Bombshell 400-page report finds Southern Baptist leaders routinely silenced sexual abuse survivors

 Bombshell 400-page report finds Southern Baptist leaders routinely silenced sexual abuse survivors

Robert Downen, John Tedesco  Staff writers  May 22, 2022

For 20 years, leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention — including a former president now accused of sexual assault — routinely silenced and disparaged sexual abuse survivors, ignored calls for policies to stop predators, and dismissed reforms that they privately said could protect children but might cost the SBC money if abuse victims later sued.

Those are just a few findings of a bombshell, third-party investigation into decades of alleged misconduct by Southern Baptist leaders that was released Sunday, nearly a year after 15,000 SBC church delegates demanded their executive committee turn over confidential documents and communications as part of an independent review of abuse reports that were purportedly mishandled or concealed since 2000.  https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/Bombshell-400-page-report-finds-Southern-Baptist-17190816.php 

As Kellner Case Collapses, Abuse Advocates Mobilize

As Kellner Case Collapses, Abuse Advocates Mobilize

New demands that ‘unfounded charges’ against abuse whistleblower be dropped.  07/10/13 Hella Winston

With the Brooklyn district attorney’s case against chasidic sex abuse whistleblower Sam Kellner seemingly falling apart amid mounting evidence that Kellner’s main accuser may have been manipulated and paid to lodge false charges against him, sexual abuse survivors and advocates are taking to the streets to protest the DA’s conduct in the case.

Abuse survivor, advocate and writer Chaim Levin has organized a protest for Thursday outside the Jay Street offices of Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes to support Kellner and, according to Levin’s Facebook post about the protest, “demand that the unfounded charges against [Kellner] be dropped immediately.”

In an interview with The Jewish Week on Tuesday, Levin said that Kellner — who reported his son’s allegations against Baruch Lebovits to police and helped bring forward more alleged Lebovits victims to the DA — is “paying a really big price for what he did and we need to stand up for him.”

“He did more than my parents did,” Levin continued. “He reported a crime. He lost his job, his housing, for a case where they have nothing on him. And we still don’t have any idea about what is happening with Lebovits.” (Lebovits, a cantor and prominent member of the Munkacs chasidic community, was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to 10 to 32 years in jail; his conviction was overturned on a technicality and no new trial date has been set.)....
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/kellner-case-collapses-abuse-advocates-mobilize