Note: This story contains details of sexual abuse.

Al Mohler believed a former seminary student when she told him in 2018 that a professor forced her to perform sexual acts. The president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, then sought to deal with the professor discreetly, sidestepping the school’s formal process to avoid an investigation.

A federal court in Nashville, Tennessee, has recently unsealed reams of documents, collected during the discovery process of an ongoing defamation suit, that detail these decisions.

Former missions professor David Sills, 68, reclamación (es leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) used him as a scapegoat to deal with a massive sexual abuse crisis. He is attempting to prove that when Mohler, 66, and others said things about him that were published in a Guidepost Solutions investigation, they acted with “reckless disregard” for the truth.

The newly available documents — including meeting notes, phone transcripts, text messages, and sworn depositions — shine light on the way SBC institutions and their leaders handled abuse allegations. Mohler, one of the defining figures in Southern Baptist life over the last 30 years, took the allegations against Sills very seriously, court documents show.

But he also tried to avoid learning many details.

“I have been completely consistent in my life in seeking to know what I need to know,” Mohler dijo under oath in October 2024, “and not wanting to know beyond what I need to know.”

A meeting memo marked “CONFIDENTIAL MATTER” shows Thom Rainer, then president and CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources, called Mohler at the seminary on May 21, 2018, to “discuss a serious matter.” The two men got on a second call 10 minutes later, joined by their respective deputies and Jennifer Lyell, an executive at Lifeway and former student and employee of the seminary.

On the call, Lyell, who fallecido earlier this year at age 47, acusado Sills of “sexual misconduct and assault (all unwanted) over a period of years,” according to the memo.

A transcript given to the court shows that Lyell did not use the exact word “assault.” She spoke of “sexual acts” that she tried and failed to “physically and verbally resist.”

Lyell also told Mohler that she sometimes “gave in and complied” with Sills’ sexual demands. “I didn’t want him to be upset with me or make him feel bad,” she said. She described that as sin and said she had repented. But there were other times, according to Lyell, that the sex happened “under physical force,” which is the definition of assault.

Mohler listened, the transcript shows. When Lyell finished talking, he committed the seminary to “do the right thing.” He took her side, unambiguously.

“It breaks my heart for you,” Mohler said. “It angers me beyond what I can articulate, but just know I’m very concerned for you, praying for you. We will stand behind you.”

Mohler said the seminary would support Lyell if she wanted to go to law enforcement. He asked if she wanted to take legal action, and said the seminary would support that as well. 

He then asked Lyell what she wanted Southern to do, noting that it was not her responsibility to make a decision for the seminary, but he wanted her input.

Lyell said Mohler should do what he thought was best for the kingdom of God and Southern, the transcript shows. She assured him she didn’t want to hurt the seminary’s reputation and wasn’t going to go public.

“There’s nothing to be gained from going public,” Lyell said. “I think that gives you the freedom to do what you think is best before God and … that’s what my hope and prayer is.”

Mohler agreed.

An ‘ambush’

When Lyell got off the call, the seminary head told the Lifeway leaders he would arrange a meeting to confront Sills. The next step would be a meeting where seminary leadership presented the allegations to the accused party. Mohler called it an “ambush.”

“I’ve learned in these situations, I want the advantage of an ambush,” Mohler said on the phone call. “People tend to be most honest when they’re unexpectedly confronted with an accusation.”

The decision to confront Sills with the allegations was immediate, without any discussion or deliberation about alternative approaches. Mohler does not appear to have directed anyone to do further investigation. In Mohler’s account of events, no one was directed to ask if there were other allegations, other potential victims, or concerning patterns of behavior.

Discussing this with the lawyers later, Mohler said there was a process that he followed.

“The phone call … invokes a process already established,” he said in his deposition. “So that was not something that we had to reinvent. It was a process that existed, and so we sought to invoke that as quickly as possible.”

The ambush meeting happened two days later, on a Wednesday before lunch. Adam Greenway, who served as seminary dean at the time, summoned Sills to Mohler’s office. He did not say what it was about, according to court records. Sills came after teaching class.

The recently unsealed court documents offer multiple accounts of what happened next.

Mohler, in his deposition, recalled that he said something about “the sadness that we had to have this meeting” and then told Sills “an allegation had been made about sexual misconduct.”

A senior vice president who was in the room dijo under oath that Mohler outlined the accusations he’d heard from Lyell, repeating a summary of what she’d said.

“It was awkward from that point forward,” recalled Craig Parker, head of institutional advancement.

Sills fumbled for a response, according to the vice president, struggling to make any clear statements. He didn’t deny the allegations but didn’t confess either.

Accused professor says ‘abuse’ is not in the Bible

Sills, in his account of the meeting that he gave under oath, said he was shocked to hear Mohler use the word “nonconsensual.”

“That was the emphasis he was making, that this was a nonconsensual thing,” Sills dijo. “The·elephant in the room that was swirling around, was ‘nonconsensual.’ I just — honestly, I was just·dumbfounded … by that term, by that word.”

When a lawyer pushed Sills for details in 2024, he would admit to sexual contact, starting when Lyell was a student at the school where he taught and a congregant at the church where he occasionally preached. Sills acknowledged “oral-genital contact,” as the lawyer termed it, in his home, her home, and on trips where Lyell would travel with his family, as part of the family. He acknowledged there were times when they were alone together and fully or partially naked. Sills admitted to “sexual touch.”

But Sills would always insist, none of this was “nonconsensual.” Nor was it “abuse,” he argued, despite the fact that he was more than 20 years older than Lyell and, for part of the time, had academic and spiritual authority over her.

Sills told the lawyers in his deposition it was false to label him “an abuser” and “abuse” is not a biblical idea.

“I would defy anyone to find in the eyes of God in the Bible a passage that speaks — that differentiates between sexual sin and sexual abuse and then tells us this is why this is sexual abuse and not just sexual sin,” Sills said.

That debate did not come up in the meeting between Sills and Mohler. Instead, Sills said in his deposition, the seminary president used the word “nonconsensual” and he denied the accusation, saying nothing nonconsensual ever happened.

Then Mohler looked around the room, Sills recalled.

“He said, you know, we need to — we need to resolve this,” Sills told the lawyers in 2024. “He said something like, we can either do a big investigation, third-party investigation, call in a bunch of people. If you are going to deny it, we can do that. Or you can just resign.”

Better not to investigate?

Mohler didn’t say why it would be better not to have an investigation or for whom, according to depositions of the men in the meeting. Southern Seminary’s faculty handbook outlines a process for dealing with accusations of inappropriate behavior. That process involves investigation.

Mohler told the lawyers in his deposition that this is the “formal process” that the seminary has written down. But there’s also another process, an alternative and more discrete route available to someone accused of abuse.

“And what’s the second process you’re referring to?” the lawyer asked Mohler in 2024.

“That is a process that leads to a resignation by the employee, not invoking that formal process,” Mohler said. “The employee has the option of the other process.”

Parker, the senior vice president, recalled that Mohler pushed Sills for a while, and Sills was willing to admit vaguely to an inappropriate relationship.

The professor didn’t offer any specifics, Parker said. Nor did he even say the inappropriate relationship was sexual. According to Sills own account in 2024, he didn’t even say that what he’d done was definitely inappropriate, only “probably.”

“I’m sure in the years that we’ve known her,·things would have happened that I wouldn’t want to·happen on the platform of the chapel, is the way I put it,” Sills recalled saying in the 2018 meeting. “I said there were probably some inappropriate·things that have happened. That is all I said.”

Mohler did not push any further, according to the people in the room. Sills was allowed to decide what he wanted to do and left for lunch with his wife, where they discussed their options.

Sills resigned later that day. The seminary didn’t give a reason for his departure at the time, but dijo in a statement that “Our policies and procedures are clear and are consistently applied.”

The cryptic statement didn’t stop Sills from getting another job in ministry. Lyell se hizo publico in 2019, after Sills got a job in missions, expressing concern that he might hurt other people the way he had hurt her.

Lyell was counting on Mohler to back her up when she went public, court records show. He affirmed again the seminary would be behind her. Lyell then said on social media that the seminary president had investigated and corroborated her allegations of abuse.

Mohler told the lawyers in the defamation suit that actually, the only thing he did was confront the accused.

“When other people say you investigated, are they mistaken or misunderstanding what you did?” the lawyer asked Mohler.

Mohler agreed. He did not launch a formal investigation, he said. Once Sills agreed to quietly resign, Mohler didn’t believe there was anything else he, as seminary president and a Southern Baptist leader, needed to know.

Daniel Silliman is senior reporter/editor at The Roys Report. He began his two decades in journalism covering crime in Atlanta and has since led major investigations into abuse and misconduct in Christian contexts. Daniel and his wife live in Johnson City, Tennessee.