Thread by @wad3mullen

This is the story of Debbie Vasquez.

Debbie was repeatedly abused by her 28-year-old pastor.

She "was 14 when her pastor started touching her inappropriately. She was 15 when he raped her and 19 when she had his baby."

baptistnews.com/article/specia…

"When she became pregnant with Amyx's child at age 18, church leaders forced her to go before the congregation and ask forgiveness as an unwed mother. But the congregation was never told it was Amyx's baby" in order to protect the church from hurt.

foxnews.com/printer_friend…

Amyx moved on to pastor a church in Arizona, ultimately ending up at a Southern Baptist church in Denton, Texas.

Debbie struggled as a single mom to provide for her daughter. She finally got a judge to order him to help. Her daughter was 8 by then.
ethicsdaily.com/baptist-clergy…

Debbie had a conversation with Amyx in 2003 in which he told her how some high school girls "talked with him about their sexual exploits." Later he told her:
“If something happens between me and these kids, I doubt she would be telling anybody.”
nashvillescene.com/news/article/1…

This caused Debbie to realize she might not be the only victim.

After seeing a local TV station run a story about Christa Brown's case and that the Texas Baptist convention maintained a file of SBC pastors who had abused, she decided getting Amyx into that file might help.

In 2006, she wrote to leaders of the BGCT, hoping that the SBC might do something to protect any other kids from harm. They told her each church is autonomous.

She "never was able to meet with state convention officials, even with the help" of SNAP.

bishop-accountability.org/news2006/11_12…

When it became clear she wasn't going to get help, she filed a lawsuit against Amyx and the church, hoping it would get everyone's attention.

Amyx admitted in a deposition to having sex with Debbie between 20-40 times, but denied having sex with her before she turned 17.

Hoping to get leaders of the SBC to do more to prevent clergy abuse, Debbie wrote to Paige Patterson. Patterson refused to help her, writing:

"You also protect evil doers who have slandered others. Is the slander of SNAP somehow not a hideous sin also?"
ethicsdaily.com/sbc-seminary-p…

She wrote to Frank Page, then SBC president. He also called into question the motives of SNAP:

"some of the groups who are doing this are nothing more than lawyer groups, looking to raise their caseload level. They are not truly trying to help people.."
ethicsdaily.com/clergy-sex-abu…

She wrote to Augie Boto, current interim president of the SBC Executive Committee. He wrote:

"With regard to how you can help, let me suggest that you consider a ministry of information to your church and other churches about your experience, and what you learned..."

SNAP also took up her concern. They wrote to Randal Everett in 2008, then executive director of the BCTC:

"We request that the name of Debbie Vasquez’s perpetrator be added to the BGCT’s file based on the evidence she has brought forth."

stopbaptistpredators.org/press/letter_t…

Debbie dropped the suit and settling out of court for $22,500 and a written apology. After legal costs, she took home $9,659.38.

Amyx was placed on paid leave by his church.

bishop-accountability.org/news2008/05_06…

"The saddest thing about Debbie's case is that, before she ever filed a lawsuit, she tried so hard to get help from the Baptist General Convention of Texas, and no one would do anything. Now, here we are two years later, and Debbie has been dragged through hell.."

Christa Brown

From a 2008 story: "Amyx has not faced any sanctions..not from his followers at Bolivar Baptist Church..Nor from the SBC, which still lists both Amyx and Bolivar Baptist as SBC-affiliates on its online databases, which is as good as having the denomination’s stamp of approval..."

The SBC simply condemned abuse in words:

"...a group seemingly content to sit on the knowledge that somewhere, along the weed-lined dirt roads of a small Texas town, a minister who admitted to having sex with a teenager is prepping next week’s sermon."

nashvillescene.com/news/article/1…

That was how it ended in 2008 and Amyx had returned to the pulpit.

A 2009 online review wrote: "Yes Dickie tells perverted jokes but he is a man. Even a man of God needs to [be] a boy sometimes."

Reviews on Amyx have been written as recent as 2017.

Although I could not find Amyx on the SBC's list of ministers, a 2018 LinkedIn profile lists him as the pastor.

And the church itself is listed in the online SBC Church Finder tool.

"We do have the right to identify churches that are rightly associated with the Convention, and if a church knowingly keeps employing a sexual predator, the Convention reserves the right to disassociate them."

Roger Oldham, SBC spokesperson, 2012
christiancentury.org/article/2012-1…

As to the confidential file Debbie tried to get Amyx added to:

The BGCT Executive Board voted Feb. 23, 2016 "to change the convention’s focus on clergy sexual misconduct.. and will eliminate its confidential file of clergy charged with misdeeds."

baptiststandard.com/news/texas/bgc…

I first heard of Debbie's story through reading material written by Christa Brown.

Christa talks of her advocacy on behalf of Debbie in her autobiography "This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang."

amazon.com/This-Little-Li…