Lawsuit accuses Southern Baptist leader in Arkansas of mishandling sex abuse complaints against pastor

A new lawsuit accuses a top-ranking Southern Baptist official in Arkansas of failing to report sex abuse allegations against a pastor. The suit was filed on behalf of a person identified as John Doe and names Sonny Tucker, executive director of Arkansas’ state baptist association, accusing him of mishandling complaints about Teddy Leon Hill Jr. that were brought in February 2018.

According to the suit, Hill continued to abuse Doe, for whom he was a legal guardian, in the months that followed. These are allegations in a lawsuit and have not been established in court. The suit’s account centers on a person in Hill’s legal care, a point that bears on protecting the vulnerable (Proverbs 31:8-9).

Hill retired in July 2018 as the longtime pastor of Millcreek Baptist Church in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Reached by phone on a Thursday, Hill, 59, said he retired because he was “old” and said he was unaware of the lawsuit or the claims in it.

The suit is the second this year to accuse high-ranking Southern Baptist officials and groups of failing to prevent abuses. It comes as the nation’s second-largest faith group faces a sex abuse crisis detailed in an ongoing Houston Chronicle investigation, the series “Abuse of Faith.” That series found that more than 700 people had been victimized by Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers in the last 20 years, nearly all of them children. The investigation also described years of failed attempts by activists and survivors to push for reforms within the convention’s 47,000 autonomous, self-governing churches.

In June, thousands of delegates from SBC churches overwhelmingly approved two reforms that make it easier to remove churches for concealing sexual abuses or harboring predators. Days before that vote, the SBC was added as a defendant in a Virginia lawsuit. That suit accuses local and state leaders of ignoring or mishandling complaints that Jeffrey Dale Clarke, a youth minister who was later convicted, had abused multiple young boys. It challenges the SBC’s claim that its doctrine of “local church autonomy” prevents it from exerting control over cooperating congregations.

Southern Baptist churches are largely free to ordain and hire whomever they choose, though the SBC has previously ousted churches with gay or female pastors. SBC churches also contribute billions of dollars a year to a pool of money that funds seminaries, missions trips and other operations. The Virginia suit cites both points in arguing that the SBC can be held liable for the actions of local congregations. SBC leaders have for years maintained otherwise, though the convention’s longtime legal counsel told the Chronicle earlier this year that the argument has never been tested in an appellate court and does not have legal standing. Kevin Biniazan, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the Virginia case, told the Chronicle earlier this year, “This idea that everyone’s completely autonomous is a facade, and it’s self-serving.”

The Arkansas suit makes a similar argument. It says Millcreek Baptist Church, the Arkansas Baptist State Convention and the Diamond Lakes Baptist Association, all named as defendants, had a duty to protect Doe from Hill. The suit alleges that the abuse was “foreseeable” and that the groups are “part of a hierarchical religious institution in which there exists a system of oversight and control.” Doe is represented by Ron Weil, a Florida-based attorney who previously won a multimillion-dollar settlement against the SBC’s Florida association. That case involved abuses by Doug Myers, who was convicted of abusing boys he met while establishing churches on behalf of Florida Southern Baptists. Myers had faced misconduct allegations in two other states before arriving in Florida. After his release from a Florida prison, he was convicted of earlier abuses in Maryland.

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