WEDNESDAY, MAY 25 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A23
V
ictims of sexual abuse at
Southern Baptist institutions
no doubt hoped they would
find a caring reception when
they took their stories to the denomi-
nation’s leaders in Nashville. But for
decades, what they received was legal
stonewalling.
The grim story is told in abundant
detail by investigators hired to review
the denomination’s stubborn failure to
address abuse by clergy and other
church employees. Again and again,
their report shows, victims and their
supporters went in search of atonement
only to find attorneys in their way.
Neither Jesus nor the Bible figures
prominently in the internal documents
quoted in the report, but risk manage-
ment and dodging liability are constant
concerns.
“Over the years, the EC’s response to
sexual abuse allegations” — the “EC”
referred to is the executive committee of
the Southern Baptist Convention —
“was largely driven by senior EC staff
members, particularly D. August ‘Augie’
Boto, the EC General Counsel,” investi-
gators found. Boto retired in 2019 after
more than two decades spent guarding
the stone wall. Yet he was a tenderfoot
compared with attorney James P. Guen-
ther, “the SBC’s long-serving outside
counsel,” as investigators put it, who
“had provided legal advice since 1966.”
The “main concern” of these legal
graybeards “was avoiding any potential
liability for the SBC.” Victims and others
concerned about abuse “were often
ignored or told that the SBC had no
power to take action.” But the lawyers
advised more than mere statements of
helplessness. They warned denomina-
tion leaders not to “elicit further infor-
mation or details about reports of
abuse, so that the EC not assume a legal
duty to take further action.”
Imagine that: These soldiers of Christ
were urged to go AWOL on a matter of
great moral importance out of fear that
if they showed any interest or concern,
they might be expected to do something
about it.
Behind the scenes, however, the
lawyers condoned a secret list of
credible abuse reports. “Basically, we
are stuffing newspaper clippings in a
drawer,” attorney Boto remarked dis-
missively in one internal memo. They
needed a very big metaphorical draw-
er, it seems; investigators found that
the list, drawn from more than 10 years
of reports, contained more than
400 likely “SBC-affiliated” names, in-
cluding repeat offenders.
For the victims, there is no differ-
ence between the worldwide sexual
abuse scandal inside the Catholic
Church and this calculated coldheart-
edness at the top of the United States’
largest Protestant denomination.
Structurally, though, there is a differ-
ence — and the Baptist lawyers have
clung to it fiercely.
Roman Catholicism is a formal hier-
archy in which parish churches run by
priests are part of dioceses run by
bishops, and the bishop of Rome — also
known as the pope — has authority over
them all. By contrast, each Southern
Baptist church is its own independent
operation. The national convention has
no authority except to say if a church is
allowed to claim the brand.
Victim support groups have long
argued that the national organization
should refuse to allow churches to be
part of the fellowship if they ignore
abuse, fail to report abuse or hire
known abusers. Enforcing that stan-
dard would entail the very eliciting of
“information” and “details” that the
lawyers have preached against — and
so, nothing has been done.
And here the distinction between
Catholics and Baptists evaporates. In
both cases, leaders have hidden behind
their lawyers. Some 20 years ago, Bos-
ton Globe reporters began digging into
the history of coverups and victim
silencing by the Catholic Church. Al-
most immediately, they ran into attor-
ney Wilson D. Rogers Jr. What Boto and
Guenther have been for the Baptists,
Rogers was for Boston’s Cardinal Ber-
nard F. Law: “an architect of the
archdiocese’s years-long adversarial
handling” of sexual abuse victims, in
the words of the Globe.
There is a place for lawyers, of course.
But they should never have been the
first figures to meet the victims of
abusive pastors and priests.
By leading with the lawyers and
hunkering down behind them, religious
leaders abdicated their moral duty to
acknowledge errors, repair mistakes
and care for the vulnerable. They lost a
chance to show the world what it means
to take responsibility.
Two days after the report came the
apology, so long overdue. Willie McLau-
rin, interim president of the executive
committee, told a virtual meeting of the
group that “now is the time to change
the culture.” Thankfully, he had the
self-awareness to add that this is “the
bare minimum” the SBC leadership can
offer.
Yet maybe there is a silver lining. The
scandal is out in the open now, forced
into the light by rank-and-file Baptists
who are determined to face the truth.
That’s not the way the lawyers wanted
it, but it is the right thing to do.
DAVID VON DREHLE
Southern
Baptist leaders
hid behind
lawyers, too
Reading Russia’s latest sanctions
list, permanently banning trav-
el to the country by 963 people,
saddened me — and not just
because my name is on it. It’s a catalogue
of hurt from a nation that seems ready to
blame everybody but its leaders for its
current troubles.
The list is very long indeed, running
to nearly 100 pages in my printout.
Reading so many names, you sense that
Russia is deliberately burning nearly all
its bridges to the United States. Russia’s
ruling elite feels abused by American
politicians, business leaders, journalists,
judges, think tanks — nearly everyone, it
seems.
Donald Trump can still visit Moscow,
but scores of Republican members of
Congress can’t. The list of excluded GOP
senators ranges from moderates such as
Roy Blunt of Missouri and Mitt Romney
of Utah to hard-right stalwarts Ron
Johnson of Wisconsin and Tom Cotton
of Arkansas. The GOP doesn’t fare much
better in the House. Moderates Liz
Cheney of Wyoming and Mike Gallagher
of Wisconsin can’t tour the Kremlin
anymore, but neither can Jim Jordan of
Ohio or Marjorie Taylor Greene of
Georgia.
As for Democrats, forget about it. The
sanctions list includes the Democratic
House leadership, including Speaker
Nancy Pelosi of California, Majority
Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland and
Democratic Whip James E. Clyburn of
South Carolina. The Congressional Pro-
gressive Caucus can save its rubles, too.
The members of “the Squad” are all
banned. So are Pramila Jayapal of
Washington state and Ro Khanna of
California. It’s the same on the Senate
side. Majority Leader Charles E. Schu-
mer of New York and Whip Richard
J. Durbin of Illinois: Nyet, nyet.
National security advisers, who form
a chain of foreign policy expertise from
administration to administration, are
mostly untouchables, too. Jake Sullivan,
the current adviser, is banned (along
with his wife, Margaret Goodlander, for
good measure). But so are John Bolton
and H.R. McMaster from the Trump
administration, along with Stephen
Hadley from the George W. Bush years.
Henry Kissinger can still travel to Mos-
cow, and maybe he should. The Kremlin
needs to talk to someone.
The sanctions document seems to be
an all-purpose payback list, with some
pretty peculiar grievances. I searched
for information about people who were
identified only as “U.S. citizens.” A
half-dozen of them had been accused in
court of mistreating Russian orphans
they adopted. They included a 1997 case
in Colorado, a 2003 case in Pennsylva-
nia, a 2008 case in Maryland, a 2010 case
in Ohio and a 2012 case in Tennessee.
Some of the details in these stories were
ugly, but still, these are very old wounds.
The list has other anomalies. People
who played a role in the Helsinki
Commission on Human Rights are cited
18 times. So are the members of organi-
zations that sought to expose Russian
disinformation, including actor Morgan
Freeman and director Rob Reiner. Rep-
resentatives of think tanks that tried to
untangle Russian foreign policy machi-
nations, such as the Atlantic Council, are
named frequently. A D.C. Council mem-
ber who named a block near the Russian
Embassy in Washington after dissident
Boris Nemtsov is also banned.
My own crime, in addition to being a
“journalist,” is that I am supposedly an
“expert at the [Woodrow] Wilson Cen-
ter.” Sorry, comrades, but you have that
last part wrong. I am, however, a trustee
of the German Marshall Fund (as I have
regularly informed readers). I guess
even sanctions compilers need editors
and fact-checkers.
Speaking of which, among the banned
are some who wouldn’t be able to go in
any event, for the simple reason that
they are dead. They include the late
senators John McCain of Arizona, Harry
M. Reid of Nevada and Orrin G. Hatch of
Utah.
Some Americans might regard per-
manent exclusion from Russia as a treat,
but I’m not one of them. I’ve visited the
country a half-dozen times, starting in
the early 1980s, and enjoyed every visit.
I’ve talked for over four decades with
Russian ambassadors, foreign minis-
ters, Middle East specialists and other
officials. Quite apart from this journalis-
tic work, I love Russian literature and
music. The vodka isn’t bad, either.
So it’s a genuine personal regret for
me that I apparently won’t be visiting
Russia again anytime soon. But beyond
that, I worry about how, if Russia won’t
talk to anyone, the country will find its
way back to normal life after its tragic
assault on Ukraine is halted.
Adults sometimes behave like chil-
dren, and that’s especially true of adult
politicians. When they make big mis-
takes, as Russian President Vladimir
Putin did in his unprovoked invasion of
Ukraine, they want someone else to
blame. They huff and puff. They imagine
there’s a virtue in their isolation.
Everyone knows what it’s like to nurse
a grudge; sensible people know how to
get over one. They find a way out, so that
they stop inflicting pain on others — and
escape the prison they are creating for
themselves.DAVID IGNATIUSRussia’stravel ban isan all-purposepayback listOn criminal justice reform, Joe
Biden is back to being... Joe
Biden.
Two years after the murder
of George Floyd, Biden has devolved
from the woke presidential candidate
who acknowledged that there is “abso-
lutely” systemic racism in law enforce-
ment and said he could reduce the
federal prison population by more
than half.
Now President Biden is more like
Sen. Biden, who in 1993 said about
people ensnared in the criminal legal
system, “It doesn’t matter whether or
not they’re the victims of society....
They must be taken off the street,”
and whose 1994 crime bill helped
usher in the present era of mass
incarceration.
It’s true that a president has limit-
ed formal authority over the coun-
try’s more than 18,000 police depart-
ments. But Biden knew that when he
was running for the presidency. The
week of Floyd’s funeral in June 2020,
Biden bragged that he had a “whole
plan” of reform, which included “a
national standard of what constitutes
policing that is appropriate.... And
all police departments are gonna
have to adopt it.”
This has not happened. The admin-
istration tried to pass the buck to
Congress, where the George Floyd Jus-
tice in Policing Act withered and died
because of Republican opposition.
This week, Biden reportedly will
release an executive order containing
some mild reforms, including restric-
tions on chokeholds and no-knock
warrants for federal officers. File this
under too little, too late. The order
appears to be a watered-down versionof an earlier leaked draft; some police
organizations took offense to the earli-
er draft’s references to systemic rac-
ism, and they didn’t like that the
federal grant money that police de-
partments receive would be contin-
gent on their implementing the re-
forms. The new order reportedly de-
letes a common-sense requirement
that the draft contained that police kill
people only as a last resort.
Biden’s lack of commitment is dem-
onstrated even more by his inaction in
areas where he has the power to create
change right now. On the campaign
trail, he apologized for his role in
implementing mass incarceration.
The Trump administration left Biden
with a backlog of 14,000 clemency
petitions, many from inmates who
have served too many years under the
harsh sentencing laws Biden support-
ed as senator. But far from allowing
some of those people to come home,
the backlog under Biden’s watch has
grown to 18,000 petitions.
Two years ago, during the height of
the protests over Floyd’s murder,
Biden told a NAACP town hall meet-
ing: “Watch what I do. Judge me based
on what I do, what I say and to whom I
say it.”
Biden should have been more care-
ful about what he asked members of
the civil rights organization to do. On
equal justice, he has done little. And
what the president has said — and
whom he has said it to — is quite
dangerous, especially for Black people.
Racial justice was set to be one of
the cornerstones of the Biden admin-
istration, and he got off to an inspiring
start, including an inaugural address
that was the first in U.S. history tocondemn “white supremacy.”
Fast-forward two years, when
crime is up and Biden’s popularity is
down. In his most recent State of the
Union, Biden did not once mention
race. And on criminal justice, the
president observed, “We should all
agree the answer is not to defund the
police. It’s to fund the police. Fund
them. Fund them. Fund them with
the resources and training — resourc-
es and training they need to protect
our communities.”
It’s not hard to identify the audience
for whom Biden’s message was intend-
ed: White voters in swing states, who
the president, along with many other
Democrats, apparently believes are
wary of too much racial justice.
As a senator, Biden was not shy
about employing white grievance to
win votes. At a debate during the
Democratic primary, Kamala D. Har-
ris famously made this point about
Biden’s opposition to busing. But
when he was trawling for Black votes,
Biden did what he thought he needed
to win election. And to his credit, he
has elevated three Black women — the
vice president, a confirmed Supreme
Court justice-designate, and his press
secretary — to new heights.
Maybe it is all political. Political in
the “put your actual values on ice”
sense. And maybe now the politics
lead to a different racial calculus. The
default, in this country, is the politics
of anti-Blackness.
During the 2020 campaign, some of
us believed that Biden, having suc-
cumbed to those politics for a long
while, had managed to overcome
them. The jury is still out on whether
we were suckered.PAUL BUTLERBiden promised police reform.He hasn’t delivered.OLIVER CONTRERAS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
President Biden speaks in the White House Rose Garden on May 17.clouds and lightning ripped the sky. Our
only consolation was that Nugget was
wearing a reflective collar bearing my
husband’s name and cellphone number.
Also, Nugget had an implanted micro-
chip that identifies him and provides
proof of ownership.
As a deluge broke and night closed
around us, thoughts unavoidably turned
to the realities of mountain wildlife —
bears, bobcats and coyotes. The same
tracker who had guided me on how to
lure him back reminded me that a small
dog such as Nugget would look like
dinner to any of our local predators.
Thanks, RV.
It was still raining Sunday morning as
we began anew. Meanwhile, dozens of
people from various lost-pet websites
(10 million pets are lost each year) and
social media where I had posted news of
Nugget offered tips and valuable infor-
mation. Our chip company, an invalu-
able resource, issued a regional alert to
hundreds of vets and shelters. I printed
and distributed posters. We draped
unwashed jeans and T-shirts from rail-
ings and tree limbs, hoping Nugget
might pick up a scent. Nada.
As it happened, the weekend was to
have been a birthday celebration for my
husband. Naturally, every gift was dog-
related, including an 8-by-10 framed
photo of him and his three charges at
home. When I walked into Walgreens to
retrieve the print, I beseeched the staff
to please forgive my tortured eyes and
obvious distress. We celebrated the
birthday Sunday night with weak
smiles, as more thunder and lightning
crashed around us. I couldn’t stop the
constant loop in my head: My poorWhen we decided to escape the
blistering 98-degree South
Carolina heat and head for
the North Carolina moun-
tains, we packed up our three pups, two
of whom had just turned 9 months old.
Within hours of arrival, one of them
went missing.
The smallest of the three, Nugget,
vanished after chasing his bigger broth-
er, Gatsby, out of sight. Gatsby returned
within 15 minutes without the little guy.
We immediately began searching, call-
ing out Nugget’s name, which, I learned
later, one shouldn’t do. A runaway dog
knows he’s done wrong and, fearing he’s
in trouble, often might not respond.
Also, a tracker named RV told me, never
chase a dog but sit quietly, facing away
from the pet, and wait for him to
approach. Tossing treats will bring him
closer.
We three — husband Woody, one of
our exceedingly methodical sons, Henry,
and I — began dissecting possibilities
and plotting strategies. Henry said, “He’s
probably on someone’s porch or in a golf
cart.” All three of our small pups love
cart rides more than tummy rubs. The
surest way to collect them is to shift the
cart into reverse gear. The annoying
beeping sound must be to them what
Homer’s mythical Sirens were to sailors.
In seconds, they’ll materialize and leap
into the cart. Nugget, once in, won’t get
out — ever — unless we retrieve him.
We decided a cart was our best hope.
Slowly circling the area for hours, we’d
periodically stop and hit reverse, hoping
Nugget might reappear. No luck. Dread
began seeping into our hearts as Satur-
day’s sun disappeared behind thunder-baby. He must be so cold. And hungry
and afraid.
The darkness in these eastern moun-
tains, especially when few people have
arrived for summer to turn on lights, is
black-hole-ish — impenetrable and, if
you’re alone out there, terrifying. With
sad hearts, we turned in that night
vowing without much hope that we’d
find him the next day.
At 10 a.m. Monday, the phone rang.
I could hear my husband talking in
the next room and raced in to listen.
Hearing the caller struggling with Eng-
lish, I began frantically waving my arms
and whispered loudly, “I speak Spanish!”
In the moment, I think he had forgotten.
As we say, Gracias a Dios.
Nugget was in the safe custody of a
painting crew working at a house — you
won’t believe — 400 feet away, as the
crow flies. As Henry had predicted,
Nugget had spent the entirety of two
stormy days and nights nestled in a golf
cart beneath the back porch of a nearby
house we had presumed was occupied.
Adequate evidence indicated he’d never
left the cart. Our heroic painters, who
discovered him when they arrived for
work, declined a reward.
I offer this miraculous (to us) story as
a cautionary tale. Take from it what you
will. Every tip included is solid, but
prevention is better. My advice: If you
take a pet on vacation, prepare in
advance a list of services and contacts
you could need in an emergency. And
keep your pet restrained or contained,
especially in unfamiliar places. For two
seconds, we thought, Oh, let’s just let
them run around for a minute. For two
days, we were as lost as Nugget.KATHLEEN PARKEROne puppy, lost and found