The Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention is meeting this afternoon (Sept. 28) in a called virtual board meeting, currently discussing matters privately in executive session.
The meeting is taking place via Zoom and is focused on the reportedly final decision about whether the Executive Committee will waive attorney-client privilege in the investigation of how it handled sexual abuse claims between Jan. 1, 2000, and June 14, 2021.
Today’s discussion is a follow up to the group’s regularly scheduled meeting last week (Sept. 20–21) in Nashville. The group struggled to make a definite call with some members adamantly for waiving privilege, some adamantly against it and several needing more information, so they agreed on a compromise motion that allowed for seven additional days of deliberation.
The Sept. 21 motion also called for the independent third-party review to begin right away with an allocation of up to $1.6 million for the work to be done by Guidepost Solutions.
Today’s deadline was for a final agreement to be worked out between Guidepost, the Sexual Abuse Task Force, Executive Committee officers and the attorneys. While the virtual meeting was available to the public via live stream, the group voted to go into Executive Session within the first 30 minutes.
One of the questions being discussed is how insurance, which is through Brotherhood Mutual, could be affected with waiving attorney-client privilege.
To read the earlier coverage coming out of the Sept. 20–21 meeting as well as information from the survivors of sexual abuse present at the meeting, see links below.
