Southern Baptist Convention settles high-profile lawsuit that accused former leader of sexual abuse – By Robert Downen (Texas Tribune) / Dec 29, 2023
The suit prompted a major newspaper investigation into Southern Baptist sexual abuse and seven other men to come forward with allegations against Paul Pressler, an influential conservative activist and former Texas judge.
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The Southern Baptist Convention and others have reached a confidential settlement in a high-profile lawsuit that accused a former leader of sexual assault, ending a six-year legal drama that helped prompt a broader reckoning over child sexual abuse in evangelical churches, expanded victims’ rights in Texas and showed that a prominent conservative activist and Texas House candidate repeatedly downplayed abuse allegations.
In 2017, Duane Rollins filed the lawsuit accusing Paul Pressler, a longtime Southern Baptist figure and former Texas judge, of decades of rape beginning when Rollins was a 14-year-old member of Pressler’s church youth group in Houston.
Rollins claimed in court documents that the alleged attacks pushed him into drug and alcohol addictions that kept him in prison throughout much of his adult life. After disclosing the alleged rapes to a prison psychiatrist, Rollins filed the suit in Harris County against Pressler along with other defendants who he accused of enabling or concealing Pressler’s behavior — including the Southern Baptist Convention and Jared Woodfill, the former chair of the Harris County GOP and Pressler’s longtime law partner.
CONTINUE > https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/29/southern-baptist-convention-sexual-abuse-lawsuit-settlement/
