ORLANDO (FL)
Christianity Today [Carol Stream IL]
September 3, 2026
By Jack Panyard
With the help of Catholic abuse survivors, Protestant survivors of abuse have created their own database of church leaders accused of sexual abuse.
Chellee Taylor, who has shared the story of her abuse by a Southern Baptist pastor in 2023 and won a settlement from the church, spearheaded the database.
“I don’t want to burn down the church, but I don’t have a problem dismantling the aspects that are harming people,” Taylor told CT. “The reason that we built this site is because I love the church and I love what the church can and should be. But what it is currently does not mirror that at all.”
Attorney Boz Tchividjian, who has represented Taylor as well as many other church abuse survivors, consulted with David Clohessy, the former executive director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a leading organization documenting Catholic abuse, and came to her with the idea of building a website in 2024.
Tchividjian told Taylor that there was no all-encompassing site for all the denominations in Protestantism, nor is there a way to find offenders quickly online. Several abuse databases exist for Catholics.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely,’” Taylor said. “Why doesn’t that exist?”
The site, ProtestantAccountability.org, claims a searchable database of more than 2,700 people accused of committing or covering up church abuse, with photos, indictments, lawsuits, and news reports listed with institutions where the accused have worked.
Taylor hopes churches using the database can screen potential hires across congregations and denominations, keeping churchgoers safer.
The website includes anyone who admitted to abuse or was convicted, suspended, defrocked, or publicly accused as well as those who enabled, disregarded, or covered up abuse at their organizations. The group does not conduct investigations but collects and organizes already public information and has a disclaimer on the landing page offering to take down any incorrect information.
Accusations range from the 1980s up to the present, with famous ministers including Robert Morris, Johnny Hunt, and Ravi Zacharias listed. The database can be organized by state, denomination, job title, and more. It includes pastors, lay staff, counselors, teachers, college faculty, and even organists.
“This database has the potential to save others from the suffering that I endured, not just at the hands of my pastor, but by the institution who chose to protect him over honoring God with accountability, transparency, and truth,” Taylor said during a press conference for the website’s launch on August 19.
During the conference, survivor Elisabeth Ingram said church staff hopping is a problem, and abusers can be quietly removed from congregations and given a “sendoff,” allowing them to victimize more people at other churches. As recorded in the database, even some former Catholic bishops are accused of transferring to Protestant churches and continuing their abuse.
ProtestantAccountability.org joins the ranks of other abuse trackers, including BishopAccountability.org and ProPublica’s “Credibly Accused” list, which document abuse among Catholic clergy, as well as SNAP.
In 2022, a third-party investigation by Guidepost Solutions uncovered a list of hundreds of names accumulated over two decades of people accused of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention. In response, at the annual meeting that year the SBC decided to create a website called Ministry Check to track abusive church leaders, but no names were added to the site.
In 2025, the Ministry Check database was put on hold, and Jeff Iorg, head of the SBC Executive Committee, said it was “not a focus for us.”
To build the new site, Taylor connected with Dominique Benninger, a cybersecurity specialist in Pennsylvania and fellow church abuse survivor. Benninger helped start BaptistAccountability.org, which he closed in August to join ProtestantAccountability.org as vice president.
Benninger said expanding the scope of documented abuse from Baptists to the whole of Protestantism was daunting. Taylor and Benninger led a team of more than a dozen volunteers, all survivors of some sort of clergy abuse, to launch the project.
“It was gargantuan, I’m not going to pretend,” Benninger told CT about the two-year project.
Taylor and Benninger also consulted with Terry McKiernan, who started BishopAccountability.org in 2003, which now has a database of 8,000 accused.
“I’ve just recently wrapped my head around how large Protestantism is, how many denominations there are,” McKiernan told CT.
He said directories and a much more unified system exist for tracking Catholic priests, compared to Protestant pastors working in a tradition where the landscape is much more fractured and difficult to monitor.
He hopes that ProtestantAccountability.org moves cautiously and can balance the need for public safety with respect for the accused and the victims involved. McKiernan said during the press conference he would like the site to prompt legislative reforms.
“I also respect that they’ve done this totally on their own,” McKiernan said. “They’ll make some mistakes, and it’s a solid team; they’ll correct them.”
McKiernan has navigated the legal side of running such a database, too. He said no lawsuits have been filed against his site.
Clohessy, an activist against church abuse for more than four decades, said he was mainly providing cheerleading and emotional support while ProtestantAccountability.org got started, and he’s eager to see the project grow.
As awareness expands about abuse, he anticipates more databases focusing on abusive coaches, teachers, camp counselors, and daycare workers.
“One of the most important, valuable changes is that now on the internet, with a few clicks, people who need to know can have a much better chance of finding out,” Clohessy told CT. “Parents can’t protect their families unless they know who and where the bad guys and the questionable guys are.”
The consultation from other database creators helped Taylor prepare for the potential legal backlash.
Upon accessing the site, users must accept a “Terms and Conditions Agreement” before viewing records. It says the site relies on public documents and that nothing on it should be “construed as an accusation of guilt” and that those listed are innocent until proven guilty.
Benninger and Taylor said they have not received any legal threats yet. Tchividjian said since there is no original information on the website, there are few footholds to bring legal action against the database or staff.
“[If] you pay the filing fee, anybody can file a lawsuit,” Tchividjian said. “I’m sure there might be some people that get upset that this already publicly posted information is now on this website, but I don’t see any viable claims.”
Tchividjian was disappointed an initiative like this was spearheaded not by a church but by people who have been hurt by churches.
“I think Jesus is on the side of these folks who came together, worked tirelessly for no glory, no benefit, no compensation, but doing this solely so others can be informed about the dangers around them,” Tchividjian said. “If the church is not doing that, then I’m not so sure what the church is doing.”
Taylor and Benninger, who still ache with their memories of church abuse, felt the emotional weight of documenting the cases and combing through details. The two have tried to stay away from social media posts about the project.
“I don’t blame anybody for not doing it first,” Taylor said. “It would be great if this wasn’t our undertaking, but I understand why especially survivors would not want to do this.”
ProtestantAccountability.org focuses on sexual abuse, but the founders hope to expand to incorporate other types of abuses, like physical or financial, as the project grows.
Taylor and Benninger, who have done the work on a volunteer basis, said the team aspires to archive the reports, blogs, and court records, so broken links or expired pages won’t erase information.
“One person being saved from potential harm is a success for me,” Taylor said.