FLORIDA
Associated Baptist Press
By Bob Allen
The attorney for a man awarded $12.5 million by a Florida jury for childhood sexual abuse suffered at the hands of a Baptist minister says the verdict could be a game-changer for how Southern Baptists handle credible accusations of clergy misconduct.
“I think it’s a good thing for the Florida Baptist Convention to clean up their act,” attorney Ronald Weil of the Miami-based law firm Weil, Quaranta, McGovern said Jan. 22 of last week’s judgment by a Lake County, Fla., jury against the 3,000-church statewide affiliate of the Southern Baptist Convention. “Hopefully, this is a wake-up call for them to do that.”
The jury handed down a unanimous verdict on Saturday, Jan. 18, awarding damages to a victim now in his 20s who claimed he was molested as a child by a church planter trained and supposedly vetted by the Baptist state convention. A previous jury found the convention responsible for the minister’s actions in 2012.
Weil, a 30-year civil trial lawyer who specializes in sexual abuse and victims’ rights litigation, said to his knowledge it is the first time for a state Southern Baptist convention to suffer a verdict in a case involving child sexual abuse.
A 2008 article in the Nashville Scene quoted Southern Baptist Convention General Counsel Jim Guenther saying the convention has never lost a lawsuit of any kind in the 50 years he has represented the denomination.
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