Southern Baptist Leader Covered up Sexual Abuse Allegations

By The Daily Caller. The former head of two prominent Southern Baptist seminaries sought a one-on-one meeting in 2015 with an alleged rape victim in order to “break her down,” seemingly so that she would not go public with her allegations.

Dr. Paige Patterson, the former president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, made the comment in an email to the chief of campus security, a trustee at the school told The Daily Caller News Foundation Friday.

Patterson was fired on Wednesday as president of SWBTS and stripped of benefits after it was revealed that he mishandled multiple sexual abuse allegations at SWBTS and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS), two of the top Southern Baptist schools in the U.S.

The Washington Post published an article on May 22 which quoted a former SEBTS student who claimed that in 2003, Patterson asked her not to go to police with allegations that she was raped by a man she was dating at the time. (Read more from “Southern Baptist Leader Covered up Sexual Abuse Allegations” HERE)

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Southern Baptist Leader Encouraged a Woman Not to Report Alleged Rape to Police and Told Her to Forgive Assailant, She Says

By The Washington Post. A prominent Southern Baptist leader at the center of controversy this spring over comments he has made about abused women allegedly encouraged a woman who said she had been raped not to report it to the police and told her to forgive her alleged assailant, the woman has told The Washington Post.

The woman said that she was raped in 2003 when she was pursuing a master of divinity degree in women’s studies from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., where Paige Patterson was president at the time.

“I had bottled it up,” said the woman, who works in public relations in North Carolina. “My husband didn’t know about it until last week. … I told him ‘I need to do something.’ ”

A man who a seminary official confirmed was the alleged assailant’s roommate at the time of the incident said that the woman told him about the assault shortly after it allegedly happened. The woman also provided an email to The Washington Post from the seminary’s dean of students at the time referencing the alleged incident. (Read more from “Southern Baptist Leader Encouraged a Woman Not to Report Alleged Rape to Police and Told Her to Forgive Assailant, She Says” HERE)

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