An explosive new report reveals decades of abuse by Baptist clergy, youth leaders and other leaders in the Southern Baptist Church against children and teens – the 380 perpetrators, some registered as sexual predators, left at least 700 victims.

And this is just since 1998.

The Southern Baptist Church literally has no mechanism for compiling lists of miscreant pastors, so the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News in Texas did it for them. The list is long and the ruin incalculable.

In the first of a three-part series, the newspapers give an overview of the depth and breadth of the scandal.

“They were pastors. Deacons. Youth pastors. They left behind more than 700 victims,” reads the introduction. “Read and hear the stories of those victims, and learn the depths of the crimes and misconduct of the church leaders they trusted.”

The Southern Baptist convention consists of a fellowship of 47,000-plus churches with 15 million members, according to the Washington Post. After the Catholic Church, which has been plagued of late with its own abuse allegations, it is the second-largest faith group in the U.S., the Post said.

“We must admit that our failures, as churches, put these survivors in a position where they were forced to stand alone and speak, when we should have been fighting for them,” said the convention’s recently elected president, J.D. Greear, in a string of Twitter posts quoted by the Washington Post. “Their courage is exemplary and prophetic. But I grieve that their courage was necessary.”

He was among dozens who came out in condemnation of the abuse after the report was published in Sunday’s newspapers.

Victims included Debbie Vasquez, now 35, who was molested and even impregnated during her teenage years by her married pastor, more than 12 years her senior. In June 2008, when she was in her 40s, Vasquez and other victims entreated the Southern Baptist leaders at their annual convention to get the denomination’s 47,000 churches to track sexual predators, the newspapers reported. But the leaders rejected just about all the proposals, keeping the perpetrators free to continue hurting hundreds more.

Many of the 700 victims were “shunned by their churches, left to themselves to rebuild their lives,” the newspaper investigation found. “Some were urged to forgive their abusers or to get abortions.”

Of the 380 Southern Baptist pastors, ministers, youth pastors, Sunday school teachers, deacons and church volunteers, about 220 have either been convicted, taken plea deals or their cases are awaiting resolution. About 100 are in prison all over the country, others “cut deals and served no time,” another hundred are registered sex offenders, and some – alarmingly – are still working in the churches.

The victims ranged from adults who were seduced or assaulted while seeking pastoral guidance, to teens molested in various forms or outright raped, to 3-year-old children who “were molested or raped inside pastors’ studies and Sunday school classrooms,” the investigation found.

Not all of them survived.

Heather Schneider, molested at age 14, saw her attacker continue working at Second Baptist Church in Houston for months before being fired, the newspapers reported. While she survived the immediate attack despite slitting her wrists the day after, “she died 14 years later from a drug overdose that her mother blames on the trauma,” the investigation states.

Now that the tragedy has come to light, the Southern Baptist Church is acknowledging some of the harm done and pledging to enact reforms that protect children.

“The report is alarming and scandalous, the courage and grace of these survivors is contrasted with the horrific depravity of those who would use the name of Jesus to prey on them,” wrote Russell Moore, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission president of the Southern Baptist Convention, in a blog post on Sunday.

“Our approach is seeking to encourage policies and practices that protect children and the vulnerable from sexual abuse in autonomous but cooperating churches, all the while promoting compliance with laws and providing compassionate care for those who have survived trauma,” he wrote. “That means training churches to recognize sexual predation and how to deal with charges or suspicions when they emerge, and equipping churches to stop the pattern, in their church or from their church to others.”

But his post outlined only vague measures, using scripture to convey correct attitudes rather than mapping out a definitive plan of action. And for many it seems too little, too late.

“So many people’s faith is murdered,” alleged victim David Pittman told the newspapers of his molestation by his youth minister from ages 12 to 15. “I mean, their faith is slaughtered by these predators.”