Abuse survivors cry foul over ERLC’s end-of-year fund-raising appeal

NASHVILLE (TN)
Baptist News Global

Dec. 18, 2019

By Bob Allen

Leaders of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests criticized a Southern Baptist Convention entity’s fund-raising appeal that touts the denomination’s response to the scourge of sexual abuse in the church as “misleading and insensitive” to victims.

Daniel Darling, vice president for communications at the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, sent out an e-mail Dec. 16 soliciting tax-deductible donations of $50, $100 or $500 to help the agency “stand with” survivors of sexual abuse and “equip them to make their voices heard.”

An accompanying 2 ½-minute video features Susan Codone, a Mercer University professor, responding to questions including, “How does it feel to know that for the first time, the church is taking the issue of sexual abuse seriously?”

“I have quite a story of sexual abuse in the church, and to be able to have a safe place where I was believed and supported by ministry leaders, to share that with the church and hopefully make the church a safer place, to me that meant everything in the world,” Codone says.

SNAP, a network of survivors of institutional sexual abuse and their supporters launched in 1988, responded with a press release contrasting Codone’s praise for SBC leadership with the “disappointing disparity” experienced by hundreds of abuse survivors “who have received zero support from the SBC.”

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