UNITED STATES
Houston Chronicle
January 21, 2021
By Robert Downen
The church pastored by Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear announced Wednesday that an outside firm will review the recent hiring of a pastor accused of mishandling sex abuses a decade ago.
The review of Bryan Loritts comes six months after he was hired at Greaar’s Summit Church in Raleigh, N.C., and after months of criticism from sexual abuse survivors.
Among the critics were those with whom Greear and other Summit leaders have worked closely as the SBC continues to confront sexual abuses detailed in a 2019 Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News investigation, Abuse of Faith.
In 2010, the worship director at Loritts’ Memphis, Tenn., church was accused of recording at least one person as they used the restroom. The man, Rick Trotter, was at the time Loritts’ brother-in-law and the announcer for the NBA team Memphis Grizzlies. Trotter was terminated from that position soon after, but moved to another nearby church.
After he was charged with multiple counts of voyeurism in 2016, the churches released a joint statement in which they said they “openly discussed Trotter’s prior sexual misconduct and the counseling he attended for sexual addiction,” according to media reports.
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