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Crunching the Numbers

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During the debate over the Sexual Abuse Task Force recommendations at the SBC in Anaheim, California on Tuesday, June 14, 2022, Dr. Mark Coppenger appealed to messengers to vote against the task force’s recommendations for a variety of important reasons.

Mark Coppenger addresses the SBC in Anaheim, June 14, 2022

Dr. Bruce Frank, chairman of the task force, responded.

Dr. Bruce Frank, chairman of the Sexual Abuse Task Force

Here, Kyle Whitt, who already was keenly aware of the contents of the Guidepost report and had studied the list of alleged abusers, analyzes some of Dr. Frank’s primary assumptions and claims with regard to numbers.

Kyle Whitt

Analysis and Observations

The Numbers

      • ~47K SBC churches
      • ~13.8M Members
      • ~41.5K SBC Churches in 2003
      • ~16M Members in 2000
      • ~28M Members since 2000
      • ~30-35 (estimate, being conservative) since 1990
      • 409 Names on the list (accused, guilty, and acquitted)
      • ~329 Convicted

Let’s dive into some of these numbers. Bruce Frank brings up the infamous “list” of “SBC abusers” and claims that there are 400 abusers on it. Because studies indicate only about 3 percent of abusers are convicted, Frank contends, then sexual abuse is a serious problem in the SBC. Frank apparently is assuming that the 400 represent only 3 percent of sexual abusers in the SBC. If all these assumptions are true (and we’ll evaluate them in the next few minutes), then there are 13,333 abusers in the Southern Baptist Convention.

I checked the unredacted names on the list, and out of the 409 listed as SBC, I found 329 that confessed or were convicted of some form of sexual impropriety. This is important, because 409 — which Frank rounds down to 400 — includes accused, guilty, acquitted, and others (see Numbers for Reference, above).

Applying Frank’s 3% to 329 would assume there are 10,967 abusers in the SBC. I looked for some studies, and best I can find, the 3% Dr. Frank relies on seems to be about rape and sexual assault (violent crimes). This means it does not include all sex crimes (such as porn, adultery, etc.). This percentage (3 percent) also relies on estimates and a “believe all women” mindset (in other words, all cases — even acquitted and unreported — are assumed to be guilty). More accurately, this would mean that “3% of alleged offenders are convicted.” More accurate still: “3% of potential cases result in conviction” (though that number still includes the number of unreported cases, which, of course, eludes an element of accuracy that we would love to have).

Of reported cases, ~8% result in conviction, though, again, these are convictions of rape and other forms of sexual assault. So let’s do this: Let’s run the numbers using

      1. Dr. Frank’s assumption of 3%,
      2. 8%, and
      3. 15% — a more conservative percentage that assumes some cases are false and accepts innocence as a possibility.

So our scenarios are:

      1. If 3% of all cases end in conviction, the total number of cases would be 11K.
      2. If 8% of all cases end in conviction, the total number of cases would be 4.1K.
      3. If 15% of all cases end in conviction, the total number of cases would be 2.2K.

Using these three scenarios, we’ll get three portraits, which together represent a reasonable ballpark range of sexual abuse issues in the SBC. I’m not making a case one way or another for any of the three percentages, but rather using them to draw some perspective.

Now, what is the size of the pool we’re drawing from? The SBC does not keep records for most of this information, so most of this is estimated based on factors that include the number of churches, average church sizes, and so forth. “The list” includes a wide variety of people. This reality is reflected in the numbers I’m laying out here for several different categories. This gives us, I believe, a better understanding of the makeup of the SBC than we would have if we simply used a number representing membership in all SBC churches.

Minister numbers: 40K churches (as it’s grown from under 40K to 47K in the past 30 years, and we just need a rough estimate, rather than recalculating year by year).

      • 1.5 pastors/elders per church (including youth & worship pastors)
      • 2.25 deacons per church (this number takes into consideration that deacons may also serve in other roles)
      • 0.75 misc. employees and ministry directors, etc.
      • 2.75 small group/Sunday school/Bible study/ministry volunteer/etc
      • .5 misc. (seminary student/employee, camp employee, school employee, etc) per church

Total= 40,000 x (1.5+2.25+.75+2.75+.5) = 310,000 at any given time

Timeframe: ~80% of incidents seemed to be 90’s or earlier, so we’ll just say 30 years. What is the turnover rate of that time? Well, some (seminary students, ministry volunteers, etc) have very high turnover, others (specifically deacons) have a low turnover. Let’s say the turnover for the lower 3 categories is 3 years (giving us 10 full turnovers in 30 years), and the turnover rate for the upper two categories, pastors and deacons, is 10 years (giving us 3 full turnovers in 30 years). That gives us a turnover multiplier of 10 x (.75+2.75+.5) + 3 x (1.5+2.25) = 51.25.

Total pool size: Now for the grand total of ministry leaders in SBC churches over 30 years, without simply using a number reflecting the total SBC membership (thus we will arrive at a more accurate picture):

40,000 churches x 51.25 (turnover multiplier, to arrive at the number of people serving in some form of ministry capacity, whether volunteer or paid) = 2,050,000 (in volunteer or paid ministry positions).

I feel this is a fair, yet conservative number based on how broad the list is. You might disagree with some of my multiplier choices, but I hope you do understand my methodology — the approach I have taken to arrive at 2 million — rather than my just saying “I think 2 million is a fair number.”

Another way to look at this is, over that same time period, there would have been about 30-35M SBC members. Two million would mean that the percentage of people in some form of ministry would be 5.7 – 6.7%, which is not a high or unreasonable number. Regardless, I think 2 million is a realistic number for this ballpark experiment.

What All This Means in Practical Terms

Okay, so what does this all mean? Well, let’s run our three numbers against the pool we’ve “marked off” to see what the percentages are. We arrive at

      • 0.55% of 2M = the total number of actual cases (11,000) when we assume that 3% of all cases end in convictions
      • 0.205% of 2M = the total number of actual cases (4,100) when we assume that 8% of all cases end in convictions
      • 0.11% of 2M = the total number of actual cases (2,200) when we assume that 15% of all cases end in convictions

Note that these scenarios turn out to be exactly the scenarios we cited above under the heading “So our scenarios are:”.

Okay, so, again, what does all this mean? Here it comes: Bruce Frank calls the sexual abuse situations we know about in the SBC the “tip of the iceberg.” Yet, even though we have relied on liberal assumptions in our number crunching in these three scenarios, (effectively erring on the side of reaching estimates that tend to be high), the numbers we’ve reached (pointing to the number of actual abusers in each scenario) are small, especially in light of the the total number of Southern Baptists during this time frame (30M on the low end), and 2M serving in SBC churches in some type of ministry capacity. Remember that the Guidepost report found only 2 active cases in the SBC in its entire investigation.

Southern Baptist Convention

Here’s the reality. There’s no iceberg at all! Are there problems? Yes. Do they need to be addressed? Of course! Even so, we don’t have an iceberg, but an ice cube floating in a glass of water!

Here’s the reality. There’s no iceberg at all! Are there problems? Yes! Do they need to be addressed? Of course! Even so, we don’t have an iceberg, but an ice cube floating in a glass of water!

A Look at Sexual Abuse Figures Nationally

Now, let’s contrast our findings in the Southern Baptist Convention with sexual abuse statistics in the US. We don’t have a perfect number to use here, so let’s go with a lesser number. (In other words, we will use a smaller number, one that will make the number of offenders seem smaller than the potential reality, as there are many more people convicted of “sex crimes” than there are registered sex offenders. Most states didn’t have sex offender registries until 1994, so we won’t worry about date range).

There are something in the range of 800-900K registered offenders in 2022 in the US, so to be conservative, we’ll go with 750K, in a population of 330M. So our three percentages for the US would be:

      • 7.6% of 330M = the total number of actual cases (25,080,000) when we assume that 3% of all cases end in convictions,
      • 2.8% of 330M = the total number of actual cases (9,240,000) when we assume that 8% of all cases end in convictions, and
      • 1.5% of 330M = the total number of actual cases (4,950,000) when we assume that 15% of all cases end in convictions.

Contrast the percentages!

      • If 3% of all cases end in convictions, that’s 7.6% of the pool of people from which cases could come nationally, versus .55% of the pool from which cases could come in the SBC.
      • If 8% of all cases end in convictions, that’s 2.8% of the pool of people from which cases could come nationally, versus 0.205% of the pool from which cases could come in the SBC.
      • If 15% of all cases end in convictions, that’s 1.5% of the pool of people from which cases could come nationally, versus 0.11% of the pool from which cases could come in the SBC.

Even if you say that my numbers are off by a factor of two for both sets (raising the SBC numbers, and lowering the US numbers), then the SBC’s numbers still are  way better than the numbers for the US as a whole. And that’s using 2M in ministry in the calculations for the SBC, rather than the total SBC population!

Again, this “iceberg” with which Frank has bludgeoned people actually is an ice cube when put in perspective. Our experiment here not only shows that the problem of sexual abuse in the SBC is small; it also shows how much better the SBC is in this area than the rest of the US. We should always working to reduce the number of cases in our churches and institutions to zero, of course. Still, despite all the negative press, instances of abuse in the SBC are minuscule in number. Bruce Frank’s assumptions and conclusions, therefore, are off — way off.

Bruce Frank’s assumptions and conclusions, therefore, are off — way off.

For additional insights and information about the exchange between Mark Coppenger and Bruce Frank on the floor of the convention, go here.

Facts about the list and my approach in using the information at my disposal to get pictures of “the lay of the land”:

      1. First, when I calculated the number of guilty at 329, I was being generous. I included anything sexual in nature, as well as not skipping cases I knew were questionable (intentionally being as liberal with the numbers as possible). I also included things that are sexual but not crimes (or may have been a crime but not a “sex abuse” crime, such as soliciting a prostitute).
      2. Oldest case comes from 1947, though I think this should be 1949 (with the next oldest being 4 cases in the 1960s). The 1947 case did involve reoffense that seems to have continued into the early 80’s. The earliest case that didn’t involve reoffense in a later decade was in the 60’s. This entry also is notable because it’s listed as SBC, but the pastor led his church out of the SBC in the 60’s, so I don’t feel it’s fair for it to be included as SBC.
      3. The names of four pastors appear on the list for not reporting abuse (not good, but not sex abuse itself). Significantly and inaccurately, the list is touted as a “list of abusers.” Misleading at best.
      4. One man appears on the list for not informing congregation about a sex offender.
      5. Two cases of adultery — bad, but not abuse (one man did threaten to kill his mistress, but that’s not sexual abuse, either).
      6. One man earned a spot on list for having his pants down in an adult shop.
      7. One pastor landed on the list for being caught at a strip club (my question… who caught him?)
      8. Child abuse is on list (not good, but not sex abuse). Two counts. (One has additional accusations of sex abuse, but those are being adjudicated. Was convicted, but was overturned and a retrial is going to take place because they cited his spanking kids bare-bottomed to help establish sex abuse.)
      9. Two cases of domestic violence (no sex abuse)
      10. One case of kidnap and robbery (no sex abuse)
      11. Four women appear on the list as abusers.
      12. Two guilty of soliciting a prostitute.
      13. At least four are listed as SBC that actually are not SBC.
      14. At least 6 listed as SBC for which I found no SBC connection.
      15. Two men ordained SBC, but not an SBC pastor. What roles did they fill? Were they seminary graduates? Were they ever SBC? One seems to not have been, but I can’t confirm one way or the other.
      16. One man claimed to be a part of an SBC church, but the church denies it, saying he was the accountant they contracted with. The only person to corroborate the man attending the church gave conflicting accounts.
      17. One man convicted of assault and battery, but then apparently was made to register as a sex offender. Cannot find any information on why, nor any accusations of sex crime. Usure what to make of this case.
      18. Position within SBC ranges from Pastor, to deacon, to piano player, volunteer, SBC ordained, Baptist schools, Baptist camps, students, etc.
      19. One professor from Liberty University listed as SBC because Liberty has a partnership (no money exchanged) with Souther Baptist Conservatives of Virginia.

Additional note:

The entry for James Richard Harris seems to have false identification — possibly confused with another man of the same name at Second Baptist Church in Newark Ohio — and is now touted online as an SBC member online, even though “the list” didn’t even call him one.

Statistics:

    • Only one-third of sexual assault cases are reported; in 975 out of 1000 sexual assault cases the perpetrator doesn’t go to jail (sexual assault incidents are violent crimes such as rape and sexual assault). By this source’s own admission their numbers are “[combining] information from several federal government reports. Because it combines data from studies with different methodologies, it is an approximation, not a scientific estimate.” This is important, as this source is the “study” Bruce is leaning on. Why am I sure of this? It comes from the SATF’s FAQ’s.

https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system

    • Source for the “only one-third get reported” claim. This number fluctuates greatly depending on the methodology (report even references a different report that gives a very different number), as it is an estimation based on surveys and interviews.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/sarble/sarble19/data/cv19.pdf

    • Source for jail rates from the RAINN data. This study shows that 89% of rape conviction result in jail/prison time. The RAINN data labels theirs as sexual assults. Those are two different categories of crimes. This data is also from the 75 largest counties, not the total across the entire US. This data is also much older than their other data (2009), which is concerning. Again, RAINN is mushing different datasets together, though I admit that there doesn’t seem to be one dataset that contains all the information. But you can’t just mush things together when they’re from very different years, methodologies, etc.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/document/cv20.pdf

    • 8.3% conviction rate. This does, however, corroborate the conviction rate of 8%, cited above ( “Only 310 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are reported to police. That means more than 2 out of 3 go unreported.” )

https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/quick-facts/Sexual_Abuse_FY18.pdf

— Kyle Whitt

Copyright © 2022 by Kyle Whitt. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

 

 

 

Kyle Whit’s work as been featured in numerous Word Foundations articles, including those in these two series: