Southern Baptists name International House of Prayer missionary on list of sex abusers
A former youth pastor at a California Baptist church who is a missionary at the International House of Prayer of Kansas City is listed as an alleged sexual abuser in a document released last week by Southern Baptist officials.
Brad Tebbutt, who served as youth minister years ago at First Baptist Church in Modesto, was accused of sexually abusing a teenage girl for two-and-a-half years, starting in the mid-1980s when she was 14.
“Tebbutt now works at the International House of Prayer of Kansas City, MO…,” the newly released Southern Baptist document says. “He served as a youth pastor for 30 years.”
Founded in 1999, the International House of Prayer is a 24/7 evangelical missions organization with its world headquarters on Red Bridge Road.
IHOPKC responded in an email Wednesday morning, referring to Tebbutt as “one of our missionaries” and referring The Star to a news release it issued in April 2019 when it announced that internal and external investigations into the case had been completed and had found Tebbutt had committed no “further wrongdoing.”
“We have no further comment at this time...” IHOPKC said. “We would specifically refer you to the section that states, ‘IHOPKC diligently seeks to be a safe, accountable, transparent and integrous organization, fully alert and corporately aware to abuses and abusers, of any kind. We desire to be a safe, trustworthy organization that deeply embodies the values and actions of Jesus for justice, mercy, and redemption. We are committed to both the prevention of oppression and to justice for those oppressed. Additionally, we challenge abusers toward full repentance with the hope of eventual restoration.’”
Jennifer Graves Roach, of Seattle, went public with her allegations about Tebbutt in 2018, saying she had reported the abuse to church leaders in California in 1988 but they did nothing. First Baptist in Modesto became CrossPoint Community Church in 2010.
The 205-page, previously secret database of pastors and other church-affiliated workers released last week was started in 2007 and contains details of about 700 cases of abuse. Described as “a fluid working document” that “has not been adequately researched” and was “largely compiled from news articles,” the table was created as a tool to discover the scope of sexual abuse of children within the Southern Baptist Convention.
Its release came after Southern Baptist leaders issued an explosive report on May 22 saying church leaders have mishandled and covered up sexual abuse allegations for decades. The revelation was reminiscent of a jaw-dropping 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report that found Catholic Church leaders in six of that state’s dioceses had covered up sexual abuse by hundreds of priests over seven decades.
Roach, a licensed therapist who primarily works with trauma clients — including those who have been through sexual abuse — said that for years, victim groups had tried to get the Southern Baptist Convention to keep track of abusers so they wouldn’t be hired or given volunteer positions with access to youth.
“The SBC flatly refused, saying that such a list would be too complicated to keep,” she said. “But all the while, they actually were keeping a list. The difference is that they knew people on that list were working or volunteering in their churches and never once warned anyone about them.”
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Roach’s allegations against Tebbutt became public in February 2018, when — emboldened by the #MeToo movement — she told The Modesto Bee that he had sexually abused her three decades earlier. Tebbutt was a 27-year-old youth pastor at First Baptist Church in Modesto when the abuse began, Roach told The Bee.
She said Tebbutt had consoled her when her father died in a car crash, then sexually abused her over the next two-and-a-half years in his car, church office and out of town.
After Tebbutt moved away in 1988, Roach said, she confided in church leaders, who told her to forgive and forget and never talk about it again. She said they never told her mother or reported it to police.
Tebbutt wrote her a lengthy letter in 2005, Roach said, acknowledging what he had done and saying that “I grieve over this.”
She later learned that Tebbutt had moved to Kansas City and was leading the Simeon Company Internship at the International House of Prayer. The internship was described as “a training experience and mentoring community for those 50 and older” who “desire to give their lives more fully to prayer, worship, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, outreach, and works of justice.”
Roach contacted IHOPKC, asking how Tebbutt could continue in ministry after sexually abusing a minor. She received an email from an IHOPKC leader saying when Tebbutt started working there in 2013, he “did make us aware of the details around these events and did provide information of a psychologist practitioner with whom he completed an 18-month repentance and restoration process.”
IHOPKC told The Star on March 1, 2018, that Tebbutt had been placed on administrative leave while the organization investigated the allegations. A few months later, IHOPKC hired a Virginia-based nonprofit to conduct an independent investigation into sexual abuse allegations against Tebbutt. The organization was headed by Boz Tchividjian, a former child abuse chief prosecutor and grandson of famed Christian evangelist Billy Graham.
In May 2018, Roach filed a lawsuit against Tebbutt, First Baptist in Modesto and its successor, CrossPoint Community Church. She later dropped Tebbutt from the suit when he agreed to cooperate with the case. CrossPoint settled with Roach in 2019 for $267,500.
IHOPKC issued the news release in April 2019 saying all investigations of Tebbutt had been completed.
“The critical conclusion of the report is that no evidence of further incidents was discovered by the independent firm, nor has there been any evidence of further wrongdoing over the last 30+ years, including time spent at IHOPKC,” it said.
The statement also said that during both the internal and external investigations, Tebbutt had “demonstrated genuine remorse and repentance over the clear moral failure committed at that time, as well as complete cooperation with the litigation. The injured realized that the accuser made a genuine apology and has genuinely forgiven him.”
The news release did not say, however, whether Tebbutt’s administrative leave had been lifted.
Roach said she still has serious concerns about Tebbutt still working at IHOPKC.
“IHOP knows his history and chooses to employ him anyway — the very thing the SBC is in hot water over doing,” she said. “Over the years, I have had a number of women contact me to tell their story of abuse at IHOP by men known to the leadership.
“Does IHOP keep a list of those men like the SBC did? Does it warn anyone about these men?”
This story was originally published June 1, 2022 at 8:55 AM.
