Lawsuit Says Arkansas Baptist Convention Ignored Warnings About Former Hot Springs Pastor

The Arkansas Baptist State Convention is being sued over accusations that it ignored warnings that a pastor was allegedly sexually abusing underage boys. The lawsuit was filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court.

The suit names Teddy Hill, former senior pastor at Millcreek Baptist Church in Hot Springs, and claims he repeatedly raped a teenage boy over several years. According to the suit, the victim said Hill began molesting him in 2014, shortly after he became a member of the church, when the boy was 13. In 2016, Hill became the boy’s legal guardian and allegedly continued the abuse. Both Hill and Millcreek were members of the statewide organization of Southern Baptist churches.

Garland County Prosecutor Michelle Lawrence said on Monday that an ongoing criminal investigation into the allegations against Hill is being conducted with the Garland County Sheriff’s office. Millcreek Baptist Church did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The suit alleges that in 2018, Hill’s ex-wife told Baptist State Convention Executive Director James Tucker that Hill was sexually abusing children. She reportedly told Tucker she had seen Hill holding hands with minors, having minors spend the night with him in the church parsonage, and reaching for the genitals of an underage boy. The suit alleges that the Baptist State Convention, Diamond Lakes Baptist Association, the regional Baptist association and Millcreek Baptist Church did not report Hill or take other steps to prevent him from abusing the boy again, a failure to protect the vulnerable that the plaintiff’s claims put at the center of the case (Proverbs 31:8-9).

The convention is now being sued for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, vicarious liability and violating the Arkansas child maltreatment act. The plaintiff’s lawyers say the group had reasonable cause to believe Hill was a sexual predator who “groomed and manipulated” and then sexually molested minors, and that it did not notify the Child Abuse Hotline, allowing Hill to abuse the victim for months.

In December, the Baptist State Convention said in a statement that its attorneys had found “no indication of impropriety” on its part or Tucker’s. “Rather, it appears the plaintiff does not understand the relationship between the Arkansas Baptist State Convention and the local church and pastor,” the statement says, in part. It continues: “Apparently, the plaintiff mistakenly believes that the Arkansas Baptist State Convention somehow controls the local church and should have been monitoring this local church pastor’s actions.”

Joshua Gillispie, an attorney for the plaintiff, said in a news release that the association’s response is “calculated legal strategy” used to protect “pedophile pastors.” He said the plaintiff’s side believes the convention’s claim of member church autonomy, which he described as routinely used by state conventions over the years, is dubious. Gillispie also said that millions of dollars in donations from congregants of member churches like Millcreek flow into the convention’s coffers, yet the convention’s official position is that the sexual abuse of congregants by its member pastors is not its problem.

Another plaintiff’s attorney, Miami lawyer Ron Weil, helped win a $12.5 million lawsuit in 2014 involving child sex abuse allegations and the Florida Baptist Convention. He said he has reason to believe Hill is a “serial” offender and that more allegations will come out. The lawsuit comes amid a recent investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express News, which uncovered hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse against Southern Baptist leaders and found that for two decades the Southern Baptist Convention played a part in concealing, and sometimes perpetuating, the abuse.

The victim is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages, as well as punitive damages against each defendant for what the suit describes as intentional and grossly reckless misconduct.

Source: Read the original report