Infection is moving on

Like a winter cold, moving from one place in the body to the next, it and SNAP has a will to survive.

After prowling through the Catholics with belly full, and finding less piles of cash, it is moving on to check for new vulnerabilities with the Baptists.

Yum!

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The victims advocates who dogged the Roman Catholic Church over sex abuse by its clergy have now turned their attention to the Southern Baptists, accusing America’s largest Protestant denomination of also failing to root out molesters.

The Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests has started a campaign to call attention to alleged sex abuse committed by Southern Baptist ministers and concealed by churches.

“They don’t want to see this problem,” said Christa Brown, a SNAP member from Austin, Texas, who says she was sexually abused as a child by a Southern Baptist minister. “That’s tragic because they’re imitating the same mistakes made by Catholic bishops.”

Southern Baptists passed a resolution in 2002 urging its churches to discipline ministers guilty of sexual abuse and to cooperate with authorities in their prosecution.

But Brown said that’s not enough. She says the Southern Baptists need an independent review board precisely because there’s no clear chain of command among Baptist churches. The SBC also does not keep a list of ministers who have been accused of abuse. Advocates say this means molesters could move from church to church.

“I believe kids are not safe in Southern Baptist churches,” said Brown, who runs a Web site called the Voice to Stop Baptist Predators.

One SNAP member, Debbie Vasquez, said she was raped by a Southern Baptist minister in Texas when she was 15 years old.

Now 48, Vasquez filed a lawsuit last year against the pastor, the Rev. Dale “Dickie” Amyx and his current church, Bolivar Baptist in Sanger, Texas, about 45 miles north of Dallas. She claims the church knew, or should have known, about Amyx’s past.

Now 48 and ready to retire without quite enough in the retirement fund. I don't know that for sure of course. Just a guess.

Our courts don't work too well with 33 year old memories of those involved. All the details get fuzzy, and some get invented even more than with recent events (if that is possible).