Donors call for investigation into trustee handling of seminary president’s firing

“[T]he donors said trustees should publicly apologize to Patterson and restore him to the financial position he held at the conclusion of the full board meeting on May 22.” - BNG

Related: Executive Committee Should Rescind Paige Patterson’s Firing

Discussion

From the link to the firing documents, the stated reason for the firing was that the BOT believed that Patterson had lied about how the 2003 allegations were handled, among other things also involving the 2015 allegations. The response of Patterson’s friends is, more or less, ” our investigations found that no rapes occurred.”

We must infer that (a) Patterson and those around him did indeed conduct internal investigations in both 2003 and 2015, (b) the results of those investigations were retained by Patterson and disseminated to his friends for whatever reason, (c) Patterson did indeed prevent a police investigation in 2003 by failing to report, and (d) conducting an internal investigation in 2015 may have inhibited whatever police investigation that was conducted.

In other words, the letter Patterson’s friends provided proves almost precisely what the SWBTS BOT accused him of doing. Word to the wise; when you’re accused, you are free to deal with the allegations through proper channels, but if you start attacking the accuser in public media, five will get you ten that things will not go well for you. Someone will see through it.

Final note; what Patterson and his friends have done here is one of the cruelest things you can do to a sexual assault victim; every foolish thing the person has ever been accused of is put in the papers, whether or not they actually did it. It’s why most states, including Texas, have rape shield laws preventing a complainant’s sexual history from being used as evidence. So what Patterson’s friends are doing by trying to try the case in the media has a lot of similarity to what some of the scummiest defense lawyers out there are doing.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Assuming your reading of the BOT’s document is accurate, you are inferring more from it than it can prove.

But it has been pretty obvious from the start that you believed the accusations as fact and Patterson et al. were all engaged in a coverup.

Well, you have your opinion, others have a different one, and most of us have no need or reason to form an opinion either way.

Closing.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.