4 NJ Pastors ‘Credibly Accused’ Of Sex Abuse, 1 Is Still Active: Report

NEW JERSEY — Four Southern Baptist pastors in New Jersey are among about 700 of the denomination’s clergy who have been "credibly accused" of sexual abuse, the church’s governing body said with the release of a secretly maintained list late Thursday. One of them remains listed as his church's pastor.

Rev. John H. Harris Jr. and the Galilee Baptist Church of Trenton paid a former church employee $50,000 in 2010 to resolve allegations that Harris sexually harassed her and got fired after reporting it to church officials, according to The Times of Trenton.

Harris and the church denied the allegations in 2010, the report says. The Galilee Baptist Church's website lists Harris as its current pastor.

Patch reached out to the church for comment but did not receive a response. We'll update this article if we hear back.

Here are the other New Jersey pastors on the list:

John Janney Sr., Calvary Bible Baptist Church, Bridgeton

In 1985, Janney Sr. pleaded guilty of abusing three teenage boys who lived with him as foster children. The former pastor abused the children between January 1976 and May 1985, according to an Associated Press report at the time.

Chavalis T. Williams, Shiloh Baptist Church, Newark

Williams pleaded guilty in 1999 to arranging for two teenagers to have sex in front of him and others while working at a facility for troubled youth in Florida, according to The Star-Ledger. At the time, he went by Chavalis Bonsell, the report states.

The Shiloh Baptist Church hired Williams in 2003 as its new pastor. About a month after his hiring, church members expressed ire because the church voted him in as pastor without telling members that Williams was a convicted sex offender, according to The Star-Ledger.

The church wasn't aware of the past conviction and fired him when they leared about it, according to the Southern Baptist Convention.

James E. Wynn, Mount Pisgah Baptist Temple, Asbury Park

In 1984, Wynn was sentenced to 22 years in prison for sexually abusing two girls.

The release of the names is a public repudiation of the way leaders at the nation’s largest Protestant denomination have responded to allegations of sexual abuse in the past. In doing so, the SBC’s top leaders said they’re committed to listening more attentively to survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

• Read the full list of accused clergy.

"This list is being made public for the first time as an initial, but important, step towards addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and implementing reform in the Convention," the SBC Executive Committee said in a statement on its website. "Each entry in this list reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by sexual abuse. Our prayer is that the survivors of these heinous acts find hope and healing, and that churches will utilize this list proactively to protect and care for the most vulnerable among us."

The denomination also released the full report of the investigation conducted by Guidepost Solutions on its handling of sexual abuse allegations. It's available on the website, too.

The denomination’s executive committee said Wednesday in a joint statement with Guidepost Solutions, which conducted the investigation, that it is creating a hotline for sexual abuse survivors that will be “an important stopgap measure” until more meaningful reform can be addressed at the SBC annual meeting in Anaheim, California, next month.

Gene Besen, the interim executive committee counsel, said in a statement after the meeting that the prompt release of the names is in the Southern Baptist Convention’s best interests.

“It’s important, it is of immediate concern to the public and to the survivor committee, and we need to do it right away,” he said.

In an interview with The New York Times, Besen said that moving quickly means that some accused pastors’ names may be redacted because the claims couldn’t be substantiated by news reports and other sources, but researchers may put them back on the list as more facts are known.

“We have become too familiar with using techniques to slow processes down,” Ed Litton, president of the SBC’s Executive Committee said, according to an account in Christianity Today of the decision to release the names of “credibly accused” pastors. “We need to be very mindful that the world is watching, and they don’t need to see business as usual… we have to do this right.”

• Related: Top Southern Baptists Stonewalled Sex Abuse Victims, Report Says

Under the “business as usual” practice, victims of sexual abuse and congregants who supported them repeatedly shared allegations of sexual abuse with top church leaders, “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling and even outright hostility” by some Executive Committee members, according to the nearly 300-page report.

“Our investigation revealed that, for many years, a few senior EC leaders, along with outside counsel, largely controlled the EC's response to these reports of abuse … and were singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC,” the report said, continuing:

“In service of this goal, survivors and others who reported abuse were ignored, disbelieved, or met with the constant refrain that the SBC could take no action due to its policy regarding church autonomy — even if it meant that convicted molesters continued in ministry with no notice or warning to their current church or congregation.”

Survivors of abuse, both congregants and seminary students, have long pressed the denomination to release the list of clergy “credibly accused” of sexual abuse. The list was maintained for about a decade by an Executive Committee staff member who turned it over to the Executive Committee’s former vice president and general counsel.

The investigator found no indication that anyone “took any action to ensure that the accused ministers were no longer in positions of power at SBC churches.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting.