Attorneys for a firm fighting a defamation lawsuit from former Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) President Johnny Hunt are asking a court to dismiss the case based on Hunt’s own statements and “now-admitted lies.”

en un motion filed in a Tennessee court last week, attorneys for Guidepost Solutions wrote that Hunt initially told Guidepost investigators that he had “no contact whatsoever” with a woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her. They added that Hunt also told investigators the woman “had never come on to him.”

However, when deposed for the lawsuit, Hunt changed his story and claimed the woman “actually stalked and seduced him,” the attorneys wrote. They added that Hunt “admitted having kissed her on her breast, pulled down her shorts, and fondled her.”

“In other words, Hunt’s predicament is entirely of his own doing,” attorneys wrote in the motion. They also argued that “sending the claims against Guidepost to a jury would . . . reward Hunt for persistently lying to the Guidepost investigators and then failing to walk back his now-admitted lies after given every opportunity to tell the truth” (emphasis in the original filing).

The recent motion comes in response to Hunt’s claim that the SBC and Guidepost defamed him and made him the scapegoat for the largest sex abuse scandal of the denomination.

In 2021, an SBC sex abuse task force hired Guidepost Solutions to independently investigate how the SBC, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, handled 20 years’ worth of sex abuse allegations.

Guidepost’s investigation, published in May 2022, found that SBC leaders were well aware of alleged sex abuse by ministers, mistreated sexual abuse survivors, and prioritized protecting the SBC from liability over stopping abusers. A bombshell from the 2022 Guidepost report was a sexual assault allegation against Hunt from a woman 24 years younger. She is referred to with the pseudonym “Jane Doe” in Hunt’s lawsuit.

Neither Hunt nor his attorney responded to The Roys Report’s (TRR) request for comment on the allegations that he lied. Hunt’s attorney hasn’t yet filed a response with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.

Hunt is asking for more than $100 million in damages in his defamation suit, according to a January filing by his attorney. In his April deposition, filed with the court last week, Hunt claims that Guidepost “ambushed” him and created a “false narrative” about him.

If Hunt’s suit moves forward, it could be costly not just to Baptists but to other organizations’ efforts to expose abuse, Guidepost’s motion for summary judgment argued. A jury trial in the defamation case would “chill” and “discourage” third-party investigators’ ability to transparently look into sexual abuse allegations, Guidepost’s motion stated.

In their depositions, Hunt and his wife, Janet, both denied that Hunt has faced additional sexual misconduct allegations during his decades as a Baptist pastor.

However, Johnny Hunt Ministries (JHM) está siendo demandado by Zachary James McAlexander, a former member of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, where Hunt used to pastor. McAlexander alleges that when McAlexander and his wife met Hunt in the church hallway, Hunt “directed all his attention” on McAlexander’s wife in an encounter in an “inappropriate” way.

Woman accuses Hunt of molesting her

Guidepost’s landmark report states that a woman called “Doe,” the wife of an SBC pastor whom Hunt was mentoring, told investigators that Hunt had groomed her while he was SBC president. The woman said he gave her an “unusual amount of attention,” comments of a “sexual nature,” and unwanted touch like kissing her hand.

Then, in July 2010, she and her husband said Hunt arranged for her to stay alone in a condo in Florida, which she didn’t realize would be next door to Hunt’s condo where he was vacationing.

Hunt asked to enter her condo, and then pulled down her pants while she froze, the report states. Hunt then commented sexually about her body, climbed on top of her, pulled up her shirt, and “sexually assaulted her with his hands and mouth,” the Guidepost report states. Later that day, Hunt allegedly asked her to have sex with him three times a day, the Guidepost report states.

According to Guidepost’s recent motion, Hunt offered investigators conflicting details about that 2010 encounter.  Guidepost found Hunt’s answers not “credible,” but relied on corroboration from a minister who had counseled Hunt and the woman and three other “credible” witnesses, the 2022 Guidepost report states.

Hunt’s alleged lies

After the Guidepost report was published, Hunt changed his story to say he had a consensual inappropriate encounter with Doe, the substance of which was the focus of much of his deposition for the lawsuit.

“Is there a truth that I had a consensual relationship by a lady that stalked me by coming to where I live and seduced me within the context of my own home,” Hunt said in his deposition. “Yes, to that.”

Guidepost’s attorneys listed several of Hunt’s other alleged lies in their motion last week. In his first interview in 2022, Hunt told investigators he didn’t know Doe’s husband, according to Guidepost’s filing. In a second interview in 2022, Hunt said he knew the couple for 20 years and that the husband had become a Christian due to Hunt’s ministry, the filing states.

In his 2022 Guidepost interview, Hunt gave conflicting reports of whether he went on Doe’s balcony, Guidepost’s filing states. He also denied going into her condo. And he initially said he didn’t have any contact with her the following day. But he later changed his story to say he saw Doe on the beach the next day, the filing states.

Hunt also told investigators in 2022 that a sabbatical he took in 2010 had nothing to do with an encounter with Doe, the filing states. But in his deposition, Hunt admitted to taking about a two-month sabbatical in 2010 following the encounter with Doe. He said he even considered not returning to his pastorate at First Baptist Church Woodstock. But he said in his deposition that he found healing through counseling and decided to return to the church without telling them about this “private” matter.

In 2022, Guidepost interviewed Hunt twice and gave him 48 hours after the second interview to contact them with any additional information to the testimony, Guidepost’s court filing stated. Hunt didn’t take the investigators up on the offer to correct his testimony or tell them he had a consensual affair, Guidepost’s attorneys wrote.

In his deposition, Hunt said he denied to investigators that he had contact with Doe because he believed the investigators’ “minds were made up,” about “false allegations” that he’d assaulted Doe. He called the Guidepost report “sensationalized.”

“My options were to continue down the line of their false allegations mixed with some truth or for me to simply say in my heart, I don’t want to talk to these people,” Hunt said in his deposition. “And that’s what I chose to do.”

Scarlett Nokes, attorney for the SBC’s Executive Committee, called Hunt a “confident man and leader,” in her questioning for Hunt’s deposition.

“Are you saying they wouldn’t let you speak in the meeting you had with them?” Nokes asked.

“After the way they ambushed me, who wanted to talk to them?” Hunt answered.

But in her February 2024 deposition, Guidepost investigator Samantha Kilpatrick said if she’d found the allegation “more likely than not” to be consensual, she would have left it out of her report.

“Guidepost is unaware of any occasion when a libel plaintiff complained that a defendant failed to report a fact for the sole reason that the plaintiff himself told the defendant the precise opposite,” Guidepost’s attorneys wrote in their filing.

‘My job is to protect my husband’

In her April deposition, which was just filed in the court last week, Johnny Hunt’s wife Janet Hunt said she found out that Doe was staying next door to their Florida condo in 2010. She thought this was inappropriate, so she asked Doe to leave.

“(M)y job is to protect my husband,” Janet Hunt said in her deposition.

Janet Hunt said she first knew of Doe’s presence when she saw her on the beach in a bikini. The only contact Janet said she had with Doe was when she saw a couple texts Doe sent to Johnny, asking for salt and pepper, and then asking if Doe could join Johnny on a run.

“So, as a result of that, I went next door where she was supposed to be staying, knocked on the door and there was no answer,” Janet said in her deposition. “And when she got off the elevator, I said to her, pack your bags, get off this beach and don’t you ever contact my husband again by email, text or phone call. Do you understand? She said, yes, ma’am. And that was the last I saw of her.”

However, when asked if Janet Hunt had suspected her husband of infidelity or adultery with Doe, Janet denied this. In their depositions, both Johnny and Hunt denied to attorneys that other women have brought any allegations against Johnny.

In Hunt’s defamation suit, Hunt is asking for $15 million due to an expected 11 years’ worth of lost income, loss in expected book sales, and loss from future speaking engagements. His attorney’s filing indicates he’s used to making at least $1.4 million a year. The filing also shows Hunt is asking for $30-45 million in damages for reputational harm and $30-45 million for emotional distress.

But Guidepost’s attorneys argued in their recent motion that Hunt’s claims don’t warrant a trial.

“(T)he Court should end this admitted liar’s cynical misuse of the Court’s resources,” Guidepost’s attorneys wrote in their recent motion.

A second lawsuit

Separately, former First Baptist Church of Woodstock church member Zachary James McAlexander is suing Johnny and Janet Hunt and Johnny Hunt Ministries, which manages Hunt’s speaking ministry. The suit was filed in April 2023 in Cherokee County Superior Court in Georgia, the county where JHM is based.

In his suit, McAlexander alleges that Hunt was negligent in not disclosing his 2010 sexual misconduct with Doe, which caused McAlexander emotional distress. McAlexander’s complaint also stated that Hunt looked at McAlexander’s wife from the pulpit and in the hallway in an “inappropriate” way.

“Defendant Johnny Hunt was looking at her as if Plaintiff did not exist though sitting right there beside her, and moving his wedding ring repeatedly on his hand,” McAlexander’s complaint states. “One time Plaintiff and his first wife encountered Defendant Johnny Hunt in the hall and he similarly directed all of his attention to her and acted like Plaintiff did not exist. Both times were inappropriate and made Plaintiff very uncomfortable.”

McAlexander, who appears to be representing himself, has also named the Southern Baptist Convention as a defendant. And in an amended complaint, McAlexander added Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) as a defendant for mishandling allegations of Zacharias’ sexual misconduct. The suit states that Hunt and Zacharias knew each other and Hunt was at the opening of one of Zacharias’ spas. Zacharias also spoke at First Baptist Church of Woodstock, McAlexander’s suit states, showing a breach of fiduciary duty.

JHM, SBC, and RZIM have all requested McAlexander’s case be dismissed. In June, McAlexander filed a motion requesting that the suit become a class action suit to represent others, too.

Hunt didn’t immediately respond to TRR request for comment on McAlexander’s suit.

Rebecca Hopkins es una periodista radicada en Colorado.