As Southern Baptist messengers ready to get their first peek at the multi-million dollar Ministry Check website, courtesy of the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARITF), it’s worth pointing out that it was a garbage website before a recent update, and it’s a garbage website now.
According to ARITF Chairman Marshall Blalock, the site will be populated by those who have been “credibly accused of sexual misconduct, whereby “Name, alias, birth date, offense, location of offense, date of offense and a photo will be on the site in a searchable database. It will be available for public search without a password or user account.”
In order to be “credibly accused” and worthy of being added to the site, the accused must be qualified under any of the four categories:
- Confession in a non-privileged setting
- Conviction in a court of law
- Civil judgment rendered
- Determination by an independent third party according to a preponderance of evidence.
It’s that last category that is so vexatious and troubling. The system would be publicly accessible, meaning that those individuals who are “credibly” accused, but not convicted, would receive the same treatment within the SBC as a convicted sex offender. Guidepost and SBC entities have already made several significant missteps in regard to who they’ve publicly accused of sexual abuse and have found themselves embroiled in lawsuits for their troubles, notably from Johnny Hunt and David Sills. (They both admit to consensual sinful misconduct, but deny the widespread characterization as ‘abusive’)
In a Twitter thread, Megan Basham explains why this Ministry Check website is so problematic:
Some facts on Category 4 for Ministry Check site. Credibly accused is based on a “preponderance of evidence” standard. What that means is anything greater than 50%. So if an investigator is 50.01% convinced accused is guilty, he would add name to list. Basically its a coin toss.
Proponents argue this is the same standard as civil court. This ignores 4 facts.
1) Accusers & witnesses in civil court are subject to perjury charges and financial penalties for lying—a threat they don’t face from independent third party investigations.2) Unlike in civil court, the single-investigator model allows a single person to act as investigator, prosecutor, and judge. There is no check or balance on that person’s judgment, and no one is tasked with the job of dispassionately reviewing the evidence with fresh eyes.
3) Civil cases are public and therefore transparent—much of the work of the investigator, prosecutor, and judge are laid open to public scrutiny. That is not the case with third-party investigations which are generally secretive and not open to public review.
4) Civil cases afford defendants many of the same due process protections found in criminal cases, like the ability to review the evidence, cross examine witnesses, and be judged by a jury of their peers.
The Supreme Court has called cross examination “the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.” Any system that does not allow for this crucial point of due process is not a biblically just system.
Those advocating for adding Category 4 to ministry check site are advocating for the same system that the Obama Admin put in place on college campus under Title IX. There have been tidal waves of lawsuits from young men whose schools judged them guilty under this standard since then.
One U.S. District judge said after reviewing a typical Title IX investigation: “It’s closer to Salem, 1692 than Boston, 2015.”
Yet it is exactly this system that Category 4 will introduce into the SBC.
