A Review and Primer of the Megan Basham/ Jane Doe Name Redaction Controversy
Here are two highly useful, longer posts about this controversy, from John G. West first and @SBClitigation.
JOHN G. WEST’S POST
“In Shepherds for Sale, Basham named a person who made accusations of sexual abuse against Southern Baptist leader Johnny Hunt. Basham stated that the accuser’s “identity was revealed when her attorneys failed to redact her name in court filings.”
Various people have now accused Basham of acting unethically in naming the accuser. I understand their concerns, but I think the issue is a lot more complicated than they seem willing to admit. While it’s commendable to want to protect victims (and alleged victims) of sex abuse, anonymous accusations raise serious questions of fairness and due process for the accused.
Basham is right about this.
If the accuser is a minor, I think a much stronger case can be made for keeping their name secret. But if the accuser is an adult, I think the question is a lot more difficult. In this case, the accuser was an adult (in her thirties), and the accused (Hunt) claimed that their relationship was consensual. Under these circumstances, I think Basham makes a credible case that it was not unethical for her to report the name of the accuser, especially since it already had been disclosed publicly by another party.
Here is where things get ugly. In its article, Ministry Watch went on and published a further claim against Basham by attorneys for the accused:
“The facts are that it was Johnny Hunt’s counsel who, in violation of the court’s protection order, filed a document with the court that did not redact our client’s identity. [Basham’s] misstatement of the facts could have easily been corrected with any basic fact-checking by the publisher. But then again, we’re not convinced that facts matter all that much to Ms. Basham,” the attorneys added.
This passage insinuates that Basham not only published the name of the accuser, but that her publication of the name was the result of the violation of a court order by the attorney of the accused. If true, that would seem to be an additional kind of wrongdoing. This additional accusation contained in the Ministry Watch article provoked new levels of outrage against Basham.
For example, @RobertDownen_, a reporter with the left-wing Texas Tribune, cited the Ministry Watch article as his basis for asserting: “Basham already blatantly violated basic ethics (as I outline below). But to do so while blaming the woman’s attorneys – when the woman was actually outed by her own alleged attacker’s camp, in violation of a court order – is egregious beyond words.” (emphasis added)
This defamatory claim spread by Ministry Watch and reporters like Downen now appears to be blatantly false. Many thanks to David Morrill, @coconservative7, for first making me aware of what actually happened: https://x.com/coconservative7/status/1824685657035514153… And thanks to @megbasham for providing further confirmation.
It seems pretty clear that the name of the person in question was revealed publicly back in April through a posting of court documents by @SBCLitigation. Go here to see the original post: https://x.com/SBCLitigation/status/1777866097401692334…
If you click through to the list of documents and search them, you will find quite a number of documents from the person’s own attorneys where her name is disclosed in the descriptions of the documents. This appears to be because her attorneys redacted her name improperly. If you go to the documents themselves, and you copy and paste the redactions, you get the supposedly redacted text. (As pointed out by Morrill, the accused’s attorney also did an improper redaction at about the same time, but his blooper doesn’t eliminate the fact of the many failed redactions of the attorneys for the other side.)
The bottom line is that Basham accurately reported that the person’s name was revealed to the public after her attorneys screwed up their redactions. Moreover, the insinuation that Basham somehow made use of an illegal disclosure by the attorney for the accused that violated a court order is false.
Ministry Watch should update its article with this new information, making clear that the original allegation was false.
BTW, Ministry Watch is run by Warren Cole Smith, author of the highly inaccurate review of Basham’s book at The Dispatch, which I earlier critiqued at length: https://x.com/jgwestdi/statu/JGWestDI/status/1820325150895841469… (Smith did not write the new Ministry Watch article described here, but he heads Ministry Watch.)”
@SBCLITIGATION’S POST
HUNT: in our opinion, Doe’s lawyers are stretching to avoid responsibility for their part in releasing Doe’s secrets.
A 🧵…
In one sense, Doe’s lawyers did file “redacted” documents, but also they did not. They filed incompetent redactions that didn’t work.
The words were covered but not removed. They could be viewed without removing anything.
Something similar happened at SCOTUS in March.
This is because Adobe Acrobat, the tool used to redact .pdfs, requires you to “mark” and then “apply” redactions. (“Sanitize” and “flatten” are similar.)
Careless (or new) users see black bars marked, but don’t realize the text is still there.
Doe’s lawyers said they removed the defective documents in under 24 hours, which is true.
But several services automatically store PACER documents, and so this “removal” has limited effect. They’re stored all over the internet already.
It’s a nightmare to release client secrets in filings. But it’s inescapable that Doe’s lawyers released identifying information about their client, probably permanently.
If Doe wanted these facts to be secret, her lawyers failed to handle them in a secret way.
Obviously, Doe’s lawyers don’t want to be hit with a malpractice suit or bar complaint. And one argument to minimize the impact is to say “Doe wasn’t damaged by our release, because it was released first by Hunt.”
Hunt’s team filed one letter in January with a partial redaction. Doe’s team complained, but Hunt said they’d followed the protective order.
In April, Hunt’s team filed a deposition transcript that mentioned Doe’s real name six times, as an exhibit to a motion.
Doe’s team demanded a redaction, and so Hunt filed a motion to seal it.
Doe’s team then filed for emergency orders, complaining that Hunt’s motion only drew attention to the problem. But it looks like Doe’s team forgot to “apply” their redactions and so disclosed more new info than Hunt — and, of course, the kerfuffle drew more attention.
Doe’s team now says Hunt violated a protective order. But did it?
If Hunt’s unredacted document violates a court order, and it’s STILL up, Doe’s attorneys would almost certainly have a duty to Doe to get it off ECF, or ask for sanctions.
You wouldn’t want to risk permanent waiver of your client’s rights.
But (again, based on a partial record), it doesn’t look like Hunt’s filing violated the then-current protective order. We don’t see a redaction rule off hand — but, more importantly, we see no argument from Doe that it was violated. Is it sealed?
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
Doe filed her motion on April 9, requesting redaction of her name going forward. But there’s no (obvious) complaint to the judge that Hunt violated a court order.
You’d think that would be in THE FIRST SENTENCE ON THE PAGE if they could argue it.
Why isn’t it?
Doe’s attorneys now say Hunt’s lawyers contrived a way to get Doe’s name on the record. Perhaps.
But it seems like Team Doe’s unintentional release was more damaging than Team Hunt’s allegedly intentional release. Basham says she noticed Team Doe’s documents.
Everyone seems to agree that once the name is public, Basham had the legal right to use it in her book. Any dispute seems to be about ethics, not law.
So: Did Hunt release first? Yes & no. Hunt filed the name first. Doe’s team released more facts first, and drew attention to them.
Did Doe redact & replace? Kind of, but also “no” in the ways that matter most. Any “redactions” were defective and the internet is forever.
Did Hunt violate a protective order? We can’t rule it out. But it hasn’t been raised with the court in an obvious way in 4 months!
And that suggests they think the “protective order” claim is weak or a bluff.
Add: This strongly undercuts any claim a protective order was violated.
Doe wanted a rule that protected her subpoena and testimony. If the protective order already had a redaction rule, you’d expect it to be raised here.
.@RobertDownen_ pivots away from the protective order claim.
But, it is important to know if the name was made public unlawfully. That was why Downen made posts about it being especially terrible.
Will be interesting to see how Hunt’s team responds to these allegations.
And lastly, why it matters (and this part is from us)
In newly released court transcripts, former SBC President and disgraced pastor Johnny Hunt is insisting that while he may have been ‘unfaithful’ to his wife by kissing another woman’s breasts and pulling down her underwear, he did not commit adultery, as no penetration took place, according to documents from BNG.
Thirteen years ago, disgraced pastor and former SBC president Johnny Hunt engaged in what he describes as a “brief, consensual extramarital encounter,” and what the woman involved maintains was non-consensual sexual assault. His church was never told about the incident and it remained a secret for a decade until it outed in the recent Guidepost investigation.
These allegations of sexual assault and revelation of (at the minimum) a “brief, consensual extramarital encounter” caused Hunt’s life and ministry to implode. He lost his job as VP at NAMB, was formally suspended from his position as Pastor Emeritus at First Baptist Church of Woodstock congregation, and was subject to great personal embarrassment.
Hunt later sued the SBC and Guidepost for labeling him as an abuser and making this public, saying that his sexual encounters were no one’s business but his own.
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