Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. She did not revisit all the details of the abuse but did disclose those details to leaders at Lifeway and then to Al Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where the professor was employed. Anthony Jackson Age 51. All rights reserved. Pooler said church members often become nonprotective bystanders, whose inaction enables abuse to continue and abusers to go unpunished. Things changed, however, once the abuse became public. She challenged those who questioned her motives. RELATED: Jennifer Lyell wanted to stop her abuser by . NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) Jennifer Lyell was trying to do the right thing. I couldnt deal. Geiger alleged that Mary Sills threatened Jennifer Lyell in text messages and that Mrs. Sills knew of the relationship between Jennifer Lyell and David Sills. Lyell, who served as vice president of LifeWay Christian Resources, posted a confession in 2018 claiming how Sills, who has been married for over 30 years, sexually abused her and groomed her. Lyell told RNS that at first, she did receive a great deal of support from Southern Baptist leaders when she told them about the abuse she experienced. Pastors and churches called for her to be fired. There are elements that sound like an abuse victim pleading with an abuser, I just want you to be like a dad, and there are elements where the story does not seem plausible given what we knowpay special attention to the police. Abusers in the church have figured out that if they are willing to admit partial, limited wrongdoing and if they are willing to perform apology, repentance and intention to do better, she said, behaving in sexually violent ways doesnt actually diminish their prospects for leadership in the church. Except the pattern of inappropriate sexual activity continued throughout the relationship., Lyell wrote that when she presented her claims to Mohler, she also shared the responsibility" for being compliant at times and for idolizing the idea of a whole family., I protected [the family] despite what was happening within it, she wrote. For Sills, no reason for his resignation was stated by Southern. Although the Sillses live in Mississippi and Lyell lives in Tennessee, the lawsuit was filed in Mobile County Circuit Court because former SBC President Ed Litton, who is among the defendants in the suit, lives in Mobile County and the SBC, the conventions executive committee and other SBC entities own and maintain property, employees and/or agents in Alabama, including Mobile County Alabama, the suit stated. He said that he is "brokenhearted over the reality" of the situation. Heaven will be diverse. And there were aspects of it certainly that I think is something that an abuser can use., Abuse advocate and attorney Rachael Denhollander said that Lyells story reflects a bigger problem with a complementarian culture that defends male leaders but views women leaders and survivors of abuse as expendable., Abuse survivor Rachael Denhollander, right, discusses the Southern Baptist Conventions history of addressing sexual abuse with ERLC President Russell Moore at the Caring Well conference in Dallas, on Oct. 4, 2019. In June, BP reported Sills also had resigned as president of Reaching and Teaching International Ministries, a missions organization that engages in discipleship and theological education internationally. Lyells claim that she was abused by David Sills while he was a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary resulted in a controversial news story published by Baptist Press, the denominational news service, which portrayed the relationship as consensual. she disclosed to her boss at Lifeway that a former professor named David Sills had first "sexually acted" against her without her consent during a mission trip he was leading while she was a seminary student. Lyell urged denominational leaders as well as pastors to recognize the responsibility they have to protect survivors from more harm when they come forward. Lyell tells the story in her own wordsso people can finally judge for themselves the particulars of the case. Jennifer Lyell claims she never wanted the attention her abuse allegations created nor to harm the family of David Sills, her alleged abuser. InterVarsity Press, which published one of Sills' books, removed Sills' biography page from its website and the webpage for Sills book Changing World, Unchanging Mission: Responding to Global Challenges. She stated that the pattern continued and escalated for more than a decade following that trip.. Lyell contends it was not consensual. They may, at best, support survivors or criticize fellow denominational leaders in private but will not use their power to do the same in public, she said. She said Lyell had repeatedly asked for the article to be corrected but her requests were denied and a number of Baptist leaders knew the story was wrong but failed to stand up for Lyell. Jennifer Lyell was trying to do the right thing. David Pooler. Jen came forward at incredible personal cost to herself, to defend those who had no voice, Denhollander said. It takes years and years to recover from trauma, and no one should be in the position of having to explain it to the whole public while theyre still trying to do that, she said. For example, why did Lyell continue the relationship with the alleged abusers after graduating from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS)? In her post, the 41-year-old Lyell said that the tenured professor of missions and cultural anthropology first sexually acted against her during a mission trip in 2004. Louisvilles Ninth and O Baptist Church told BP it is the congregation referenced in Lyells statement. Mohler commended Lyells courage in coming forward. "David Sills was repentant and obedient to the rules of the SBC," the complaint alleges. David Sills and his wife, Mary Sills, claim Lyell 'constructed a false narrative . This wasnt by accident; I believe it was by design, Lyell wrote. A reasonable inference is also that Defendant Lyell intended to advance her false narrative by taking a hand in the actual writing of an article by RNS and Smietana, each of whom had previously served as a resource to Defendant Lyell for the purpose of publishing her malicious allegations against the Sills Plaintiffs. However, Ascol, Basham and Buck were copied on the email, and in another email, Lyell indicates Basham had accessed the video without Lyells knowledge or permission. She has alleged Sills abused her over a multi-year period. If the claims in this suit are true, then it would seem that he is as culpable as any of the other defendants., To which Basham replied: Note, Religion News Service reported that Sills admitted to abuse, though Sills told me through an intermediary that RNS also did not reach out to him before that story was published and he never admitted anything like this., Basham also tweeted a link to the BNG story with this comment: Ive read David/Mary Sills filing against SBC, Guidepost, & number of SBC leaders. Just over two years later, she stated the allegations to then-LifeWay Senior Vice President Eric Geiger and Mohler. The Southern Baptist Convention would pass Resolution 6 which acknowledged Jennifer Lyell as an abuse survivor and therefore labeling David Sills as an abuser. But at Lyells request, SBTS, the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention, did not make the details behind Sills resignation public at the time. In a statement posted on her website, Jennifer Lyell, who is now 41 and works for a major Christian book publisher, said Sills first "sexually acted" against her on a mission trip in 2004 and. Ascol is a Florida pastor who leads Founders Ministries, a group of Southern Baptist Calvinists. Lyell was not writing to a professional journalist with a national news organization; she was writing to two bloggers who run a small nonprofit that investigates cults and preaches against the Enneagram. What Ascol, Buck and Sills share in common is adherence to an extreme version of Reformed theology, known as hyper-Calvinism, that has been on the resurgence in the SBC over the past 30 years. I have never been unwilling to be questioned when making allegations that arent only moral, but are also criminal . Whatever else is accurate or inaccurate in the lawsuit filed by David and Mary Sills against the SBC, Lyell and 10 others, the quotation attributed to a Lyell email to Smietana of RNS actually comes from a different Lyell email sent to Veinot and Henzel June 18, 2021. Sills is also an author. The conventions statement of faith says women and men are equal in Gods sight but have different roles in the church and the home. She describes being shocked and blaming herself despite that she had not initiated the encounter. Having known that I experienced sexual abuse growing up, Dr. Sills assured me that the first incidents that happened on that mission trip werent really my fault as I naturally felt even though I had not initiated them and was shocked as the actions took place., He explained they were because of what happened to me when I was a child. While the SBCs reports on Lyells allegations claimed Sills was fired, the former professor claims he voluntarily resigned after admitting to a morally inappropriate relationship with Lyell. She claims . In fact, the key facts alleged are right in the first few paragraphs: 1. Nine months after The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) professor David Sills resigned for undisclosed reasons, a woman has released a statement of allegations including details of what she describes as sexual abuse by Sills, beginning while she was a Southern Seminary student. But he didnt make it public disclosure, Lyell said. Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. told Baptist Press he could not disclose why Sills employment at the seminary ended. Lyell explained that she decided to go public with her story after hearing that Sills was appointed to serve as a missionary with a mission agency not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. This issue caught fire on Twitter, where critics of SBC leadership and of the sexual abuse study picked it up, prompting retweets and commentary. Old login credentials will no longer work. 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