Justice for a Survivor in the SBC

Sometimes justice is a community experience

In November 2023, my friend Boz Tchividjian texted me to ask if I would consider working on a case with him.

I didn’t respond for four days. I wasn’t sure I was ready.

Just three months earlier, I had lost my seventeen-year-old son to an accidental drug overdose. The three days I spent in the hospital, hoping and praying that he would recover, then the unfathomable grief thereafter, almost broke me.

There were points where I actually described myself as irretrievably broken.

But over the course of the last 18 months, a series of events helped piece me back together, not how I was, but with my cracks filled in with love and purpose, truth and memories.

One of those events was the text from Boz.

Kintsugi (also known as "golden joinery") is form of Japanese art that uses lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum to mend the cracks of broken pottery. Photo by Riho Kitagawa on Unsplash

His message sent us on a wild legal ride, out of which I made a friend who I got to witness step into courageous freedom first at her deposition and then again last week when she came forward under her own name.

Meet my client and friend Alisa Womack, formerly Jane Doe in Hunt v. Southern Baptist Convention et al.

Posted with permission

The case was brought by Johnny Hunt, a former President of the Southern Baptist Convention, after he was named in the 2022 Guidepost Report as someone engaging in grooming while he was SBC President, then committing sexual assault in the month after his term ended. In 2023, Hunt then sued Guidepost and the Southern Baptist Convention, but not my client, for defamation, placing him in a false light, and emotional distress, among other claims.

Here is how the Guidepost Report describes what Johnny Hunt did on a day in July 2010:

Dr. Hunt then moved towards Survivor and proceeded to pull her shorts down, turn her over and stare at her bare backside. He made sexual remarks about her body and things he had imagined about her. During this time, Survivor felt frozen. Survivor said these were some of the longest moments of her life. She mustered the courage to ask him could she turn back over, and Dr. Hunt said yes. When she turned back over, she began to pull up her shorts. Dr. Hunt then pinned her to the couch, got on top of her, and pulled up her shirt. He sexually assaulted her with his hands and mouth. Suddenly, Dr. Hunt stopped and then stood up. Survivor pulled down her shirt. Survivor said she did not want him to ruin his ministry, at which he responded he did not want to ruin hers. But he then forced himself on her again by groping her, trying to pull her shirt down, and violently kissing her. Survivor did not reciprocate, but rather stood eyes open and very stiff, hoping he would just stop and leave. He finally stopped and left.

There’s more to the story - what happened before - tactics that I see all the time in how manipulative people insinuate themselves into someone’s good graces, admiration, and trust, and then after - how they convince their victim that they didn’t see or experience what they thought they did, or that they were responsible for it, how they convince them to remain silent about it for years or even decades.

Getting caught up in a lawsuit

If you’ve never been sued, it’s hard to imagine how it feels to have to hire an attorney, expose intimate documents and parts of your life, be questioned by people you don’t know, sometimes aggressively, in a deposition for hours. Although my client herself wasn’t sued, she was subpoenaed as a witness, and could not choose to ignore the court.

But last week brought some justice.

The Court granted Guidepost’s and the SBC’s motions for summary judgment, dismissing all claims related to the Guidepost Report. The only claim that survived (and may now go to trial) relates to a tweet about Hunt sent by the individual who was president of the SBC at the time the Guidepost Report was released.

For more insight, read my post about defamation in cases of abuse, especially when the case is brought by the alleged abuser: You Can’t Handle the Truth

There were some significant aspects to the Court’s 74-page opinion:

• A full 30 pages of the opinion consisted of reprinted portions of the Guidepost Report, including TEN pages that recounted my client’s allegations against Hunt. (p.5-34) This is not an accident. I worked as a clerk to a judge in the year after law school, and wrote drafts of many opinions. What is included (and not included) is intentional. The judge was making a point here by memorializing the report and my client’s allegations.

• Hunt told about four different accounts of the events that day between his interviews with Guidepost then to his deposition and filings in the case: (1) he didn’t know the couple at all, (2) he never went inside her condo, was never on her balcony, there was “no contact whatsoever,” and she had never come onto him (3) that he had “a brief, consensual encounter,” (4) that she was allegedly the aggressor. (p.37-46)

• The court held that the Guidepost Report concerned “broad issues of interest to society at large, rather than matters of purely private concern. Specifically, the issues the Report highlights – allegations of sexual abuse involving clergy members and how allegations of such abuse were handled – are matters of public import.” (p.49) Because of that ruling, Hunt had to show, by clear and convincing evidence, that the defendants had “actual malice” in publishing the allegations against him. He couldn’t even come close.

• “Doe was not an anonymous or unverified informant, but someone with whom the Guidepost investigators met with multiple times and corroborated key elements of her account (who, when, where) with multiple other sources…. And there is no evidence in this record that Doe was known to be untrustworthy in 2022 or any other time.” (p.57, emphasis added)

Walking forward into freedom

After the judge’s opinion, my client made the brave choice to come forward under her own name, releasing a beautifully written statement that emphasized the challenges she faced since the traumatic event and why many survivors never come forward.

Notably, however, true justice would have included her never being forced to share her story with all these lawyers, much less the world, never having to pay a lawyer herself, and conversely, being supported through therapy or otherwise, and true accountability and acknowledgment by all involved.

In 2021, I was also subpoenaed for documents and a deposition as a witness in a case where I wasn’t a party - O’Connor v. Lampo Group. Thankfully, I was not a victim of sexual assault in that case, but of institutional and spiritual abuse by the organization - Lampo Group, also known as Ramsey Solutions, in connection with my divorce. That, and my own experience with domestic abuse, help make me a better attorney in cases of alleged abuse and an independent investigator in evaluating allegations of abuse.

In that case, the motion for summary judgment has been outstanding, waiting for a court ruling, for more than two and a half years. For the victim of employment discrimination in that case, justice delayed can be justice denied.

And for someone like me, a witness who provided intimate information about my life and experience, waiting so long in anticipation of possibly having to share those details publicly, is painful.

But with the recent opinion in Hunt v. SBC, justice for one person can sometimes feel like a little bit of justice for all of us.

Warmly,