GEORGIA
Baptist News
BOB ALLEN | MARCH 22, 2016
A Cooperative Baptist Fellowship pastor in Georgia has voiced regret and sadness about his church’s handling decades ago of allegations of sexual abuse within a Boy Scout troop it sponsored.
A lawsuit filed March 17 in Fulton County State Court accuses First Baptist Church of Gainesville, Ga., of neglect leading to the rape in 1985 of a now 46-year-old man.
Robb Lawson, who says in his lawsuit he didn’t come to terms with his mental and emotional harm until last year, claims that church leaders knew about allegations of abuse by the congregation’s scoutmaster, a church member, in the early 1980s but did not report it to police or the Boy Scouts of America.
Church leaders removed the man as scoutmaster, but he continued to participate in troop activities, including the camping trip where Lawson says his abuse occurred. The former scoutmaster remained active in the church, serving as a deacon until the allegations about him became public just recently.
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