Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn was closely involved in one of the harrowing stories featured in an explosive investigation into the mishandling of sexual abuse within Southern Baptist Convention churches.

The 300-page report, made public by the nation’s largest Protestant denomination this week, reveals that top Southern Baptist leaders across the nation systemically mishandled sexual abuse claims, often working to cover them up and suppress victims and their families. The report was compiled by a third-party firm, which scrutinized more than 20 years of sexual abuse accusations in Southern Baptist churches across the nation.

A Mississippi case involving a decades-long coverup and high-ranking Baptist officials defending an abuser was highlighted in the report. Though Gunn is not named in the report, his involvement as an attorney in the case was scrutinized broadly by the state and national press and even Southern Baptist-focused and other religious news outlets.

John Langworthy, a former music minister at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, resigned from the church in 2011 after admitting that he sexually abused young boys when he worked at two Mississippi Baptist churches in the 1980s and then in a Texas Baptist church.

Gunn, who has served in leadership roles at Morrison Heights, was the church’s attorney as Langworthy’s case played out in the courts and in the public sphere. The speaker was unable to be reached for comment regarding this article.

Langworthy was first accused of abusing a teenage boy at a Texas Baptist megachurch in 1989. But that church’s pastor Jack Graham, who once served a stint as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, allowed Langworthy to be dismissed quietly and did not report the abuse to police at the time, the report said.

Langworthy immediately moved back to Mississippi, where he landed a job in 1990 as music minister at Morrison Heights and later as a choir teacher at Clinton High School. Langworthy held those jobs until 2011, when details of his abuse were first made public. 

Amy Smith, an advocate for child abuse survivors who had worked in 1989 at the Texas church where Langworthy was first accused, worked for months starting in 2010 to get Morrison Heights church leaders — and really anyone else — to hear her story about the Texas accusations of Langworthy. Smith told a blogger the story about Langworthy’s Texas abuse allegation and the ensuing coverup at the Texas church, and the blog published that information in June 2011.

With the accusations made public via the blog, Langworthy confessed to the Morrison Heights congregation in August 2011 that he abused children during his time in Texas and while he was in Mississippi before that. Smith then shared video of Langworthy’s confession with journalists in Texas and Mississippi, and the story was broadcast. Several victims of Langworthy’s saw those news reports and alerted authorities. In September 2011, he was indicted in Hinds County on charges of sexually abusing five boys ages 6-13 in Jackson and Clinton between 1980 and 1984.

Hinds County Assistant District Attorney Jamie McBride told the Clarion Ledger at the time that an investigation showed Langworthy was “involved heavily with the youth choirs from 1980 to 1984 at First Baptist Church of Jackson and Daniel Memorial Baptist Church in Jackson.”

When Langworthy confessed to the abuse in 2011, Gunn was set to become one of Mississippi’s most powerful political leaders as speaker of the House. But that same year, Gunn had become ensnared in the church scandal.

Gunn was publicly accused of trying to cover up Langworthy’s abuse before his confession and indictment. Amy Smith, the Texas church staffer who first disclosed details of Langworthy’s earlier abuse to the blogger, told Mississippi reporters in 2011 that she heard from Gunn three months before Langworthy publicly admitted to the abuse and four months before he was indicted.

Gunn emailed Smith in May 2011 “to discuss a resolution,” he wrote. Smith declined to speak with Gunn and perceived his email as an effort to sweep the allegations under the rug.

“Seems to me like he was asking to offer me something to go away to be quiet and that was not acceptable to me, that’s not protecting children and I simply said no,” Smith told WJTV at the time.

After Smith refused to speak with him, Gunn reportedly contacted another advocate who was also publicly discussing Langworthy’s past crimes. Sherry LeFils, a former Texas probation officer who worked with thousands of sex offenders, said at the time that she had three phone conversations with Gunn regarding Langworthy’s case. She told WJTV that one phone call, in particular, struck her as odd.

“My take was what we can do to make this right, to make this go away,” LeFils told WJTV.

Gunn also faced broad public scrutiny for advising Morrison Heights church leaders to not talk with the Hinds County District Attorney’s investigators about what Langworthy told them about his alleged child sex abuse. To back up that counsel, Gunn cited a “priest-penitent privilege” law — which legal scholars later said was not relevant to the case.

“What I’m telling you is that the elders are bound by privilege. Under the law, there’s a legal privilege that attaches. Are there no exceptions to that? No, there are no exceptions to that,” Gunn said in a WJTV interview in 2011.

Smith, who prosecutors later credited with the work that ultimately inspired Langworthy’s victims to come forward, blistered Gunn publicly for that position.

“It is very troubling that Philip Gunn as the legal representative for Morrison Heights Baptist Church is trying to keep information from Hinds County prosecutors about a recently arrested and indicted child molester on whose behalf Gunn attempted to ‘discuss a resolution’ with me last May,” Smith said in November 2011.

Gunn and other church leaders maintained they found no evidence that Langworthy abused children in his 21 years as music minister at Morrison Heights. But what church leaders knew was never divulged publicly because a trial never occurred.

Even after his public admission to the Morrison Heights congregation, Langworthy cut a guilty plea deal that kept him out of prison. He served five years of probation, could have no contact with the survivors of his abuse, and had to remain registered as a sex offender. The state’s sex offender registry says Langworthy died in 2019.

Graham, the pastor of the Texas megachurch where Langworthy’s abuse accusation was allegedly ignored, refused to speak with investigators who were compiling the report released this week.

Meanwhile, Southern Baptists are reeling as they reckon with the report and its broad negative attention.

Russell Moore, a Mississippi native and prominent Southern Baptist Convention leader who left the denomination in 2021 for, among other reasons, its lax response to the sexual abuse scandal, penned a column for Christianity Today this week about the damning report.

I can’t imagine the rage being experienced right now by those who have survived church sexual abuse. I only know firsthand the rage of one who never expected to say anything but ‘we’ when referring to the Southern Baptist Convention, and can never do so again. I only know firsthand the rage of one who loves the people who first told me about Jesus, but cannot believe that this is what they expected me to do, what they expected me to be. I only know firsthand the rage of one who wonders while reading what happened on the seventh floor of that Southern Baptist building, how many children were raped, how many people were assaulted, how many screams were silenced, while we boasted that no one could reach the world for Jesus like we could.

That’s more than a crisis. It’s even more than just a crime. It’s blasphemy. And anyone who cares about heaven ought to be mad as hell.

Russell Moore in Christianity Today on May 22, 2022

The post Philip Gunn’s connection to the Southern Baptist Convention sexual abuse scandal appeared first on Mississippi Today.

JACKSON, Miss. – Today State Auditor Shad White announced special agents from his office have arrested Undare Kidd and Trafonda Kidd. Both have been indicted for conspiracy and fraud by a local grand jury. A $49,653.52 demand letter was presented to both individuals upon arrest.

The Kidds allegedly submitted a false invoice for services not actually provided to Hinds County taxpayers. These arrests come after Toni Johnson, Sudie Jones-Teague, and Cedric Cornelius were each arrested for fraud, embezzlement, and bribery earlier this year.

A portion of the money allegedly obtained by the Kidds came from $1.9 million in grants awarded to Hinds County by the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL)—a nonprofit organization funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. According to the Wall Street Journal, this organization gave over $350 million to election offices across the country during the 2020 election season.

“This case shows, once again, that there was allegedly fraudulent spending on the 2020 election in Hinds County. We will continue to work alongside prosecutors to ensure all our 2020 election spending cases are brought to a successful conclusion,” said Auditor White. “I am thankful to the investigators and prosecutors for their hard work.”

If convicted, the defendants face many years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines. All persons arrested by the Mississippi Office of the State Auditor are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. The case will be prosecuted by the office of Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens.

No surety bond covers either of the defendants or their alleged crimes. Surety bonds are similar to insurance designed to protect taxpayers from corruption. Both defendants will remain liable for the total amount of the demand in addition to criminal proceedings.

Suspected fraud can be reported to the Auditor’s office online at any time by clicking the red button at www.osa.ms.gov or via telephone during normal business hours at 1-(800)-321-1275.

The post Two More Arrested in Connection with Hinds County Election Commission Case appeared first on Mississippi Office of the State Auditor News.

In 2021, the United States recorded a grim record – over 100,000 drug overdose deaths, the most ever.

Mississippi has seen its fair share, with regular reports of tragic overdose deaths in communities across the state. Many of these overdoses are attributed to fentanyl, a potent opioid that can result in overdose in very low quantities.

The growing presence of overdoses in Mississippi is largely attributed to the presence of fentanyl in street drugs. These reports have prompted a response from the state’s political leaders, including efforts to promote awareness of the problem and increase enforcement of drug penalties. These strategies are decades-old, all the way back to Nancy Reagan’s campaign to “Just Say No” and the War on Drugs that has persisted for decades, with limited success.

A new kind of policy aimed at stemming overdose deaths has swept the country in recent years. “Good Samaritan” laws get their name from the Biblical story, where a traveling Samaritan stopped on the road to help a man who was injured after he had been passed by several others.

Good Samaritan laws have emerged as a way to encourage reporting of overdoses by providing criminal immunity for those reporting the overdose. By shielding the individual reporting the overdose from prosecution for illegal drug use, Good Samaritan laws remove a powerful disincentive that can discourage individuals from seeking medical attention.

A review of Mississippi’s Good Samaritan laws by Grading Justice gives the state’s policies a letter grade of C. While Mississippi does have a Good Samaritan law, it is limited. Expanding the policy could help decrease overdose deaths and save lives.

Mississippi’s Good Samaritan law protects those who seek medical attention as well as those experiencing an overdose but only in certain circumstances. Mississippi’s law provides only very narrow protection against charges for possession of very small amounts of a controlled substance and possession of paraphernalia. Even small, user-level amounts of a controlled substance are not covered by the law. Additionally, individuals acting in good faith could still be liable for possession with intent to distribute, sale, or transfer of a controlled substance, or trafficking of a controlled substance.

Immunity in Mississippi’s law extends to both the individual experiencing the overdose and the individual reporting the overdose but does not explicitly protect other individuals in the immediate vicinity.

If policymakers are serious about saving lives and decreasing overdose deaths, expanding the state’s Good Samaritan law is a good place to start.

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The Mississippi Public Service Commission purports to regulate utility monopolies including Mississippi Power and Entergy Mississippi. But the PSC actually shills for them. A shill is a hustler’s accomplice who touts rubes to play rigged games. Entergy’s latest hustle is a $150 million solar plant experiment. Solar energy is a rigged game.

The Central District Commissioner is the PSC’s main solar shill. His recent newsletter says Mississippi ranks 50 out of 52 in U.S. solar deployment – but is poised to shine. It describes Entergy’s solar experiment and others. It recites solar talking points. The Commissioner knows the talking points. His former job was promoting solar and “sustainability” for something called the 25X‘25 Alliance.

You may remember Mississippi Power’s infamous Kemper County lignite plant experiment. A former governor and two pet PSC commissioners touted it. It was supposed to turn lignite (low grade coal) into a synthetic gas to burn and drive turbines to generate electricity. It was also supposed to capture carbon dioxide from the burning syngas and inject it into depleted oil fields to rejuvenate them.

So, Kemper’s experimental technology would turn worthless lignite into electricity, save the planet from CO2’s global warming, and recover oil from worn out fields. A three-fer! U.S. Department of Energy experts promoted the technology. They said the Chinese would license it. And do good for mankind with it. You know – like they did with COVID gain of function research (promoted by U.S Public Health experts).

The lignite plant was supposed to cost $1.6 billion – about three times more than a conventional natural gas turbine generating plant. But after six years and $7 billion, it hadn’t run. The PSC finally decided it wouldn’t run and threw in the prudence towel – when two new commissioners replaced the governor’s pets. “Prudence” is a magic PSC word. It means customers must pay for the utility’s shell game.

The PSC determined Kemper wasn’t prudent. But it still stuck customers with $854 million of its cost for turbines modified to run on natural gas. The company paid for the rest of the failed experiment.

It now turns out that none of Kemper’s electricity was needed. The PSC said it was when it issued a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) authorizing Kemper’s construction. Ooops. Note, the CPCN authorizes plant construction. Prudence makes customers pay for it. It’s a two-step hustle.

So now the PSC says Mississippi Power must reduce its generating capacity and shut down some plants. Guess what? It’s not going to shut down Kemper’s turbines. Their electricity is more expensive for customers – but more profitable for the company. Instead, Mississippi Power will shut down part of Plant Daniel near Pascagoula.

The part of Plant Daniel being shut down is coal fired. Mississippi Power has spent $770 million since 2014 to reduce its CO2 emissions. It charges customers for this (with PSC approval). Coal gives Mississippi Power fuel diversity. This was once important to the PSC. It cited fuel diversity

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A pair of letters sent earlier this month by the Institutions of Higher Learning commissioner shed light on the recent controversial policy changes that faculty fear will make it harder to get and keep tenure at Mississippi universities. 

In the letters, Commissioner Alfred Rankins addressed concerns that the new standards IHL added to its tenure policies, like “collegiality,” could be used by university presidents to discriminate against politically outspoken faculty or faculty members of color. 

Rankins wrote that IHL thinks the new policies are “improvements to prior policy language.” Though teaching, research and service are still the main factors, Rankins wrote the board believes that standards like collegiality are valid and legal for university presidents to consider and don’t infringe on the constitutional rights of faculty in Mississippi. 

“There is no prior evidence to suggest these terms have quashed academic freedom or faculty individual rights within our system of universities,” Rankins wrote. “In reviewing your concerns, I must point out that almost any criterion commonly used in evaluating faculty for tenure could be used by a bad actor as a pretext for denying tenure for impermissible reasons.”

“However, that does not mean that the criterion is not an appropriate and valuable point of consideration as part of the tenure attainment process,” he added. 

Rankins sent the letters, which are similar, on May 9 and May 10 in reply to inquiries from faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi as well as two national nonprofits, PEN America and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. 

“I want to assure you that the protection of our employees’ constitutional rights is of utmost importance to us,” he wrote to both groups. 

Jeremy Young, the senior manager for free expression and education for PEN America, told Mississippi Today that he was not assured. Young said Rankins’ letter made him more concerned about the new policies. The organizations told Rankins as much earlier this week in a reply to his letter. 

“Your response assuages none of the academic freedom or free expression concerns in our original letter, and in fact strongly suggests the IHL Board of Governors neither understands the concept of academic freedom nor recognizes its central importance to the health of higher education,” the organizations wrote back on May 18. 

PEN America and FIRE pushed back on Rankins’ assertion that there is no evidence IHL’s policies have violated academic freedom. They wrote that IHL and university presidents have appeared to use the tenure policies to target outspoken faculty in several cases, including in 2019 when several board members voted to deny University of Mississippi sociology professor James Thomas because they did not like some of his tweets. 

Faculty are “justified in interpreting the new policy as more than an idle threat,” the organizations wrote. 

IHL’s new policies gave the university presidents the final say on approving tenure applications. Previously, the board approved tenure. IHL also added new criteria for university presidents to use to determine whether to grant tenure, including a faculty member’s “collegiality,” “effectiveness, accuracy and integrity in communications,” and “contumacious conduct,” a factor that was previously only included in the board’s tenure dismissal policy. 

Faculty say these new terms will weaken tenure in Mississippi by providing university presidents a guise to dismiss outspoken or marginalized faculty. Tenure is meant to ensure that faculty are only dismissed for cause. 

But IHL never gave faculty an opportunity to have formal input on the new policies. When the trustees approved the tenure policies at its April meeting, they did so without discussion. The board did discuss the policies at its March board meeting, but the proposed revisions were not included on the agenda. The March meeting was held at Mississippi State University Riley Center in Meridian, an hour-and-a-half away from the complex where the board typically meets in Jackson, that was not live-streamed. 

IHL’s April vote came as faculty were in the middle of the most hectic time of year, reading essays and submitting final grades. At University of Southern Mississippi, members of the faculty senate met with President Rodney Bennett to ask him about the new policy. 

Shortly after, Brian LaPierre, the president of USM’s faculty senate, wrote a letter on May 3 asking Commissioner Rankins to clarify the new policies. 

“This is intended to give you a sense of the confusion, anxiety, and dismay that these policies — and the lack of information and context accompanying them — have created in our campus community,” LaPierre wrote. 

LaPierre appended a number of questions about the new policies: What prompted IHL to revise its tenure policies? Why weren’t faculty consulted? Is IHL concerned the policies “will impact the ability of our universities to recruit and retain talented faculty and students, as well as promote research in Mississippi?” 

Rankins did not address these questions in his reply. He defended the new criteria, particularly collegiality, as a standard that is legal to consider in granting tenure and wrote that “effectiveness, accuracy, and integrity in communications are important components of effective teaching and learning.” 

The changes are already having ripple effects. Under the old policies, most of the universities submitted tenure applications for the IHL to approve at its May board meeting. That didn’t happen this year because IHL’s changes went into effect immediately after the April vote. 

Now some of the universities are working to figure out if they need to retroactively consider collegiality for the tenure applications they had expected the IHL board to approve this month. At USM, Denis Wiesenburg, a member of the faculty senate executive committee, said the university is sending tenure applicants back to the school level to ensure faculty members are evaluated under the new standards. 

“It’s created chaos,” Wiesenburg said. “The amount of administrative burden that the IHL has added at the worst time of year.” 

At a University of Mississippi faculty senate meeting earlier this month, Chancellor Glenn Boyce and Provost Noel Wilkin assured faculty that everyone who was up for tenure this year would be approved. 

Wilkin also told the faculty that the chief academic officers met with Commissioner Rankins prior to the April board meeting and that he had not brought up the tenure changes.  

Boyce, who served as commissioner from 2015 to 2018, said he had “known for awhile” that IHL was considering changing its tenure policies, but that he did not know the board was going to make the revisions this year. 

“They had these two policies on their mind when I was commissioner,” Boyce said. “They just never formally sat down like they did this time around.” 

“Needless to say, we got no advance notice of the changes,” he added. “We had no advance notice this was gonna be on the agenda and had no opportunity to provide input. Hopefully that’ll help you understand what we knew and when we knew it.”

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