Amy Fritz is joined by Melissa J. Hogan on the Untangled Faith podcast to discuss the lawsuit involving Johnny Hunt and the SBC, addressing misconceptions and the importance of the judge's resolution.
Subscribe to my newsletter: https://untangledfaith.substack.com
In this episode we:
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Explore the origins and developments of the Johnny Hunt lawsuit against the SBC.
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Unpack the significance of the Guidepost Report in uncovering abuse within the SBC.
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Clarify common misconceptions about defamation cases and the impact of public testimony.
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Reveal the judge's resolution and its implications for survivors and the SBC.
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Highlight the importance of understanding power dynamics and trauma-informed perspectives in cases of abuse.
Featured Guest
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Melissa J. Hogan https://melissajhogan.substack.com
Resources mentioned
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Dr. David Pooler Professor David Pooler: What is consent and power in clergy-laity relations? | Diana R. Garland School of Social Work | Baylor University
- Judge Rules Against Johnny Hunt in Defamation Suit over SBC Abuse Report - Christianity Today
If you liked this episode you'll like these:
94: Lawsuit Update: Hypocrisy and Double Standards at Ramsey Solutions
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to episode 135 of the Untangled Faith
podcast. Today I'm joined by my friend Melissa J. Hogan for
a conversation about the lawsuit between Johnny Hunt and the
sbc, what some people are getting wrong, and the significance of
the resolution and memorandum from the judge. I am
really excited to share this episode with you.
(00:24):
I'm Amy Fritz and you're listening to the Untangled Faith
Podcast, a podcast for anyone who has found themselves
confused or disillusioned, mentioned in their faith journey. If you want to hold on to
your faith while untangling it from all that is not good or true, this
is the place for you. Welcome to the podcast,
Melissa. Thanks for having me, Amy. There's a lot
(00:45):
of things happening in the world right now, and there was one thing in particular
that I wanted you to be here to chat with us
about. It is a lawsuit involving the
SBC that was just my understanding is it was tossed out. But you're the
attorney, so I wanted you to kind of explain
what was happening with this case. And, and let's
(01:07):
just do that. First of all, give us a summary of this lawsuit
and where we're at. I will preface that with the fact that I
am an attorney for one of the two attorneys with
Boschevichin for the witness in the case,
the primary witness who was not a party to the suit.
So in some of these areas, I'm going to talk about generalities.
(01:29):
I'm obviously going to be careful about disclosing anything that
is privileged, but there's a lot that's public in this case. When you say that
the person that you worked with is not a party to the case, you're saying
this person is neither the defendant or the person
who's bringing the case, Correct? Right. Yes. So this
case was the genesis of this case is
(01:50):
in the Guidepost Report, which a lot of people are probably familiar with, if they
know anything about SBC or abuse or things like that. But the
sbc, a lot came out about covering up abuse.
And there was a huge article in the Houston Chronicle a number of years
ago. And so the messengers to the SBC
prompted a process to examine the
(02:12):
SBC's behavior in receiving complaints of abuse, tracking abusive
pastors and or covering up abuse. And that resulted
in a large investigation through which they hired
a company called Guidepost Solutions. And
the end result was a 200 and something
page report that was supposed to look at, you know,
(02:34):
in what ways did they know about abuse, cover it up,
enable it, and also any potential abuse within the
ranks of leadership of the sbc.
And as part of that, they received
complaints about different individuals that some of which
they had had before and some of which they had not. And one that
(02:56):
they had not known about was an allegation against a
former president of the SBC named Johnny
Hunt. And the allegation was that he
groomed the victim while he was president of the
SBC and he sexually assaulted her just after
his term as president of the SBC had ended.
(03:19):
So, obviously, Johnny Hunt was not happy about that. He
had a pretty lucrative life on this post SBC
president speaking circuit. Yeah. Not happy about being named in this
publicly released report. Correct. So
he was, you know, shunned, some would say very
rightfully so, by a number of places that would have had him
(03:41):
come speak. He actually ended up going through this process where
pastors unrelated to his church because he
stepped down from leadership in his church unrelated to his church, supposedly
restored him to leadership. We have
air quotes and restored from Melissa over here. Yes, air
quotes restored him and what, to the esoteric leadership
(04:03):
of the public Christian Respect Zone? I don't
know. Yeah. Yeah. And so then
he sued the sbc, the Southern Baptist
Convention, and Guidepost Solutions for a number of different
claims, but mostly for defamation,
portraying him in a false light. Disclosure, public
(04:25):
disclosure of private facts. A lot of these similar
claims. If we hearken back to us discussing Johnny
Depp suing for defamation for allegations
that he was an abuser, pretty similar in a lot of ways to
that. That's fascinating. So,
because the, my understanding is because
(04:47):
the, the question
about whether this is defamation or not would
include a third party, the, the victim of
Hunt. That is how you ended up being hired
and the third party ended up being brought in to
testify. Is that my understanding? Is that right? Yes. So. So he did not
(05:09):
sue the accuser, his accuser. One
of the elements in some of these types of claims is that
something is said publicly and the
accuser had not publicly made these claims. They went
to Guidepost in assurance of
confidentiality. And because, you know,
(05:31):
it had taken a long time for. It takes a long
time for anyone to process
through experiences that are really traumatic. So if
you, if you've read at all about research related to
sexual abuse as children, the average age of disclosure
is after 50 years old. And that is because
(05:53):
there's just so much that goes into lots of different kinds of
abuse related to thinking it's your fault, being
convinced by the abuser that it's your fault or that you wanted
it. These are common things. We, we understand that happen
in, in, in all different types of abuse, including
in adult clergy sexual abuse, which is,
(06:15):
you know, what we're talking about here. And so
because those claims were never made by,
by the victim publicly, it was a difficult,
it would have been an uphill battle to actually sue the victim
for defamation or those other types of claims, but
because those allegations were part of the crux
(06:37):
of the case, not necessarily whether they were true, although
truth is a complete defense to defamation. It's
whether guideposts and the SBC went
deeply enough in their investigation to meet a certain
standard in, in examining whether they were true.
So you, you probably don't hang around
(06:59):
online a lot to see everything people are saying about a case that you're
involved in. I mean, I would imagine in some ways it's helpful to kind of
know. In other ways it's, it's not. But could you speak to,
like, any misconceptions you think people might have about
what this is about and what the issue is or, or anything that
this is publicly available? This isn't like my privileged information because of
(07:21):
conversations that nobody else would know about. Well, first of all,
regarding public availability, the, the premise for cases in the
United States is that they should be publicly available and open to the
public for examining the, the reliability of our
court system, of our judges of how things are reasoned.
So it actually takes some type of
(07:43):
additional showing for something not to be public or for it to be
sealed. So, yeah, there's a, there's a lot public in a lot of cases. And,
and specifically in this case, except that the court
allowed the victim to use a pseudonym, and that
is, that's often what happens
in cases of sexual assault, different kinds of
(08:04):
abuse. So she went under the pseudonym Jane Doe,
and the court allowed that and redaction of anything that was publicly
identifying of her or her family. But a
lot of people look at this and think the question is, did this
happen? Did this happen? Did it happen how they said it
happened? And, and while proving that
(08:26):
it happened and it happened in this way and that it was
sexual assault is a complete defense to,
to some of the claims, to the defamation claim, for
sure, the court doesn't even have to decide
that. They just have to decide that, that the
investigative agency Guidepost Solutions and the
(08:48):
SBC met their burden in their
investigation, so that they did what's kind of called due
diligence that they had corroborating. They, they
went deeply enough, they had corroborating witnesses, they
interviewed people, they gave, you know, the alleged
offender a chance to speak and, and tell his side of the story, which
(09:09):
they absolutely did. And that was some of the argument in.
In this case is. Yeah. When he had the opportunity
to. To make his case for what he
said happened, how did I post how many different stories
he told? Many, many. Right. And the first
opportunity was to guide Posts. Is that, is that
(09:31):
a correct statement? Yes, that when dad Post was doing the,
the taking the information in, they reached out in some way.
They reached out to him twice. Yes. And. And I believe it's
been a while since I've read some of this, but I believe the first time
they asked him if he knew that the, the couple that
was the accuser and. And her husband, who was an SBC
(09:53):
pastor, and he said he. He didn't know them. So,
you know, that's, that's the first kind of, you know, bland denial of.
Of even knowing them. And then they, I
think the second time that they reached out to
him, he said that he. So the
backing up a little bit. The allegations involved being
(10:16):
on a trip and in adjoining
condos. And, and this is all public in the Guidepost Report,
so none of this is private, that he came
into her condo, came out onto her balcony, and
then sexually assaulted her inside her condo.
So his second statement was, I was never on her
(10:37):
balcony. I was never in her condo. And there was
no contact whatsoever. So the first was, I
don't know this person. Yeah, well, don't. Don't know this couple or the
pastor. Don't know this couple. Second was, I was never in
that area. Yeah. And. And
so part of the crux of the case was he was saying, well, they didn't
(10:59):
know my side of the story. But when you, when you
tell falsehoods, that's why they don't know, can you
really blame them? And that's part of what the court said. You know, you.
They. The court went through, you know, the number of different
stories that he had told, because then eventually, and
as part of this coming out, I think when he publicly,
(11:21):
when the report came out and he had to make some kind of public statement,
I think it was something to the effect of, well, this was a, you know,
a consensual sexual encounter with someone who was not my wife.
And so that was the third. The third, at least the third story.
Wow. And then at some point, he insinuates
what I call kind of the fourth story was he insinuates that she was,
(11:44):
you know, after him or, you know, some other. There's a lot
of changing of the Story. Yeah, from. So the first thing I
thought of when you were explaining, like, the misconception about, like, is this
about whether something happened or not? Is what I've learned
from advisory opinions Sarah Isger and
David French about how the court answers a question, a specific question
(12:06):
before them. So there was a specific question before
this, this judge. It wasn't about, like, tell me everything you think
about. Make it. Make a determination about xyz.
It was. It was a very specific thing that they were there for. So that's
helpful. Another really interesting thing is when this report came out, you and
I were together. Do you remember that? We were driving home
(12:29):
from Illinois and it was May.
You would have not known that you would have had anything to do with.
This in Illinois for. In May, we're there for a conference,
and we knew the report was going to be coming out, and
it came out while we were driving home. You somehow brought it up on your
phone and had your phone read it out loud because it was so. And we
(12:51):
just sat there. So many pages, so many pages, taking it
in. I forgot. I forgot that. I completely forgot
that. And who would have thought that year,
a year and a half later. Wild, Wild. I want
to circle back to something that you said about Guideposts, because I think
part of the online discourse that I've been really
(13:14):
frustrated about is this argument
from people that I would say should
know better than to speak as if they had authority
on something and knowledge about something that they don't. Is this
argument that says, well, it seems to me
that abuse victims can just randomly accuse somebody and
(13:36):
with no other information out
there, we're just supposed to believe them
and they. They get to be anonymous and
we don't get to evaluate their credibility.
I would love to hear you speak to that what you can. My frustration, and
I'm not even in the case, is that my understanding is Guidepost
(13:58):
wouldn't have just been like, thanks for giving me this
statement. I'm not going to do any other due diligence.
I've, you know, my understanding is Guidepost understands they have
training in, like, abuse dynamics, how these things work, and they would have
done some additional due diligence before just
randomly sharing something. Because the
(14:19):
implications are big. The implications are very big
because this is the very kind of implication. You're risking being
sued for defamation. Right. Or in some
other. For being negligent, sharing private
facts. So any kind of organization that
does an investigation, including, you know, the
(14:41):
police, get knocked on, too, for, you know, zeroing in on
one, you Know, potential suspect and, and you know, to the
exclusion of all else, someone who is good at their work,
whether it is a police officer or an investigative firm.
You know, kind of like this. Yes. You have
to play devil's advocate. You have to look
(15:03):
at, you know, alternative theories of the case. You have to look
at corroborating, look for, or the absence of corroborating
evidence. You have to look at credibility and, you know,
credibility as, as an attorney, if you are making a
case to, to a court, let's say, you know, what,
whatever kind of case you have a contract dispute, or if you're, you
(15:25):
know, defending someone accused of a crime or if you're prosecuting some
of someone accused of a crime. As a lawyer, you learn
about credibility and ways
to show or undermine somebody's credibility or what, what
shows they are or are not credible. And it can be things like
prior consistent statements. So the, the story
(15:47):
that they've told in the past, not necessarily how they
interpret it, because trauma, you know, the same exact
facts can have happened, but, you know, as a
child victim of sexual abuse, say they
thought it was normal, so they, they didn't call it abuse. They didn't,
you know, do all these things, but the same facts happen. So the, the prior
(16:09):
consistent statements are often about, like, what are the actual facts that
happened? Have those been told consistently?
And, you know, were there any contemporaneous notes?
So did you. Obviously the, the best primary information
which often does not exist are things like recordings or
video recordings. And you know, that's very
(16:31):
rare in any kind of case of sexual abuse or sexual assault.
You know, if it's public, maybe there is a, you know, a street cam or
something like that, but generally very rare. So you have to go to,
you know, other types of evidence. So like contemporaneous
notes. Did you take notes or tell someone else
about it at the time or closer in time to,
(16:54):
to the actual events that happened. So things like that
are ways that you can try to corroborate something
and then credibility is its own. If, if the,
the victim is saying this is what happened and they're saying that
now and it's, you know, removed in time. It's, you know, are they
credible and, you know, looking at, you know, their general
(17:16):
truth telling other aspects that would suggest,
you know, they're credible or they're not credible in other circumstances.
So, you know, what kind of level of detail do they have and do those
details check out? And then, so, you know, in this
case, you had, you know, if, if you were going to
look solely at whether the events actually happened or
(17:39):
not. But like I said, there's. We're one step removed on what the court's actual
inquiry was. But in, in terms of what
Guidepost had to look at, or any investigative firm,
you're looking at the credibility of the victim versus the, the
credibility of the offender. And in this case, you
had Johnny Hunt saying he, he didn't know this
(18:01):
pastor and then saying that, you know,
none of this was true in terms of him being on the balcony or
in the condo or. And there was no contact when there was
a number of pieces of evidence saying that
that wasn't true, and thus he was not credible because
even now he would admit he was lying at that point. Now,
(18:24):
he can give a lot of reasons why he was lying, but he was lying
and he was lying to protect himself. And,
you know, then that. That reduces your credibility significantly.
Yeah, that helps. I think that helps to frame
it. And it certainly speaks to the
online mob that says, you know, people
(18:46):
just say you need to believe women or whoever
that say you just believe them, you don't question them, or there's a couple
of different things going on there. Like, in general, that's a whole different thing than
like a company, an organization like
Guidepost, and a legal standard
for defamation, that there's different layers and
(19:08):
different things that they would jump through. So Guideposts, you're saying, wouldn't have just
said, thank you for your one statement. Right. I'm
going to publish it now without going any further. So I think that's
because some people argued it as if that's the way. It
was when they, when they call it like an anonymous source. Yeah,
the person is not anonymous to, to the people
(19:31):
investigating. You know, it wasn't like they just sent an anonymous
letter. I mean, that would never be published in a
report like this. You know, the, the person, if they are a
victim, you know, in, in lots of different courts, there are different kinds of
rape shield laws, you know, other ways where the victim
isn't necessarily known to the public or using a pseudonym like Jane
(19:53):
Doe. But that doesn't mean they are an anonymous
source. And in fact, they're not, because their
credibility and the things they say are being checked out and
evaluated by whatever the investigative agency
or people are. So. Yeah, no, there's not just
people anonymously giving accusations
(20:13):
and bringing down a good man. Yeah, you know, that,
that, that would be very, very rare. And I don't personally know
of a case like that. Yeah. Now for a quick Break.
Now back to the show. Do you want to speak to the doxing
or not? There's several
(20:36):
considerations in thinking about the idea of doxing.
A. Even if you just said it, an alleged victim of
sexual assault or sexual abuse. There's a lot of things to think about
there. One is imagine if
you or your daughter. Imagine if your
daughter was a victim of sexual assault
(20:57):
and it was painful
and traumatic. And, you know, there are lots
of victims who say it's embarrassing. And we say, well, they
shouldn't have to be embarrassed. We know that now, like, it's not their fault. But
there is. There are still layers of shame related
to different types of sexual abuse or sexual assault.
(21:20):
Imagine if that was your daughter or best friend.
Would you want someone putting them on blast
and you know their. Their name in a book or
on Twitter? No, I can't. Our
compassion, our compassion as
people. Our compassion as
(21:41):
believers in Jesus Christ
should not lean towards causing someone
else pain in that way. Yeah. And it.
For the people that would say it's somehow necessary in order to
examine their claims. No, you. You
can examine lots of different things without putting their name out
(22:03):
publicly. And journalists, in fact, in fact do. And that's
another aspect to consider is the ethics
and the examination that good
ethical journalists do. And, you know, there's a lot
of information, I know that journalists know and that I know
as a lawyer that we're not putting out there publicly. And that's
(22:26):
because either we don't have enough corroboration
or are, you know, our ethics say not
to put that out there, including, you know, journalists who
know who a victim of different types of abuse or assault
are, and they're not putting it out there publicly. So.
And certainly, like I said, our, our compassion as
(22:48):
Jesus followers should not be to cause additional
pain. If you want to talk about this, you can or not. But
in regard to, you know, a pretty public figure
who decided to publish the name of the
survivor, in this case in an actual book that exists in
the world and isn't just on the Internet, which is, I would
(23:11):
say, is a pretty big deal too, when you have a lot of people who
follow you. What I saw there was really
horrifying ignorance about the
whole, even things that should have been publicly
understood and leaving out some things that were
really important to the framing of this
(23:33):
to say to really cast doubt into.
Maybe we shouldn't believe this person because of xyz. And also we
should just put their name out there if they're, if they're going to
accuse somebody. I don't know if you want to speak to that or not. I
had some big concerns about somebody with a platform
speaking so as if they had authority on this
(23:54):
matter. Yeah. And it was
wildly off base. What everything I knew about abuse
dynamics and I didn't have any insider information about the case. All I knew
was what was publicly available. Yeah, I mean, I
have a lot of thoughts about that. And you know, the, the
first is that I observed a
(24:17):
lack of, you know, compassion, a lack
of being trauma informed, a lack of
understanding of how adult
clergy sexual abuse works. I think one of the points
was this wasn't her pastor. And
that is a misunderstanding of how different types of
(24:39):
power work. And of course, there is
a, a continuum of power, different types
of power. And someone who is the
president of the Southern Baptist
Convention has a type of power
over people who are either within the Southern Baptist
(25:00):
Convention or much less a pastor and their
wife who are being mentored in many
ways by that president of the Southern Baptist
Convention. That is an unequal amount of
power and, and failure to recognize that
is either extremely ignorant
(25:21):
or intentionally capitalizing in order
to make money by selling a book. Yeah. The
power dynamics is something
I think a lot of people don't understand. I was hearing a pretty high profile
person talk about their experience with a very powerful
person and how, how they changed how they viewed their experience over the
(25:42):
years. Whether like, first of all, they were like,
yeah, it was consensual to later on coming to a place
like, I shouldn't have even been there. I shouldn't
have even been in that room. Power is a,
it is a concept that we really have to
look at and be aware of because we all have different types
(26:06):
of power and, and influence, you know, and it's influence, power. The
definition of power is just the ability to influence people. And
so you and I each, by being on this podcast and you by
having this podcast, have a certain type of power.
And I've watched you reckon with, you know, what does that look
like to steward it well. And we can't
(26:28):
think about how we steward it well and steward the gifts that God has given
us without recognizing that it exists. And the idea
that somebody has to be a direct, in a direct
line above you in order to take
advantage of an unnatural balance,
you know, an imbalance of power is just not true. If
(26:50):
that was the case, then, you know, domestic abuse couldn't happen
because, you know, we're not saying. And in fact, I think the
argument in a lot of ways is, is that the husband is
not the direct line over the wife and not the
intermediary between her and Jesus. That's part of the
argument some really unhealthy,
(27:12):
spiritually and physically and emotionally abusive husbands
make. But, you know, they have a power in different ways.
Often it's financial power or it's emotional power
in the way that they manipulate physical power. They can be
physically imposing or intimidating. So there's different types of
power. And I always say too,
(27:35):
for people who are what I would term
pathological liars, they have a superpower
that a lot of the world doesn't have, and that is
the ability and willingness to lie
and fabricate on a level that most of us can't really
conceive of. We don't expect that people will
(27:57):
do that. We don't look for it necessarily.
And so when someone can lie on that level and
fabricate and manipulate, it is a power over us
because we're just not expecting that. Now I would argue we need to
be. Work at being more discerning. And because the Bible talks about
the wolves all the time and the wolves are in the church, the
(28:19):
wolves are not out there everywhere. Maybe wolves there, but,
but Jesus talks a lot about the, the spiritual leaders
and that type of behavior. So yeah,
I, it's, I wouldn't have. To think about wolves if they never were in our
area. If they, if they never made it into the, into our environment. Like, why
would we need to be warned about them or say power? Even in, in
(28:42):
the example of, you know, our experience with Ramsey
solutions, we were not employees there. So somebody could try to say,
well, you know, what specific power did Dave
Ramsey have over us? But when I went
into to meet with him and
here's. He has control of the income of our family. He
(29:04):
is a wealthy and influential person in our community.
He commandeers the minds
and belief systems of the thousand people that work there and clearly
manipulated that to his advantage when he lied about me to all
thousand people. So that is an imbalance of
power that was really difficult for
(29:25):
me to be believed by anyone
in that situation, much less if that person, you know,
takes that power and uses it to, to lie and kind of
bully. And so yeah, I think in,
in, in that specific incidence of doxxing and trying to say that,
you know, to defend or explain, you
(29:48):
know, that this guy was not her pastor. That's a complete
misunderstanding of how power works. And then how power works in terms of
like adult clergy sexual abuse specifically. I'm actually,
I just asked for the email for David Pooler Because I'm going to have him
on the podcast. He's an expert. He is a
out of Baylor University, and he has done
(30:10):
a lot of research on adult clergy sexual abuse. And I'm
looking forward to actually having a more in depth conversation with somebody who's researched
is very misunderstood and it feels like a really new thing for people to
wrap their, their minds around. And so I don't blame people
entirely for not getting it. And there is a little education
gap there, and I think people are leaning into it a little more. I have
(30:33):
not listened to the recent podcast series all the Buried Women
that Beth Allison Barr put out with Savannah Locke, I
think is her name. But the most recent episode, I guess, featured David
Pooler talking about adult clergy sexual abuse. And so
go check that out in the meantime. I think that would be great. I have
already listened to it. Oh, was it good? Yeah. David and I met and we
(30:55):
had some great conversations. Yeah. Smart guy. And I'm such a
nerd for research and, you know, publishing research
and, and understanding things, using, using
frameworks to educate people. And he's, he's really good at that.
Yeah. So what was the ruling from the judge on this case?
So in this case, the judge issued what I would
(31:18):
call a Pretty scathing opinion,
74 pages, which is not
super common at this level of court. This is a district court,
which is a trial court. And I mean, this is a. Was a major
ruling. It was dismissing almost the entire case.
So early on in the case, the judge had dismissed one of the claims
(31:41):
and this dismissed the other, Gosh, I want
to say five claims. The only claim
it left was not related to the report.
Specifically, he dismissed all the claims related to the Guidepost
Report, which included defamation claims, false
light, publication of private facts. And the only
(32:03):
claim that remained was a defamation claim related to a
tweet that the then president of the sbc,
Bart Barber, had tweeted related to
that, that Johnny Hunt's actions would be
a felony sexual assault, I believe, in any, almost
any jurisdiction. So it was characterizing it in that
(32:25):
way. And it's not that that claim
is going to be successful necessarily, it's just that the judge said,
well, there's certain genuine issues of
material fact. So there's a thing called a standard of review,
depending on when a judge is looking at a case for whether a claim
can survive. And the standard review at this stage, which was
(32:47):
a motion for summary judgment, is that there are no genuine issues of
material fact and a party is entitled to judgment
as a matter of Law. So what the judge said related to
the claims he dismissed was even, you know,
looking at all the facts that are presented because,
you know, here's what they knew at the time and here's the
(33:09):
level of investigation that they went through.
And, you know, here's what he's saying related to what he
thinks is credible or wrong with it. Taking all that to
be the case, there's no genuine issues
of the facts that are material to deciding
this isn't a claim. This claim can't survive. And so only the claim
(33:32):
related to the tweet survived. So I read.
I read the memorandum from the
judge, and
I remember reading it and thinking, melissa's really
happy with this. I imagined
that your client was pretty pleased,
(33:52):
as was Boz. Why?
Why was how it was presented and what was included
so significant? There were a number of things that were
significant about this opinion. The first thing I noticed
was how much of the Guidepost report was in
the opinion. Yeah. And, you know, I actually had
(34:15):
to go back and forth a number of times going, wait, wait a second, is
this still in the report? Is this still a quotation of the report?
And it was Approximately. It was 74 page report
or 74 page opinion. Approximately 30
pages of that was reprinted from the
Guidepost report. That's wild. Because the whole thing happened
(34:37):
because Hunt did not like the things that
Guidepost put out into the world, said it shouldn't have been there. And the judge
was like, not only do I disagree, but I'm going to put it in
here again for more people, just in case you missed it. Here's the
things related to that. This is not an accident. This was
not a lazy clerk or a lazy
(34:59):
judge. Yeah. In order to
explain the opinion and
explain how he got there, he felt that these
portions of the report were relevant because in all
likelihood, a lot of these cases go up on appeal. And if you're just
citing to things. He's annoying his work. There's. He's showing his work.
(35:20):
Exactly. And I was. So judges
have what are called law clerks, and they
usually assist with conducting trials, you know, at this
level or, you know, writing opinions. They write things that are
called bench briefs. So when a. When a motion comes to the court like
this, the clerk. I was a clerk on the sixth Circuit of court
(35:43):
Appeals, Court of appeals, which is the court above this. So if this gets appealed,
it will go to the court that I was a clerk on. So you examine
all the briefs of the parties and you write a
bench brief, which is a summary of both Sides. And
you research the case law independently, not just what they give
you, because there's some really bad lawyers out
(36:04):
there. Well, and sometimes you have, you know, prisoners who are pro
se, and they're not giving you the accurate case law necessarily.
So you research independently. Pro se is representing themselves. Yes,
representing themselves. And you. You look at their briefs, their arguments,
you research independently, and you say, here's the. Here's
the arguments on both sides. Here's what I believe the law
(36:26):
says and how, you know, how I would expect
you would probably rule or I think you should rule. And then the judge takes
that. Takes that all in. They don't just rubber stamp it. Obviously, they are
the judge. And then they. And depending
on how they come come out of the bench brief, they may ask that
clerk to then write a draft opinion or they may write. Judges have different
(36:49):
procedures. But the fact that there was that much in there was not
an accident. And in that 30 pages was
also about 10 pages of that
were the allegations against Johnny Hunt.
And that's also not an accident because, yeah, the things that are
in court records. So what you say in a brief
(37:11):
submitted to the court or what's in the court opinion
that can't be subject to, like, a defamation
claim. And so now it's in there and. You say
it's memorialized. Does that for all time. It's there,
which is. Was great. But, yeah, I mean, that's just one aspect of the
opinion that I felt was incredibly significant.
(37:33):
Like I said, the judge also went through the different
stories and. And I'm summarizing them more, you know, closely
together than. Than the court did, but went through here's. Here's the different stories
he told. And then he complained that they didn't know,
you know, they didn't have his side. Well, you know,
he didn't have credibility. And. And then he, you know, told more stories.
(37:57):
Another thing that was significant was that in one of the
claims, there was a higher standard of review
if these were public issues of public concern.
And the court held that in analyses of the
Catholic Church and the sexual abuse crisis there, these are
also issues of public concern. So this Guidepost report, you
(38:18):
know, in its look at how the church handled
these things, they were issues of public concern. And so the
threshold for what he would have had to prove
in those specific claims was higher
than if these were more private, just a private
matter. So that was significant. And then the
(38:40):
court. One of the beautiful things I think
that happened is the court, you know,
I feel like they saw
this case for what it was. They. I feel like
they saw what has happened here
and they, you know, highlighted the fact that
(39:02):
there's no indication that the
victim was not credible, that she. There's
no indication she wasn't credible when. When Guidepost
interviewed her, there was no indication she was not credible
since that time. And really
affirmed that in ways that I feel like was a
(39:23):
victory for people who
come forward and are being drug through a
process that is painful,
it's vulnerable, it's expensive,
it's, you know, traumatic. And,
you know, while, you know, there would have been a lot of
(39:46):
additional ways in which a victim could be
validated and have gotten, you know, some
kind of actual accountability ways further
than what happened here, it was still good to see.
Yeah. In the limited ways in which the court could
validate and show concern
(40:07):
for her credibility and what has happened in this case, the court did.
And so that was. That was important because, you know,
Johnny Hunt couldn't really point to anything that
Guidepost had or that it. It reason that a
reasonable person would have uncovered that would have said in 2022,
she wasn't credit credible. And there's still
(40:29):
nothing. So I think that that's the. That was the
court's, you know, emphasis. What did you want him to do? There's no
indication she was not credible. And, yeah, you know, I would say
she is credible. Yeah. Yeah, it was great. It was so
good. And then I saw that she gave a statement and actually used her
name to reporters, which I have to think was
(40:51):
really a powerful moment of saying on my own
terms, I'm gonna say something and
sign my name on it. It was just really,
really great. I want to give her a virtual high five
from. From my little place in Middle Tennessee. Like, I feel kind
of choked up thinking about it. There is a whole
(41:13):
moment for any victim
when, I mean, you have to be ready to come
forward. You know, there's such a fear. Part of
how abuse works is
weaves this fear into you that is. It's
hard to explain that. What if I say something. What
(41:37):
if I say something to anyone? And so there's just this
slow. There's this slow
revealing that happens externally,
but then this slow empowering internally. I mean, I can
remember the first time I said the
word abuse to someone. I was
(41:57):
walking. I was. My church group, we were walking on
this path, having a, like a women's walking day first
time. And, you know, and so it's this
slow empowering of is it
safe to say anything? And then you say a little Bit
more. And so when people question why don't abuse
(42:19):
victims speak up? That's a complete misunderstanding
of how trauma works, how, how
abusers work to warp your mind around what has
happened and your own agenc about
speaking up or even examining what's happened to you.
And you know, the slow empowering. And like I said, this
(42:41):
is why, why the average age of, of disclosure of childhood sexual abuse
is beyond the age 50. Because it has taken a long time.
But you know, where you can slowly start
to tell people and understand what happened to you. And
then at some point it's, can I speak about this
publicly? Can I How will it be received? Right. Well, can
(43:03):
I use my name? And, and there's going to be
off. Well, often is blowback at different stages, but you're
slowly getting stronger and you're also getting
stronger in your own identity. Because part of what
abuse does is it strips you of your
agency, strips you of your identity of who you are. And you have
(43:25):
to reconstruct who am I and who do
I believe? Because you've been trained to believe the
abuser's story of who you are and what
happened and going in that confidence in knowing
you know what, I actually know what happened and
I know who I am and I don't have to bear under
(43:47):
the weight of the abuser's warped
sense of me or what happened. And so you
have to build up that armor over time because you
know you're going to get blowback at some point when you know
there's always going to be people who don't believe you. There's always going to be
people who say, well, you should have done this and you should have thought this
(44:08):
and didn't, you know this. And so building up that confidence and
knowing who you are and going, I don't give a flying flip
what yeah. About it. I know who I am. I know what
happened and I'm gonna stand. And you know what? Jesus loves
me and I, I don't need their approval. I know it's true.
I, I want to speak to the people that are listening. I know I
(44:30):
have people that listen, that they haven't experienced this personally.
They want to be an informed,
wise person in this world. They want to be
somebody that deals with these things. Well, I want to
say to you, thank you first of all for listening, but this isn't
like a happy, clappy topic. This is. This is not
(44:52):
light and fluffy. Thank you for
listening. And also go listen to go read some
things by Dr. David Pooler. Is he a Ph.D. david
Pooler, if you ever think,
if you're ever tempted, world, anyone in the world, if you're ever
tempted to just declare to the world what is true about a
(45:14):
situation like this, I beg of you to do a
little bit of educating yourself first,
because there are people that are listening to your declaration of who is right
and wrong in these things that have never told you their experience.
And they will know how safe they are with you
(45:35):
and how educated you are in abuse dynamics
based on how you talk about things that you didn't
know impacted them. Yeah, and, you
know, we don't have to have answers
to everything. I mean, I think that's one of the things we've talked about,
is sometimes people think they have to comment on everything or have the answer.
(45:57):
We don't have to have the answer. And people think, well, I have to
dig into this because I've got to be able to tell people whether I believe
this person or this person. Maybe you don't. Yeah,
maybe. Maybe don't speak. I mean, I have been, you
know, convicted about. Sometimes it's good to let some
things play out and to say, you know what? I'm not legal. Things
(46:20):
are complicated. I'm not sure what all is going on here. I'm not going to
make a definitive statement about something that I'm not. I might
spend some time learning a few things, but I, I'm going to
hesitate making definitive statements. Maybe I'll
say, here's something I've learned. Here are some patterns I see happen.
Let's see what happens here. It's different
(46:43):
if it's someone you're in relationship with and they come to you and
they say, this is what has happened to me versus, like
something happening out in the public sphere that we don't necessarily have to comment on.
And in fact, we may not have access to
the information that can give us some definitive
way to look at it and understand it. But you're right, we
(47:05):
can talk about. Here's what I know about this topic. Here's what I
know about patterns of behavior
in abusive people or abusive
institutions. Here's what I know about common patterns of behavior
for someone who has experienced sexual assault
or some type of sexual abuse or trauma. And,
(47:27):
you know, and then people can look at situations. But yeah,
I think if it's someone we're in relationship with
and they come to you, you know. Yes. The first thing you do is,
is support and love
and, and believe. And obviously, if there's
information, information that suggests other ways of
(47:49):
looking at it, you don't turn a blind eye to anything. Yeah. But
especially publicly, you know, we. We may not
have all the answers, but we should
be educated. We should learn about what it looks
like. And, you know, I, I think back,
even in my own life, I remember when the first
(48:12):
allegations came out about Bill Cosby, and I think. I think
it was when I had young kids, and, you know, you've got a lot going
on in your life, and it wasn't something I dug into
because obviously, I didn't need to necessarily have any.
Nobody was asking me for my opinion about whether Bill Cosby was a sexual
abuser. But, you know, many years later,
(48:34):
when, you know, you really do look at the evidence
and what came out. Yeah,
I wish I had, as with a lot of people, wish I had
listened earlier to know, you know, what had happened to
these women. Yeah, I think it's a good point that we don't.
We're not telling people that need to learn everything. That's a heavy burden to place
(48:56):
on you. But to learn some things
will be helpful. I think it makes us humble, too, to be like, oh, I
didn't know that. I didn't understand how that that works. Now, am
I right that there's another case involving the
SBC that may be playing
out? Is it the same district? Do you
(49:18):
know anything, or can you say anything there?
(50:04):
Yeah.
Welcome to episode 135 of the Untangled Faith
podcast. Today I'm joined by my friend Melissa J. Hogan for
a conversation about the lawsuit between Johnny Hunt and the
sbc, what some people are getting wrong, and the significance of
the resolution and memorandum from the judge. I am
really excited to share this episode with you.
(00:24):
I'm Amy Fritz and you're listening to the Untangled Faith
Podcast, a podcast for anyone who has found themselves
confused or disillusioned, mentioned in their faith journey. If you want to hold on to
your faith while untangling it from all that is not good or true, this
is the place for you. Welcome to the podcast,
Melissa. Thanks for having me, Amy. There's a lot
(00:45):
of things happening in the world right now, and there was one thing in particular
that I wanted you to be here to chat with us
about. It is a lawsuit involving the
SBC that was just my understanding is it was tossed out. But you're the
attorney, so I wanted you to kind of explain
what was happening with this case. And, and let's
(01:07):
just do that. First of all, give us a summary of this lawsuit
and where we're at. I will preface that with the fact that I
am an attorney for one of the two attorneys with
Boschevichin for the witness in the case,
the primary witness who was not a party to the suit.
So in some of these areas, I'm going to talk about generalities.
(01:29):
I'm obviously going to be careful about disclosing anything that
is privileged, but there's a lot that's public in this case. When you say that
the person that you worked with is not a party to the case, you're saying
this person is neither the defendant or the person
who's bringing the case, Correct? Right. Yes. So this
case was the genesis of this case is
(01:50):
in the Guidepost Report, which a lot of people are probably familiar with, if they
know anything about SBC or abuse or things like that. But the
sbc, a lot came out about covering up abuse.
And there was a huge article in the Houston Chronicle a number of years
ago. And so the messengers to the SBC
prompted a process to examine the
(02:12):
SBC's behavior in receiving complaints of abuse, tracking abusive
pastors and or covering up abuse. And that resulted
in a large investigation through which they hired
a company called Guidepost Solutions. And
the end result was a 200 and something
page report that was supposed to look at, you know,
(02:34):
in what ways did they know about abuse, cover it up,
enable it, and also any potential abuse within the
ranks of leadership of the sbc.
And as part of that, they received
complaints about different individuals that some of which
they had had before and some of which they had not. And one that
(02:56):
they had not known about was an allegation against a
former president of the SBC named Johnny
Hunt. And the allegation was that he
groomed the victim while he was president of the
SBC and he sexually assaulted her just after
his term as president of the SBC had ended.
(03:19):
So, obviously, Johnny Hunt was not happy about that. He
had a pretty lucrative life on this post SBC
president speaking circuit. Yeah. Not happy about being named in this
publicly released report. Correct. So
he was, you know, shunned, some would say very
rightfully so, by a number of places that would have had him
(03:41):
come speak. He actually ended up going through this process where
pastors unrelated to his church because he
stepped down from leadership in his church unrelated to his church, supposedly
restored him to leadership. We have
air quotes and restored from Melissa over here. Yes, air
quotes restored him and what, to the esoteric leadership
(04:03):
of the public Christian Respect Zone? I don't
know. Yeah. Yeah. And so then
he sued the sbc, the Southern Baptist
Convention, and Guidepost Solutions for a number of different
claims, but mostly for defamation,
portraying him in a false light. Disclosure, public
(04:25):
disclosure of private facts. A lot of these similar
claims. If we hearken back to us discussing Johnny
Depp suing for defamation for allegations
that he was an abuser, pretty similar in a lot of ways to
that. That's fascinating. So,
because the, my understanding is because
(04:47):
the, the question
about whether this is defamation or not would
include a third party, the, the victim of
Hunt. That is how you ended up being hired
and the third party ended up being brought in to
testify. Is that my understanding? Is that right? Yes. So. So he did not
(05:09):
sue the accuser, his accuser. One
of the elements in some of these types of claims is that
something is said publicly and the
accuser had not publicly made these claims. They went
to Guidepost in assurance of
confidentiality. And because, you know,
(05:31):
it had taken a long time for. It takes a long
time for anyone to process
through experiences that are really traumatic. So if
you, if you've read at all about research related to
sexual abuse as children, the average age of disclosure
is after 50 years old. And that is because
(05:53):
there's just so much that goes into lots of different kinds of
abuse related to thinking it's your fault, being
convinced by the abuser that it's your fault or that you wanted
it. These are common things. We, we understand that happen
in, in, in all different types of abuse, including
in adult clergy sexual abuse, which is,
(06:15):
you know, what we're talking about here. And so
because those claims were never made by,
by the victim publicly, it was a difficult,
it would have been an uphill battle to actually sue the victim
for defamation or those other types of claims, but
because those allegations were part of the crux
(06:37):
of the case, not necessarily whether they were true, although
truth is a complete defense to defamation. It's
whether guideposts and the SBC went
deeply enough in their investigation to meet a certain
standard in, in examining whether they were true.
So you, you probably don't hang around
(06:59):
online a lot to see everything people are saying about a case that you're
involved in. I mean, I would imagine in some ways it's helpful to kind of
know. In other ways it's, it's not. But could you speak to,
like, any misconceptions you think people might have about
what this is about and what the issue is or, or anything that
this is publicly available? This isn't like my privileged information because of
(07:21):
conversations that nobody else would know about. Well, first of all,
regarding public availability, the, the premise for cases in the
United States is that they should be publicly available and open to the
public for examining the, the reliability of our
court system, of our judges of how things are reasoned.
So it actually takes some type of
(07:43):
additional showing for something not to be public or for it to be
sealed. So, yeah, there's a, there's a lot public in a lot of cases. And,
and specifically in this case, except that the court
allowed the victim to use a pseudonym, and that
is, that's often what happens
in cases of sexual assault, different kinds of
(08:04):
abuse. So she went under the pseudonym Jane Doe,
and the court allowed that and redaction of anything that was publicly
identifying of her or her family. But a
lot of people look at this and think the question is, did this
happen? Did this happen? Did it happen how they said it
happened? And, and while proving that
(08:26):
it happened and it happened in this way and that it was
sexual assault is a complete defense to,
to some of the claims, to the defamation claim, for
sure, the court doesn't even have to decide
that. They just have to decide that, that the
investigative agency Guidepost Solutions and the
(08:48):
SBC met their burden in their
investigation, so that they did what's kind of called due
diligence that they had corroborating. They, they
went deeply enough, they had corroborating witnesses, they
interviewed people, they gave, you know, the alleged
offender a chance to speak and, and tell his side of the story, which
(09:09):
they absolutely did. And that was some of the argument in.
In this case is. Yeah. When he had the opportunity
to. To make his case for what he
said happened, how did I post how many different stories
he told? Many, many. Right. And the first
opportunity was to guide Posts. Is that, is that
(09:31):
a correct statement? Yes, that when dad Post was doing the,
the taking the information in, they reached out in some way.
They reached out to him twice. Yes. And. And I believe it's
been a while since I've read some of this, but I believe the first time
they asked him if he knew that the, the couple that
was the accuser and. And her husband, who was an SBC
(09:53):
pastor, and he said he. He didn't know them. So,
you know, that's, that's the first kind of, you know, bland denial of.
Of even knowing them. And then they, I
think the second time that they reached out to
him, he said that he. So the
backing up a little bit. The allegations involved being
(10:16):
on a trip and in adjoining
condos. And, and this is all public in the Guidepost Report,
so none of this is private, that he came
into her condo, came out onto her balcony, and
then sexually assaulted her inside her condo.
So his second statement was, I was never on her
(10:37):
balcony. I was never in her condo. And there was
no contact whatsoever. So the first was, I
don't know this person. Yeah, well, don't. Don't know this couple or the
pastor. Don't know this couple. Second was, I was never in
that area. Yeah. And. And
so part of the crux of the case was he was saying, well, they didn't
(10:59):
know my side of the story. But when you, when you
tell falsehoods, that's why they don't know, can you
really blame them? And that's part of what the court said. You know, you.
They. The court went through, you know, the number of different
stories that he had told, because then eventually, and
as part of this coming out, I think when he publicly,
(11:21):
when the report came out and he had to make some kind of public statement,
I think it was something to the effect of, well, this was a, you know,
a consensual sexual encounter with someone who was not my wife.
And so that was the third. The third, at least the third story.
Wow. And then at some point, he insinuates
what I call kind of the fourth story was he insinuates that she was,
(11:44):
you know, after him or, you know, some other. There's a lot
of changing of the Story. Yeah, from. So the first thing I
thought of when you were explaining, like, the misconception about, like, is this
about whether something happened or not? Is what I've learned
from advisory opinions Sarah Isger and
David French about how the court answers a question, a specific question
(12:06):
before them. So there was a specific question before
this, this judge. It wasn't about, like, tell me everything you think
about. Make it. Make a determination about xyz.
It was. It was a very specific thing that they were there for. So that's
helpful. Another really interesting thing is when this report came out, you and
I were together. Do you remember that? We were driving home
(12:29):
from Illinois and it was May.
You would have not known that you would have had anything to do with.
This in Illinois for. In May, we're there for a conference,
and we knew the report was going to be coming out, and
it came out while we were driving home. You somehow brought it up on your
phone and had your phone read it out loud because it was so. And we
(12:51):
just sat there. So many pages, so many pages, taking it
in. I forgot. I forgot that. I completely forgot
that. And who would have thought that year,
a year and a half later. Wild, Wild. I want
to circle back to something that you said about Guideposts, because I think
part of the online discourse that I've been really
(13:14):
frustrated about is this argument
from people that I would say should
know better than to speak as if they had authority
on something and knowledge about something that they don't. Is this
argument that says, well, it seems to me
that abuse victims can just randomly accuse somebody and
(13:36):
with no other information out
there, we're just supposed to believe them
and they. They get to be anonymous and
we don't get to evaluate their credibility.
I would love to hear you speak to that what you can. My frustration, and
I'm not even in the case, is that my understanding is Guidepost
(13:58):
wouldn't have just been like, thanks for giving me this
statement. I'm not going to do any other due diligence.
I've, you know, my understanding is Guidepost understands they have
training in, like, abuse dynamics, how these things work, and they would have
done some additional due diligence before just
randomly sharing something. Because the
(14:19):
implications are big. The implications are very big
because this is the very kind of implication. You're risking being
sued for defamation. Right. Or in some
other. For being negligent, sharing private
facts. So any kind of organization that
does an investigation, including, you know, the
(14:41):
police, get knocked on, too, for, you know, zeroing in on
one, you Know, potential suspect and, and you know, to the
exclusion of all else, someone who is good at their work,
whether it is a police officer or an investigative firm.
You know, kind of like this. Yes. You have
to play devil's advocate. You have to look
(15:03):
at, you know, alternative theories of the case. You have to look
at corroborating, look for, or the absence of corroborating
evidence. You have to look at credibility and, you know,
credibility as, as an attorney, if you are making a
case to, to a court, let's say, you know, what,
whatever kind of case you have a contract dispute, or if you're, you
(15:25):
know, defending someone accused of a crime or if you're prosecuting some
of someone accused of a crime. As a lawyer, you learn
about credibility and ways
to show or undermine somebody's credibility or what, what
shows they are or are not credible. And it can be things like
prior consistent statements. So the, the story
(15:47):
that they've told in the past, not necessarily how they
interpret it, because trauma, you know, the same exact
facts can have happened, but, you know, as a
child victim of sexual abuse, say they
thought it was normal, so they, they didn't call it abuse. They didn't,
you know, do all these things, but the same facts happen. So the, the prior
(16:09):
consistent statements are often about, like, what are the actual facts that
happened? Have those been told consistently?
And, you know, were there any contemporaneous notes?
So did you. Obviously the, the best primary information
which often does not exist are things like recordings or
video recordings. And you know, that's very
(16:31):
rare in any kind of case of sexual abuse or sexual assault.
You know, if it's public, maybe there is a, you know, a street cam or
something like that, but generally very rare. So you have to go to,
you know, other types of evidence. So like contemporaneous
notes. Did you take notes or tell someone else
about it at the time or closer in time to,
(16:54):
to the actual events that happened. So things like that
are ways that you can try to corroborate something
and then credibility is its own. If, if the,
the victim is saying this is what happened and they're saying that
now and it's, you know, removed in time. It's, you know, are they
credible and, you know, looking at, you know, their general
(17:16):
truth telling other aspects that would suggest,
you know, they're credible or they're not credible in other circumstances.
So, you know, what kind of level of detail do they have and do those
details check out? And then, so, you know, in this
case, you had, you know, if, if you were going to
look solely at whether the events actually happened or
(17:39):
not. But like I said, there's. We're one step removed on what the court's actual
inquiry was. But in, in terms of what
Guidepost had to look at, or any investigative firm,
you're looking at the credibility of the victim versus the, the
credibility of the offender. And in this case, you
had Johnny Hunt saying he, he didn't know this
(18:01):
pastor and then saying that, you know,
none of this was true in terms of him being on the balcony or
in the condo or. And there was no contact when there was
a number of pieces of evidence saying that
that wasn't true, and thus he was not credible because
even now he would admit he was lying at that point. Now,
(18:24):
he can give a lot of reasons why he was lying, but he was lying
and he was lying to protect himself. And,
you know, then that. That reduces your credibility significantly.
Yeah, that helps. I think that helps to frame
it. And it certainly speaks to the
online mob that says, you know, people
(18:46):
just say you need to believe women or whoever
that say you just believe them, you don't question them, or there's a couple
of different things going on there. Like, in general, that's a whole different thing than
like a company, an organization like
Guidepost, and a legal standard
for defamation, that there's different layers and
(19:08):
different things that they would jump through. So Guideposts, you're saying, wouldn't have just
said, thank you for your one statement. Right. I'm
going to publish it now without going any further. So I think that's
because some people argued it as if that's the way. It
was when they, when they call it like an anonymous source. Yeah,
the person is not anonymous to, to the people
(19:31):
investigating. You know, it wasn't like they just sent an anonymous
letter. I mean, that would never be published in a
report like this. You know, the, the person, if they are a
victim, you know, in, in lots of different courts, there are different kinds of
rape shield laws, you know, other ways where the victim
isn't necessarily known to the public or using a pseudonym like Jane
(19:53):
Doe. But that doesn't mean they are an anonymous
source. And in fact, they're not, because their
credibility and the things they say are being checked out and
evaluated by whatever the investigative agency
or people are. So. Yeah, no, there's not just
people anonymously giving accusations
(20:13):
and bringing down a good man. Yeah, you know, that,
that, that would be very, very rare. And I don't personally know
of a case like that. Yeah. Now for a quick Break.
Now back to the show. Do you want to speak to the doxing
or not? There's several
(20:36):
considerations in thinking about the idea of doxing.
A. Even if you just said it, an alleged victim of
sexual assault or sexual abuse. There's a lot of things to think about
there. One is imagine if
you or your daughter. Imagine if your
daughter was a victim of sexual assault
(20:57):
and it was painful
and traumatic. And, you know, there are lots
of victims who say it's embarrassing. And we say, well, they
shouldn't have to be embarrassed. We know that now, like, it's not their fault. But
there is. There are still layers of shame related
to different types of sexual abuse or sexual assault.
(21:20):
Imagine if that was your daughter or best friend.
Would you want someone putting them on blast
and you know their. Their name in a book or
on Twitter? No, I can't. Our
compassion, our compassion as
people. Our compassion as
(21:41):
believers in Jesus Christ
should not lean towards causing someone
else pain in that way. Yeah. And it.
For the people that would say it's somehow necessary in order to
examine their claims. No, you. You
can examine lots of different things without putting their name out
(22:03):
publicly. And journalists, in fact, in fact do. And that's
another aspect to consider is the ethics
and the examination that good
ethical journalists do. And, you know, there's a lot
of information, I know that journalists know and that I know
as a lawyer that we're not putting out there publicly. And that's
(22:26):
because either we don't have enough corroboration
or are, you know, our ethics say not
to put that out there, including, you know, journalists who
know who a victim of different types of abuse or assault
are, and they're not putting it out there publicly. So.
And certainly, like I said, our, our compassion as
(22:48):
Jesus followers should not be to cause additional
pain. If you want to talk about this, you can or not. But
in regard to, you know, a pretty public figure
who decided to publish the name of the
survivor, in this case in an actual book that exists in
the world and isn't just on the Internet, which is, I would
(23:11):
say, is a pretty big deal too, when you have a lot of people who
follow you. What I saw there was really
horrifying ignorance about the
whole, even things that should have been publicly
understood and leaving out some things that were
really important to the framing of this
(23:33):
to say to really cast doubt into.
Maybe we shouldn't believe this person because of xyz. And also we
should just put their name out there if they're, if they're going to
accuse somebody. I don't know if you want to speak to that or not. I
had some big concerns about somebody with a platform
speaking so as if they had authority on this
(23:54):
matter. Yeah. And it was
wildly off base. What everything I knew about abuse
dynamics and I didn't have any insider information about the case. All I knew
was what was publicly available. Yeah, I mean, I
have a lot of thoughts about that. And you know, the, the
first is that I observed a
(24:17):
lack of, you know, compassion, a lack
of being trauma informed, a lack of
understanding of how adult
clergy sexual abuse works. I think one of the points
was this wasn't her pastor. And
that is a misunderstanding of how different types of
(24:39):
power work. And of course, there is
a, a continuum of power, different types
of power. And someone who is the
president of the Southern Baptist
Convention has a type of power
over people who are either within the Southern Baptist
(25:00):
Convention or much less a pastor and their
wife who are being mentored in many
ways by that president of the Southern Baptist
Convention. That is an unequal amount of
power and, and failure to recognize that
is either extremely ignorant
(25:21):
or intentionally capitalizing in order
to make money by selling a book. Yeah. The
power dynamics is something
I think a lot of people don't understand. I was hearing a pretty high profile
person talk about their experience with a very powerful
person and how, how they changed how they viewed their experience over the
(25:42):
years. Whether like, first of all, they were like,
yeah, it was consensual to later on coming to a place
like, I shouldn't have even been there. I shouldn't
have even been in that room. Power is a,
it is a concept that we really have to
look at and be aware of because we all have different types
(26:06):
of power and, and influence, you know, and it's influence, power. The
definition of power is just the ability to influence people. And
so you and I each, by being on this podcast and you by
having this podcast, have a certain type of power.
And I've watched you reckon with, you know, what does that look
like to steward it well. And we can't
(26:28):
think about how we steward it well and steward the gifts that God has given
us without recognizing that it exists. And the idea
that somebody has to be a direct, in a direct
line above you in order to take
advantage of an unnatural balance,
you know, an imbalance of power is just not true. If
(26:50):
that was the case, then, you know, domestic abuse couldn't happen
because, you know, we're not saying. And in fact, I think the
argument in a lot of ways is, is that the husband is
not the direct line over the wife and not the
intermediary between her and Jesus. That's part of the
argument some really unhealthy,
(27:12):
spiritually and physically and emotionally abusive husbands
make. But, you know, they have a power in different ways.
Often it's financial power or it's emotional power
in the way that they manipulate physical power. They can be
physically imposing or intimidating. So there's different types of
power. And I always say too,
(27:35):
for people who are what I would term
pathological liars, they have a superpower
that a lot of the world doesn't have, and that is
the ability and willingness to lie
and fabricate on a level that most of us can't really
conceive of. We don't expect that people will
(27:57):
do that. We don't look for it necessarily.
And so when someone can lie on that level and
fabricate and manipulate, it is a power over us
because we're just not expecting that. Now I would argue we need to
be. Work at being more discerning. And because the Bible talks about
the wolves all the time and the wolves are in the church, the
(28:19):
wolves are not out there everywhere. Maybe wolves there, but,
but Jesus talks a lot about the, the spiritual leaders
and that type of behavior. So yeah,
I, it's, I wouldn't have. To think about wolves if they never were in our
area. If they, if they never made it into the, into our environment. Like, why
would we need to be warned about them or say power? Even in, in
(28:42):
the example of, you know, our experience with Ramsey
solutions, we were not employees there. So somebody could try to say,
well, you know, what specific power did Dave
Ramsey have over us? But when I went
into to meet with him and
here's. He has control of the income of our family. He
(29:04):
is a wealthy and influential person in our community.
He commandeers the minds
and belief systems of the thousand people that work there and clearly
manipulated that to his advantage when he lied about me to all
thousand people. So that is an imbalance of
power that was really difficult for
(29:25):
me to be believed by anyone
in that situation, much less if that person, you know,
takes that power and uses it to, to lie and kind of
bully. And so yeah, I think in,
in, in that specific incidence of doxxing and trying to say that,
you know, to defend or explain, you
(29:48):
know, that this guy was not her pastor. That's a complete
misunderstanding of how power works. And then how power works in terms of
like adult clergy sexual abuse specifically. I'm actually,
I just asked for the email for David Pooler Because I'm going to have him
on the podcast. He's an expert. He is a
out of Baylor University, and he has done
(30:10):
a lot of research on adult clergy sexual abuse. And I'm
looking forward to actually having a more in depth conversation with somebody who's researched
is very misunderstood and it feels like a really new thing for people to
wrap their, their minds around. And so I don't blame people
entirely for not getting it. And there is a little education
gap there, and I think people are leaning into it a little more. I have
(30:33):
not listened to the recent podcast series all the Buried Women
that Beth Allison Barr put out with Savannah Locke, I
think is her name. But the most recent episode, I guess, featured David
Pooler talking about adult clergy sexual abuse. And so
go check that out in the meantime. I think that would be great. I have
already listened to it. Oh, was it good? Yeah. David and I met and we
(30:55):
had some great conversations. Yeah. Smart guy. And I'm such a
nerd for research and, you know, publishing research
and, and understanding things, using, using
frameworks to educate people. And he's, he's really good at that.
Yeah. So what was the ruling from the judge on this case?
So in this case, the judge issued what I would
(31:18):
call a Pretty scathing opinion,
74 pages, which is not
super common at this level of court. This is a district court,
which is a trial court. And I mean, this is a. Was a major
ruling. It was dismissing almost the entire case.
So early on in the case, the judge had dismissed one of the claims
(31:41):
and this dismissed the other, Gosh, I want
to say five claims. The only claim
it left was not related to the report.
Specifically, he dismissed all the claims related to the Guidepost
Report, which included defamation claims, false
light, publication of private facts. And the only
(32:03):
claim that remained was a defamation claim related to a
tweet that the then president of the sbc,
Bart Barber, had tweeted related to
that, that Johnny Hunt's actions would be
a felony sexual assault, I believe, in any, almost
any jurisdiction. So it was characterizing it in that
(32:25):
way. And it's not that that claim
is going to be successful necessarily, it's just that the judge said,
well, there's certain genuine issues of
material fact. So there's a thing called a standard of review,
depending on when a judge is looking at a case for whether a claim
can survive. And the standard review at this stage, which was
(32:47):
a motion for summary judgment, is that there are no genuine issues of
material fact and a party is entitled to judgment
as a matter of Law. So what the judge said related to
the claims he dismissed was even, you know,
looking at all the facts that are presented because,
you know, here's what they knew at the time and here's the
(33:09):
level of investigation that they went through.
And, you know, here's what he's saying related to what he
thinks is credible or wrong with it. Taking all that to
be the case, there's no genuine issues
of the facts that are material to deciding
this isn't a claim. This claim can't survive. And so only the claim
(33:32):
related to the tweet survived. So I read.
I read the memorandum from the
judge, and
I remember reading it and thinking, melissa's really
happy with this. I imagined
that your client was pretty pleased,
(33:52):
as was Boz. Why?
Why was how it was presented and what was included
so significant? There were a number of things that were
significant about this opinion. The first thing I noticed
was how much of the Guidepost report was in
the opinion. Yeah. And, you know, I actually had
(34:15):
to go back and forth a number of times going, wait, wait a second, is
this still in the report? Is this still a quotation of the report?
And it was Approximately. It was 74 page report
or 74 page opinion. Approximately 30
pages of that was reprinted from the
Guidepost report. That's wild. Because the whole thing happened
(34:37):
because Hunt did not like the things that
Guidepost put out into the world, said it shouldn't have been there. And the judge
was like, not only do I disagree, but I'm going to put it in
here again for more people, just in case you missed it. Here's the
things related to that. This is not an accident. This was
not a lazy clerk or a lazy
(34:59):
judge. Yeah. In order to
explain the opinion and
explain how he got there, he felt that these
portions of the report were relevant because in all
likelihood, a lot of these cases go up on appeal. And if you're just
citing to things. He's annoying his work. There's. He's showing his work.
(35:20):
Exactly. And I was. So judges
have what are called law clerks, and they
usually assist with conducting trials, you know, at this
level or, you know, writing opinions. They write things that are
called bench briefs. So when a. When a motion comes to the court like
this, the clerk. I was a clerk on the sixth Circuit of court
(35:43):
Appeals, Court of appeals, which is the court above this. So if this gets appealed,
it will go to the court that I was a clerk on. So you examine
all the briefs of the parties and you write a
bench brief, which is a summary of both Sides. And
you research the case law independently, not just what they give
you, because there's some really bad lawyers out
(36:04):
there. Well, and sometimes you have, you know, prisoners who are pro
se, and they're not giving you the accurate case law necessarily.
So you research independently. Pro se is representing themselves. Yes,
representing themselves. And you. You look at their briefs, their arguments,
you research independently, and you say, here's the. Here's
the arguments on both sides. Here's what I believe the law
(36:26):
says and how, you know, how I would expect
you would probably rule or I think you should rule. And then the judge takes
that. Takes that all in. They don't just rubber stamp it. Obviously, they are
the judge. And then they. And depending
on how they come come out of the bench brief, they may ask that
clerk to then write a draft opinion or they may write. Judges have different
(36:49):
procedures. But the fact that there was that much in there was not
an accident. And in that 30 pages was
also about 10 pages of that
were the allegations against Johnny Hunt.
And that's also not an accident because, yeah, the things that are
in court records. So what you say in a brief
(37:11):
submitted to the court or what's in the court opinion
that can't be subject to, like, a defamation
claim. And so now it's in there and. You say
it's memorialized. Does that for all time. It's there,
which is. Was great. But, yeah, I mean, that's just one aspect of the
opinion that I felt was incredibly significant.
(37:33):
Like I said, the judge also went through the different
stories and. And I'm summarizing them more, you know, closely
together than. Than the court did, but went through here's. Here's the different stories
he told. And then he complained that they didn't know,
you know, they didn't have his side. Well, you know,
he didn't have credibility. And. And then he, you know, told more stories.
(37:57):
Another thing that was significant was that in one of the
claims, there was a higher standard of review
if these were public issues of public concern.
And the court held that in analyses of the
Catholic Church and the sexual abuse crisis there, these are
also issues of public concern. So this Guidepost report, you
(38:18):
know, in its look at how the church handled
these things, they were issues of public concern. And so the
threshold for what he would have had to prove
in those specific claims was higher
than if these were more private, just a private
matter. So that was significant. And then the
(38:40):
court. One of the beautiful things I think
that happened is the court, you know,
I feel like they saw
this case for what it was. They. I feel like
they saw what has happened here
and they, you know, highlighted the fact that
(39:02):
there's no indication that the
victim was not credible, that she. There's
no indication she wasn't credible when. When Guidepost
interviewed her, there was no indication she was not credible
since that time. And really
affirmed that in ways that I feel like was a
(39:23):
victory for people who
come forward and are being drug through a
process that is painful,
it's vulnerable, it's expensive,
it's, you know, traumatic. And,
you know, while, you know, there would have been a lot of
(39:46):
additional ways in which a victim could be
validated and have gotten, you know, some
kind of actual accountability ways further
than what happened here, it was still good to see.
Yeah. In the limited ways in which the court could
validate and show concern
(40:07):
for her credibility and what has happened in this case, the court did.
And so that was. That was important because, you know,
Johnny Hunt couldn't really point to anything that
Guidepost had or that it. It reason that a
reasonable person would have uncovered that would have said in 2022,
she wasn't credit credible. And there's still
(40:29):
nothing. So I think that that's the. That was the
court's, you know, emphasis. What did you want him to do? There's no
indication she was not credible. And, yeah, you know, I would say
she is credible. Yeah. Yeah, it was great. It was so
good. And then I saw that she gave a statement and actually used her
name to reporters, which I have to think was
(40:51):
really a powerful moment of saying on my own
terms, I'm gonna say something and
sign my name on it. It was just really,
really great. I want to give her a virtual high five
from. From my little place in Middle Tennessee. Like, I feel kind
of choked up thinking about it. There is a whole
(41:13):
moment for any victim
when, I mean, you have to be ready to come
forward. You know, there's such a fear. Part of
how abuse works is
weaves this fear into you that is. It's
hard to explain that. What if I say something. What
(41:37):
if I say something to anyone? And so there's just this
slow. There's this slow
revealing that happens externally,
but then this slow empowering internally. I mean, I can
remember the first time I said the
word abuse to someone. I was
(41:57):
walking. I was. My church group, we were walking on
this path, having a, like a women's walking day first
time. And, you know, and so it's this
slow empowering of is it
safe to say anything? And then you say a little Bit
more. And so when people question why don't abuse
(42:19):
victims speak up? That's a complete misunderstanding
of how trauma works, how, how
abusers work to warp your mind around what has
happened and your own agenc about
speaking up or even examining what's happened to you.
And you know, the slow empowering. And like I said, this
(42:41):
is why, why the average age of, of disclosure of childhood sexual abuse
is beyond the age 50. Because it has taken a long time.
But you know, where you can slowly start
to tell people and understand what happened to you. And
then at some point it's, can I speak about this
publicly? Can I How will it be received? Right. Well, can
(43:03):
I use my name? And, and there's going to be
off. Well, often is blowback at different stages, but you're
slowly getting stronger and you're also getting
stronger in your own identity. Because part of what
abuse does is it strips you of your
agency, strips you of your identity of who you are. And you have
(43:25):
to reconstruct who am I and who do
I believe? Because you've been trained to believe the
abuser's story of who you are and what
happened and going in that confidence in knowing
you know what, I actually know what happened and
I know who I am and I don't have to bear under
(43:47):
the weight of the abuser's warped
sense of me or what happened. And so you
have to build up that armor over time because you
know you're going to get blowback at some point when you know
there's always going to be people who don't believe you. There's always going to be
people who say, well, you should have done this and you should have thought this
(44:08):
and didn't, you know this. And so building up that confidence and
knowing who you are and going, I don't give a flying flip
what yeah. About it. I know who I am. I know what
happened and I'm gonna stand. And you know what? Jesus loves
me and I, I don't need their approval. I know it's true.
I, I want to speak to the people that are listening. I know I
(44:30):
have people that listen, that they haven't experienced this personally.
They want to be an informed,
wise person in this world. They want to be
somebody that deals with these things. Well, I want to
say to you, thank you first of all for listening, but this isn't
like a happy, clappy topic. This is. This is not
(44:52):
light and fluffy. Thank you for
listening. And also go listen to go read some
things by Dr. David Pooler. Is he a Ph.D. david
Pooler, if you ever think,
if you're ever tempted, world, anyone in the world, if you're ever
tempted to just declare to the world what is true about a
(45:14):
situation like this, I beg of you to do a
little bit of educating yourself first,
because there are people that are listening to your declaration of who is right
and wrong in these things that have never told you their experience.
And they will know how safe they are with you
(45:35):
and how educated you are in abuse dynamics
based on how you talk about things that you didn't
know impacted them. Yeah, and, you
know, we don't have to have answers
to everything. I mean, I think that's one of the things we've talked about,
is sometimes people think they have to comment on everything or have the answer.
(45:57):
We don't have to have the answer. And people think, well, I have to
dig into this because I've got to be able to tell people whether I believe
this person or this person. Maybe you don't. Yeah,
maybe. Maybe don't speak. I mean, I have been, you
know, convicted about. Sometimes it's good to let some
things play out and to say, you know what? I'm not legal. Things
(46:20):
are complicated. I'm not sure what all is going on here. I'm not going to
make a definitive statement about something that I'm not. I might
spend some time learning a few things, but I, I'm going to
hesitate making definitive statements. Maybe I'll
say, here's something I've learned. Here are some patterns I see happen.
Let's see what happens here. It's different
(46:43):
if it's someone you're in relationship with and they come to you and
they say, this is what has happened to me versus, like
something happening out in the public sphere that we don't necessarily have to comment on.
And in fact, we may not have access to
the information that can give us some definitive
way to look at it and understand it. But you're right, we
(47:05):
can talk about. Here's what I know about this topic. Here's what I
know about patterns of behavior
in abusive people or abusive
institutions. Here's what I know about common patterns of behavior
for someone who has experienced sexual assault
or some type of sexual abuse or trauma. And,
(47:27):
you know, and then people can look at situations. But yeah,
I think if it's someone we're in relationship with
and they come to you, you know. Yes. The first thing you do is,
is support and love
and, and believe. And obviously, if there's
information, information that suggests other ways of
(47:49):
looking at it, you don't turn a blind eye to anything. Yeah. But
especially publicly, you know, we. We may not
have all the answers, but we should
be educated. We should learn about what it looks
like. And, you know, I, I think back,
even in my own life, I remember when the first
(48:12):
allegations came out about Bill Cosby, and I think. I think
it was when I had young kids, and, you know, you've got a lot going
on in your life, and it wasn't something I dug into
because obviously, I didn't need to necessarily have any.
Nobody was asking me for my opinion about whether Bill Cosby was a sexual
abuser. But, you know, many years later,
(48:34):
when, you know, you really do look at the evidence
and what came out. Yeah,
I wish I had, as with a lot of people, wish I had
listened earlier to know, you know, what had happened to
these women. Yeah, I think it's a good point that we don't.
We're not telling people that need to learn everything. That's a heavy burden to place
(48:56):
on you. But to learn some things
will be helpful. I think it makes us humble, too, to be like, oh, I
didn't know that. I didn't understand how that that works. Now, am
I right that there's another case involving the
SBC that may be playing
out? Is it the same district? Do you
(49:18):
know anything, or can you say anything there?
(50:04):
Yeah.
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