioneer in the effort to document Protestant clergy sex abuse. Many of the names on ProtestantAccountability were on my original StopBaptistPredators list.

But here’s the thing: Yet again, it’s wounded survivors who are doing the work of documenting clergy sex abuse and trying to warn people. This is work that the Church should be doing but, by and large, is not.

Much has changed, but that part hasn’t.

And as for former SBC president Frank Page? He became the SBC’s top CEO for a time but was ousted when it came to light that he’d had what was initially described as a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Later, it was reported that the relationship involved “a female congregant under his care,” which to my ear sounds like an abusive pastor. But he was still able to find a new church to pastor.

No surprise, eh?

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8/19/2026: I’m proud that Religion News Service picked up this column & ran it with a bit of minor editing and a better headline: “20 years ago, I wrote SBC leaders to warn them about abuse. They are still not listening.”

8/20/2026: Here’s the press conference announcing the launch of ProtestantAccountability.org. The site will include not only clergy abusers but also those who are documented as having enabled or covered up abuse.

For more on the ruses and maneuvers of the Southern Baptist Convention, check out my book, Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation.