Hannah-Kate Williams has filed a lawsuit against several Southern Baptist institutions and leaders, alleging they failed to take seriously her allegations of sexual abuse against her father, an SBC pastor.
Williams filed suit on Aug. 16, according to Religion News Service. Named in the suit include the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where her father, James Williams, once worked; Lifeway Christian Resources; the SBC Executive Committee; and EC committee members Mike Stone and Rod Martin.
“I’m hoping all abusers will be exposed and brought to justice so they can find redemption, that survivors can receive restitution, and the vulnerable can be protected,” Williams, 26, told Religion News Service.
The complaint filed in Franklin County Circuit Court in Kentucky also names her father as a defendant. The suit alleges church leaders failed to investigate Hannah-Kate Williams’ reports of sexual and physical abuse by her father beginning when she was 4 or 5 years old and continuing until she first left home at 16. The suit claims SBC leaders defamed her as a liar and “conspired to protect the Baptist denomination from a problem of sexual abuse of minors or other vulnerable populations.”
Leaked letters
The complaint also cites leaked letters written by Russell Moore, former head of the SBC’s Ethics & Religion Liberty Commission, including one to then-SBC President J.D. Greear registering Moore’s disappointment in the church for silencing victims and covering up misconduct.
“Based upon the Moore-Greear correspondence, …” the complaint alleges, “there is a high likelihood that the reports made to the SBTS by Plaintiff were part of the discussions alluded to in the Moore-Greear correspondence, that there are other relevant documents and witnesses to the attempts by the corporate Defendants to cover up their ‘passing along’ of Williams to unwitting congregations, and the risk that the other children of the Williams’ family suffered similar abuse.”
Dan Carman, one of Hannah-Kate Williams’ lawyers, said the SBC needs to deal more openly with its own failings to handle abuse and to make amends for the harm done to survivors.
“The church needs to own it,” he told RNS. “When you have the quantum and quality of claims that have been brought forth, it’s incumbent upon the church and associated institutions to handle this. They’ve got to open the book.”
Williams, the oldest of six siblings, said she first contacted SBC local pastors and national leaders after she realized her father was also assaulting three of her younger siblings. According to public statements by Hannah-Kate Williams’ and her oldest siblings, their mother physically abused them and also sexually abused her two younger brothers. Her two youngest siblings are still in her parents’ custody.
The elder four siblings have filed police reports against their parents in several jurisdictions, alleging sexual and physical abuse, RNS reported. But in December, a detective in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, declined to send the case to a prosecutor, citing “factual issues and inconsistencies” among the siblings’ stories, according to the report.
Reports in more than 10 other jurisdictions in Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee remain under investigation, RNS reported.
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