Tracking Sexual Predators in the SBC and the Multiple Allegations against Judge Paul Pressler

Paul Pressler's Stained Glass Window at SWBTS Chapel

The Houston Chronicle reported last month that multiple men have filed sexual assault allegations against Judge Paul Pressler.

Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson are the two major architects of the 1979 Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention.

One of the men suing Pressler is Duane Rollins Jr, and the Houston Chronicle reports that Rollins accuses Judge Pressler in the lawsuit of raping him multiple times, beginning when Rollins was 14-years-old.

Normally, one would give an accused man like Judge Paul Pressler the benefit of the doubt.

However, there are three reasons why messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention should be shaken to the core by these allegations against a man whose image is in stained glass at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

1. In 2004, Judge Pressler paid $450,000 in what was to be a "secret settlement" to Duane Rollins. All copies of the settlement were destroyed, except for one copy kept at the law office of Pressler's personal lawyer and former business partner. 

2.  In 2016, a young attorney named Brooks Schott worked in that same law office and was also allegedly "sexually propositioned" by then retired Judge Paul Pressler. Disgusted, the young attorney quit the law firm. The Houston Chronicle reports Brooks Schott accused "Jared Woodfill, Pressler’s longtime law partner and the head of the Harris County Republican Party until 2014, of failing to prevent Pressler’s sexual advances toward him and others, which Schott says were well-known among the firm."  

3. Another man named Toby Twining, now 59 and living in New York, claims in an affidavit that Judge Pressler propositioned him at the River Oaks Country Club in Houston when Twining was a young man.

I would encourage every Southern Baptist to follow closely the excellent reporting of Robert Downen of the Houston Chronicle on this matter. Paige Patterson is also a party to this lawsuit. Duane Rollins claims Patterson had knowledge of the sexual assaults and covered them up.

I have friends who are members of the River Oaks Country Club in Houston, Texas. I've been told that "it was common knowledge that Pressler had a thing for young men." It was seen by other members in the clubhouse.

Years ago, I also heard that the San Francisco Chronicle was about to release a story on the allegations against Pressler. The editors of the paper reportedly backed down after receiving some phone calls from some very powerful people.

In 1989, after the FBI ran a "background check" on Judge Pressler, his name was "withdrawn" as President George Bush's choice to head the Office of Government Ethics. Public statements at the time declared the withdrawal to be about issues other than allegations of sexually predatory behavior,  but one wonders if there was more to the story.

Because...

In 1978, Judge Pressler was terminated from his position as "youth worker" at Bethel Church in Houston.  Frank Sommerville, pastor at Bethel at the time, confirmed that the church “received information about an alleged incident involving Mr. Pressler in 1978.”

“Upon learning of the alleged incident, the church immediately terminated Mr. Pressler’s involvement with the youth group and its activities,” Sommerville wrote. “The Presslers subsequently left the church sometime in late 1978.”

Judge Pressler shows how easy to is for someone to cover up allegations of sexual misconduct through his personal memoir. In his autobiography, A Hill on Which to Die, Judge Pressler goes into great detail on the timeline of his departure from Bethel Church. 

He doesn't mention "the incident." He doesn't tell that he was "terminated." 

Judge Pressler writes that he and his wife, Nancy, resigned in 1979 after realizing they could not dedicate themselves to work in the Southern Baptist Convention while at Bethel. In fact, the only statement he makes about Bethel was what a pastor told him at the time:

“Are you going to minister to 250 high-school students or 13 million Southern Baptists?”

In light of recent revelations, I think there are about 500 parents who were glad Bethel terminated him. Unfortunately, many Southern Baptists have no clue that the architects of the Conservative Resurgence are parties in a lawsuit that alleges predatory sexual behavior as well as a cover-up.

In 2007, I recommended that the Southern Baptist Convention establish a Sex-Offender Database so that people who are credibly accused or convicted of sexual abuse of children or women could be tracked and not passed off from one church to another by covering-up the allegations of abuse. 

In 2008, the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention denied my motion. 

One wonders if men with things to hide helped kill that motion.

What is being reported in the Houston Chronicle these last few weeks leads me to ask a very specific question:

"Had a database tracking sexual predators been in place in 1979, would that database have prevented Judge Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson from ever having influence in the Southern Baptist Convention?"

If you don't care, or worse, if you think the good these two did in the SBC rises above any allegations of predatory behavior or alleged cover-up, then you need to look at yourself carefully in the mirror and see if the gospel has indeed made a difference in your own life.

Stained-glass windows at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary may actually be more stained than Southern Baptists realize.