Southern Baptist Leader Pleads Guilty In Abuse Coverup

October 17, 2024 Crime, Religion

The Tennessean reports:

The first Southern Baptist pastor to face a federal criminal charge related to an abuse inquiry pleaded guilty to a felony, according to court filings on Wednesday.

Matt Queen, currently a pastor in North Carolina and a former interim provost for Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, reached a plea agreement prior to a trial in the case out of the U.S. Southern District of New York. The trial was set to begin on Nov. 13.

Queen’s guilty plea, for making false statements to federal investigators, carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison, though Queen’s attorney, Sam Schmidt, expects the judge to recommend a sentence of several months at most.

Religion News Service reports:

As part of an investigation into the SBC and its entities, federal officials have been looking into alleged sexual abuse that occurred in 2022 at the seminary. School officials were required to turn over any documents related to abuse to the Department of Justice.

However, an unnamed seminary official, known as “Employee-2,” allegedly ordered that a report on the 2022 abuse case — which detailed that the seminary had known about the alleged abuse but failed to take action on it — be destroyed.

According to federal officials, Queen heard Employee-2 order “Employee-1,” the staffer who wrote the report, to destroy it and then allegedly lied to federal officials about it.

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