Lawsuits Accuse Former Northside Baptist Youth Pastor in Lexington, South Carolina, of Abuse and Claim Southern Baptist Convention Failed to Address Sexual Abuse

A pair of lawsuits recently filed in Richland County, South Carolina, accuse former youth pastor Mike D’Attoma of Northside Baptist Church in Lexington of grooming and sexually abusing female parishioners under his care. The suits also allege that the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest non-Catholic Christian denomination in the United States, systematically failed to address widespread sexual abuse. The plaintiffs asked the court to refer to them as Jane Doe One and Jane Doe Two throughout the proceedings. They were 14 and 15 years old when D’Attoma entered the Northside youth ministry in 2009, the year he became a pastor at the church.

According to the suit, D’Attoma was a popular and enthusiastic leader among the youth group. One plaintiff said she saw what she described as inappropriate hugs between D’Attoma and a peer, and reported them to church leadership. She says she was advised to stop talking about things that could hurt D’Attoma or his marriage. The filings allege that D’Attoma regularly messaged both plaintiffs in increasingly controlling and demanding ways, expressed anger when messages went unanswered, and video-chatted with one plaintiff while she was alone in her room. The suit further alleges that he repeatedly asked a plaintiff to undress and sent sexual messages and images to the plaintiffs. These are allegations in the lawsuits and have not been adjudicated.

The suit states that in June 2011, one of the plaintiffs was selected as a summer intern at Northside Baptist and often stayed at D’Attoma’s home in Lexington, because her family lived 45 minutes from the church’s campus. She alleges that around June 20 she texted D’Attoma after receiving an explicit message, telling him she felt uncomfortable with such messages and that their interactions were disrespectful to her boyfriend at the time. She said she felt deep shame, but did not believe she could do much more because of the position of power D’Attoma held within the youth group, the church and the wider community. Protecting young people who have little power within a church is a concern the case brings into focus (Proverbs 31:8-9).

Northside Baptist Church is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention and the South Carolina Baptist Convention. The lawsuits’ claims about the national denomination build on findings made public in May 2022. In that month, an independent investigation conducted by the global investigation firm Guidepost Solutions was reported to have found that the Southern Baptist Convention had suppressed information about sexual abuse within the denomination for decades.

As that report was being prepared, allegations emerged against Johnny Hunt, a former SBC president who served from 2008 to 2010 and who was the organization’s senior vice president for evangelism and leadership until May of this year. The Guidepost report stated that a Southern Baptist pastor and his wife had come forward to report that Hunt sexually assaulted the wife on July 25, 2010. The report said investigators included the allegation because they found the pastor and his wife credible, their account was corroborated in part by a counseling minister and three other credible witnesses, and investigators did not find Hunt’s statements about the allegation to be credible. Hunt denied the allegations on Twitter. Hunt had also run a residential program for “hurting pastors” who had experienced “moral failings” during his time as pastor of First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Georgia.

The Guidepost report said that Hunt’s conduct was not its main focus. Its central concern was a culture of secrecy that suppressed the handling of sexual assault at SBC churches for decades. The report described Augie Boto, who served as executive vice president of the SBC from 1998 to 2019, as having worked alongside Baptist leader Paige Patterson to advance conservative leaders to the top of the denomination. Boto remained close to Patterson after Patterson was dismissed amid allegations that he mishandled sexual abuse cases. Quoting the report, the investigators wrote that “for many years, a few senior Executive Committee leaders, along with outside counsel, largely controlled the Executive Committee’s response to these reports of abuse,” and that SBC leaders “closely guarded information about abuse allegations and lawsuits, which were not shared with Executive Committee trustees and were singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC to the exclusion of other considerations.”

Source: Read the original report