PAWLEYS ISLAND (SC)
In Solidarity with Christa Brown
July 20, 2026
By Christa Brown
With a civil lawsuit and criminal charges against enablers, maybe some Southern Baptist leaders will finally learn a lesson.
At Pawleys Island Community Church in South Carolina, church leaders allowed a convicted child sex offender to regularly interact with kids.
When it came to light last week, church leaders performed a spiritual-sounding song-and-dance to try to justify their recklessness, but parents weren’t having it. Bravo.
Pawleys Island Community Church is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant faith group in the nation, and it sits in an affluent town with gated neighborhoods and high-end golf courses. So, don’t imagine that this is just a one-off aberration at some podunk church. It’s not. Pawleys Island is a prominent church, and its story illustrates some of the egregious patterns within the SBC… except this time, ordinary people are fighting back.
(And for what it’s worth… there are a LOT of Southern Baptist churches like this – i.e., churches that don’t even use the word “Baptist” in their name. It’s almost as if they’re trying to conceal their relationship to a tainted brand.)
What happened at Pawleys Island wasn’t a mere oversight or a mistake. Church leaders knew about Warren Perry’s prior conviction, but despite that, they allowed Perry to serve as a volunteer maintenance worker, and that included allowing him to work at the Pawleys Island Christian Academy, a private school operated by the church.
The fact of church leaders’ knowledge isn’t even disputed. In a congregational meeting on July 15th, senior pastor Don Williams specifically said:
“Mr. Perry’s conviction was known to me, to several leaders within our church, to our church staff, and to the leadership of the PICC.”
Then Williams tried to smooth it all over with gaslighting, spiritual bypassing, talk of how much Jesus loved children, and platitudes about “redemption.” He defended the church’s handling of Perry’s volunteer role, making it sound as though church leaders had chosen the righteous, Jesus-loving path.
“As Christians, here are two things that we believe to be true at the same time. We believe that children must be protected. I also believe that every person, even someone who has committed a serious crime, is made in the image of God and should be treated with dignity.”
But the parents weren’t buying it. They weren’t going to let him use religion to reframe reality. (For a refresher on how high-control religious systems use spiritual language to distort truth and protect power, check out Wade Mullen’s wheel of reality-bending phrases.)
At the congregational meeting, as pastor Williams read his prepared remarks, he was frequently interrupted by people who shouted comments and questions. At one point, someone called out: “You’re reading from a script. You’re not sorry. Speak to us as parents.”
I sympathize with the distraught anger of those parents. Many of us have simply heard far too many of those prepared scripts from recalcitrant, cover-upping church leaders, haven’t we?
Pastor Williams did not engage with any of the parents’ comments. He simply finished reading his statement and exited the podium. (You can listen to the entirety of his remarks here. It’s like a Southern Baptist gaslighting 101 demonstration.)
There appears no doubt that Perry was allowed to interact with kids. A teacher said that children drew pictures for Perry and gave him gifts. The school even had an auction in which one child could spend a workday assisting the school’s two custodians, one of whom was Perry.
One teacher, who had discovered Perry’s listing on the sex offender registry, expressed her concerns, but was told that Perry had rehabilitated himself and that judging him was “not a Christian thing to do.” She said pastor Williams told her:
“You don’t want to be the type of Christian that would spread this information.”
According to her report, she was then forced out of her position at the school.
By now, I expect this story is starting to sound familiar to some of you who’ve had your own experiences with church leaders’ dismissiveness toward those who raise questions about the handling of abuse concerns. Those who raise questions are often the ones who pay a price.
And far too often, church leaders get away with their reckless endangerment of kids. There’s seldom any consequence.
At the conclusion of the July 15th congregational meeting, pastor Williams said:
“Trust is rebuilt when people consistently tell the truth, take responsibility, make the changes, and faithfully follow through. That is our commitment to you.”
But why should anyone believe his words when, in fact, this isn’t the first time that Pawleys Island Community Church and pastor Don Williams have faced allegations of putting youth in danger? A 2005 lawsuit alleged that, even though church leaders had been informed of youth pastor Kenneth “Tripp” Atkinson’s inappropriate conduct toward girls in the youth group, they did not dismiss him, and that he then molested and assaulted a 13-year-old.
Apparently, Williams and other church leaders learned little from that prior history. But now, hopefully, that inability to learn, combined with their failure to take responsibility and make changes, will cost them.
This time, the parents of Pawleys Island are fighting back in force.
They’ve filed a $25 million dollar class-action lawsuit against the church and its school. Among its allegations, the lawsuit claims that the defendants:
- Negligently hired or retained a known sex offender.
- Failed to properly screen him.
- Failed to notify parents.
- Allowed him access to children.
- Breached fiduciary duties owed to families.
- Caused emotional distress to parents and children.
- Should pay actual and punitive damages exceeding $25 million.
On the heels of the lawsuit’s July 17th filing, pastor Don Williams and other church leaders resigned. No doubt that’s cause for many to cheer, but is being allowed to resign consequence enough?
For those of you who’ve seen how these stories often play out in Baptistland, I can hear your skepticism in my head. Too often, the church leaders who put kids at risk and who enable abuse simply move on. Six months down-the-road, they show up in the pulpit of some other church, or they get handed a plum job at state denominational offices.
I expect that’s what will likely happen with pastor Williams. (But keep reading… this story is still evolving, so maybe it will turn out differently. I expect I’ll be updating this post.)
On Sunday, July 19th, protesters rallied outside Pawleys Island Community Church, calling for everyone involved to be arrested.
If that seems harsh to you, consider these words from Judy Purcell, a Pawleys Island church member and organizer:
“People want to say… ‘Oh well, no one was hurt.’ How do we know? What we do know is that he put hundreds of children at risk.”
And therein lies the problem. When it comes to the safeguarding of kids and vulnerable congregants, Southern Baptist leaders repeatedly put kids at risk, and they seem incapable of learning to do better.
For two decades, in response to multiple media exposés, Southern Baptist Convention leaders have claimed they were educating their churches. (E.g.: Last October, the SBC presented a series of webinars on abuse prevention and response, and the first in the series was about how to help sex offenders and bring them into the church body. Furthermore, the webinar was taught by a man who, according to an investigatory report, directed the concealment of documents related to a missionary’s repeated sexual abuses. Any wonder that the SBC can’t succeed in educating its churches?)
Yet, despite their claims and despite their purported “educational” offerings (or maybe because of them?), again and again, in Southern Baptist churches big and small, we see a pattern of recklessness.
This is why kids are not safe in Southern Baptist churches.
But here’s the hope: As of today, July 20th, pastor Don Williams, his wife Ginny Williams, and the school’s director will face criminal charges.
The local sheriff, Carter Weaver, states that investigators discovered “an abundance of evidence” through witness statements and search warrants.
At the press conference, Sheriff Weaver held up photos showing that Perry had indeed been around children. And investigators said, the “statement given to us by church leadership was simply not true.”
The charges include obstruction of justice, unlawful placing of a child at risk, and criminal conspiracy.
The sheriff says that more charges are possible, for these church leaders, and for others connected to the church.
Hallelujah. Real consequences like this are what’s needed. And the more the better. Too many Southern Baptist church and denominational leaders have demonstrated that they will learn in no other way.
For more on the ruses and maneuvers of the Southern Baptist Convention, check out my book, Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation.