Breaking: SBC President Bart Barber Approved Controversial Kentucky Amicus Brief: ‘People are Disappointed With Me and Angry’
Southern Baptist Convention President Bart Barber has confirmed that he approved the participation of the SBC in the controversial Kentucky Amicus Brief.
Several years ago, Samantha Killary claimed that her father, a police officer who adopted her when she was two, sexually abused her throughout her childhood until she turned 18 in 2009. She recorded him admitting it and turned in the tapes, resulting in a guilty plea and 15 years in prison.
She later sued her father’s girlfriend, whom he dated from 2001-2003, and her grandfather. Like her father, they were also police officers, and she alleges they both knew of the abuse but failed to report it. She sued the police station as well for employing all three.
At issue is whether she can sue the police station, girfriend, and gradfather, considered “non-perpetrator parties, 20 years after the fact, after a new law increased the statute of limitations to make them potentially retroactively “sue-able.”
Barber revealed in his blog that despite initially believing that he was not involved in this decision and having no memory of it, he has since he discovered the email where he approved the SBC’s participation in the brief, writing: “This is my doing. I approved it. I take full responsibility for the SBC’s having joined this brief, and this lengthy statement will help to explain the mistakes I think I have made.”
Noting that “I know that a lot of people are disappointed with me and angry,” he laments that “I did not give this decision to file this brief the level of consideration that it deserved” while sharing the circumstances that led up to him giving the go-ahead.
Fifteen months ago, on August 9, 2022, he was in Nashville and was slammed with meetings to help orient the new members of the SBC Executive Committee, when he received the email from the SBC’s legal team. They made him aware of the brief and recommended he join it, informing him that the deadline to file was later that day. With another important meeting with the Great Commission Council on the books, he only had a few hours to decide.
“I was sitting in an orientation meeting, trying to pay attention. At the same time, I was fielding questions about my ARITF appointments, some of which were pretty insistent. Also, I was preparing for what I expected to be a tense and difficult meeting. In between all of that, as the other things allowed time, I was sneaking looks at this brief, reading it to see whether I could approve of our participation in it. And the clock was ticking. The whole thing was an email conversation, and a brief one at that. I became aware that the SBC Executive Committee was joining the brief. I approved our joining the brief. I hadn’t heard anything about it or thought anything about it since then until last Wednesday.”
Acknowledging that he did not know the circumstances of the underlying legal case, Barber shares he probably didn’t even have the power or authority to sign off on in the first place, but that his consistent practice in addressing these legal matters has been considering “Is this an honest, true legal question for which the Southern Baptist Convention can take this position in good faith?”
I am not sure exactly what I think about statutes of limitation. I think they are a mixed bag. I agree with our 2019 resolution that statutes of limitation can get in the way of true justice. I also think that sometimes they are an important part of justice….I am uncomfortable with the harm statutes of limitations can do, but I also think that they play a valid role in the law sometimes.”
Coming to read more about the case, Barber says that he’s disheartened about the message his approving the brief sent to Samantha Killary, “I can’t stop thinking about her. What have I communicated to her and to other survivors by taking this action?” and is devastated by the fallout of the consequences of not giving the brief its due consideration.
“I was not thinking, “How can I harm survivors of sexual abuse today?” I spent that day appointing people like Marshall Blalock and Todd Benkert, both of whom have publicly expressed disapproval of this brief….I spent that day trying to support everyone on the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force and to carry forward our work. August 9, 2022, was not a day I spent trying to hurt survivors.
That’s what makes it hurt so much, and that’s what makes me so disappointed in myself: I did, in fact, wind up hurting survivors by what I did. My determination for us to advance abuse reform in the SBC is no less than it was when I began, but I know that my credibility with you is harmed by this, perhaps irreparably.”
Barber concludes:
Throughout the last year and a half, so many of you have told me that you are praying for me. I can tell by the looks on your faces that some of you think I am joking when I reply, “Please keep praying for me, because every day I make decisions for you that I do not know how to make.” I am counting on your prayers and I am counting on wisdom from above. I hope that I learn a little with every mistake that I make, and I hope that those of you who are angry with me today can find it in your hearts to forgive me.
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